Microsoft News Tracker

Press release:

The new and improved MSN® Shopping (http://shopping.msn.com) and Cedric the Entertainer, one of the hottest actor/comedians working today, called for an end to the hassles of holiday shopping, declaring today national Shop in Your Undies Day. Cedric appeared in New York’s Times Square to demonstrate that by shopping on the new and improved MSN Shopping, consumers can dress in whatever they want, even their undies. Shopping on MSN is not only easier than ever, it allows consumers to avoid holiday crowds and find great values on tens of millions of products from thousands of retailers.

Today Cedric was met by a huge crowd of fans, tourists and native New Yorkers in Times Square. As Cedric told the crowd that MSN Shopping is “the” place to shop dressed in whatever they want, some 50 men and women suddenly stripped down to just their winter coats and boxer shorts and marched through the crowded streets alongside Cedric singing holiday songs.

Indeed! There’s the obligatory picture at the link as well this factoid:

A new survey conducted by Harris Interactive Inc.® and commissioned by MSN Shopping shows that they’re not the only ones stripping down before shopping online. According to the survey, 31 percent of U.S. online adults have indeed shopped online in their undies.

Who knew?

Ryan Katz has the buzz at Think Secret:

Apple’s Mac mini will be reborn as the digital hub centerpiece it was originally conceived to be, Think Secret sources have disclosed. The new Mac mini project, code-named Kaleidoscope, will feature an Intel processor and include both Front Row 2.0 and TiVo-like DVR functionality.

While the specific model and speed of the Intel processor in the new Mac mini is unknown, sources are confident the system will be ready for roll-out at Macworld Expo San Francisco, in line with other reports Think Secret has received that Intel-based Macs will be ready some six months sooner than originally expected.

Macworld Expo is scheduled for January 9-13. The new mini is supposed to have an iPod dock as well as the enhanced FrontRow 2.0 media control and the “TiVo-killer” DVR application. That would seem to answer the complaints about the new iMac G5 and FrontRow 1.0 announced in October.

Michael Gartenberg:

While I won’t comment on how likely this rumor is, I will comment that if Apple does introduce this machine in January, it will be a huge success.

and he wonders if the press would promptly forget Media Center PC’s.

Update: Gartenberg has some further thoughts.

While it had looked imminent, the promised November Community Technical Preview of Windows Vista still hasn’t arrived. Mary Jo Foley does some sleuthing to try to track it down and explores the implications. In the overall scheme of things, a late or skipped CTP isn’t particularly important except as an indication of whether Vista is still on schedule and that’s why everyone is mighty curious.

You may recall that Toshiba, Intel, and Microsoft are backing the HD DVD format (although Vista will not support it initially), while Sony and the movie studios are supporting Blu-ray along with Dell and HP (although HP is waffling). Well, here’s the latest.

As had been feared, China will have its own third format (via Neowin):

The DVD Forum, the international DVD standard authority, has given Chinese engineers the go-ahead to look into developing a next-generation DVD format which will compete with Sony’s Blu Ray and Toshiba’s HD-DVD standards.

Last month China announced plans to develop its own format in a bid to eliminate the need to pay licensing fees to foreign companies. The DVD Forum has now agreed that a study can be carried out to test the feasibility of a China-only format, according to news network NewsFactor.

The format will be based on, though not compatible with, HD-DVD technology and is due for release in 2007. According to Lu Da of the government-backed National Disc Engineering Center, the format will offer higher definition, better sound quality and more effective means of combatting piracy than Blu Ray and HD-DVD.

In another clarifying move, the DVD Forum also approved twin rewritable formats:

Re-recordable HD DVD discs will be branded ‘HD DVD-RW’, the DVD Forum confirmed at its most recent steering committe last week.

But in a move which would seem to be calculated to win support from as many firms as possible, the Forum also said re-writeable discs will be branded ‘HD DVD-RAM’. They were originally supposed to be called ‘HD DVD-RW’.
…
That begs the question: how does re-recordable differ from re-writeable? Alas the Forum provided no clear guidance.

And spreading the discord to another aspect of the technology, Sony opted to ship its recordings using the old MPEG2 format:

Microsoft surprised many two years ago when it submitted its Windows video technology, called VC-1, to technical standards bodies in hopes of seeing it appear on the new DVDs. Other technology giants hold patents in a rival advanced format called MPEG-4 AVC.

Last week, studio giant Sony Pictures quietly voted for “none of the above,” and took a swipe at the new codec formats. The new advanced codecs aren’t immediately necessary for discs released in Sony’s high-capacity Blu-ray format, Sony Pictures executives said in an interview with CNET News.com, and the studio would instead use the 11-year-old MPEG-2 video codec used on today’s DVDs.

Then, Sony and NEC, who had been on opposite sides of the format battle, merged their optical disk drive operations:

“This joint venture relates to the creation of joint manufacturing operations,” said Rick Clancy, senior vice president of communications for Sony Electronics, San Diego. “It is conceivable that there could be a variety of disk-drive requests produced, based on requests for a variety of customers.” Those drives include CD-based drives, DVD drives, Blu-Ray, and “perhaps even that other format,” Clancy said.

And finally, HP is still waffling.

Oh wait, there’s one more item: Sony has chosen Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle as the first Blu-ray movie:

We can’t claim to have viewed said picture, but lets just say that even Blu-ray could not compel us to such an act. Sony says that “this achievement will help everyone understand that Blu-ray is real and poised to enter the marketplace,” but we’re guessing and hoping it will take more than this to win the format war.

Techcrunch is doing the teasing about a new Windows Live service codenamed “Fremont” that is supposed to launch in the next few weeks:

I had a chance to see a demo of the product - it’s very cool and will definitely shake things up.

However, one of the commenters spoils the suspense by pointing to a blog post that apparently describes it:

This product represents a unique offering by Microsoft to address the person-to-person marketplace. The product, code-named “Fremont,” is a dynamic new listing service that enables people to easily buy, sell, or swap among friends, co-workers, or the public. Fremont enhances your ability to:

* Connect with those you trust - your messenger buddies and your coworkers,

* Locate items in your neighborhood or across the country through integration with MapPoint and Windows Live Local (formerly Virtual Earth),

* List easily, instantly, and for free.

His conclusion is that it is a better Google Base, although there is a distinct classified ad flavor that isn’t inherent in Google Base despite the way it seems to be turning out. Should Craigslist, eBay, and the dead tree classified publishers be worried? Or in the latter case, more worried:

Murdoch once described revenue from these pages as “rivers of gold”. Yet presumably his concern over the future of the classified market was at least partly behind his sale of The Times Education Supplement group last month.

“Sometimes rivers dry up,” he says when reminded of his old quote. “This is a generational thing; we’ve been talking a 15- or 20-year slide on this. Certainly I don’t know anybody under 30 who has ever looked at a classified advertisement in a newspaper. With broadband they do more and more transactions and job-seeking online.”

I guess we’ll just have to stay tuned.

Update: Related: Google to Go Hard After Classifieds.

Update 2: Ben Charny confirms the suppositions above in eWeek. Fremont seems to be Microsoft’s version of Google Base with a stronger classified advertising flavor:

While created to serve primarily as an online marketplace, Fremont, and similar initiatives pre-dating it, serve a much broader purpose.

Each of these Web sites represents a way for individuals or businesses without any Internet presence to become more visible to to the Internet-using community.

For a business or individual, it means taking part in the growing amount of online commerce. From an Internet search provider’s perspective, introducing these facets means more Web pages to sell ads on.