Napster, one of the largest digital music retailers, said Monday it would start selling downloads in the MP3 format from the second quarter of this year in the latest blow to copy protection for songs bought online.

Napster had sold songs protected with Microsoft’s Windows-based digital rights management (DRM) to prevent buyers from illegally making multiple copies or distributing songs to other users.

But the use of DRM, originally mandated by the world’s largest music companies, has proved unpopular with consumers. Many have been frustrated to find that songs they buy can only be played on certain compatible digital players or could not be moved from one computer to another.

Napster made its name in the 1990s as the first major free marketplace for DRM-free songs in the MP3 format. But it did so as an illegal service for users to share their music files, eventually being sued and closed by the music industry in 2001.

Today’s incarnation of Napster operates legally after buying rights to the name in 2003. It has 750,000 subscribers who use both its music subscription and download services.

“We projected a year ago that there would be a critical mass of support for MP3, and we’re pleased to see the music industry is beginning to support it,” Chief Executive Chris Gorog said. “There’s now enough top-tier content out there.”

Major music companies including EMI Group, Vivendi’s Universal Music Group and, more recently, Warner Music Group, have begun selling songs in the MP3 format.

MP3 is the most widely available digital audio format and plays on the widest range of devices, including the dominant digital music player, Apple’s iPod.

“There’s little question that the broad adoption of MP3s will provide an uplift for the industry,” Gorog said.

©2007 CNET Networks, Inc. All rights reserved. CNET , CNET.com , and the CNET logo are registered trademarks of CNET Networks, Inc. Used by permission.

A video spoof shown during the CES 2008 keynote by Bill Gates about his last full day at Microsoft in July starring himself, Brian Williams, Steve Ballmer, Matthew McConaugheyr, Robbie Bach, Jay-Z, Bono, Steven Spielberg, George Clooney, Jon Stewart, Kevin Turner, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Al Gore, Ray Ozzie and Craig Mundie,

http://www.istartedsomething.com/20080107/bill-gates-last-day-microsoft-video/

A video spoof shown during the CES 2008 keynote by Bill Gates about his last full day at Microsoft in July starring himself, Brian Williams, Steve Ballmer, Matthew McConaugheyr, Robbie Bach, Jay-Z, Bono, Steven Spielberg, George Clooney, Jon Stewart, Kevin Turner, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Al Gore, Ray Ozzie and Craig Mundie,

http://www.istartedsomething.com/20080107/bill-gates-last-day-microsoft-video/

Mac Nano
• Redesigned Mac–Mini
• Half the height as its predecessor
• Now has an anodized aluminum shell.
• 2.2GHz and 2.4GHz Santa Rosa chips
• 32GB flash solid state drive (64GB build-to-order option, also option for 160GB conventional HDD)
• On sale at MacWorld, ships February

MacBook Pro
• Mobile Penryn Chipset
• 2.4GHz and 2.6GHz Speeds
• 17” gets LED backlighting
• 15” gets a build-to-order higher resolution similar to the 17” model
• Keeping the 8600M GT graphics, but upping the video memory to 256MB and 512MB
• Black anodized aluminum option similar to the iPod classic
• On sale at MacWorld, ships February

MacBook Nano
• Ultraportable Mac
• Same screen resolution and size as the current MacBooks; 13” at 1280×800
• 1.6GHz and 1.8GHz low voltage Core 2 Duos
• Low end model to feature a 32GB SSD and the higher end to have a 64GB SSD
• $1,499 and $1,999 Respectively
• No Optical Drives
• Intel Integrated Graphics
• 10 Hours of Battery Life
• On sale at MacWorld, Available at MacWorld

Windows Server 2008 has gone into the final test stages: Escrow. If all goes well it is expected the RTM build bits to be delivered on January 16th. After that all the teams working on Windows have to “sign off” the build (till Jan 23rd)

The week after that there will be “media verification” whatever that may be and then the Release To Manufacturing on February 6th.

We already know Windows Server 2008 build is in sync with Windows Vista Service Pack 1, so do the math.

February 27th is the worldwide launch of Windows Server 2008 together with Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008 in Los Angeles. There will be launch events around that day all over the world.

SQL Server 2008 has not yet RTMed yet on its launch day!

WSUS 3.0 sp1 can be expected in this time frame too.

Ever wondered how Exchange Server evolved over the years? And how come Exchange Server 2007 shows “8.0” as its version number?

Here is a brief history of time… it might add a bit to the known history!

First Exchange proof of concept was in the early 90’s. Development team usage only.

Mercury – we couldn’t get Exchange to scale past 25 users. We were bleeding internally with Xenix mail, so we figured that we’d keep Exchange alive but just use it as a MIR (Microsoft Internal Release). A perf and scale team was put in-place to see what we could do about the abysmal performance.

Touchdown – the perf and scale team figured out the important issues, and Exchange once again had the potential to become an external release, marketed and sold by Microsoft. Indeed, after several test releases, we shipped in early ’96 as Exchange 4.0

4.1 – Exchange 4.0 spent a long time in development, but it was a little rough around the edges. We immediately started work on a 4.1. After having implemented X400 as the primary messaging protocol and an X500-like directory structure, we quickly realized that this Internet ‘thing’ was really going to take off. It started to become obvious that we needed more than a .1 release. The 4.1 moniker was dropped and we were now working toward 4.5. After implementing several ground-breaking protocols such as SMTP and LDAP v2, this was certainly not a dot release. We shipped as Exchange 5.0 in early ’97.

Exchange 5.0 brought another important technical addition – the introduction of a Web-based e-mail client called Exchange Web Access (EWA). EWA was subsequently renamed Outlook Web Access (OWA). EWA was revolutionary for its time. It allowed employees or other individuals with mail stored in an Exchange 5.0 or later server to use a web browser to access their e-mail from anywhere at any time. In other words, the Exchange server provided the necessary information and interface through the web browser, no special e-mail client application was required on the user’s machine.

While on the subject of Exchange 5.0:

If you still have an Exchange 5.0 CD around, there is an Easter egg on the CD in the form of a file called EXGL32.DLL. Rename that file to .AVI and view it… it is essentially credits for all the people that worked on Exchange 5.0 and while at it, we made some fun about the versioning in it too. Just so you get an idea:

The Exchange 4.1 Team! Oh… wait…

The Exchange 4.5 Team! Uh… let’s try this again…

The Exchange 5.0 Team! Yeah, that’ll work!

Osmium (aka Oz) – More and more Internet protocol work was poured into the product including LDAP v3 and NNTP support. It was also obvious that 16GB of database space was not enough. Exchange 5.5 was born and shipped near the end of ’97.

Platinum (aka Pt) – After we shipped Exchange 5.5, we started building the Exchange 6.0 product. Big changes were afoot. The Exchange Directory team had moved over to Windows and Active Directory was coming together. Both the Windows and Office teams used year numbers for their releases, so externally, the product would be called ‘2000’ rather than 6.0. There was no point changing the internal version numbers, so we stuck with 6.0 inside the code. Exchange 2000 was released in November of the year 2000.

Mercury – Exchange 2000 also turned out to be a little rough around the edges, especially with upgrades and integration with Exchange 5.5. We had to act quickly, so SP1 quickly followed. However, more was needed, so we started work on a 6.1 which was codenamed ‘Mercury’. Ironically, this was the same code name as what we had used back in the early 90’s, and suffered the same fate as the first Mercury. For various business reasons, the Mercury project was canceled. We had already written a lot of new code, and this was eventually divided and shipped as part of Exchange 2000 SP2 + SP3, with the rest in Titanium.

Titanium (Ti) – We were now working on Exchange 6.5, this was to sync up with Windows 2003 and Office 2003. Major technical breakthroughs occurred in this release including the advent of RPC/HTTP, cached mode and ActiveSync for mobile clients. Exchange 6.5 was externally shipped as Exchange 2003 (shipped in September of 2003).

Kodiak – after Exchange 2003 shipped, it was time for a major shake-up of the product. We had many new ideas and needed a place to check-in our code – the version number is now 7.0. Spam is a major problem – is it time to create a special version of Exchange just to tackle this? The small business market is in need of a ‘tiny’ version of Exchange – perhaps the market is ripe for Exchange for Workgroups, or perhaps Exchange Express. For the enterprise product, is it time to switch from ESE (JET) to SQL? After a lot of research and investigation, we decided to cancel the Kodiak project, but take our best ideas forward.

E12 – A new version of Exchange needs to come together. There’s too much proof-of-concept code occupying the 7.0 version space. It’s time to increment to 8.0. With major changes all round, including Unified Messaging, multiple server roles and PowerShell integration, the code name was aligned with the Office team. Office was working on their ’12’ wave, and so we used the code name of Exchange 12 (or E12). Exchange 8.0 / E12 was externally shipped as Exchange 2007 at the end of year 2006.

E?? – We just shipped Exchange 2007 SP1 (or, E12 SP1 to you and me). What’s next, you ask? Is it Exchange 9.0 or perhaps Exchange 13? Perhaps it’s something completely different… Stay tuned!

http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2008/01/02/447806.aspx

January 02, 2008 (Computerworld) — Microsoft Corp. cited Netscape Navigator, the browser that was discontinued by AOL LLC last Friday, as an example of why most provisions of the 2002 antitrust settlement should be retired. The Microsoft memorandum (download PDF) was filed in federal court on the same day AOL announced plans to discontinue development of Netscape as of Feb. 1.

Microsoft also accused the states that want a federal judge to extend her antitrust oversight of shooting legal blanks, according to court filings made a week ago.

In the memorandum, Microsoft dismissed claims made earlier in December by 10 states and the District of Columbia as so much bottom-of-the-barrel legal scrapings. “In the absence of any real-world support, movants are forced to rely solely on hypothetical examples and unsubstantiated facts,” Microsoft said. “Quite simply, the movants have no basis on which to carry their burden for the extraordinary remedy that they are seeking from this court.”

The states have argued since October that Microsoft should be monitored another five years, and they have asked District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly to extend all provisions of the 2002 settlement until November 2012. Microsoft has contested the extension request. The Dec. 28 memo was its response to a brief filed by the states — led by New York and California — that Kollar-Kotelly asked them to submit prior to her ruling, which she will make before the end of this month.

Key parts of the agreement that Microsoft struck with the U.S. Department of Justice and 20 states back in 2002 were originally scheduled to expire on Nov. 12. But in late October, Kollar-Kotelly bumped back the expiration date to Jan. 31, 2008, saying that more time was needed for the parties to file briefs and for her to reach a decision.

Recently, the states arguing for an enforcement extension have said that all the parts of the consent decree are interrelated. One section devoted to server communication protocols has already been extended to the end of 2009; the states have said that if one part is extended, all should be.

Microsoft has stuck to its line that the decree has served its purpose, and that most of its requirements should be retired. In the latest memorandum, Microsoft rejected the idea that the protocol provisions were connected to those slated to expire. The protocol-related parts of the decree, said Microsoft, pertain only to server-based software, and are not linked to the desktop versions of the company’s Windows operating system, as the states have argued.

“Rather than providing legal or factual support, the movants put forth hypothetical scenarios in which a MCPP [Microsoft Communication Protocol Program] licensee theoretically could benefit from the expiring provisions of the final judgment,” said Microsoft’s memo. “In the real world, these competitors [Google Inc. and Apple Inc.] have achieved success by relying on non-Microsoft protocols (for good business reasons) and have never seriously considered — much less licensed — Microsoft’s Communications Protocols.”

Microsoft also touted the Netscape Navigator browser as an example of “platform software” whose development was given a helping hand by the soon-to-expire sections of the 2002 decree. “Those remedial provisions were designed to provide opportunities for the development and distribution of platform software running on the Personal Computer desktop, such as Netscape’s Navigator and Sun’s Java Virtual Machine,” said Microsoft in the Dec. 28 memo. “Those provisions have fulfilled their objectives and now are scheduled to expire.”

On Friday, the head of AOL’s Netscape Communications Corp. division declared Netscape Navigator dead, saying that his team is halting development and would issue security updates only until Feb. 1.

As 2007 rolls to a close, Microsoft isn’t letting up on its efforts to push Windows Vista.

The latest promotion is aimed at subscribers Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) or TechNet who provided Microsoft with Vista testing feedback.

“As we approach the one year anniversary of launching Windows Vista we want to remember you as one of the many people who downloaded and tested one of the Windows Vista Beta or Release Candidates through TechNet or MSDN. YOU were a significant contributor to the development of Windows Vista. Your participation was extremely valuable to Microsoft, and we would like to say, ‘Thank You!’” according to an e-mail message I received about the promotion at the end of December.

Under terms of “The Ultimate Offer,” testers can go to any retail or online store and buy a copy of Vista Ultimate (full or upgrade version) for full price and Microsoft will match it with a second complimentary Vista Ultimate Upgrade product key.

To participate in the promotion, invited testers should go to the Vista Tester Offers site. The promotion ends January 15, 2008.

According to the most recently released numbers from Microsoft, the company sold 88 million copies of Vista at retail (to the channel, not necessarily to end users), plus another 42 million licensees through its volume license programs since Vista went on sale. Microsoft officials said at the Vista launch they expected the uptake of Vista to be twice the rate of Windows XP — a rate the company didn’t realize (although how short it fell is up for debate).

Getting ready to run Exchange on Windows Server 2008? The Microsoft Exchange Development team has been preparing for this for some time now, and Paul Bowden shares some advice and lessons they’ve learned to help you get ready. You’ll also find links to useful Exchange and Windows Server resources.

http://blogs.technet.com/tnmag/archive/2008/01/01/running-exchange-with-windows-server-2008.aspx

Is the desktop metaphor dead, replaced by Web services like Google and Facebook? Or is Vista so bad that it’s not worth buying?

New data points to the latter suggestion, leaving Microsoft with two options. It can either view its sagging Vista sales as a testament to the incredible work of art that is Windows XP (gag). Or it can concede that Vista is a pile of potty.

Or perhaps, just perhaps, this isn’t a Windows thing at all but simply a recognition that we may have tapped out the “must-have” innovations on the fat-client desktop leading people to wait out upgrades until a hardware refresh makes the choice a no-brainer.

Regardless of how Microsoft chooses to view its Vista numbers, it clearly has a problem. Though it’s only one dataset, PCWorld’s users aren’t jumping up and down for Vista. PCWorld measured Web traffic on its site, and found that adoption of Vista is tepid (14 percent), and is crawling compared with how fast XP came out of the gate:

How much of an accomplishment is it for a new version of Windows to get to 14 percent usage in 11 months? The logical benchmark is to compare it to the first 11 months of Windows XP, back in 2001 and 2002.

In that period, that operating system went from nothing to 36 percent usage on PCWorld.com–more than 250 percent of the usage that Vista has mustered so far. In fact, it only took 11 months for XP…to surpass Windows 98…and become the most-used version of Windows among users of the site.

It’s possible that the numbers aren’t as bad as they are made to appear or, rather, that there’s a good reason for how bad they are. Some Slashdot commentary points out that Vista has a tougher battle ahead of it because it’s meant to replace a strong product (XP) when XP replaced a terrible product (ME).

Fine. But that doesn’t change the fact that 42.3 percent of Windows OS sales are XP today. Microsoft depends on new license sales to fuel its growth. With a subscription model, it arguably would be OK. But with a huge swath of its user base not injecting new cash into the Microsoft ecosystem? Well, let’s just say it’s time to push Sharepoint a little harder as a way to suck people into upgrading.

It’s not just Vista that is wheezing, however. PCWorld’s numbers show Firefox jumping from 25 percent of its site visitors to 36 percent by the year end. As comparison, 70 percent of the visitors to this blog use Windows (of various flavors)…but 54 percent use Firefox. Only 31 percent choose Internet Explorer.

Microsoft seems to have lost the “Wow” in its products, and it already covered “cheap and easy” in its last release. There doesn’t appear to be much reason to move to Microsoft right now, while the Mac’s ease of use and integration with the iPod is paving the way for more Mac usage (and Ubuntu is carving out fans within the Linux crowd).

Crisis time for Microsoft? Probably not. But certainly time to worry.

The real question is, “Worry about what?” Worry about Vista’s problems or worry about the problems with the desktop metaphor. Is it dead? Or does Vista just stink? Thoughts?

Originally posted at The Open Road.

Is the desktop metaphor dead, replaced by Web services like Google and Facebook? Or is Vista so bad that it’s not worth buying?

New data points to the latter suggestion, leaving Microsoft with two options. It can either view its sagging Vista sales as a testament to the incredible work of art that is Windows XP (gag). Or it can concede that Vista is a pile of potty.

Or perhaps, just perhaps, this isn’t a Windows thing at all but simply a recognition that we may have tapped out the “must-have” innovations on the fat-client desktop leading people to wait out upgrades until a hardware refresh makes the choice a no-brainer.

Regardless of how Microsoft chooses to view its Vista numbers, it clearly has a problem. Though it’s only one dataset, PCWorld’s users aren’t jumping up and down for Vista. PCWorld measured Web traffic on its site, and found that adoption of Vista is tepid (14 percent), and is crawling compared with how fast XP came out of the gate:

How much of an accomplishment is it for a new version of Windows to get to 14 percent usage in 11 months? The logical benchmark is to compare it to the first 11 months of Windows XP, back in 2001 and 2002.

In that period, that operating system went from nothing to 36 percent usage on PCWorld.com–more than 250 percent of the usage that Vista has mustered so far. In fact, it only took 11 months for XP…to surpass Windows 98…and become the most-used version of Windows among users of the site.

It’s possible that the numbers aren’t as bad as they are made to appear or, rather, that there’s a good reason for how bad they are. Some Slashdot commentary points out that Vista has a tougher battle ahead of it because it’s meant to replace a strong product (XP) when XP replaced a terrible product (ME).

Fine. But that doesn’t change the fact that 42.3 percent of Windows OS sales are XP today. Microsoft depends on new license sales to fuel its growth. With a subscription model, it arguably would be OK. But with a huge swath of its user base not injecting new cash into the Microsoft ecosystem? Well, let’s just say it’s time to push Sharepoint a little harder as a way to suck people into upgrading.

It’s not just Vista that is wheezing, however. PCWorld’s numbers show Firefox jumping from 25 percent of its site visitors to 36 percent by the year end. As comparison, 70 percent of the visitors to this blog use Windows (of various flavors)…but 54 percent use Firefox. Only 31 percent choose Internet Explorer.

Microsoft seems to have lost the “Wow” in its products, and it already covered “cheap and easy” in its last release. There doesn’t appear to be much reason to move to Microsoft right now, while the Mac’s ease of use and integration with the iPod is paving the way for more Mac usage (and Ubuntu is carving out fans within the Linux crowd).

Crisis time for Microsoft? Probably not. But certainly time to worry.

The real question is, “Worry about what?” Worry about Vista’s problems or worry about the problems with the desktop metaphor. Is it dead? Or does Vista just stink? Thoughts?

Originally posted at The Open Road.

“In Service Pack 3 for Office 2003, Microsoft disabled support for many older file formats. If you have old Word, Excel, 1-2-3, Quattro, or Corel Draw documents, watch out! They did this because the old formats are ‘less secure’, which actually makes some sense, but only if you got the files from some untrustworthy source. Naturally, they did this by default, and then documented a mind-bogglingly complex workaround (KB 938810) rather than providing a user interface for adjusting it, or even a set of awkward ‘Do you really want to do this?’ dialog boxes to click through. And of course because these are, after all, old file formats … many users will encounter the problem only months or years after the software change, while groping around in dusty and now-inaccessible archives.”

Microsoft Office for Mac 2008 doesn’t officially ship until the kick-off of this month’s Macworld Conference and Expo on January 15. But Microsoft has taken the wraps off the latest version of Office, showcasing its new features and capabilities.

“This is a really big release for us,” Geoff Price, Product Unit Manager for Office 2008 for Mac at Microsoft’s Mac Business Unit, told Macworld. “We are moving with Apple as it moves forward with its operating system.”

Office will be available in three versions: Office 2008 for Mac ($400; $240 upgrade), Office 2008 for Mac Home and Student Edition ($150) and Office 2008 for Mac Special Media Edition ($500; $300 upgrade).

When it arrives on U.S. retail shelves later this month (with international sales to follow), Office 2008 will sport a number of new features, not the least of which is the ability to run natively on Intel-based Macs. But from Microsoft’s perspective, some of the most important features in the latest version of its massive productivity suite have already been in place for some time.

As is the custom at Microsoft when developing software updates, members of the office team hit the road to talk to customers about what they wanted to see in the next version of Office. One of the things they noticed noticed is that loyal Office users were often unfamiliar with all the features of the product.

“One of the goals for this release was to allow people to rediscover the power of Office,” said Microsoft’s Han-Yi Shaw, lead program manager for Word, Compatibility, and User Experience. “Sometimes we get requests from power users for features we already have.”

To overcome that, according to Microsoft product unit manger Eric Wilfrid, the company’s Mac Business Unit designed Office 2008 to allow users to create a variety of documents quickly regardless of which Office application they’re using.

When Office 2008 does arrive, here’s what to expect from each of its components.

Word 2008

The latest version of Microsoft’s flagship application (and perhaps the most commonly used program on the planet) offers several new features designed to give people access to the different parts of a document.

One such feature is called Document Elements, which assists users in creating such things as cover pages, tables of contents, headers, footers, and bibliographies. Users could create these things in Word before, Shaw notes, but the Document Elements tool aims to make that process more evident.

Word also adds a Publishing Layout View, allowing users to create rich documents such as newsletters, flyers and brochures in an interface more akin to a page-layout program than a word processor. Using this view, graphics and photos can be freely placed on a page and text will automatically wrap around it.

Publishing Layout View also includes templates and guides—similar to those in Apple’s Pages—to assist users in creating and placing objects.

Word includes other new features, including improved support for formatting bibliographies and citations; OpenType Ligature Support; Notebook Layout View; and a streamlined Mail Merge manager.

Entourage 2008

The latest version of Entourage retains its key e-mail and calendaring features, including junk e-mail protection, but the new version takes information management a step further.

Entourage integrates tightly with the new My Day program, a floating widget that provides you with an at-a-glance view of your schedule and tasks. In addition, a new To Do List sits alongside your Entourage Inbox and displays all items in one place.

Improvements to Entourage’s ability to block junk e-mail include enhanced protection as well as a new ability to detect “phishing”—an online fraud technique used by criminals to trick you into disclosing personal information, such as account numbers and passwords.

Entourage’s calendar adds color-coded categories, status indicators and To Do List management. Other calendaring improvements include Meeting update and cancellation; Meeting Reply, Reply All and Forward; Out of date invite detection; and Invite Conflict and Adjacent banners.

Another major change to Entourage lies in its search capabilities, said lead program manager Andy Ruff. Entourage now uses OS X’s Spotlight search capabilities to allow users to search inside the document attachments inside the e-mail.

Users of Microsoft Exchange servers will be happy with the compatibility improvements made in the new Entourage, according to Mac BU manager Craig Eisler. According to Eisler, who transitioned over to the Mac version of Office after taking over the job, using Exchange e-mail and shared calendaring on Entourage 2008 is a far smoother process than with previous versions of Mac Office.

Among the Exchange improvements includes a new Out-of-Office Assistant, Kerberos single sign-on authentication for Exchange servers, support for managed folders, and major improvements in the ability to manage and edit events and declare your ability to attend events to which you’re invited. (Exchange compatibility features are not a part of the lower-priced Home and Student edition.)

Excel

Users into charting and formulas should appreciate the work done with Excel in this release of Office.

New in Excel 2008 are Ledger Sheets, templates which contain complete formulas and cell categories. Ledger Sheets are available for a variety of uses including forms for inventories, invoices, budgets, payroll and portfolios.

“For a lot of customers, writing formulas are hard. Quite honestly, I don’t want to write every formula I need,” said Stuart DeSpain, lead program manager for Excel. “Now, if you insert a checkbook ledger, we do many of the formulas for you.”

Users who want to create their own formulas can turn to Excel’s new Formula Builder, which will walk them through the steps needed to build the right formula. If you’re not sure about a particular function when building a formula, you can check out a description of each one by clicking on it.

Formula AutoComplete is another new feature that presents a drop-down menu of functions as soon as you start typing. Excel also includes improvements in charting with 3-D effects, fills and transparencies.

DeSpain said that the maximum size of an Excel spreadsheet has also expanded greatly in 2008. Excel in Office 2004 could hold a total of 17 million cells. In Office 2008, Excel can handle more than 17 billion.

PowerPoint

The updated presentation application includes several new features specific to Mac users. For example, users can now send their presentations to iPhoto and then sync them to an iPod. (The presentations need to be saved as a PNG or JPEG file prior to transfers.)

PowerPoint also takes advantage of the six-button Apple remote that comes with most new Mac systems, allowing users to control their presentations.

Of course, PowerPoint 2008 includes other features like dynamic guides that help users align text and graphics when building presentations. Improved presenter tools, custom views and a thumbnail view round out the new features.

Perhaps of most importance to users who rely on PowerPoint to generate cross-platform presentations, Office 2008 adopts the same version of the OfficeArt graphics engine used in Office 2007 for Windows. As a result, users should be able to move rich PowerPoint files back and forth between the two platfor
ms with much greater compatibility than they might have expected with past versions.

Shared and other components

All the programs in the Office 2008 suite support Microsoft’s new Open XML File Format, which is the native format of Office 2007 for Windows. You can also set any of the programs to save by default into formats that are compatible with previous versions of Microsoft Office for Mac.

Users who like to automate or script Microsoft Office will note several major changes in this version. Gone is support for Microsoft’s Visual Basic for Applications macro language (though files containing such macros can be opened and saved, you can’t run them from within Office 2008). In comes a collection of more than 70 Automator actions and several sample Automator workflows, intended to allow Mac users to automate various parts of Office via Apple’s built-in automation tool. (Like Exchange support, Automator features are not available in the lower-priced Home and Student edition.)

Throughout Microsoft Office you’ll find that the program’s user interface looks much more in tune with Apple’s current user-interface fashions. Office windows now sport a modern set of toolbar icons. And the programs all feature a more OS X-style set of preference windows for controlling program settings.

http://www.macworld.com/article/131352/2008/01/office08preview.html

Neowin reader nX07 claims that a “friend of a friend who works for Microsoft”
has first hand knowledge that a batch of Ultimate Extras will be
released in late Q2 or early Q3 of 2008. Below is his post from the
forums.

I brought up Vista
Ultimate and its “extras”, and he told me that because of the
”unexpected” flood of Vista issues Microsoft had to divert it’s
resources elsewhere and have SP1 cover more than internally-planned.
Also, believe it or not, supposedly the Driver and Application
Compatibility issues (Which technically was not Microsofts’ fault and
thus didn’t need to do anything) made Microsoft very unhappy since it
gave many software/hardware developers more than enough time to
prepare, and basically forced Microsoft basically play hound-dog to all
those companies.


He mentioned that come Late Q2 to Early Q3
of 2008, Microsoft will have a “wave” of Extras coming covering
functionality, aesthetics, and even performance (seems a bit unfair if
performance extras will only be for Ultimate users though).

Take it the way you want it, which is probably with a grain of salt, but you heard it first here folks

Exchange 2007 Service Pack 1 introduces several changes in the Extensible Storage Engine (ESE). In my first blog article on the subject,
I discussed the removal of page dependencies and the disabling of
partial merges. In this blog, I discuss other changes we made to ESE
which enhance Exchange.

• Passive Node I/O improvements
• Online Defragmentation
• Checksumming databases
• Page Zeroing

http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2007/12/06/447695.aspx