Microsoft watcher Mary Jo Foley's blog covers the products, people and strategies that make Microsoft tick.
Mary Jo has covered the tech industry for more than 25 years for a variety of publications and Web sites, and is a frequent guest on radio, TV and podcasts, speaking about all things Microsoft-related. She is the author of Microsoft 2.0: How Microsoft plans to stay relevant in the post-Gates era (John Wiley & Sons, 2008).
Microsoft officials announced on January 9 that the next version of Office for the Mac will be dubbed "Office 2008 for Mac," and will ship in the latter half of this year. Converters needed to exchange documents between Windows- and Mac-based Office systems won't ship in final form until six to eight weeks after Office 2008, however.
I spent most of the first day at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) on January 8 doing what you'd expect from a full-time Microsoft watcher: Meeting with Microsoft execs under the Microsoft press tent; touring the Vista hardware showcase; and wading through the crowds in the giant Microsoft booth on the show floor.
Over at the Microsoft press tent at the Consumer Electronics (CES) Show, Microsoft is showing off a few protypes of its just-announced Windows Home Server product.
The Windows Home Server cat is finally out of the bag. Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates officially announced the existence of the Windows Home Server at his January 7 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) kick-off keynote. But the real details on the new systems didn't come from Gates, Microsoft or HP.
At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2007 kick-off keynote by Bill Gates on Sunday night, Microsoft showed a bit of what Microsoft has planned for the first wave of Ultimate Extras. And at Microsoft's Windows Vista Lab, an event for about 60 bloggers, Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs) and Windows community members held in Las Vegas on January 6 and 7, Microsoft officials filled out details on the rest of its Extras strategy.
Microsoft is tuning its vision for the the Windows Live Platform which is at the center of its Windows Live strategy. At a January 7 session at Microsoft's Vista Lab in Las Vegas on the Live developer platform Scott Swanson, director of platform planning for Windows Live, outlined Microsoft's current and evolving vision the Live platform.
It's Saturday morning, and I'm in Vegas already. I'm one of about 60 bloggers, Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs) and/or Microsoft Featured Community site members attending the Microsoft-sponsored Windows Vista RTM Lab.
Microsoft is working on some kind of secret Web-development-related tool/technology, known simply at this point as "Technology X." Anyone have any educated (or purely speculative) guesses as to what this might be, beyond my own meager attempts?
The retail and Web versions of Microsoft's Windows Live OneCare 1.5 won't be out until the end of January (allegedly at the same time as Windows Vista launches to consumers on January 30). But Microsoft officially released the code to manufacturing on January 3, according to a post on the OneCare team blog.
Is 2007 finally going to be the year Windows Live gets more airplay? If so, it doesn't seem like there will be much of a concerted Live presence at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) next week.