Microsoft News Tracker

Presumably having worked out the kinks in manufacturing that had delayed a European launch, Sony finally released their next-gen PS3 game console in Europe and Australia and there was the predictable PR puffery:

At the London launch everyone who bought a PS3 also received a free 46-inch HD television and a taxi home.

In total, the giveaway amounted to £250,000 worth of televisons to more than 100 gamers.

and not forgetting the Continent:

Midnight sales under the Eiffel Tower and at Berlin’s Potsdamer Platz were aimed at pushing Sony’s PlayStation 3 onto the European stage Friday, but the console faces tough rivals who have head starts.

A handful of gamers showed up at a midnight store opening at Schiphol Amsterdam, including Sony fan Nomey, 24, who said the Blu-ray drive for new, high-density disks that can also play high-definition movies is reason enough to buy a PS3.

“I’m not a fanatic gamer. But if I would have to buy a standalone Blu-ray player it would cost me 1,000 euros,” he said. A new high-definition flat-screen television would complement his home entertainment by next week, he added.

It would certainly be paradoxical if the Blu-ray drive that caused so many problems turned out to be the saving grace of the PS3. Maybe Sony should sell a feature reduced version without the gaming support? For some more Friday snarking, see Xbox Crashes French PS3 Launch.

Maarten Goet at Techlog say his “sources within Microsoft” tell him that Systems Center Operations Manager 2007 was released to manufacturing last night and should be available in the various channels shortly. Also expect a big launch party next week at the Microsoft Management Summit 2007. Operations Manager had been promised in 1Q07 so they are coming in just under the wire. If you’d like to really see what is new, see the Operations Manager videos that Microsoft has posted.

On the heels of yesterday’s announcement that Microsoft was joining the Anti-YouTube Network which is supposed to be squeaky clean with regard to the absence of pirated content, Microsoft has temporarily closed MSN Soapbox as it works on its own copyright protection mechanisms:

Microsoft is closing its video-sharing site, Soapbox, to new users for up to two months so it can create better safeguards against pirated content.

The software giant, which agreed earlier Thursday to distribute movies and TV shows for big media companies, has seen Soapbox fill up with unauthorized clips since a test version of the site launched last month.

No new subscribers will be accepted, but anyone who has already signed up for Soapbox can continue to access the site, said Adam Sohn, a director in Microsoft’s online-services group.

Microsoft stood to be embarrassed by the existence of pirated work on Soapbox. There was a real possibility that the company could have found itself distributing video from News Corp. and NBC Universal, at the same time another one of its units was hosting material stolen from those same companies.

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, you didn’t have to look hard to find plenty of that nasty pirated video on Soapbox. It’ll be interesting to see what they come up with, since if this were a simple problem, everyone would have fixed it already.

Update: per the article, Microsoft will be using some digital fingerprinting technologies licensed from Audible Magic which is a leader in the field.