Tekorama

Microsoft plans to convert the 404 error pages on the microsoft.com domain, as well as other websites the company owns, to error pages with Live Search capabilities. This will allow Microsoft's customers to search for what they were looking for right away, instead of being stuck at a 404 error page that is equivalent to hitting a dead end. Furthermore, Microsoft has also released a toolkit for webmasters who also want to transform their 404 pages to search-enabled pages. The 1.13MB Web Page Error Toolkit, a customizable ASP.net application that replaces the default error page on one's IIS server, is not limited to Live Search; web admins can choose whichever search engine they prefer. View Full Article: Ars Technica

In his farewell Tech·Ed keynote, the last as Microsoft chairman, Bill Gates today announced a Go Live edition of Silverlight 2, a new data caching technology and a partnership with IBM. Silverlight 2 beta 2 was released with a Go Live license—permitting customers to use the prerelease software in production—shortly after the keynote had ended. The second beta of the Silverlight 2 tools for Visual Studio 2008 was released at the same time. The beta’s feature set is complete, said Jonathan Perera, general manager of Microsoft’s Application Platform division, in an interview with SD Times. However, he could not confirm whether Microsoft had addressed developers’ complaints by expanding its isolated storage or by adding support for using HTML and Silverlight within the same application. View Full Article: SD Times

Yahoo execs opposed the idea of a search-advertising partnership with Google as recently as the day before Microsoft made its acquisition offer, according to court papers made public today. In a Q&A prepared for a Jan. 30 internal meeting, Yahoo asserted that such a deal "may not take into account the longer term impact on the competitive market if search becomes an effective monopoly," the court documents say. That tidbit -- and particularly the reference to the competitive impact -- may provide fodder for Microsoft in its attempt to thwart the potential search-advertising partnership between Google and Yahoo. They started discussing such a deal as a means of fending off Microsoft's bid. View Full Article: Todd Bishop's Microsoft Blog

Microsoft subsidiary Massive Inc. teamed up with media research firm Interpret LLC to study the efficacy of in-game advertising, and today released its findings.

At COMPUTEX TAIPEI 2008, Microsoft Corp. is announcing the expansion of its intellectual property (IP) licensing program for Microsoft Hardware technologies with the launch of the Licensed Contract Manufacturers Marketplace and the expansion of its IP licensing portfolio with three new technologies — Instant Viewer; Magnetic Recharging Cable; and Video Conferencing Digital Pan, Tilt, Zoom and Face Tracking — to further demonstrate its commitment to shared industry success. View Full Article: Microsoft PressPass

Microsoft insists that channel partners are going to have plenty of chances to add value to its Online services portfolio, which includes Web-hosted versions of Exchange, SharePoint, Office Communications and Office Live Meeting. For example, solution providers will be needed to connect in-the-cloud Exchange with servers using Active Directory as well as to handle the configuration of business rules, said Chris Capossela, senior vice president of the Microsoft Information Worker Product Management Group, in a recent interview with ChannelWeb. View Full Article: ChannelWeb

Managing a massive Windows installation has already been likened to administering a colossal database. Today, Microsoft added new functions to its Installer for setup packages, that really does start treating Windows like one.

With the arrival of its online office product, Adobe Systems is putting Microsoft and Google on notice that viable alternatives do exist to the industry's reigning hegemons. What sort of impact the new products will have obviously won't be known for months. But the release is intriguing a lot of people who have weighed into the blogosphere conversation today. This nifty-looking application suite allows users to create word processing documents, share files, convert PDFs, and hold Web conferences. Adobe also took the wraps off Acrobat 9, which includes support for Flash. You can test out the office suite with the beta of Acrobat.com that became available today. View Full Article: CNET News

Two Microsoft research groups, Microsoft Research Asia and Microsoft Office Labs, have launched Task Market, an online marketplace for jobs that can be done on Office applications. Like Elance, oDesk, and other piecework job sites, Task Market is a marketplace for people with skills and time--and those that need them. Task Market is focused on very specific, and nontechnical jobs. At the moment, the only job categories allowed on the site are writing, editing, translation, and basic design. Why not programming or scripting or multimedia editing? Because, as the FAQ says, "By focusing on tasks accomplished using applications such as Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access, Task Market makes it quicker and easier for small businesses to get their job done. View Full Article: Webware

A Delaware judge has unsealed court documents containing new details about Yahoo Inc.'s efforts to ward off Microsoft Corp.'s unsolicited bid to buy the Internet pioneer. The documents, made available Monday over Yahoo's objections, shed new light on an employee severance program that would have driven up Microsoft's expenses in a successful takeover. The records were obtained as part of a shareholder lawsuit filed against Yahoo's board for resisting Microsoft's overtures. Based on Yahoo's internal estimates, the severance plan would have added $462 million to $2.1 billion to Microsoft's costs, based on the software maker's initial offer of $44.4 billion, or $31 per share. View Full Article: Yahoo News - AP