InsideMicrosoft

Some Microsoft/Yahoo Overlap You May Not Have Considered

Do you really have any idea how big Yahoo is, or hell, how big MSN is? There’s a lot of overlap between the two, and Long Zheng & Josh Philips have been kind enough to generate a nice chart to show the two. The chart is reproduced below, with some notes added by me regarding what I think about which service will be rolled into the other.

What do you think? What is missing from the table?

February 4th, 2008 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | Windows Mobile, Office Live, Live, Windows Media, Mail, Zune, Yahoo Acquisition, Sidebar, Maps, Vista, Hotmail, MSN, Media Player, Applications, Search, Windows, Messenger, Yahoo, Spaces, General | 8 comments

Windows Media Player Has Cool Party Mode

I had no idea about this, but turns out Windows Media Player (or at least the latest version) has a party mode/lock button that is only available in full-screen mode. Click it, and you are asked to choose a four-digit pin number, which locks the screen. Once you’ve done that, no one can exit full screen, use the rest of your computer or choose new music without entering the code. This is perfect for when you want to leave your computer out at a party for music, without worrying about what people will do with it.

December 14th, 2007 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | Media Player, Applications | one comment

Microsoft Sued Over Playlist Patent

Another one of those patent companies (that does nothing but sue companies that produce useful products over patents it owns and uses for nothing) has sued Microsoft and 18 other companies over the playlist functionality in media players like Windows Media Player. Premier International Associates just wrapped up a settlement on a suit with Apple (probably with a clause that relates to the new Microsoft suit), and they’ve moved onto bigger prey.

Interestingly, manyof the other defendents are computer makers, being sued for shipping computers with Media Player. Why exactly would they be responsible for anything in Windows? Shouldn’t they only be responsible for products created and sold by themselves?

I’ve been gone for three days and am catching up, so expect a bunch of quick, short posts.

September 16th, 2007 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | Media Player, Law, Applications | no comments

Psychedelia Visualization Pack Released For Media Player

Tim Cowley (designer of Windows Vista screen savers) and Stephen Coy (engineer for Office) teamed up to release a package of “unofficial” visualizations for Windows Media Player, based on the Vista screen savers. Psychedelia, this viz pack for WMP, is available for download after a year delay in certification testing* at WMPlugins.com.

Long Zheng lists the different visualization families within the pack:

• Album Art 3D - 3D cubes with the album art of the song you’re currently playing
• Bubbles - inspired by the Bubbles Vista screensavers also featuring the album art
• Distortion - distorts the album art in a 3D waveform
• Hypnobloom - hypnotic checkered purple rings
• Ribbons - inspired by the Mystify and Ribbons Vista screensavers (as seen above)
• Gigertron 3D - 3D layered visualizer bars
• up cuber - a pigment arrangement of 3D hexagon cubes

The album art-based visualizations seem to have trouble picking up the album art of the currently playing song, but either way this visualization pack is a must-have for and Windows Media Player user. It looks great, and is well worth the two seconds to download and install. They work in Windows XP and Vista, so long as you have WMP.

* - If you ever wonder why Microsoft products are never “cool”, this is why. A year for certification? Of an unofficial viz pack? By two Microsofties? What hope do the rest of us have of making cool stuff? Microsoft needs to fire the certification team and hire a new team under the “more is more” motto.

September 5th, 2007 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | Vista, XP, Windows, Media Player, Applications, General | no comments

MTV Kills URGE

MTV has cancelled its music store, URGE, which comes built into every copy of the current version of Windows Media Player. MTV launched the service 15 months ago, with both MTV and Microsoft hoping the MTV name and the deep integration with Windows Media Player 11 would help it appeal over iTunes, but obviously that never really worked out. Microsoft basically gave up on URGE when it announced its own Zune would use a competing technology.

MTV announced a partnership with Real, which will allow current URGE users to move over to Real’s Rhapsody service. Rhapsody appears to use the same Windows Media DRM that URGE used, so it should be supported by the same music players as URGE. In a way, it’s a good argument for the multi-partner DRM system used by Windows Media over the single store system used by the Zune (and iTunes), since if a store closes, the users aren’t screwed. Closing a DRM store without a backup can be a costly mistake, as Google is learning.

August 21st, 2007 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | Windows Media, Media Player, Applications, General | no comments

Microsoft/Apple/Adobe/Real Face Legal Action For Not Having Enough DRM

One company, Media Rights Technologies, is trying to drum up some publicity for itself by filing a Cease & Desist order against Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, and Real, ordering the companies to stop producing little things like Windows Vista, the iPod, iTunes, Adobe Flash and RealPlayer. MRT claims that the DMCA’s clause against products designed to infringe on DRM should also apply to products that do not have sufficient DRM, and that since those companies aren’t use MRT’s copy protection software, they should not be allowed to sell their products at all.

It’s such a ridiculous claim, that I haven’t seen anyone actually coming out in support of them. The DMCA doesn’t want software to circumvent DRM, and these products honor that by only dealing with stuff that is not copy protected, or stuff that is licensed with their DRM. MRT is arguing that stuff that doesn’t have DRM should be protected anyway! Crazy people. They just want to get their name in the media, and they’ve certainly succeeded at that.
(via Digg)

May 11th, 2007 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | Apple, Vista, Windows, Media Player, Law, Applications | no comments

1.53 Billion Patent Verdict Against Microsoft Approved

A judge approved a February ruling against Microsoft, ordering the company to pay $1.53 billion to Alcatel-Lucent to end a degital music patent lawsuit. A jury had decided that Windows Media Player infringed on Lucent’s patents, and the judge just decided that Microsoft has to pay it. Microsoft has a hearing on June 20 to get this week’s Supreme Court ruling to get the judgement to only apply to U.S. sales of Windows, which would probably knock over $800 million off the judgement.

Another patent lawsuit against Microsoft by Lucent starts May 21.

In 2003, Lucent filed 15 patent claims against Gateway and Dell for technology developed by Bell Labs, its research arm.

In April 2003, Microsoft added itself to the list of defendants, saying the patents were closely tied to its Windows operating system.

A judge threw out two of the 2003 patent claims and scheduled six separate trials to consider the remaining disputes. The PC makers are still defendants.

In the latest trial, Microsoft disputed that Alcatel-Lucent’s patents govern its MP3 encoding and decoding tools, and said it licensed the MP3 software used by its Windows Media Player from Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, a German company.

A lawsuit over two patents for computer user-interface technology brought by Lucent against Microsoft, Dell and Gateway, is due to go to trial May 21, Ambrus said.

(via Digg)

May 4th, 2007 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | Media Player, Law, Applications, General | no comments

Windows Media Player Finally Supports Firefox

Yeah, it may seem even silly, but until this week, there was no official, sanctioned means of playing Windows Media Player files in Firefox. As a result, if a webpage embedded WMV or another supported format, you’d have to install a third-party plugin (which is never fun, or all that safe). Finally, Microsoft has released an official plugin, as part of their initiative to be a company that plays better. Microsoft’s Open Source Software Lab created the plugin, and you can download it here.

April 19th, 2007 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | Firefox, Media Player, Applications | no comments

Copy YouTube and Google Videos in IE

There’s a new useful plugin for Internet Explorer called Zunemytube, which lets you download Google Video and YouTube videos, converts them to WMV format, and deposits them in your My Videos folder for quick syncing to a Zune or other Windows Media compatible device. It’s designed to make Zune life easier, but will work just fine with anything that plays WMV. This is very useful, not just for YouTube (which has no sanctioned method of downloading videos), but also Google Video, which seems oddly convinced that people only watch video on iPods.

Oh, yeah, it’ll work fine for sharing videos to an Xbox 360 (at low quality, natch), if you’ve got Windows Media Connect/WMP11 properly set up.
(via Lifehacker)

January 4th, 2007 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | Windows Media, Zune, Google, Media Player, Applications, General | 3 comments

Sync Your iPod With Windows Media Player

If you like Windows Media Player (and it remains my favorite media player, with the right balance of advanced features and performance, as well as tweaking and customization), you’ll be glad to hear that there’s a plugin for Windows Media Player that lets it sync to the iPod. You get all the features typical of syncing other MP3 players with WMP, just with a player that actually sells well. The only thing you can’t sync are DRM tracks, but if you’re big into the iTunes Music Store, you probably don’t need this anyway.
(via LifeHacker)

Also, for Zune owners, Gizmodo has a tip for saving battery life on your Zune when you aren’t using it. The idea: instead of hitting the power button to put the device in standby, use a two-button combo to shut it down. Find out how.

December 20th, 2006 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | Windows Media, Zune, Apple, Media Player, Applications, General | 12 comments

Windows Media Player 11 Released

Microsoft has released the final version of Windows Media Player 11 for Windows XP. It has been covered here many times before, but WMP11 includes a great new interface, with an Album view that shows album art stacked in the media library, deep integration with MTV’s URGE music store, reverse sync with mobile devices, audio fingerprinting for metadata, new Windows Media Audio Professional and WAV Lossless file formats, and a new media sharing features that streams content to an Xbox 360 or other digital media receiver, without the need for seperate Connect software.

Interface:

URGE Music store:

Media Library:

Sync:

October 31st, 2006 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | XP, Windows, Media Player, Applications, General | one comment

Windows Media Player 11 Going Gold Monday

Neowin has learned from a Microsoft spokesperson that the final release version of Windows Media Player 11 for Windows XP will be available for download Monday, October 30. Vunderbar! Four big releases in a short period (only Vista is left to go gold).

October 25th, 2006 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | Media Player, Applications, General | one comment

Media Player 11 DRM Terms Stricter

There’s some serious differences between the DRM terms between Windows Media Player 10 and 11. Most specifically, this section:

Backing up and restoring licenses
Windows Media Player 11 does not permit you to back up your media usage rights (previously known as licenses). However, depending upon where your protected files came from, you might be able to restore your rights over the Internet.

If you encounter an error message that indicates you are missing play, burn, or sync rights for a file and you had these rights previously, you might be able to resolve the problem by restoring your media usage rights. You have several options to do so:

• If you obtained the file from an online store, contact the store to find out if it offers media usage rights (license) restoration (some stores refer to this procedure as computer activation, computer authorization, or license synchronization).
  The procedure for restoring your rights varies from store to store. For example, you might be able to right-click the file in your library or click an Error button or an Information button next to the file, and then click a command. Or you might be required to delete the file from your computer and then download the file again.
  The store might limit the number of times that you can restore your rights or limit the number of computers on which can use the songs or videos that you obtain from them. Some stores do not permit you to restore media usage rights at all.
  For details, see the store’s customer support or Help links.
• If the file is a song you ripped from a CD with the Copy protect music option turned on, you might be able to restore your usage rights by playing the file. You will be prompted to connect to a Microsoft Web page that explains how to restore your rights a limited number of times.

As you can see, you can no longer back up your music “rights”, ensuring a fail-safe if something goes wrong. Microsoft is basically saying it has no responsibility to protect your purchase, and that some stores won’t even bother to help you if you lose your music. In the end, the music store can choose to give you as few or as many rights as it wants. And if you want to switch stores, well, you’ll have to buy your music all over again.

See, when it comes to legally downloaded music, this is why I prefer the subscription model. If I don’t really own the music anyway, and I have to deal with licenses and such, I’d rather have a means of switching stores without taking a huge hit. If I buy my music, I might have to re-buy it for a new music store or a new device, but if I subscribe, I can switch stores easily.

I really don’t like the idea of copy protecting music ripped from CDs. It’ll never work with every ripping program, and it only convinces MP3 player owners not to buy a CD. When you listen to most of your music on an iPod (or a Zune or whatever), why would you ever buy a CD you couldn’t rip? In this day and market, the idea is preposterous.

More at Slashdot, and hysterical ranting at the Enquirer.

September 22nd, 2006 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | Media Player, Applications, General | no comments

Windows Media Player 11 Beta 2 Released

Windows XP users, download and enjoy beta 2 of Windows Media Player 11, just released by Microsoft. Here are the major changes:

• Fixing issues. Fixes have been made for issues that occurred in the first beta release of Windows Media Player 11 for Windows XP.
• Additional online stores are now available. More online stores are available in this beta release of Windows Media Player 11 for Windows XP. For a listing of online stores that are now available, see Availability of online stores.
• Changes to sharing digital media content. The functionality of Windows Media Connect is now integrated into Windows Media Player 11 Beta 2 for Windows XP as the new Media Sharing feature, which lets you enjoy the contents of your Windows Media Player library from anywhere in your home. If you have a home network (wired or wireless), you can use Windows Media Player 11 to stream the contents of your library to networked devices such as Xbox 360 or other digital media receivers. For more information, go to Digital Media at Home.
  Note that digital media sharing is targeted for home users; therefore, computers that are joined to a domain might experience issues when trying to share digital media.

I think it is so smart to build Windows Media Conect into Media Player. That functionality is a huge benefit to Windows users, being able to stream music throughout the home, and not having to install it seperately is a nice deal.

Download it now.
(via Bink)

August 31st, 2006 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | XP, Windows, Media Player, Applications, General | no comments

South Korea Rejects Microsoft AntiTrust Appeal

South Korea’s Fair Trade Commission has turned down an appeal by Microsoft of an earlier antitrust ruling that Microsoft has abused its monopoly power by tying certain software to Windows. The ruling includes a fine of $34 million, and was prompted by a 2001 complaint by local internet portal, Daum Communications, whom Microsoft settled with last year for an additional $30 million.

The ruling also required Microsoft create two alternate versions of Windows. One, similar to the one required by the European Commission, must be shipped without Windows Media Player and Windows Messenger. The other must ship with links to websites where customers can download competing software.

While the first version is likely to be as much a failure as it was in Europe, the second version is not a bad idea, and could have been presented as a requirement for all versions of Windows, not just some alternate. In fact, to go even further, if a court believes a product like Windows Media Player infringes, isn’t it better for the consumer if the computer is forced to ship with multiple media players, rather than none?

May 23rd, 2006 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | Messenger, Media Player, Law, Applications, General | no comments

Multi-Post 7, featuring Win XP In Flash, Dell Retail Stores, Windows Vista Pricing, Why No Podcasting In WMP 11?, and ODP Decription Opt-Out

I’m really trying hard to clear out my old tabs in time for Windows Vista Beta 2 and Office 2007 Beta 2, so you’ll have to forgive more of these…

Windows Done In Flash
Apparently this isn’t new, but as NBC would say, it’s new to me: Someone created a Flash version of Windows XP, although I suspect they were trying to make some kind of sick joke! How else can you explain the huge amounts of viruses, spyware, terrible software…

Crap.

Anyway, it’s pretty funny. For less funny, but to be pretty impressed, I remember someone had created a really good online version of Mac OS. Anybody remember the link?
(via Digg)

Dell Opening Retail Stores
PCPro reports that Dell is looking to open two retail stores, one in my own backyard. Well, not literally my backyard, but, if instead of trampling on my backyard, you head the other way, hop on a bus, then a subway… Anyway, the strange thing: The retail locations will let you look at PCs, but you’d still be buying them from the central store and having them shipped.

Why? The most annoying thing you can run into at Dell are shipping charges. I won’t even buy a Dell without a free shipping coupon. Why can’t you just sell me the PCs in store, and even charge a little extra for labor, just to cut out the shipping? What a waste. This is never going to be as successful as Apple.

In other news, Coca-Cola announced vending machines that come stocked with Coke, but only let you order one for mail delivery two weeks later.

Vista Price Leak A Stupid Hox
Ed Bott reports on some site that decided to create linkbait by publishing fake prices for Windows Vista and trying to pass it off as the real thing, without making the slightest bit of effort to be believable. For example, they had Vista Ultimate costing less than Vista Business, even though Ultimate includes Business!

If I had to guess Vista’s pricing, it would be:

• Windows Vista Home Basic - $75 upgrade/$175 retail
• Windows Vista Home Premium - $150 upgrade/$250 retail
• Windows Vista Business - $225 upgrade/$325 retail

Why do I think these? Microsoft wants to price the cheapest Vista lower than XP, so that they can claim a price reduction and fight open source better. However, they actually want to make more money on average, so they crippled Home Basic, forcing smart users to actually pay more than they did for XP Home ($99/$199), by buying Home Premium.

Home Premium makes up for the mistake of XP Professional ($199/$299), which many refused to buy, and thus didn’t make Microsoft as much as they’d hoped. Meanwhile, Business costs $25 higher than XP Pro, making Microsoft again a few more bucks.

To summarize: Under these prices, Microsoft can claim Vista is cheaper than XP, but sell enough Home Premium to make more money than XP Home, since people who didn’t buy XP Pro will buy Vista Premium. Keep in mind, these are just my guesses.

Did Microsoft Screw Up By Not Including Podcasting In Windows Media Player?
Amit Agarwal and Geek News Central wonder why Microsoft didn’t include a podcasting client in the new Windows Media Player. I think the Media Player guys were afraid that if WMP 11 included podcasting support, all the buzz at their big release would be “Microsoft is copying Apple!” By not including it, people can see how great the software and the UI is, and they can release podcasting support later, once people already like the product.

MSN Gives Opt-Out For ODP Descriptions
MSN Search has come up with a meta tag to stop search engine spiders from using Open Directory descriptions in search results. If you aren’t into search engines, this probably means nothing to you, but webmasters should be happy that a third party isn’t getting to describe their sites to the world anymore against their will.

May 22nd, 2006 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | Humor, Apple, Vista, XP, Windows, Search, Applications, Media Player, MSN, General | one comment

Multi-Post 3, featuring Xbox Live Terabytes, Windows Live WiFi, Blogging From Word, Music Videos In URGE and Media Player Search Tips

Here’s an attempt to get out a lot of news stories at once, rather than have them fester in open tabs for the rest of my life:

#1:
Over the week of E3, Xbox Live delivered over 600 terabytes of downloads, a total of 5 million (over 20% of the all-time Live downloads). The biggest download, of course, was the Halo 3 trailer, but, surprisingly, the number 10 download wasn’t free, but a purchase of the new Uno game (a good sign).
(via Digg)

#2:
LiveSide talks up Windows Live WiFi, which helps you manage your wifi connection and find hotspots on a map. It also has the Live Safety Center, to protect you when using WiFi.

#3:
Lots of people have been talking up Microsoft Word 2007’s blogging feature, which lets you write a blog post in Word, with all the advantages of the Word interface, and Word posts it to your blog using the metaweblog and ATOM APIs. Joe Friend introduced the feature, and here are the rest of my links:

Eric’o'theque / Alex Barnett / Don Campbell / Dare Obasanjo / Kirk Allen Evans /

The feature supposedly creates really clean HTML for your benefit, unlike previous versions of Word. Chris Pratley reveals that the feature is also present in OneNote 2007.

#4:
Did you know that MTV’s URGE service has some 700kbps streaming music videos? Sean Alexander says, “look for the little film icon to the left of songs to see if a video is available”. I can’t tell yet, but I assume you can’t buy them or sync them to a portable device. Will try later.

#5:
I didn’t really get into Windows Media Player’s search function in my review, and I probably should have. Suffice to say, it has instant search as you type, and it works extremely well. Jake Ludington goes over the advanced search operators you can use.
(via Digg)

May 18th, 2006 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | Word, Live, Xbox Live, OneNote, Office, Xbox, Applications, Media Player, Windows, General | no comments

MTV URGE: Impressions And Screenshots

Got a look today at the MTV URGE music service. Here, I present ten screenshots, and a walk through the experience:

So, the obvious stuff. First you create an account:

There are several options. URGE All Access To Go lets you download an unlimited amount of music from the store and synchronize it to a portable device, for $14.95 a month (or $149 a year, saving $30.50 a year). URGE All Access gives you unlimited access to URGE, with unlimited downloads, but no synchronization, for $9.95 a month (or $99 a year, saving $20.40 a year). URGE By The Track lets you purchase songs, which don’t expire, and cost 99 cents a track.

To try out the service, sign up for the 14-day free trial:

You won’t even need a credit card, which is great news. I signed up for Napster’s free trial, forgot to cancel at the end of the trial, and got charged for two months of a service I never used. Meanwhile, at the end of your MTV URGE trial, they can’t charge you, and they just switch you over to URGE By The Track.

Here’s the main URGE view:

(click to enlarge)

That button at the top of the window reveals a menu when you mouseover:

There’s also an image bar that reminds me a lot of Mac OS X’s dock:

There’s lots to look at. Here’s what you see when looking at a track:

The features look to be great. Besides searching around for tracks, the home page has lots of features, each of which is linked to music you can listen to. Mouseover a button, and most of the time it fades backwards to reveal two options, Play or Go:

Hitting Play will play all the music associated with that button. For instance, if the button is associated with the VH1 show “Best Music Week Ever”, the Play button will play all the music in that playlist. Here’s an example:

The music comes in so many different ways, you could spend hours perusing through the library, trying out all the various playlists and collections. There are playlists from MTV/VH1/CMT television shows, including a whole bunch of those VH1 Top 100 lists. You could listen to the whole top 100, or dump the whole list on your portable player. Plus, there’s versions of songs not available elsewhere, like live shows:

The Go button takes you to features, while presenting the playlist at the bottom of the screen. You get an article to read, and music associated with that feature. For example, a current home page link has an interview with the composer from the Da Vinci Code movie, along with the music at the bottom of the windows:

URGE has a very cool feature called Feeds, that works like RSS feeds, in that you subscribe to them, and the music in them changes at different times. So you subscribe to the This Week In Rock feed, and every week there’s new music in it. Yes, you can look at it every week when it updates, but the power is when you set up to sync the feed to your portable device. Every week, you get brand new top rock music, and it gets sent to your device. It’s like a podcast, but less likely to suck, and with music actually worth listening to. The feeds are archived at least a few weeks back, giving you even more music to look through.

It appears that most of the TV shows which have music in the service are included as feeds, so if you like the show and its tastes, you can keep getting its music. Also included in this fashion are music blogs, called Informer Blogs, and they all have feeds. When the blogger posts, they include a track list, and that becomes the latest entries in the feeds. You subscribe to your favorite Informer blog, and you get to read the articles and listen to the music automatically, something that would be nice with regular music blogs.

And that’s where I see a possible opportunity. If the people behind URGE are smart, they’ll open up the service to sharing. They’ll let you write a blog out in the regular world, add some RSS extensions, and let people to subscribe to that alongside the Informer blogs. Let your users create blogs that promote and support your service, and you’ll create a social phenomenon.

Anyway, Urge looks impressive. It officially launches tomorrow, but works in the leaked WMP 11 builds. It isn’t stable; downloads are very slow on my idle DSL connection, and the player frequently crashes, but that may have more to do with the fact that it isn’t official yet. Still, I like what I see so far. URGE has more personality and does a better job with music discovery than iTunes or Yahoo Music. I’m going to miss it when my trial expires, although I might miss it enough to actually pay for it.

May 16th, 2006 Posted by Nathan Weinberg | Media Player, Applications, General | one comment