Microsoft News Tracker

Brian Bergstein at the AP:

Microsoft Corp. landed in the Wikipedia doghouse Tuesday after it offered to pay a blogger to change technical articles on the community-produced Web encyclopedia site.

While Wikipedia is known as the encyclopedia that anyone can tweak, founder Jimmy Wales and his cadre of volunteer editors, writers and moderators have blocked public-relations firms, campaign workers and anyone else perceived as having a conflict of interest from posting fluff or slanting entries. So paying for Wikipedia copy is considered a definite no-no.

“We were very disappointed to hear that Microsoft was taking that approach,” Wales said.

Microsoft acknowledged it had approached the writer and offered to pay him for the time it would take to correct what the company was sure were inaccuracies in Wikipedia articles on an open-source document standard and a rival format put forward by Microsoft.

Spokeswoman Catherine Brooker said she believed the articles were heavily written by people at IBM Corp., which is a big supporter of the open-source standard. IBM did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

There are more details of the Microsoft and Wikipedia sides of the story by following the link. The blog post by the “blogger” in question (Rick Jelliffe , CTO of XML tools company Topologi) that started the furor is here. The standards are the perennially contentious document formats: ODF (OpenDocument Format) and OOXML (Microsoft Office Open XML).

Microsoft’s Scott Guthrie:

I am really excited to announce that the final release of ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 (aka “Atlas”) shipped this morning. You can download it here.
…
ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 delivers a rich client-side AJAX library that provides cross platform, cross browser support for a core JavaScript type-system, JSON-based network serialization stack, JavaScript component/control model, as well as common client JavaScript helper classes. ASP.NET AJAX also delivers a rich server-side library that integrates AJAX functionality within ASP.NET, and enables developers to easily AJAX-enable existing ASP.NET 2.0 sites with minimal effort.

ASP.NET AJAX is available for free, and can be used with ASP.NET 2.0 and VS 2005. It is a fully supported Microsoft product, and is backed by a standard 10 year Microsoft support license (with Microsoft Product Support available via phone 24 hours a day x 7 days a week).
…

While the core ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 release is now officially shipped, we are definitely not slowing down. :-)

All of the ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 features will be integrated directly into the next release of ASP.NET (codename: “Orcas”). Visual Studio “Orcas” will also provide client-side JavaScript intellisense, JavaScript compilation checking, and rich JavaScript debugging support for ASP.NET AJAX scenarios.

We are also already at work on the next ASP.NET AJAX release, and will continue to add new features and improvements to the supported ASP.NET AJAX core. You can already start using many of these new features with the ASP.NET AJAX Futures CTP (available for download now on the ASP.NET AJAX site - it also supports a “go live” license).

More details by following the link, but if this seems excessively geeky, think of it as Microsoft’s toolkit for building the spiffy modern Web site interfaces so beloved of the Web 2.0 crowd.

Mary Jo Foley spots the elusive Vista SP1 which is now said to be arriving in 2H2007. We thereby have a rough date for all the big business users who are reputed to be awaiting the first service pack to consider introducing Vista into their production infrastructures. My personal belief is that most large enterprises have their own testing and adoption cycles that are independent of the service pack date, but which may well coincide serendipitously.

There is also a difference of opinion as to whether the Microsoft project codenamed Fiji is SP1 or a later “Vista R2″ release, but I’m saving it for the latter based mostly on the desire to not to call it R2.

As expected, Windows Live OneCare, Microsoft’s new entry in the PC security software market, will ship a new version 1.5 with Vista support along with Vista on January 30. Also not unexpected given the lagging sales, there will be some retailer promotions as well as a last ditch appeal for beta users who didn’t take advantage of last year’s promotion directed at them.

One Caveat: Even the new version of OneCare does not support 64-bit versions of Vista or XP.

(Via Amit Agarwal). I usually don’t mention Bill Gates’ personal (as opposed to Microsoft) activities, but I can’t resist World’s Two Richest Men Can Eat for Free at Hooters:

While they surely don’t need the help, the world’s two richest men can now eat for free at Hooters restaurants. On Friday October 20, 2006 Bill Gates and Warren Buffet were presented with Hooters VIP Cards at a Hooters Restaurant in Kansas City, Kansas. The Cards entitle the gentlemen, who currently rank numbers 1 and 2 on the list of worlds richest, to free food at any of the chains 435 locations in 46 states and 20 countries exclusive of tip and alcohol.

The pair made a stop at the Hooters Restaurant along with members of the Board of Directors for Berkshire Hathaway. The visit came at the request of Buffet so the group could pose for a Christmas Card photo with the chain’s beautiful Hooters girls.

Indeed. The Christmas Card photo is available at either of the links. I guess it’s another instance of the old aphorism, “If you give a man a fish, he will eat for a day. If you teach a man to fish, he will eat for a lifetime. If you give a man a Hooters VIP Card, he will eat for a lifetime served by young women in skimpy outfits.”