Microsoft News Tracker

LiveSide has the skinny on the beta of a new Windows Live service called Windows Live Family Safety Settings:

Family Safety Settings is an easy-to-use parental control application that is designed to monitor, control and filter online activity. By creating specific accounts for your children, you can view activity reports showing what websites they have visited and adjust their content filters accordingly.
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The technology behind this service is similar to the Windows Vista Family Safety feature…
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Beta invitations were being sent out yesterday for this upcoming Windows Live service, which goes by the codename “Vegas” (think Sin City).

Hit the link for more including a screenshot, but despite the praiseworthy objective, a couple of observations immediately come to mind.

First, this is yet another odd candidate for the “Live” moniker. The way these personal filtering programs work is that they install on the user’s machine and get periodic updates of Web site ratings, much like an antivirus program. There’s no Web 2.0 or Web interface of any kind in the deal. Chalk it up as some more “Live” branding confusion.

The second observation lies in the above phrases “these personal filtering programs” and “like an antivirus program.” The personal filtering business already has numerous established players like CYBERsitter, Cyber Patrol, Net Nanny, and more which seem to provide equivalent functionality to the proposed Microsoft offerings. Some like CYBERsitter don’t charge for the periodic updates, others generally do, but it looks very similar to the Windows antivirus software market and it’s a popular category:

More than half of U.S. families with online teens use filtering programs, with more than 12 million copies of such software in use, according to a study conducted last year by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. The report indicated that use of filters in U.S. homes grew 65 percent from four years earlier, as children logged on to the Web in ever greater numbers and the online porn industry continued to flourish.

There’s no word on how much Microsoft is going to charge (if anything) for Windows Live Family Safety Settings or Vista’s Windows Family Safety, but the 800 pound gorilla just showed up and it doesn’t look good for the little players, particularly with the Vista bundling. If the antitrust regulators are getting antsy over OneCare, they ought to get pretty excited over this one.

Vista backdoor or not?

Earlier in the week, the BBC had a story that the British government had requested a backdoor in Windows Vista’s BitLocker drive encryption because it was too strong. John Lettice at The Register isn’t too impressed - Panic spreads over Windows Vista ‘back door’ that never was:

Who’d be a Microsoft? There you are, strolling along minding your own business and the next thing you know you’re in a top level conspiracy with the UK security forces to put a back door into Windows Vista. Or so, anyway, the web bush telegraph would have us believe. But disorientating as we find it to be leaping to Microsoft’s defence twice in one day, we at The Register feel compelled to point out that the story is somewhat exaggerated, going on entirely untrue.

Vista still plenty secure

Regardless of any backdoor stories, Bill Gates delivered a keynote at the RSA conference and touted the new security features in Vista including the ubiquitous InfoCards, which he also announced will be supported in Internet Explorer 7. The term “virtual wallet” was even bandied about. In an interesting development, InfoCards got backing from Verisign:

Microsoft has found an unlikely backer for its ambitious InfoCard online ID management system.

At the RSA Conference here, Verisign dispelled the notion of a rivalry with Microsoft over identity management and announced that its new VIP (Verisign Identity Protection) network—which is backed by Yahoo and eBay—will work seamlessly with InfoCard in Windows Vista and Internet Explorer 7.

Oh ye of little faith!

There seems to be a bit of buzz about Microsoft actually being on time with the February CTP of Vista:

Microsoft still is expected to deliver the next Windows Vista milestone, the February Community Technology Preview release, next week — most likely on Feb. 21, according to testers briefed last month by Microsoft.

While beta testers contacted this week said they had received no updated information as to when to expect the so-called February Community Technology Preview, most said they were still expecting it to arrive on February 21, as Microsoft privately told testers a month ago.

And in a related vein, it looks like that, as anticipated, Vista will actually ship in time for the holidays.

A surprise in the holiday stocking?

Last but not least, don’t plan on upgrading your current PC to Vista and being able to watch any high definition content. Ken Caesar Fisher has the details at Ars Technica, but I rather like Thomas Hawk’s explanation, “Hollywood Hates You.”

I’m an IBM alumnus and know well that they have some very talented people, but you have to wonder if the powers that be will ever “get” the SMB market. Robert McMillan at InfoWorld:

IBM plans to ship a new version of its Tivoli Identity Manager software designed for small to medium-sized businesses.

Tivoli Identity Manager Express will be a slimmed-down version of the product that can be used by a maximum of 5,000 users, said Joe Anthony, a Tivoli program director with IBM.

Identity Manager is typically used by very large companies to manage user names and passwords and audit user activity. The Express version will have less customization features than its enterprise counterpart, but it will also be easier to install and manage, Anthony said. “It’s a single DVD. It installs on a single server in less than two hours.”

Dare Obasanjo points to the new adCenter blog where we find out that an updated version of the limited beta is near release. Oilman reports on a demo of the new version and has screenshots. It still looks like Microsoft is on track for a full launch of adCenter in June 2006

Meanwhile, on the contextual Internet advertising front, Nathan Weinberg points out a post at Jensense where Jennifer Slegg reveals what she found while reading the session descriptions for the upcoming Microsoft Mix06 conference where she is to be a speaker:

MSN ContentAds is their contextual advertising program name and a launch date will be sometime in 2006.
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While it is extremely likely ContentAds will only be in beta for a soft launch in 2006, similar to AdCenter starting off with a small beta, the fact that MSN is planning their program to launch relatively soon in the contextual advertising timeline is very good news to hear. With YPN taking over two years to launch after the introduction of Google AdSense, it wouldn’t have been surprising to see MSN not offer their own contextual program until 2007 or 2008.

The greater the delay, the bigger Google’s lead gets.