Openning Kahuna for Public :)

Try the new Microsoft Web Mail, actually I watched the channel 9 video with team and Kahuna is amazing stuff guys. It really ROCKS !

http://www1.imagine-msn.com/minisites/mail/default.aspx?locale=en-us

You have to wait since this is a waiting list mechanism; it may take sometime till you get the opportunity to be added as one of the beta users cause a lot of people in the queue. We pick up some users randomly from the hotmail to join this beta experience just when you notice a green button under the Hotmail Logo in you hotmail start page the you have to be happy cause your lucky to experiment our new product between 200 million users online.

Kahuna is Microsoft's answer to Yahoo Mail's redesign, which is also currently in beta test, and also will produce a new, faster version of its Web-based mail service. Like the new Yahoo Mail, Kahuna uses a variety of technologies, including AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), to create its new look and feel.

Kahuna, which works under the marketing slogan of "Faster. Simpler. Safer" has a secondary phrase used by its development team of "Pimp My Mail," said Hotmail program manager Imran Qureshi on his blog. Qureshi has posted a screenshot of Kahuna in action here.

Official screenshots of microsoft Mail beta

Quoted from Imran Qurashi Blog

http://spaces.msn.com/imranq2/blog/cns!516AB90C3B384A7B!244.entry?_c=BlogPart

Top 5 reasons I Love mail beta… reasons 1 and 2

Mail beta is a brand new web mail experience focused on being faster, simpler and safer than existing web mail services (read more). The team focused on the basics of reading and sending mail. Mail beta is a work-in-progress and a large number of beta users are driving what it becomes (we can barely keep up with all their ideas…)

Here’s the first of some of my favorite things about reading mails in mail beta:

1. Fast, faster and faster still
Mail beta is significantly faster, I mean by an order of magnitude:
a) The UI responds instantly to many actions and quickly to others
b) Very few context switches (where the whole page changes and your eyes have to rescan)
c) You need fewer clicks to do the everyday tasks
d) Cleaner look (including more “white space”) so your eyes can relax and find stuff faster

2. Read mail without leaving your inbox using the Reading pane
The Reading pane allows you to read your mail without leaving your inbox. If you like the reading pane in Outlook now you have it in web mail. Other web mail services forces you to open each message and close it before reading the next message. If you have 10 messages to read, they will require 20 clicks, Kahuna: 10. (How’s that for your carpal tunnel?)

Want to see a wide email? Just click and voila!

Posted By: Imran Qureshi

CIDER

I was watching a video conversation with CIDER team, they were previewing CIDER test using Visual Studio 2005. Visual Designer codename "CIDER" give the designers the opportunity to design forms separated from the workshop of the behind codes. So the visual team foundation gives you the ability to develop now synchronize with your designers and all their work will be reflected into your behind code as a developer. No need for the designers to learn Any NET Language anymore to create an amazing form presentation, in my point of view i advise designers to star learning and trying Avalon not only cause it's amazing and pretty cool but also cause it will be the next generation of Windows Presentation Foundation which make look and feel more productive and attractive.

--------------

Interesting that the XAML editor within the Visual Designer (Cider) is keep your editing formatting as it's so seems even if you change the value of some attributes it still keeping your formatting which means that it obviously deals with xml structure based and it just search for the smart tags and elements and then change its attribute value without effecting the formatting of the file i mean it doesn't reorder the lines as Visual Studio (Web Windows) editor does. I heard them call it GUNKS but not sure about the word but certainly it's a genius editing methodology.

--------

The XAML includes new Panels included as components for your Windows Forms, when you will develop the WPF (Avalon) you will notice that you are allowed to add complex panels i meant Grid Panel inside Right-Dock Panel and so on, some panels are:

Grid Panel

The controls are located in (x,y) grid.

Dock Panel

The control is docking into (Top,left,righ,bottom,center) docking.

-Within Cider when you are trying to drop a control into a docking panel you will notice highlight signs show you available positions.

Flow Layout Panel

within the flow layout panel controls are ordered into sequential order, one after another from left to right. When you resize the form you will notice that controls within the FLP will reorder it self to be convenient with the resize event.

Stack Panel

It's looks like as the FLP above but what's different is the ability to change the controls flowing method between rtl,ltr,utd or dtu.

---------

I like the new Color System within WPF which allows you to fill the component with two colors fade into each other from the angel you determine.

---------

Cider is giving the designer the ability to modify the presentation without affecting the code behind. You can create templates forms or skins also cause you can add more than XAML file within your project and switch between them even in the runtime which is really cool. You will figure that you can play with the UI of controls easier now using Visual Designer which produces in the end an XAML file.

Cider Team didn't give a specific date for the release of CIDER BETA 1 or any CIDER CTP yet but they confirmed that CIDER will be shipped as a part of next Visual Studio in 2007 codename "Orcas". WinFx release will be shipped as a part of Windows Vista which expected to be released in the next November if am not wrong.

VISTA LAUNCH CONTEST!!

Go now and get your chance to win a trip for the party of lunching MS Windows Vista ..

My Guess close to 23 November 2006 (next Thanksgiving holiday) based on what I read about what was going at the CES this ya. What about ya? J

https://www.microsoft.com/emea/msdn/betaexperience/launchcontest/

After you take the decision am sure you will like the joke about some people who are trying to make some doubt in order to change your decision but as long as the contest is running you can change your date as much as you want.

Gloassary

Some Text Quoted form http://channel9.msdn.com/wiki/default.aspx/Cider.CiderGlossary

AJAX

AJAX or Asynchronous JavaScript and XML is a term describing a web development technique for creating interactive web applications using a combination of: * HTML (or XHTML) and Cascading Style Sheets for presenting information* Document Object Model, JavaScript to dynamically display and interact with the information presented* XML, XSLT and the XMLHttpRequest object to interchange and manipulate data asynchronously with the web server (although AJAX applications can use other technologies ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AJAX

Cider

The code name for the Visual Designer in Visual Studio that targets WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation)

Love

The code name for attention and understanding. We want everyone to feel the Cider love!

Orcas

The code name for a future release of Visual Studio (as in, the one after VS 2005)

Hawaii

The code name for a future, future release of Visual Studio (as in, the one after the one after VS 2005)

Avalon

Windows Presentation Foundation, or WPF

WPF

Windows Presentation Foundation, the next generation of Windows UI

CTP

Community Technology Preview, an early-release drop of a future product. The level of quality is pretty non-deterministic, definitely below beta quality, but we're working on process improvements to raise the quality level without reducing frequency of CTP.

VS

Visual Studio, the professional development tool from Microsoft.

WinFX

The "Windows Framework", a managed code set of Windows-based technologies that builds on top of the .NET Framework 2.0. It includes WPF, WCF, etc. See the WinFX dev center on MSDN.

msft

One of the ways that some people, including NASDAQ, abbreviate Microsoft.

Sparkle

The Expression Interaction Designer, a member of the Expression suite.

XAML

The XML format that describes a set of avalon objects and properties. It stands for the "eXtensible Application Markup Language".

MSN ToolBar Tabs

For who uses the MSN toolbar, if you would you like to know the mechanism of how the bar provides the functionality to open new tabs within the same IE window browser. Just try to switch between the tabs and notice the taskbar downward, you will notice that a new window was activated and the current been hidden. If you concentrate and think more you will realize that the toolbar is passing arguments contains the window Number and the group of windows it interacts with. So this means that the tool bar is doing the same as you are opening a new window otherwise what Mozilla Firefox does which switch between the tabs by creating an instance of a new browser component included within the same Window Browser MDI. Since this Functionality is added to new Internet Explorer 7 which expect to release with the shipment of Windows Vista to be involved into the new OS.

Report Designer at VS2005

Posted by trobbins // Tue, Jan 3, 2006 12:36 AM

Quoted from: http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=151149

Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 includes a report designer functionality and a new set of ReportViewer controls that can be used to build and display reports within custom applications. Reports may contain tabular, aggregated, and even multidimensional data. The ReportViewer controls are used to process and display these reports within applications. There are two versions of the controls. The ReportViewer Web server control is used to host reports in ASP.NET projects. The ReportViewer Windows Forms control is used to host reports in Windows application processing.

Both controls can be configured to run in either local or remote processing mode. How you configure the processing mode effects everything about the reports from design to deployment.

· Local processing mode refers to report processing that is performed by the ReportViewer control within the client application. All report processing is performed as a local process using data that your application provides. To create the reports used in local processing mode, you use the Report project template in Visual Studio

· Remote processing mode refers to report processing that is performed by a SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services report server. In remote processing mode, the ReportViewer control is used as a viewer to display a predefined report that is already published on a Reporting Services report server. All processing from data retrieval to report rendering is performed on the report server.

Refactor!

Refactor! for Visual Basic 2005

Refactor! for Visual Basic 2005 is a free plug-in from Developer Express Inc., in partnership with Microsoft, that enables Visual Basic developers to simplify and re-structure source code inside of Visual Studio 2005, making it easier to read and less costly to maintain. Refactor! supports more than 15 individual refactoring features, including operations like Reorder Parameters, Extract Method, Encapsulate Field and Create Overload.

Download now

Windows Vienna

Quoted from http://www.neowin.net/index.php?act=view&id=32095

Windows Vienna to follow Vista

Posted by Tom Warren on 18 January 2006 - 23:35

That's right folks. Windows Vienna is the new codename for Windows Blackcomb the successor to Windows Vista.

Not much is known about Blackcomb officially and Microsoft is not ready to talk about it yet. However, Microsoft's blogging guru, Robert Scoble confirmed in a thread reply to a channel 9 video, "since this video was shot the codename for Blackcomb has indeed changed to Vienna. I haven't gotten the story on this yet, though."

While Windows Vista is intended to be a technologies-based release, with some UI changes (in the form of the Aero set of technologies and guidelines), Vienna is targeted directly at revolutionizing the way we interact with our home and office PCs.

For instance, the "Start" philosophy, introduced in Windows 95, may be completely replaced by a "new interface" which was said in 1999 to be scheduled for Blackcomb, before being moved to the Longhorn project, and then back to Blackcomb. The interface involved some ideas based upon truely 3D Windows and an intergration of what is now known as Sidebar.

The Explorer shell is expected to be replaced in its entirety, with features such as the taskbar being replaced by a new concept based on the last 10 years of research from Microsoft's "Vibe" lab. Projects such as GroupBar and LayoutBar are expected to make an appearance, allowing users to more effectively manage and keep track of their applications and documents while in use, and a new way of launching applications is expected - among other ideas, Microsoft is investigating a pie menu-type circular interface, similar in function to Apple's dock feature.

All features are speculation and rumour at this point. However, with Vista arriving so late (5 years after Windows XP) - will Vista sell to the masses just as many enterprise customers have moved to XP and many home users are comfortable with XP. Time will tell.

The New Generics

The VB.net has released a new namespace called generic which includes some of the classes that were supported by System.collection before such as (Array, Stack, Array List, Queue, Dictionary, etc ).

Now Generic types became more powerful and you will notice a large different between the performance of the updated Generic Classes. VB.NET 2005 supported a new methodology allow for the programmer to develop an Array collection doffed for a specific type rather than using the formal Object type as a default declaration.

A- Dim b as new Stack (of Integer)

B- Dim b as new Stack

In (A) we can notice that b has been declared to recognize only numbers that can be assigned to Integer. But in (b) it supports all the conversion from any type to the object type which takes a reference from the defined item and do a method called boxing upon the item. Any assigning in (A) cause an error assigning for the integer will cause the compiler to report an error. Furthermore the Typeof method make the processing for the collection faster regarding that it doesn't need to do the boxing task.

VB.NET 2005 :)

Quoted From Ken Getz MCW Technologies, LLC - MSDN

The My Namespaces

Imagine being able to find the functionality you need within the huge set of classes available as part of the .NET Framework immediately. Imagine using a single reference to accomplish goals that would otherwise require many lines of code. Imagine being more productive than you could ever have been programming in previous versions of Visual Basic or Visual Basic 6. These goals, and more, have been met with the addition of the My namespace to Visual Basic 2005.

Like shortcuts on your Windows desktop make it easier for you to find the applications and files you need in Windows, the My namespace classes provide shortcuts to commonly used functionality within the .NET Framework. In addition, the My namespace adds functionality that was previously difficult to find, difficult to use, or was simply not possible without unmanaged API calls.

The My namespace includes the following classes, each of which includes a number of useful members:

Application

Computer

Forms

Resources

Settings

User

For example, to play an audio file in Visual Basic 2005, rather than using DirectX or Win32 API calls, you could write this simple single line of code:

My.Computer.Audio.Play("C:\Beep.wav")

Or, to play a system sound, you might write code like this:

My.Computer.Audio.PlaySystemSound(SystemSounds.Asterisk)

In addition, My namespace supplies functionality that otherwise requires substantial code. For example, the following code demonstrates how you can use simple code to ping a computer:

If My.Computer.Network.IsAvailable Then If My.Computer.Network.Ping("http://www.microsoft.com") Then MsgBox("Microsoft's site is available.") End If End If

Working with the file system has never been easier. My.Computer.FileSystem provides a flat, stateless, discoverable, and easy-to-use way to perform common file system operations. File system operations such as copying, deleting, moving, and renaming files and folders are at the core of My.Computer.FileSystem. For example, developers frequently require file, folder, and drive properties (such as a file's size, encoding, and so on). Using My.Computer.FileSystem, commonly referenced file, folder, and drive properties can be obtained easily. For example, to display the size of each drive in your system, you might write code like the following:

For Each drv As DriveInfo In My.Computer.FileSystem.Drives If drv.IsReady Then Debug.WriteLine(String.Format( _ "{0}:\ {1:N0}", drv.Name, drv.TotalSize)) End If Next

The My.User class provides information about the current user, including Name and IsInRole properties. You could use code like the following to display the current user's information and whether the user is an administrator:

MsgBox(My.User.Identity.Name & ":" & _ My.User.IsInRole("Administrators"))

If you wanted to determine the current user's application data folder, you could use simple code like the following:

MsgBox( _ My.Computer.FileSystem.SpecialDirectories. _

CurrentUserApplicationData)

The My namespace also adds functionality that returns many of the RAD features of Visual Basic 6 to the .NET development platform. For example, Visual Basic developers historically accessed forms by name, relying on the runtime engine to maintain a collection of all the available form classes. Using the new My.Forms collection, developers can write code to open and interact with an instance of a form class created as part of a solution, like the following:

My.Forms.HelpForm.Show()

In addition, the My namespace includes a number of other dynamically created collections, including Forms, WebServices, Resources, and Settings. The My.WebServices collection allows developers to easily call Web Service methods taking advantage of IntelliSense and strong typing, and makes the call simpler as well. For example, imagine a Web Service named Numbers that has already been declared in a project. Calling the NumToStr method of the Web Service couldn't get much easier than this:

MsgBox(My.WebServices.Numbers.NumToStr(123.45))

The My namespace has been devised to make it simpler for Visual Basic developers to accomplish their goals with less work, and with less searching through multiple namespaces. You'll find that many arduous tasks in previous releases are now only a single reference away.

ACM 28/11/2005 KUWAIT

The ACM competition which took place in Kuwait this year was an amazing event and one of the interested events I have participated ever. I was one of the contestants who have to solve the 10 problems in order to join the International contest which will take place in USA this year. My team called (Show the way) and our goal was to solve 5 problems at least we were training for 4 months ago but in the end we passed with two problems which were bad for us and prevent us even from being ranking as the 13^th winner team. Actually it wasn't regarding we don't have enough knowledge to solve more cause we trained so fine but it was all about the experience of participating. We enjoyed there by meeting a lot of competitors from different parts of our Arab world which heats up the passion to participate and compete more and more. They all joined with passion for winning but Egypt was the better due to its experience (4 years) :S. Hopefully I will do better in the next programming contests. I wished for my team to win the battle but defiantly we still need more experience about how to feel confidence in participating like these contests. Anyway I hope the next times will allow me to show them the programming creation that I hopefully have ;) .

I'm on the way to participate with the Imagine Cup 2006 contest will I have do much better to gain the experience and the Cup nothing is impossible if you did hard !!!.

Acm.uva.es

What a great cool site for those who participating the ACM contest. It has an online judgment adding to that a huge number of interesting problems. Just try to see the online judgment and notice how efficient the accepted answers are. Furthermore notice how many solutions been submitted per minute.

Go and test your programming infra structure :D … http://acm.uva.es/

Bit-Shop ( Testing your ASP.net 2.0 )

With the release of ASP.net 2.0 (Beta 1, Beta 2, Final Release) a lot of web hosts that support NT/IIS running fast beyond bringing this new technology to their local servers for serving customers widely and efficiently with a new rock reliable solid hosting. Web hosts compete who will provide the technologies early in order to gain a lot of users who developing these new features. One of the web hosts is Bit Ship ( Business Internet Technology Shop http://www.live.ws/ ) which powered by Microsoft. Its servers support ASP.net 2.0, ASP and Perl. Furthermore, it supports MS SQL Server 2005 (codename Youkon) and Access. It provides web mail and a lot of protecting techniques to prevent the spammers from reaching your box. You can have a FREE host with 50 mg if you need to try ASP.net 2.0 which is good in order to shine this new release in the developers Market. I was looking for the free templates that Bit shop provide neither but still didn't discover it yet (I heard it's up to 400 templates but still not sure). If you are an ASP.net 2.0 developer go ahead and upload your web application to test it online ;). Iam soOo longing for testing my web parts, give my site a culture customization, using master pages and a lot of amazing new features that ASP.net 2.0 include. Go on Dude don't waste your time in the 1.1 traditional one the new generation is coming .

SM4......

After a long journey, After they called me King , After I spent days full of thinking + caring+ adoring moments running to the shadow that killed me , now I returned back with empty hands losing the light that I was searching for along time ..

Promises, what promises!!! .. That Kingdom of Romantic which been built through the last three years evaporated in two days.. Why!! Don't ask me I still shocked ………………………… where is Faithfulness, it's all about how to live the moment not the whole life …

Even she left, I still keeping all the memories which living and growing up inside of me. Even she left, I still alive but not Smile Heart any more ……………….. Why she left!! Simply She is a girl…..

Good Luck my darling, Have a nice days with the kingdom that i built for Mr. Wolf!!!! …

Will i got Revenge ......... Iam older than burning a girl ...

Eid Mobaraaaaak ya 2amameeer :)

Walkoooooooo Kol 3aaaaaam Wentooooooooo b 2alf Hana w b5eeeeeer

J

Am fine thanks God , actually It was a good experience that I've tried with Bill Gates in the dead sea near by friends from different parts of Jordan . We were 32 students 16 of them sat on the round table which their Excellencies Khaled Touqan and Nadia Assa'adi ( Ya Allaaaah shu bet7eb te7ki heeek 7akooli bs el7amdolellah ma 7kat walaw 7ases-ha fahmani I duno :S ) , my luck were to set in the chair near by the chief software architect and Microsoft chairman Bill Gates. I Think I told you what I've been pushed to say last time . Anyway we come up with an agreement which been decided to be signed before all of that to move the Microsoft Preventative office to be Regional one and other agreements such as Laptop for Each student (they said it will cost 100$ :S), the main purpose for meeting resume of Jordan youth is to let him (Bill) focus on the passion that youth has in Jordan (wllahi fee passion bas kam el percent la tes2alooni :S) .. It was an amazing meeting enso ennu ma 9a7elna nakol mnee7 :P .. 3o2baalko w kolko deserve it aktar menni wallaaaa ..

Aham eshi halla2 et-hanno bel3eed elyoom w bokra wel yoom elli b3do ekbesooha drasi le2anno 2arrab el first .. Ba7ebkooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo J ..

By The way guys, shu rayko b seminar amoor nejteme3 fyo el esboo3 elli jaaaay ;) weykoon yoom eltolata J .

Gallery of our meeting will be downloaded enshallah on my Blog online (Mohzd.blogspot.com) …

Microsoft Attack !!!

http://www.itp.net/arabic/news/details.php?id=18618

 

أطلقت مايكروسوفت طلائع خدماتها على الويب ضمن مجموعة تطبيقات حية لترد على غوغل بموقع لايف التجريبي الذي يعتمد على الإعلانات http://www.live.com

 

وتتألف الحزمة من موقع الألعاب Xbox Live وموقع أدوات ويندوز Windows Live و أوفيس باسم Office Live. و
وبينما يعد موقع الألعاب قديما نوعا ما فإن الموقعين الآخرين هما خدمات جديدة تتلخص في تقديم صفحات قابلة للتخصيص personalized حسب رغبة المستخدم ليجمع بين قراءة البري والأخبار وساعة مع توقيت وبرنامج دردشة وأدوات مسح الفيروسات. وتكتسح الإنترنت حاليا موجة لخدمات والتطبيقات التي تبشر بما يعرف بجيل الإنترنت الثاني ويب 2 واليت تقدم قدرات لنشر المدونات والتعاملات الاجتماعية والتي تمتد لتتصل بالهاتف الجوال.
أما أوفيس لايف Office Live فهو يستهدف الشركات الصغيرة بتقديم خدمات استضافة للمواقع وأدوات عمل جماعي بأدوات أوفيس ولا يحتاج المستخدم لبرامج أوفيس أو إنترنت إكسبلورر تحديدا للعمل بهذه المواقع والخدمات فيها.

Microsoft Plays Catch-up on Services

Source : http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,123382,00.asp

Analysis: Live Software Strategy aims at strong Google, Yahoo portals but could drain MSN.

Elizabeth Montalbano, IDG News Service

Thursday, November 03, 2005

SAN FRANCISCO -- Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates touted Microsoft's new Live Software strategy as a "revolution" in how the industry views software. But Microsoft's plan to provide a series of Web-based services branded with the names of popular Microsoft products is more an evolution of Microsoft's software as a service strategy--and an effort to catch up to current industry trends--than a move that will redefine the entire industry, analysts said.

The way it was presented Tuesday here, Live Software is a multifaceted plan that shows Microsoft making several moves. First, the company proved it understands the need to clarify its long-neglected software-as-a-service-strategy as many companies, including rival Google, are backing the trend in an attempt to rival Microsoft's dominance in desktop applications.

With its Windows Live and Office Live offerings, the company is giving its customers a taste of what is to come when it brings all of its software online sometime in the future, even if that plan is 15 years away, said Rob Enderle, principal analyst for the research firm Enderle Group in San Jose.

"This is Microsoft moving toward offering [all of its] software as a service," Enderle said. "Microsoft will ease into it because they don't want to give up the product revenue before the services revenue can ramp up."

Stoking the Portal Wars

Windows Live--which lets users build a personalized Web portal that includes e-mail, a new instant messaging client with collaborative functions and ways to sort and maintain contact information, and enhanced local and Internet search technology--also shows Microsoft playing catch-up to Yahoo. Microsoft's take on a comprehensive portal is reminiscent of MyYahoo, where users can access Web-based services that meet both consumer and business needs. Google also gives its users the option of personalizing its home page with things such as news headlines, weather information and stock quotes.

One thing Microsoft has over its competitors, however, is that Windows Live lets users add local content and Web services from their PCs to their personal start page, which provides more flexibility and value, said Van Baker, a research vice president at Gartner. "That's pretty compelling technology," he said. "That will be harder for Yahoo and Google to do because they don't have access to the innerworkings of the OS like Microsoft."

This kind of tie-in of online services and the OS shows that Microsoft is no longer going to be shy about using its most bankable product, Windows, to promote its online services in an effort to outsmart Google and other Web services companies, said Rob Helm, director of research for Directions on Microsoft.

"Microsoft never used Windows to drive business to online services," he said. "This announcement is a signal that they might be willing to rethink that and hook software more into online services."

Windows Live also calls into question the fate of Microsoft's MSN portal. Microsoft executives said that while MSN will continue to exist as a portal, current users of Hotmail and MSN e-mail services will eventually be required to transition to the e-mail service offered by Windows Live, now available in beta.

Good-Bye, MSN?

Analysts believe the overlap between what Windows Live will offer and what the MSN portal currently offers is great enough that Windows Live eventually will, for all intents and purposes, replace MSN as the portal for Microsoft's Web-based services.

"My sense is that the development and marketing effort [of MSN] will go into Windows Live," Helm said. "The MSN brand will stick around but it seems like the machines, the people and the services will be there, but more and more of them will be called Windows Live."

"MSN starts looking redundant to me as Windows Live starts evolving," Enderle agreed. "I cana??t see why youa??d need both."

In addition to taking on Google with Web-based services, Microsoft also plans to try to beat the search company at its own game by winning more online advertising dollars through Windows Live and Office Live, and by adding its AdCenter advertising sales engine to a host of its products.

Microsoft currently has about 10 percent of the online advertising market. Google has done an impressive job at showing how much money can be made through online advertising, Microsoft Chief Technical Officer Ray Ozzie said at Tuesday's event.

Analyst Helm said Microsoft may not expect to make a ton of revenue itself through online advertising, but by going after those dollars, the software company might keep Google from growing.

"Even if Microsoft cana??t make money, the plan may well be able to keep Google away from the resources it needs to expand," he said. This may well be a difficult endeavor, however, as even Ozzie acknowledged Tuesday that plenty of money can be made in online advertising, a market that is projected to grow to $150 billion by 2050.

Critical of Debut

Analysts noted that while Microsoft's Live Software plan is ambitious, the company's presentation of its new strategy Tuesday left much to be desired. Microsoft tried to cover too much ground in one event, they said, and the announcement of Live Software seemed hurried, as if the company was trying to quiet critics who wondered what Microsoft had up its sleeve to compete with the wildly successful Google.

Errors also plagued event logistics. The event ran considerably over its planned two hours, and several product demos failed initially, leaving Ozzie to awkwardly fill dead air time while engineers corrected technical difficulties.

"It was Ray Ozziea??s coming out party and it wasna??t a good one," Enderle said of the performance. "Ray really stumbled a lot. ...It was one of the most poorly executed events I've seen Microsoft do in years."

Microsoft likely won't be as ill-prepared when it comes to executing on its hosted software strategy over the next several years, something that analysts think will pick up in earnest after the launch of Windows Vista at the end of 2006.

But it remains to be seen exactly how far the company will go with its software as a service strategy, analysts said. Another thing made evident by Microsoft's tarnished performance Tuesday is that even company executives may be unsure how long it will take to move customers, and the industry itself, from packaged software to Live Software.

Google opens doors to virtual library

Google Inc. marked an important step in the history of recorded information Thursday by opening up the first virtual library on the Web.

Google said it's making available the first large collection of public books via Google Print. The books range from U.S. Civil War history texts to government documents. The digitized books are not subject to copyright laws because they were never bound by these laws or copyright law has expired. All books published prior to 1923 are considered to be in the public domain.

'It's no surprise that this idea makes some publishers nervous, even though they can easily remove their books from the program at any time.' David Drummond, Google

Google has been working with partner libraries at the University of Michigan; Stanford, Harvard and Oxford universities; plus the New York Public Library since announcing last fall that it planned to digitize the world's libraries.

But since that dramatic revelation the Google Print project has come under scrutiny from publishers who have argued it would infringe copyright law. The Association of American Publishers and the Authors' Guild have filed separate lawsuits against Google.

Google has contended that it has a legal right to scan the books under the fair-use clause of the Copyright Act.

For books bound by copyright law, Google only provides "snippets" unless a publisher or copyright holder provides express permission to show more.

On Oct. 19, David Drummond, a Google vice president and general counsel, outlined the company's stance in an e-mail:

"It's no surprise that this idea makes some publishers nervous, even though they can easily remove their books from the program at any time," he wrote. "The history of technology is replete with advances that first met wide opposition, later found wide acceptance, and finally were widely regarded as having been inevitable all along.

"In 1982, for instance, the president of the Motion Picture Association of America famously told a Congressional panel that 'the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston Strangler is to the woman home alone.' But Sony, makers of the original Betamax, stood its ground, the Supreme Court ruled that copying a TV show to watch it later was legal, and today videotapes and DVDs produce the lion's share of the film industry's revenue."