Author Archive | David Worthington

Microsoft Loosens its Grip on Windows Components

Posted by David Worthington on March 6, 2009 at 3:36 pm

Fear (and fines) can be an excellent motivator. Microsoft is giving Windows 7 users more control over what Windows components are installed on their systems. In doing so, the company may appease antitrust regulators enough to smooth the way for the OS’s release by October.

Windows 7 lets users choose which components they want installed on an à la carte basis. Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, Windows DVD Maker, the Windows Gadget Platform, and the XPS document viewer, among others, are now optional.

Internet Explorer, long the bete noire of regulators, is not entirely gone. Microsoft is just removing the IE executable, and the guts of the browser remain integral parts of Windows. At this point, I do not think that it may not even be possible for Microsoft to remove it entirely without a major reinvention of Windows.

The US Department of Justice has had Windows 7 under its microscope for over a year. With the clock running on its authority to oversee Microsoft’s business practices, the DOJ has required Microsoft to submit Windows 7 for antitrust review, and has specifically expressed concerns over how Windows should handle middleware.

In January, the European Commission’s Directorate General for Competition notified Microsoft that it believes that company has been in violation of European competition law since 1996. The EU’s argument centers on Microsoft’s decision to bundle IE with Windows, and resolves that the remedies put in place by the company’s 2002 settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice do not make the inclusion of the browser in Windows legal under European law.

If regulators approve of the new course Microsoft has taken with middleware, it is a safe bet that Windows 7 will be preloaded on PCs by this holiday season. However, as first reported by Technologizer, Microsoft has an alternate plan to launch Windows 7 in January should it face mandates to modify the OS.

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Obama Administration Appoints Top CIO

Posted by David Worthington on March 5, 2009 at 5:32 pm

The White House press office announced today that Vivek Kundra, the current chief technology officer of Washington DC, will be assuming the position of Federal Chief Information Officer (CIO) at the White House.

U.S. President Barack Obama rode into office backed by an unprecedentedly sophisticated grassroots campaign that leveraged Web 2.0 technologies to rally and organize his supporters. Kundra’s appointment fulfills a campaign promise to appoint a so-called technology czar to make the federal government operate more effectively.

The appointment of a top CIO is another first: the position did not exist in any previous administrations. Kundra will also have final say on government technology purchases , and will have the authority to overrule his peers at subordinate agencies.

He will likewise have responsibilities for making government information systems more interoperable to share information, while preserving (and in many cases establishing) security and privacy standards. The Washington Post has reported that Mundra will have a CTO to assist his efforts.

The impact all of this has on government contractors–as well as commercial software vendors–could be huge. Imagine if Kundra decides that the federal government should embrace open source software, for instance.

All I can say is “wow.” Government agencies have enjoyed incredible autonomy; getting CIOs to fall in line is an immense task and will require skillful political maneuvering. But it is an undertaking that may be long overdue.

Salon.com founder Scott Rosenberg’s book Dreaming in Code (a great read, btw) details how the Internal Revenue Service’s tax system modernization cost taxpayers billions of dollars, and ultimately failed.

The notion that someone could pull the plug on such bloated efforts offers taxpayers a measure of accountability, and in my opinion, that’s a very positive happening.

When President Obama took office, his staffers entered a White House that was years behind the technology curve –old, outdated equipment stymied staffers that were accustomed to the bleeding edge. Reports about security breaches persist to this day.

Kundra’s job will be a great experiment in streamlining bureaucracy, and is perhaps the most difficult a CIO has ever taken. Is a Federal CIO is a good idea, or will the position be relegated to failure?

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Microsoft Plans to Profit from Piracy with Office Web Apps

Posted by David Worthington on March 3, 2009 at 6:30 pm

After countless attempts at suffocating software piracy, Microsoft has accepted it as an inevitability–one that it can profit from. The company intends to deliver an ad-supported edition of Office 14 in an attempt to draw illicit users into its revenue steams, Silicon Alley Insider is reporting.

That is not to say that Microsoft has abandoned the fight–it’s just thinking outside of the box. Today, at the Morgan Stanley Technology conference, Microsoft Business Division president Stephen Elop told attendees that an ad-supported version of Office could provide Microsoft with an eventual upsell opportunity with pirate “customers.” It would also diversify its revenue streams, he said.

Over the past two years, Microsoft has pushed ahead with its Office Genuine Advantage (OGA) program. OGA requires customers to validate their licenses in order to receive updates and add-ons. The program met with resistance from some customers when their paid software was flagged.

Those measures, while helpful, have apparently fallen short. Last month, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told Wall Street analysts that piracy drained Office sales more so than competition from Google Apps, OpenOffice.org, or any of its other competitors.

“We offer services through Office Live today that take advantage of both ad-funded and subscription offerings. As we announced last year at PDC, we will deliver Office Web applications, which will be available with the next version of Office, to consumers through this service. We have nothing more to share at this time,” a spokesperson said.

Microsoft has pushed the dial enough toward enforcement direction that a new direction is warranted–paying customers won’t accept more inconvenience and intrusion. I’m not certain that splattering a Web-based version of Office with ads is going to eliminate piracy altogether, but it will provide an alternative to unauthorized copying that could reduce its occurrence without markedly affecting Office license revenue.

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Gartner Predicts Significant Drop in PC Sales

Posted by David Worthington on March 2, 2009 at 3:57 pm

A new research note from analyst firm Garner predicts that the PC industry will “suffer its sharpest unit decline in history” in 2009. Gartner predicts a nearly 12% reduction in sales from 2009, but noted that many PC makers are and their suppliers are equipped to adapt to the changing reality of the market.

“The PC industry is facing extraordinary conditions as the global economy continues to weaken, users stretch PC lifetimes and PC suppliers grow increasingly cautious,” said George Shiffler, research director at Gartner. Sales in both emerging and mature markets will both decline at steep rates,10.4 percent and 13 percent respectively, according to the report.

The Gartner report is not so much a “Debbie Downer: as it is a reflection of today’s economic reality. Consumers and businesses are just spending less. And it’s not surprising to see them stretch out the useful life of the computers they already own.

Worldwide mobile PC shipments are expected to reach 155.6 million units, a 9 percent increase from 2008. Desktop PC shipments are forecast to total 101.4 million units, a 31.9 percent decline from 2008. Mobile PC growth will be substantially boosted by continued growth in mini-notebook shipments; excluding mini-notebooks, other mobile PC shipments will grow just 2.7 percent in 2009.

Desktop PC sales are forecast for a marked 31.9% decline; whereas, mobile PC sales are expected to increase nearly 10% from 2008. The report credits the burgeoning popularity of netbooks–low cost mobile PCs–for the growth. Netbooks are cushioning sales, but remain too few to offset the collapse of the desktop PC market, the report noted.

Regardless, PC makers have learned their lessons from 2001, when the market contracted just 3.2%, Gartner says. “Razor thin margins and the lessons learned in 2001 have schooled PC vendors and channels in the necessity to invest in their supply chains. These investments have given them much better visibility of demand, even though products are largely being built in Asia by third parties and therefore have long lead times.”

The PC market is far from collapsing, and the availability of Windows 7 later this year (unless it’s January) will likely boost sales. Back-to-school and holiday sales likely won’t be as robust as they would during normal economic times, but there are still a lot of PCs that will be sold this year, and there will not be a dust bowl in Silicon Valley.

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Malware is Messing with Facebook Users

Posted by David Worthington on February 27, 2009 at 2:04 pm

A rogue application has struck Facebook for the second time within a week, reports Trend Micro’s Malware Blog. The malware uses social engineering to hoodwink Facebook users into installing it, and then proceeds to harvest their personal information. But don’t panic yet – it’s not that easy to do.

When a user installs the application, it propagates itself by spamming their friends profiles with fake but official sounding notices that they have violated the Facebook terms of service. In order to avoid “penalties,” the user is instructed to install the application. If the would-be victim falls for it, the cycle repeats.

Trend Micro has pointed out the obvious: Facebook should review its application hosting policy. The firm also recommended that users take responsibility for what they are installing, and to do some research beforehand.

One possible solution is a verification process for applications, but the problem would have to be more prevalent to justify its costs, said Caleb Sima, an HP executive that is the former co-founder and CTO of SPI Dynamics.

“Really, I don’t have much to say about this as I have been expecting it for a while. Its no different then email. I send you a link to a program you allow it to install it takes your contacts list and spams it out. There is nothing new here. Its just applied as a Facebook app or message.”

He also predicted that malware could start arising with any type of ‘app stores.’

The silver lining is that Faceobok applications are much harder to write and distribute than e-mails are, so it won’t be as big of a problem, Sima explained. Vigilance is the best course of action, he added. “Ultimately I don’t think there is much that Facebook can do about it besides act quickly to remove rogue apps when they are reported.”

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Windows 7 to Ship in October. Probably. Unless It's January.

Posted by David Worthington on February 25, 2009 at 3:13 pm

Windows 7I’ve confirmed a report by Bloomberg news report that Microsoft plans to ship Windows 7 by October. Microsoft has also worked out a contingency plan for a secondary launch date in the event that the European Commission takes action, a well-placed source at Microsoft told me.

Ray Chen, president at Taipei-based Compal Electronics, made the disclosure at an investors’ conference at the company’s headquarters today. He also projected that Windows 7’s release could help reinvigorate sagging PCs sales amid the global economic downturn. Chen is positioned to know: Compal produces laptops for big-name brands including Acer and Hewlett-Packard.

A source at Microsoft told me that Chen is right on the money. The October timetable also meshes with the unofficial word that I have been hearing for weeks. Should the EU take action, Microsoft will push the release back to January, mirroring Windows Vista. OEMs have been asked to move forward as if October is the date regardless of what happens in the courts.

Indeed, Microsoft appears to be on track with its new operating system, and is nearly ready to begin updating its beta release to solicit more feedback from testers.

Windows 7 builds on the plumbing that was laid by Windows Vista. Application and hardware compatibility issues should not involve anywhere near the hassles that the XP-to-Vistra transition caused, because Windows 7 is not a dramatic departure from Vista. Additionally, Microsoft had already completed work for application developers in October before it even issued the first beta.

Windows Vista also got off to a rocky start in part because it was released in January–about the worst possible time for a new OS to debut. But the European Union willing, and unless there’a some sort of unanticipated problem, expect Windows 7 to be on store shelves and preinstalled on new PCs for the holidays.

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Microsoft to Squeeze Windows 7 onto Netbooks

Posted by David Worthington on February 25, 2009 at 12:04 am

Windows 7At an analyst meeting in New York City today, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer revealed that the company was working on a low-end edition of Windows 7 that’s designed to run on netbooks. The increasingly popular budget notebooks rarely run Windows Vista, in part because that OS’s hardware requirements–formulated in the pre-netbook era–simply exceed what most 0f the low-cost machines have to offer.

Microsoft’s interest in netbooks is an acknowledgment that Windows 7 needs to compete with lower-cost solutions that come preloaded with Linux and even Windows XP. Other potential entrants, including Google’s Android OS, are also threatening Windows’ dominance.

The company’s failure to compete in the low-end market has profoundly impacted its finances. Windows client revenue recently fell 8% as a result of PC “market weakness and a continued shift to lower priced netbooks,” according to Microsoft’s second-quarter earnings release. Even so, Ballmer stated that about 90 percent of netbooks have been shipped with Windows XP, during today’s conference.

And that trend is significant: netbook sales are steadily increasing. This month IDC found that netbooks account for 30% of sales in the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) market alone.

Outlining Microsoft’s strategy to appeal to netbook buyers, Ballmer said that Microsoft is developing a low-end version of Windows 7 designed specifically for netbooks, and will provide an upgrade path to more powerful versions of the OS. Windows 7 is designed to work well on inexpensive laptops, he said.

Ballmer didn’t talk about what features the Windows designed for netbooks will and won’t offer, but the company has already announced that the bargain-basement Windows 7 Starter Edition will only let users run three programs at once. My take is that Microsoft would be wise not to appreciably limit the functionality of Windows 7 on netbooks, or customers will vote with their feet, and PC manufacturers will choose another operating system that makes the most of what netbooks have to offer.

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Microsoft Research Envisions Leap in Browser Security with "Gazelle"

Posted by David Worthington on February 23, 2009 at 6:21 pm

GazelleMicrosoft Research has re-imagined the Web browser to include its own operating system. In a technical report published on February 19, researchers argued that a radical change in browser architecture is necessary, because Web sites have evolved from static documents into dynamic Web applications that draw content from multiple sources.

Their proposed solution is a browser, code-named Gazelle, that is designed with a multi-principal operating system at its core. The researchers explained that Gazelle would be more secure than traditional Web browsers, because its OS would manage the protection of system resources and better isolate Windows from the Web.

“Our prototype implementation and evaluation experience indicates that it is realistic to turn an existing browser into a multi-principal OS that yields significantly stronger security and robustness with acceptable performance and backward compatibility,” the researchers wrote.

Gazelle blazes a path that no modern browser has followed, including Internet Explore 8 and Google Chrome, they added. However, it might not be entirely necessary to go back to the drawing board: Microsoft has managed to make the current incarnation of Internet Explorer safer over the years by taking measures sucvh as restricting what system resources the browser may access and limiting application privileges through User Account Control in Windows Vista. It is also attempting to create a new standard to isolate Web content for greater security.

Ultimately, the Gazelle project does not necessarily mean that Microsoft is coming up with a replacement for Internet Explorer; Microsoft research projects do not always become products. Nonetheless, some industry watchers, including Mary Jo Foley, believe that the company may give Gazelle greater exposure at its TechFest ‘09 research fair this week.

(Gazelle photo by Erik A. Drablos from Wikipedia.)

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IBM Delivers High Speed Internet Over Power Lines

Posted by David Worthington on February 19, 2009 at 6:47 pm

IBM LogoJust days after the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was signed into law, today IBM announced that it successfully delivered broadband Internet service to rural areas over power lines. With $7 billion allocated to high speed Internet service, the Recovery Act is a boon for companies like IBM.

Big Blue’s timing might be serendipitous, but it is certainly on message. IBM is touting its relationships with rural electric cooperatives in Alabama, Indiana, Michigan and Virginia, as well as the cost-effectiveness of its solution. The deployments were subsidized by the Rural Development Program of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Electric power lines may also be a better alternative than wireless services for areas that have hilly terrain, and are more cost effective per mile than DSL telephone service, IBM’s Raymond Blair, director of advanced networks, told the New York Times.

I can’t help but think back to the push for electrification in rural areas after the Great Depression, and the role that played in modernizing undeveloped areas of the United States. Decades later, with the electric grid laid, IBM is saying that government subsidies will permit utilities to cover sparsely populated areas that may otherwise remain unserviced.

Indeed, there may be pent up demand for high speed services. IBM’s Blair noted that a rural utility cooperative in Michigan signed up 5,000 customers within two weeks. My brother lives in an area that is not serviced by cable, and I’m certain that he would jump at the opportunity to sign up for broadband.

My take is that electric power line data transmission will likely be part of a mix of broadband solutions. Different technologies will be better suited for specific regions, and government officials, working in partnership with companies including IBM will work it out over time. It goes without saying that there will be glitches and cost overruns along the way, but when all is said and done, broadband Internet will be significantly more accessible than it is today.

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Microsoft: Windows CE is Closer to End-of-Life than Windows

Posted by David Worthington on February 18, 2009 at 5:45 pm

On Monday, Microsoft debuted its long-awaited Windows Mobile 6.5 update at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. But as Microsoft moves forward with its “Midori” operating system incubation project, the longevity of Windows CE–the platform that Windows Mobile is based on–is in doubt, according to internal company documents viewed by Technologizer.

The documents refer to a “general sense that Windows CE is far, far closer to its end-of-life than Windows.” Indeed, Microsoft does not believe that the existing ecosystem of Windows CE devices, applications, third-party developers, and customers will force it to continue developing Windows CE indefinitely. “The device space is evolving fast enough that legacy support is less of a concern (than it would be to migrate users from the existing Windows code base,” it noted.

Midori is a componentized, Internet-centric operating system being architected from the ground up by a team led by Eric Rudder, senior vice president for technical strategy at Microsoft. Last summer, I reported that Microsoft was considering creating a layered, thin platform for mobile devices out of it–a product which could replace Windows Mobile over the long haul.

In such a scenario, Microsoft might end up with variants of one basic OS platform–Midori–on both traditional PCs and other mobile devices. The caveat is that Microsoft remains uncertain how far the company can go with a single codebase at Midori’s core.

According to the internal Microsoft documents, “There’s a limit on the hardware range that can be addressed with a single codebase, no matter how factored and substitutable the components. The litmus test of whether a device is too small to support with code may be if it can download code. Even if we cannot execute our code on tiny devices (light switches & smart sand), we may be able to extend our model to those devices, in the form of naming, the protocol for remote calls, etc.”

The documents noted that a general-purpose device OS must be carefully designed to be reconfigurable into myriad of configurations. That is not impossible to accomplish–Apple did it successfully with OS X, which powers both Macs and iPhones. Microsoft’s Visual Studio development tools are being updated with Application Lifecycle Management that will make it easier for it to create multiple versions of Windows based on the same codebase (assuming that Microsoft uses Visual Studio to develop Midori).

As I previously disclosed, Midori is designed to have a single framework for all device types called Resource Management Infrastructure (RMI). RMI is designed to manage and monitor I/O bandwidth, memory, power, and other resources, and to take them into account as it schedules tasks for processing. Microsoft believes that Midori’s power-based scheduling would be a good fit for mobile devices.

“I think we’re about to deluged over the next few years with Mobile Internet Devices as Intel pushes the Atom chip and AMD rushes to catch up,” Forrester Research principal analyst Jeffrey Hammond told me. That would seem an interesting place for Midori as the hardware is pretty similar [to traditional PC design], but power and form factor are different.’

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