Microsoft News Tracker

Mary Jo Foley interviews Jeremy Allison who is free to dish on the Microsoft Novell deal now that his tenure at Novell has ended. One of many good lines:

A nagging doubt is that if I had just spoken out louder against the deal I might have been able to change something, but I was too quiet until too late. It’s *hard* to be the one saying the emperor has no clothes, especially whilst listening to others praising the finery of the silk stitching :-) .

I’m sure plenty of folks at Novell have now noticed how chilly it is.

HD-DVD AACS hacked and Studios Take Claims of AACS Crack Seriously. It’s more of an exploit of some specific HD-DVD player software but it works and it means that all currently released titles are vulnerable.

MMS Exploit Released for Windows Mobile – No Patch Available:

And remember, just because it doesn’t look like a computer doesn’t mean it can’t be owned.

More discussion here.

Is this the HTC 2007 Windows Mobile lineup? HTC manufactures most Windows Mobile phones.

The PlayStation 2 Still Rocks:

“The PS2 will have legs well into 2008,” says Michael Pachter, an analyst at Wedbush Morgan Securities in Los Angeles. And while Nintendo Co.’s Wii console is getting most of the industry buzz, and the Xbox 360 from Microsoft Corp. has racked up big sales in its year on the market, some say the PS2 might even beat out each of those offerings in 2007. “The PS2 probably has the capacity to sell more than any other gaming” console, says Simon Jeffrey, chief operating officer at game maker Sega of America.

Interesting times ahead.  The first round results will be clear when we get some holiday sales numbers. Also, Microsoft Xbox 360’s updated 65nm CPU delayed to mid 2007.

Yahoo! Answers Captures 96% of Q and A Market Share according to Hitwise. Windows Live QnA got 1%. Not a surprise - Yahoo owns this niche.

Windows Live Mail Plus rumored to offer 4GB storage and some other assorted bling for the subscription price.

Read the Exchange 2007 fine print since Microsoft has tinkered with the Client Access Licenses (CALs).

And last but not least, Microsoft: Vista’s Secure, Not Perfect. Of course, but the question is whether it is secure enough to get Microsoft out of the emergency patch rut and live up to its advance billing to customers.

The demise of Google Answers was officially announced here but visit Danny Sullivan for some traffic statistics and analysis. Like Danny, I’ve been dubious of these Web “question and answer” services, but Yahoo has clearly found the right approach - free and social:

But in June, I had to admit that my being dubious in terms of Yahoo Answers was off the mark. The service kept notching up tons of traffic, and Yahoo continues to put its weight behind it, to the point of even more integration last week of Yahoo Answers material into regular results.

Look Out Wikipedia, Here Comes Yahoo Answers! from me is my long look at the service and some of the factors in its success. Unlike Google Answers, it doesn’t charge. And unlike Google Answers, there are a lot of “answers” that are more discussions happening rather than searches being fulfilled.

Even if there’s a lot of chatting going on, I think there’s no denying that Yahoo Answers turned into the social success that Yahoo hoped its 360 service or My Web would be. There’s a entire active community taking part in Yahoo Answers, and some of those are going to translate into Yahoo searchers.

That action’s not lost on Microsoft, which kicked off its Windows Live QnA service in August. I haven’t seen a ton of buzz like with Yahoo coming out of it, so maybe lighting only strikes once, in this case.

I mentioned the August Windows Live QnA launch here. In terms of traffic, the QnA team clearly has their work cut out for them since according to the latest Hitwise numbers shown by Sullivan, QnA has less than half the traffic of Google Answers which has only about 4% the traffic of Yahoo Answers. As for Google, maybe they’re learning when to hold ‘em and when to fold ‘em.

Betty Aoki at The Windows Live QnA blog has the news:

It’s with great pleasure, a lot of late nights, and barrels of caffeine, that our team launches the public Windows Live QnA beta.

For all you thousands of beta testers who took a chance on us, nagged us, mocked us, and made us better – we thank you. Keep doing it. Enjoy.

Hit the link for some tips on usage and go to http://qna.live.com for the real thing. Marshall Kirkpatrick has some thoughts on the increasing ubiquity of question and answer services at Techcrunch.

As for Alerts, Chris at LiveSide reports:

The MSN Alerts service has now been migrated over to Windows Live, and is available from http://alerts.live.com.

The link didn’t work work for me at first, but now does, so it’s likely just rolling out. Alerts is a service that sends news alerts to users via IM, email, or to a mobile phone. Also for the bottom line, the home page has a large tower graphical ad in the right sidebar.

When Windows Live Spaces launched last night, I was curious to see what kind of marketing Microsoft put behind it, since I was commenting just a week ago (after the “stealth” launch of Windows Live Toolbar) that you couldn’t prove that Windows Live was particularly important to Microsoft based on the minimal marketing attention they seemed to be devoting to it. Well the good news is that Windows Live Spaces merited a press release that was picked up widely in the press and that Microsoft marketing took the opportunity to boost the whole brand:

Microsoft Continues to Deliver on Windows Live Strategy

As the launch season continues, additional Windows Live services continue to be rolled out, and by the end of the summer Microsoft expects to ship almost half of the 20 beta services the company has been testing. To help provide a safer and more secure online experience, Microsoft will launch a number of new safety services in the coming weeks, including Windows Live OneCare™ Safety Scanner, a beta version of which was released in November 2005 as Windows Live Safety Center. Windows Live OneCare Safety Scanner is a free, on-demand PC scanner that checks for and removes viruses and gets rid of unused files on the hard disk for improved PC performance.

Microsoft will also integrate enhanced safety features into Windows Live Toolbar, which was launched in a total of 38 markets this week. Windows Live Toolbar is designed to help consumers easily find, save and act on information and services across the Internet. It also includes access to the newly launched Windows Live OneCare Advisor, which provides quick and easy access to the Windows Live OneCare Safety Scanner and an updated version of Microsoft® Phishing Filter that includes additional functionality to help protect consumers from online data theft.

Also coming soon to customers in the United States is the Windows Live QnA beta, a new vertical search experience designed to help people find the information they are looking for by allowing them to ask and answer questions from an online community on a given topic. Consumers will be able to tap into the power of the online community to search for answers on a variety of subject areas and topics including business, health, arts, sports, technology and more. Those interested can learn more and sign up for the beta at http://qna.live.com.

OK, it’s just a name change, a retroactive announce, and another beta, but it’s better than a mere blog post. Of course, a press release does not a marketing campaign make. Presumably there is some real sizzle coming.

Microsoft’s rumored “Windows Live Answers” service has slipped out the door into beta as Windows Live QnA:

Here we are - Windows Live QnA!

OOPS! We hadn’t planned to talk about this yet but some Web pages went live overnight and well, we decided we might as well turn on the blog and give you the straight scoop. You’ll be seeing more on this blog about our team and our product as the days go by. In the meantime here are some more details about what we are doing.
…
Windows Live QnA gives us an opportunity to showcase unique knowledge – provided, filtered, rated and approved by human beings – not available anywhere else. QnA allows people to ask questions of their knowledgeable friends, family, classmates at school, professional and community peers in a way that others around the world can benefit from the answers. We want to build the biggest, friendliest and most helpful community of smart humans the world has ever seen. Some people will love the fame and recognition that answering questions will bring them; others will appreciate getting answers quickly and easily.

You can sign up for the beta at http://ideas.live.com/. Based on the description, this seems to be the equivalent of Yahoo! Answers or Google Answers with some sort of social networking twist.