Microsoft's 'Mama' Dies at Age 72

Microsoft's 'Mama' Dies at Age 72 - Miriam Lubow is featured in the remake of the "Albuquerque Group" photo. Microsoft has lost one of its early employees one month after the original 11 members reunited to celebrate Bill Gates' retirement from his day-to-day role with the company he co-founded. Miriam Lubow (1935-2008) is known as Microsoft's 'Mama', a title she received shortly after starting to work as an office administrator for what was then a very small software company based in Albuquerque. Lubow is featured in the remake of the "Albuquerque Group" photo, but not in the original photography (both included in this article). Lubow missed the opportunity to be featured in the original image due to a snow storm.

"She was born in Milan, Italy on October 17th 1935. She came to America in May of 1940 where she boarded a ship sailing from the Port of Genoa, called the SS Conte di Savoia. Her family settled in Scarsdale, NY. After High School, she returned to Europe and attended an Interpreter's school in Switzerland where she learned five languages. She met her husband Milton in NY where they were married in 1960. They moved to Albuquerque, NM to raise a family where she is proud to have answered an ad in a newspaper looking for a 'Girl Friday'. She became the first office manger and employee number seven to Bill Gates, Jr. She later became known as "Mama" to her Microsoft friends," reads a fragment from Lubow's family message of her death.

Lubow is the second member of the software giant's first 12 employees to pass away following Bob Wallace, after she was diagnosed with liver cancer. The 'Mama' nickname was well earned by Lubow, who at least at the office, took on a much more intimate role, and started to take care of the aspects that the geeks overlooked with ease. By her own recalling of the early days of Microsoft, Lubow had put Bill Gates on a steady diet of hamburgers because he always skipped lunch.

The video embedded at the bottom of this article, put together to mark Gates' last day at Microsoft as a full-time Chairman, also features a brief appearance by Lubow. Microsoft's 'Mama' recalled her first encounter with Gates, and her utter disbelief that he was the president along with he conclusion that she was working for a bunch of kids.
By: Marius Oiaga, Technology News Editor (http://news.softpedia.com)

$60 Billion in Revenue for Bill Gates' Last Year at Microsoft

$60 Billion in Revenue for Bill Gates' Last Year at Microsoft - More precisely, $60.42 billion. June 30, 2008 marked the last day of Bill Gates as a full-time Chairman of Microsoft and, at the same time, the end of the company's 2008 fiscal year. On July 17, the Redmond giant announced revenue of over $60.42 billion, representing a jump of 18% from the past FY. In just the fourth fiscal quarter of 2008, the company accounted for total revenue of $15.84 billion and a growth of 18% over Q4 2007. Microsoft touted what it referred to as the fastest annual revenue growth in the past decade. In fact, with a 32% jump in earnings per share, the software company hasn't seen such good results since 1999.

"Delivering $60 billion in annual revenue is an outstanding accomplishment and a testament to the powerful combination of great technology solutions and strong execution by our partners and global sales and marketing teams," commented Kevin Turner, chief operating officer at Microsoft. The Redmond giant posted $22.49 billion in operating income for the whole past fiscal year and $5.68 billion for the last quarter. Diluted earnings per share for FY 2008 were $1.87 with $0.46 for Q4 2008.

"The outlook for fiscal year 2009 is positive given the breadth of our impressive technology portfolio and the expanding collection of online services we are bringing to market," Turner added. Microsoft is estimating total revenue of $67.3 billion to $68.1 billion for the fiscal year 2009, which has debuted on July 1, 2008 and will end on June 30, 2009. The forecast also reveals estimates of $26.3 billion to $26.9 billion for operating income and $2.12 to $2.18 in diluted earnings per share.

"We had a strong finish in the fourth quarter, which capped off an impressive year for the company. We grew revenue 18% for the year with earnings per share significantly outpacing that. Looking forward, despite difficult economic conditions, we will build upon the momentum exiting fiscal year 2008 and expect to deliver another year of double-digit revenue and earnings growth in fiscal year 2009," indicated Chris Liddell, chief financial officer at Microsoft.
By: Marius Oiaga, Technology News Editor (http://news.softpedia.com)

Windows 7 Is Just the Beginning for Microsoft

As far as Microsoft is concerned, Windows 7 is just the beginning. Not a new beginning for Windows, mind you, but the debut of a revolution in human - computer interaction. At Tech Ed 2008, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates indicated that he is betting big on natural user interfaces. "Now one of the big changes coming that I think is most underestimated is the change in interaction," he stated. Not by coincidence, the Redmond company's first public demonstration of Windows 7 involved almost exclusively the new touch computing technology built into the operating system.

"The way we interact with the computer has hardly changed," Gates stated looking at the current model of interaction. "We had the graphics revolution that took us from the keyboard to the keyboard and the mouse, and it took the screen from character mode to graphics mode. But still it's that one person sitting there, primarily using the keyboard, and the pointing device to interact with the application."

With Microsoft Surface, its first surface computing product, the Redmond giant made a single Windows Vista machine a potential nucleus of social interaction. The secret lies in the multi-touch, gesture and object recognition capabilities - exactly the features that Windows 7 will sport, as Microsoft so amply demonstrated.

And just as security and reliability were the focus of Windows Vista, so will the natural user interface in Windows 7 be the focus of the next iteration of Windows. Microsoft is not exactly reinventing the wheel of touch computing, as the technology is hardly an innovative item any more. But what Microsoft is without a doubt is the agent which will make the natural user interface as ubiquitous as the Windows operating system.

"There's a number of technologies that our research group and others have been working on for these decades that are now moving into the mainstream. It's a combination of software advances, and hardware power that allow us to bring new interaction techniques to a mainstream world. We collectively refer to these as natural user interface, but it's several different things. It's the idea of touch panel, and we gave a glimpse just last week of some of Windows 7, and the thing we chose to highlight there was this touch support, and how we built that in and made that easy for developers, and how end users will like that," Gates added.

But in the end natural, user interface is much more than just touch computing. It's also about pen capabilities for tablet devices, and about voice recognition. It's about opening up the computer, and technology in general, and making it available to as much people as possible, independent of the literacy level, of education, of language. Windows 7 is just the first step to taking interaction down to the level of a reflex.

"The final natural interface piece, one that I think is perhaps the most important of all, is vision. A camera is very inexpensive, and putting software behind it that can tell what it's seeing allows you to have gestures, and movements, things that will be used in a variety of settings," Gates explained. "Your desk won't just have a computer on it, it will have a computer in it. And your whiteboard will be intelligent. You can walk up, take information, expand it, point to somebody's name, start a teleconference with them, sit there and exchange information. And so natural interface really has a pretty dramatic impact on making these tools of empowerment, the personal computer, making them pervasive, and looking at them in new ways."

Source: news.softpedia.com

Bill Gates: All Surfaces Will Be Windows Computers

Thanks to a new trend which is responsible for increasingly pointing technology in the direction of adopting natural user interfaces, Bill Gates’ initial goal for Microsoft – putting a computer on every desk in every home – is somewhat evolving. In fact, it has at this point in time transformed into efforts of integrating Windows computers into all the traditional surfaces that are currently inert, failing to represent items of focus or interaction in any manner. But this will change in the future, as Microsoft labors to introduce a Windows computer into every surface possible, be it a tabletop or a wall, and make not only the operating system but also the touch-based, gesture recognition UI, along with additional examples of natural user interfaces technology ubiquitous.

"Our view is that all the surfaces, horizontal surfaces, vertical surfaces, will eventually have an inexpensive screen display capability, and software that sees what you're doing there, so it's completely interactive. When I say everywhere, I mean the individual's office, I mean the home, the living room, all of those things. The cost of the hardware is not that great, and the quality of the software is improving substantially", Gates stated.

During his presentation at the Microsoft CEO Summit 2008, Chairman Bill Gates demonstrated the Touch Wall, a new 4-foot-by-6-foot prototype which is not a vertical equivalent of Surface, introduced in early 2007, but a new example of multi-touch user interface technology. Touch Wall is not developed by the same team that is building Microsoft Surface, but is instead a project developed through the combined efforts of Microsoft Research and Office Labs. The joint venture produced a touch-sensitive interface in a vertical surface but also the underlying software, labeled as Plex.

"Well, I always like to show something that's new, because that's kind of risky and exciting, and so what I thought I'd show is this future whiteboard, the intelligent whiteboard. So far, this display has just had the nice meeting logo, but, in fact, it's running a new piece of software. It's got some scanning cameras down here at the bottom, so whenever I go up to it and say just touch it, the software will notice that, theoretically", Gates revealed.

Source: news.softpedia.com

Bill Gates Promises Windows 7 Will Be Less of a Resource Hog

There are but scarce details pointing the direction in which Microsoft is taking the development of Windows 7, and the operating system, for that matter. Nevertheless, if Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates is to be believed, Windows 7 is going to be less of a resource hog than its predecessor, although such a comparison can only be speculated upon and was not actually stated. On May 7, 2008, one day after the Redmond company dropped Windows XP SP3 via Windows Update and the Download Center, Gates was in Tokyo, Japan, at the Windows Digital Lifestyle Consortium and he mentioned the fact that there was a focus in making Windows 7 play well with less physical system memory.

"I'm very excited about the work being done there. The ability to be lower power, take less memory, be more efficient, and have lots more connections up to the mobile phone, so those scenarios connect up well to make it a great platform for the best gaming that can be done, to connect up to the thing being done out on the Internet, so that, for example, if you have two personal computers, that your files automatically are synchronized between them, and so you don't have a lot of work to move that data back and forth," he commented.

At CES 2008, Gates refused to answer a question inquiring as to which software product he wished Microsoft had perfected more before releasing it on the market. At that time, the Microsoft co-founder only said that he would provide an answer after the next version of the Windows client becomes available. According to the latest details Gates unveiled, Microsoft will take Windows 7 where Windows Vista never managed to go, making it even greener, offering increased performance and even swallow less RAM. Of course, at the same time, the Windows 7 PC to Windows 7 PC bridging capabilities come courtesy of Live Mesh, Microsoft's recently released cloud synchronization platform.

"Obviously we'd all love it if people had more PCs per average, and so making that simple is important. Also the effort to upgrade, I think that's an area we got a lot of feedback in Vista, that we need to invest in that, and we're going to make that very, very simple for people. So Vista is doing well, and we're hard at work putting even more investment now in the version that comes after that," Gates added.

Source: news.softpedia.com

Microsoft Will Build an Ubiquitous Computing Environment in the “City of the Future”

Microsoft will be responsible for building an ubiquitous computing environment in the "City of the Future." The Redmond company announced that its technology would be at the heart of Songdo, a new South Korean city being built 40 miles southwest of Seoul. Microsoft Solutions will cover various technological aspects of the Songdo International Business District and will be made available to citizens, government, as well as for education purposes. Songdo is under construction in Incheon, South Korea and will cost an estimated $35 billion (U.S.). Gale International, the developer of Songdo, singed a partnership with Microsoft, and the Redmond company will get to place a complete technology infrastructure for the "City of the Future."

"Designing an entirely new city from the ground up provides a unique opportunity to create an ideal technological infrastructure in which access to digital capabilities and experiences is an inherent part of the living and working environment across people’s lives," revealed Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft. "Microsoft is pleased to join with Gale International, which is working closely with the governments of Korea and Incheon and the Incheon Free Economic Zone Authority to help turn this exciting vision into reality."

Bill Gates was present at the Government Leaders Forum - Asia in Jakarta, Indonesia, where he delivered the keynote address. Songdo will get a wide variety of Microsoft technologies, but the entire span of the project is yet to be determined. According to the Redmond company, the city's technological requirements will be determined in collaboration with the Gale International and the Korean government, but will feature a Windows Mobile capable interface for government services, the Microsoft Citizen Service Platform, Microsoft Surface and Virtual Earth.

"I am very glad to have Microsoft as one of the major technology partners for the ubiquitous connectivity of Songdo IBD, a part of the Incheon Free Economic Zone," said Heon-Seok Lee, commissioner of the Free Economic Zone Authority. "I am confident that Microsoft’s technologies will successfully make Songdo IBD a cutting-edge technology-enabled city, which will accelerate Incheon Free Economic Zone’s city development and investment promotion."

Source: news.softpedia.com

2009 – 2010 - Windows 7 from Milestone Builds to the Beta and Final Versions

Will the real Windows 7 availability date please stand up! While officially, when Microsoft is in PR mode, the company is pointing to 2010 for the delivery of its next iteration of Windows, additional indications, slip-ups and leaks point to the end of 2009 for the release deadline of Windows 7. With Microsoft completely mum on the successor of Windows Vista, the speculation bonanza is being fed only crumbs from the Windows 7 feast. And the latest anodyne detail made public comes from none other than Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, who pointed out that Windows 7 is right on track for availability next year, in 2009.

"Sometime in the next year or so we will have a new version [of Windows 7]," Gates revealed in a statement before the Inter-American Development Bank, according to Beyond Binary. "I'm super-enthused about what it will do in lots of ways." By focusing on 2009, Gates managed to diverge from the official timetable for Windows 7.

In mid-March, a Microsoft spokesperson confirmed to Softpedia that "we are currently in the planning stages for Windows 7 and development is scoped to three years from Windows Vista Consumer GA [general availability, or January 31, 2007]. The specific release date will be determined once the company meets its quality bar for release."

With Steven Sinofsky, Senior Vice President, Windows and Windows Live Engineering Group, in charge of the Windows 7 project, Microsoft has made little to no details public about the next major version of Windows. Official confirmation offered was focused on promising both 32-bit and 64-bit variants as well as revealing a pet-project designed to modularize and isolate a low-footprint part of the platform, namely the core, as a standalone product dubbed MinWin.

Microsoft has so far offered Windows 7 Milestone 1 to its close partners and the antitrust regulators for review. Windows 7 M2 is expected in the April-May 2008 timeframe, and Mary Jo Foley says she heard talk about Milestone 3.

Gates' words could very well point to the general availability of Windows 7 ahead of the holiday season in 2009, a move which will not repeat the pains of Windows Vista's delivery at the start of 2007. But at the same time, 2009 could be synonymous with the release of the first Beta version of Windows 7. This even if there are indications that Windows 7 Beta 1 could drop as early as October 2008, more specifically October 27–30, 2008, at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC), in Los Angeles.

Source: news.softpedia.com

What's Written on Bill Gates' Face? Positive 73%, Negative 27%

If it's true that the eyes are windows into the soul, then the face is a map to a person's mindset. At this point in time, facial coding is no more of a science than palm reading, but it has the potential of developing into a new area of expertise that could end up being used on a scale just as large as the polygraph. Facial coding, or the practice of interpreting the minute details, shifts and movements of the hundreds of muscles on a person's face, is essentially designed as a system of reading emotions and correlating them with the subject's actions, or words. Suppressed emotions might be an indication of frustration, of an attempt to lie, while at the opposite pole, positive expressions come to enforce a certain statement as being honest and true.

Facial coding expert Dan Hill analyzed a dozen of business leaders and Chief Executive Officers from major American companies for USA Today, in an effort to translate facial expressions during interviews into personality traits. Among the top executives examined there is also Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates. The co-founder of Microsoft managed to score no less than positive 73% and negative 27% in terms of facial expressions. This means that: "He was at ease, affable and low key, but displayed small, weak social smiles, and touches of contempt," Hill stated.

In terms of positive expressions, Gates bested Apple Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs, whose facial coding ended up revealing a positive score of just 48%, with a negative of 52%. But according to Hill, Steve Jobs failed to hide his emotions in the least. "Lots of emoting, enjoyment mingled with frustration," Hill stated. Berkshire Hathaway CEO Buffett and a close friend of Bill Gates has the largest positive score, no less than 69% after Microsoft's Chairman being "affable, assured and low-key" but also slightly ironic, which scored him a negative 31%.

Source: news.softpedia.com

Bill Gates' New Work at Microsoft Will Begin in July 2008

Bill Gates' new work at Microsoft will debut come July 2008. Yes, July is also the month synonymous with the end of Gates' day-to-day role in the company he helped found. On June 15, 2006, Microsoft announced that Gates will enter a two-year transition period at the end of which the Chairman will shift his focus mainly on the global health and education work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Gates will not completely divorce from Microsoft, but he has already unloaded the vast majority of his daily responsibilities on his successors.

But believe it or not, Gates will continue working at Microsoft, not only as chairman and advisor, but on specific projects. The Microsoft Chairman participated at the U.K. Server and Tools partner pre-launch event on January 30, 2008, and addressed the subject of his new responsibilities with Microsoft following July 2008.

"I had the pleasure of attending this event today. The last item was Q&A with Bill Gates and there were a number of questions that you will be able to watch and listen too in the future. However, the one that I thought was most interesting was this one: 'what will Bill be doing in his part time capacity with Microsoft and what will the Bill and Melinda Foundation focus on?' His reply was roughly (I made a few scribbled notes, so I hopefully have the gist, if not the words): Ray Ozzie and Craig Mundie will take care of the 'one Microsoft and R&D function'," revealed David Overton, ISV Partner Account Manager at Microsoft.

Back in mid 2006, Chief Technical Officer Ray Ozzie assumed the title of Chief Software Architect, and took over the technical architecture and product oversight. At the same time, Chief Technical Officer Craig Mundie was given the new title of Chief Research and Strategy Officer and took control over Microsoft's research and incubation efforts. In this manner, Gates' responsibilities passed to Ozzie and Mundie. After July 2008, the Chairman will focus on three key areas.

"Search - still have lots to deliver from the various teams - we have just started to see the beginning of this - in both Internet and enterprise areas. Office - Bill has always had a keen interest in this area and it will continue. Things to be included are Modelling and declarative rules. Natural User Interfaces - more voice, touch, gesture and general non-keyboard interaction with technology," Overton added.

Source: news.softpedia.com

Bill Gates: Office Is a Platform too, Not Just Windows

In an effort to underline the relevance of the Office System as a platform for developers and not just an application, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates introduced during his keynote address at the Office System Developers Conference 2008, in San Jose, new software, services and tools designed to make Office an equivalent of Windows. At least from a development platform perspective. But unlike Windows, Gates emphasized the opportunity for developers to leverage Office, in order to build business applications. And to prove his point, the Microsoft Chairman also showcased a number of Microsoft Office Business Applications (OBAs) from various producers, including FedEx and Dell.

"I wanted to talk a little bit about some of the development platform directions, and why I see Office as continuing to innovate at a very rapid pace. The opportunity to make workers more productive is really a phenomenal opportunity, and I believe we're just at the beginning of that, and a key element is the broad set of software we use to empower those workers. And there's no more important piece of software for that than Office, and making this a platform is very important for us. In fact, if you look at the success of our software or any software, this emphasis on it being a platform, reaching out to developers, having great tools has been the key to its success," Gates stated.

Gates brought to the attention of the public no less than seven developer resources and tools tailored to the Office System. OBA Sample Application Kit enabled the creation of solutions connected with Office, while the Financial Services Reference Application Pack brings to the table over 75 OBA components that use Open XML and other Office system technologies for products aimed at the financial sector.

Via the OBA Composition Toolkit developers can put together Office and SharePoint Server 2007 mash-ups, and the BizTalk Adapter Pack and BizTalk Adapter Pack: Office Developer Program offer new opportunities in terms of line-of-business systems connectivity. The Visual Studio extensions for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0, v1.1 simplify the development process for SharePoint Server 2007, while the Metro for Unified Communications permits leveraging Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 for the integration of unified communications capabilities into third-party products.

"Almost half of ISVs and IT developers worldwide are using the Microsoft Office system to build business applications because Microsoft Office is such an effective way to unlock business data stored in back-end systems," Gates added. "With applications and services built on the Microsoft Office system, developers can make it easier for employees to connect to information and business processes."

Source: news.softpedia.com