Microsoft News Tracker

Engadget has the rumor du jour:

The juicier bits, however, are that we can all expect to find out some hard information from Microsoft in August, and that the player is slated to launch on November 14th, right in time for the holiday buying season (what a huge surprise).

There’s more there and if you haven’t been keeping up with the Zune news, I see that the Zune News Site has an (unofficial) FAQ that collects the latest buzz.

Microsoft is going to have to stand in line for a piece of the iPod action though, since there seem to be so many others trying for the same market mojo. Today, Verizon Wireless jumped in with their “Chocolate” cell phone and music player:

With its circular scroll pad, the device looks like Apple Computer’s iPod MP3 player, adding another player to an increasingly crowded market. Microsoft announced July 21 it would soon release a digital music player called Zune.

Verizon’s Chocolate will probably differ from both products in that it uses wireless links both to download and to play music, supporting a Bluetooth-enabled headset. The device also doubles as a cell phone, with 3G (third-generation) features like games, music videos, television clips, GPS (global positioning system) navigation and a camera.

No word on a kitchen sink, but that’s the rub with these multipurpose phones - they may do everything a little bit, but they do nothing really well - except phone calls, I guess. BullMarket.com:

Though the sleek new phone is pleasing to the eye, and, at $249 with a one-year contract, not terribly expensive, analysts aren’t expecting Chocolate and other cell phone MP3 players currently on the market to make much of a dent in Apple’s dominance in the mobile music arena. In fact, some see such devices, which have far less storage capacity than iPods, as complementary devices rather than competitors, allowing people to have a few songs with them at all times — since people are rarely without their cell phones these days — even as they leave their iPods at home.

Nonetheless, this trend certainly bears watching, since cell phone makers are undoubtedly trying to provide an all-in-one mobile device that would make iPods superfluous. Both Cingular Wireless and Sprint Nextel (NYSE: S - News) offer handsets that can store music as well, but Apple has also dabbled in cell phones. The company has a partnership with Motorola (NYSE: MOT - News), whose SLVR phone — available to Cingular subscribers — runs Apple’s iTunes software.

At the same time, it’s long been rumored that Apple intends to develop an iPod-branded phone of its own.

And Steve Ballmer has hinted that Microsoft would like to play in the musical phone market too.

Martin LaMonica at CNET:

Computing industry heavyweights on Monday announced a plan to create a standardized way for computing resources to “talk” to each other, a move they say will lower the cost of running corporate data centers.

The initiative calls for the creation of an XML-based standard, called Service Modeling Language (SML), and its adoption in commercial products, including systems management software, hardware, and application development tools.

The companies involved–BEA Systems, BMC Software, Cisco Systems, Dell, EMC, HP, IBM, Intel, Microsoft and Sun Microsystems–published a draft SML specification on Monday and pledged to support it in the future.

The goal of SML is to establish a lingua franca for computing resources–servers, networking gear, applications and the like–to exchange operating information, such as security requirements or performance problems.
…
The basis for SML is Microsoft’s own XML specification, called Systems Definition Model. The company has already built support for SDM in Visual Studio 2005; all future management software and future operating systems will use SML starting in 2007, Tatarinov said.

Kirill Tatarinov is Corporate Vice President of Microsoft’s Windows Enterprise Management Division. The formal press release has more details.

Pardon the school analogy, but it’s European Commission competition honcho Neelie Kroes’ favorite, so who am I to quibble? Anyhow, Microsoft has finally completed and handed over the server protocol interoperability documentation that the European Commission had demanded:

Microsoft Corp. has submitted documents required by the European Commission in an effort to avoid further fines for breaching an antitrust ruling, the European Union regulator said on Monday.

The Commission said it was studying the files and that it was too early to tell whether the world’s largest software company would be subject to an additional non-compliance penalty.

“We have received technical documents from Microsoft. Our people are looking at it, including the trustee, and it’s too early at this stage to give any indication of whether there will be another payment, another penalty, and if there is to be another penalty, how much it would be,” Commission spokesman Michael Mann told a news briefing.

Microsoft said that it had made a final submission of 2,600 documents which “further demonstrates our ongoing commitment to reaching full compliance with the Commission’s decision of March 2004.”

Chris at LiveSide:

Recently I got a demo of some upcoming Windows Live Mobile applications, one of which, the Live Local mobile application, has just been updated and is available for public download.

As with G2, the new mobile Messenger client for smartphones, the Live Local application is impressive, both in terms of performance and features. While Messenger helps you waste away the spare minutes you have, Local could turn out to be the must-have application of the group. Built-in position determining via GPS or Wifi, pushpins and driving directions are some of the newest feature additions.

More by following the link including screenshots.

A selection of “small” Microsoft stories from last week:

Vista’s voice recognition feature provided the comedic relief at last week’s Financial Analyst Meeting, but the claim is that it was a known beta bug. Speaking of Vista, Developers cry foul over Windows kernel security which makes things harder for both hackers and legitimate security software from third parties. Microsoft released Vista upgrade information, but take it with a grain of salt. Finally, a frequent refrain: “No one outside of the 98052 ZIP code seems to believe that Windows Vista is really going to ship when Microsoft says it will.”

What RealNetworks thinks about Microsoft’s Zune - Rob Glaser would like Microsoft’s spurned partners to call.

Shocking news: Lehman Bros. thinks Microsoft Poses Long-Term Web Threat To Google, Yahoo. The NY Times had more on the same competition from a Yahoo perspective.

Californians to Soon Get $1.1B from Microsoft. It’s another state antitrust settlement.

Microsoft plans to charge $1.50 for the next Office 2007 beta to help pay for the bandwidth and hosting required by the unprecedented demand. Starts next Wednesday at 6PM PDT, but only applies to new testers.

The Microsoft Developer Network Library is now a free download. It used to be only available to MSDN subscribers although there is an online version.

Microsoft recalled Small Business Server 2003 R2 due to a manufacturing defect.

Microsoft Sets Sights on iSCSI: “Microsoft on Friday will release the iSCSI target technology it acquired from String Bean Software earlier this year.”

Microsoft Releases Free Commerce Server 2007 Developer Edition . This used to be Commerce Server 2006 but has undergone a name change. The full version is supposed to be available on August 1.

Windows Live Mail Desktop starts an open beta - also sometimes called Windows Live Mail Center.

Microsoft Defends WGA, Plans Similar Tool to Validate Office

OpenDocument wins more fans