Microsoft News Tracker

(Via Bink.nu) Adam Cohen of Dow Jones has the story from Davos:

Microsoft Corp. is developing on an online payment system that will be cheaper than credit card transactions, making it possible for companies to charge small fees for Web-based content and services they now offer for free.

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates told a breakfast meeting here at the World Economic Forum that he reviewed a plan to enter the online payments business during his “think week,” a twice-yearly ritual where he usually isolates himself in a backwoods cabin to study new ideas.
…
Gates described a system that would undercut credit card fees, making it profitable for an online newspaper to charge small fees for individual articles, for example.

“If you want to charge somebody $0.10 or $1 a month, that will just be a click…you won’t have to manage some funny thing or pay some big credit charge, where half of it goes to the clearing,” Gates said.

What Mr. Gates describes is a micropayments system rather like Microsoft Points which started out as the popular “currency” of the Xbox Live Marketplace, but since has spread to the Zune Marketplace and general merchandise. Heck, maybe it is Microsoft Points. In any case, the report will give the folks at eBay’s PayPal and Google Checkout something to think about.

Some Microsoft news items from this week that did not find posts of their own:

Ed Bott notes the first appearance of Vista OEM prices (for smaller OEMs) and Microsoft Answers ‘Vista OEM’ Questions. If you actually need to buy a retail copy of Vista, hopefully you’re savvy enough to not pay full price. Best line:

Going OEM means you don’t get the skimpy manual or other scraps of paper that comes with the regular retail version. But when (was) the last time a basic Microsoft manual told you anything you needed to know?

For a completely different demographic: Yes, there is a Windows Vista Starter Edition.

Microsoft released the software development kits (SDKs) for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, and the Microsoft Office Project 2007 platform.

Shocking news: Microsoft hurt by poor Live branding, analysts say.

Stop me if you have heard this one before: Symantec warns of new zero-day Word attack. This one too: Windows Defender Lets Spyware Slip onto Vista PCs.

Nintendo profits soar and the Wii now does the Internet - Wii news channel debuts early. Meanwhile, Sony’s PlayStation 3 to Debut in Europe, Mideast, Africa and Australia on March 23.

Two Major Linux Groups Merge to Fight Microsoft

The two main evangelizers of the Linux operating system, Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) and the Free Standards Group (FSG), are merging to form the Linux Foundation.

LiMo arrives for mobile Linux:

The duopoly of Windows Mobile and Symbian is to face its biggest challenge yet, with six big names in mobile telephony backing the development of a new Linux-based software platform for mobile phones.

The founders of the LiMo Foundation are handset makers Motorola, NEC, Panasonic and Samsung, plus two big operators - NTT DoCoMo and Vodafone

Network Engines Selected By Microsoft to Support Existing Whale Communications Customers.

From Microsoft’s Windows Live Dev News: Live Search Web Service and SDK Released:

Today we’re proud to announce the release of the Live Search Web Service (previously known as the MSN Search Web Service Beta). For those new to our search service, it allows developers to programmatically submit queries and retrieve results from the Windows Live Search Engine using a SOAP API.

Check out the Live Search SDK to find out what’s new…

Or just read the post for a summary. But they also want you to know that there are plenty of other Live tools available:

While we announced the Live Search API and SDK release yesterday, we’ve been posting updates to other Windows Live docs along the way more silently. Now we’re ready to officially name the collected set the Windows Live SDK. All the docs are aggregated and a number of improvements have been made, including:

• New SDKs and major updates, including: Search, Alerts, adCenter
• More user friendly reference docs
• Filtered search of the Windows Live SDK from dev.live.com (instead of all MSDN library)
• Cleaner organization

A nice roundup hampered only by the proliferation of products under the Windows Live brand.