PDC 2009: Live Coverage

I'm attending PDC 2009 this week in Los Angeles. I'll have live coverage of the show Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday this week, including live blogging of the Day 1 and Day 2 keynotes with fellow All-Star Bloggers Ed Bott, Mary Jo Foley, Kip Kniskern, Rafael Rivera, Tom Warren, and Long Zheng!

Keynote Live Blogs | PDC Blog Posts | WinInfo News Articles

Keynote Live Blogs

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Day 2: Wednesday

Day 1: Tuesday

PDC Blog Posts

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PDC 2009: Day 2

Blog: Today is PDC 2009 Day 2. It should be more client focused, so expect some news around Windows 7, Office 2010 and Internet Explorer 9.

PDC 2009: Day 1

The official first day of PDC 2009 figures to be incredibly busy, with a major keynote address, several meetings, and, of course, a party this evening. I should have posts throughout the day...

The New Office 2010 Logo

Microsoft today made Office 2010 Beta 2 available for download to MSDN and TechNet subscribers. (Thanks to Mary Jo Foley for the heads-up.) Here's a peek at the new Office 2010 logo.

PDC 2009: Day 0

I'm at the Los Angeles Convention Center (LACC) today for the Professional Developers Conference (PDC) pre-show events, which involve some workshops--including the one I'm attending right now, Windows 7 Developer Boot Camp, which features Microsoft Fellow Mark Russinovitch.

More soon...

WinInfo News Articles

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PDC 2009: Microsoft Pushes Windows 7 to Developers

Microsoft Windows chief Steven Sinofsky took to the Professional Developer Conference (PDC) 2009 keynote stage on Wednesday morning to bask in the afterglow of Windows 7's successful launch and ask that developers create compelling new applications that build on Windows 7 technologies. He also showed off a very early version of Internet Explorer 9, which Microsoft says will be more standards compliant and offer huge performance improvements.

"The tremendous support behind Windows 7 equates to tangible opportunity for developers on the Windows platform," Sinofsky said. "We're looking forward to the new ways that they will bring Windows and the Web to life for all of our customers."

Sinofsky provided some impressive numbers related to the record size of the Windows 7 beta test experience. The company received over 1.7 million "Send Feedback" clicks, recorded over 91,000 unique external devices connected to pre-release Windows 7 PCs (14,000 of which were unique printers), saw over 883,000 unique applications installed on the OS, and had 8.1 million official installs of pre-release versions of Windows 7. (There were over 7 million unofficial install as well, though Sinofsky didn't mention that.)

Looking ahead, Sinofsky asked developers to target Windows 7 technologies like the ribbon and showed off a very early version of IE 9. He offered no timeline for the product, but one can reasonably expect a public release before or at next year's MIX conference in March 2010. Microsoft also separately showed off a next-generation version of its Adobe Flash competitor Silverlight.

PDC 2009: Microsoft Announces Office 2010 Public Beta

Microsoft on Wednesday announced the public availability of Office 2010, which includes versions of the productivity suite, SharePoint Server 2010, Project 2010, Visio 2010, Office Web Apps for businesses, and Office Mobile 2010. The products are on track for a final release in the first half of 2010, the company says.

"We are hoping to have millions of people download and test the products, as we depend on that feedback to shape the final product," said Kurt DelBene, the senior vice president of the Office Business Productivity Group at Microsoft. "To get the broadest range of feedback we are making this beta available in seven languages--English, Spanish, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Russian, French and German--more than any other Office beta program in the past."

As you might expect, the Office 2010 suite includes updates to all of the traditional Office applications, including the addition of the ribbon user interface across the board. Some applications, like Outlook, are receiving major, revolutionary updates, while most are getting a more evolutionary bump.

This week's release also marks the first time that Microsoft has made a mobile version of Office available directly to users in beta form. The Office 2010 Mobile beta can be downloaded from the Windows Marketplace for Mobile, which is now accessible from all Windows Mobile 6.x devices.

I'm in the process of reviewing the entire Office 2010 Beta release, and the first two parts of that review are now.

PDC 2009: Microsoft Launches Cloud Computing Platform

As expected, Microsoft launched its forthcoming cloud computing platform, Windows Azure, on the opening day of its Professional Developers Conference (PDC) 2009 event in Los Angeles. The service will transition from its current "community technical preview" state to a feature-complete, final version on January 1, 2010, the software giant said. But customers won't be billed until February so they can determine what the costs will be during the preceding month.

"Customers want choice and flexibility in how they develop and deploy applications," Microsoft chief software architect Ray Ozzie said. "We're moving into an era of solutions that are experienced by users across PCs, phones and the web, and that are delivered from datacenters we refer to as private clouds and public clouds. Built specifically for this era of cloud computing, Windows Azure and SQL Azure will give developers what they need to build great applications and profitable businesses."

The Windows Azure cloud computing platform extends Windows Server into the hosted services space, providing developers with a way to create applications and services that run in the cloud instead of in on-premise servers. This provides a more reliable and cost-effective platform in many scenarios, Microsoft says, and represents a major shift in the way that businesses and consumers utilize computing resources.

The Windows Azure launch was announced during a keynote address on day one of the PDC. This keynote was cloud-computing-heavy, and included several new announcements related to Windows Azure. Among them are a new information service, codenamed "Dallas" that privides access to premium commercial and reference datasets and content from providers like the Associated Press, NASA, and the United Nations; an online marketplace for partner applications called PinPoint; and Windows Server AppFabric, currently in beta, which helps developers manage and deploy applications that span from local Windows Servers to the cloud.

While Tuesday's keynote was largely about cloud computing, Microsoft promises some desktop-related news on Wednesday. In addition to a push for Windows 7 technologies and the Office 2010 public beta, the software giant is expected to show off an early version of Internet Explorer 9, the next version of its web browser.

PDC 2009 Opens: Mid-Week Short Takes

Today, Microsoft takes the stage for the first of two days of Professional Developer Conference (PDC) keynote addresses, with the software giant promising big surprises at each. Despite this, PDC 2009 will likely be a much less exciting time than the previous three PDC shows, which focused on Longhorn/Vista and Windows 7.

I'm here in LA to cover PDC in person, but with the first keynote looming, there is a spate of non-PDC news to cover. I thought it might make sense to provide coverage of this news in a mini-Short Takes style. Here's what's happening as Microsoft preps to start its latest PDC.

Windows 7 suffers first "zero-day" flaw
And the countdown begins for the inevitable "told you so" Apple advertisement. Microsoft admitted that reports about a denial of service vulnerability in its newly-minted Windows 7 (and Windows Server 2008 R2) were correct but downgraded the seriousness of the issue because it cannot lead to remote control or remote installation of malicious software. It's unclear now if Microsoft will deliver before or at its next regularly-scheduled monthly security patch release (which is due in December).

Microsoft ports Windows Marketplace for Mobile to older devices
Microsoft provided Windows Mobile 6.5 users with a Windows Marketplace for Mobile online store at the system's launch in October. But this week it opened up the store to users of older versions of Windows Mobile, including versions 6.0 and 6.1. The store now has 800 applications, or about three times the number at launch. But looked at another way, it has about 1/125th the number of apps in Apple's iPhone Apps Store. It's getting there. Right?

Office 2010 Beta comes early to MSDN, TechNet subscribers
Microsoft previously said that it would ship a broad public beta of Office 2010, but this week it delivered the beta only to subscribers of MSDN and TechNet. You can expect the public release soon, since I know that's what you're really worried about. And yes, I'll be providing a thorough overview on the SuperSite for Windows.

Microsoft co-founder treated for lymphoma
If you're steeped in Microsoft lore, you know that Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen came down with Hodgkin's lymphoma in the early 1980's and left the company. Allen survived his bout with lymphoma and went on to become one of the world's richest and most successful men. Sadly, after over 20 years of good health, Allen was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and is now undergoing chemotherapy. He said he expects to beat cancer this time too and he continues to work. Good luck, Mr. Allen.

The misreporting of Zune's "global launch"
When the Financial Times reported this week that Microsoft was getting set to launch Zune around the world, a lot of people got excited about the prospect of buying Zune HD portable media devices in countries other than the US. There's just one problem: That's not happening. Instead, Microsoft is simply launching the Zune brand worldwide, courtesy of the limited Zune Video Marketplace service for the Xbox 360 video game console. The service launches today in the US and 17 other top western markets, Microsoft says. "The strategy and vision of Zune is to continue to build out that full entertainment experience," a Zune spokesperson said. "This is a very important step for us to introduce Zune to new consumers around the world." A more important step, methinks, would be to get the device out there. Just a thought.

Microsoft loses font ruling in China
Microsoft this week lost a court case in China and was found to have infringed on a Chinese company's intellectual property rights by including certain fonts in Windows. "We plan to appeal the decision for the fonts case," a Microsoft spokesperson said. "We believe our license agreements with the plaintiff cover our use of the fonts." The case was filed in 2007 and doesn't cover Windows 7.

Bing continues to increase its usage share
Microsoft's Bing search engine accounted for 9.9 percent of all web searches in the US, up from 9.4 percent the previous month. However, most of that gain clearly came at the expense of Yahoo!, since market leader Google also expanded its share, from 64.9 percent to 65.4 percent. Yahoo!, meanwhile, lost big time, falling to 18 percent from 18.8 percent.

OK, back to PDC. See you at the show: I'll be providing blog posts and news articles over the new two days and will be live-blogging the keynote events on both Tuesday and Wednesday. Stay tuned to the SuperSite for Windows for updates.

More soon...

--Paul Thurrott
November 16-19, 2009

Previous PDC Coverage

PDC 2008: Windows 7
PDC 2005: Windows Vista
PDC 2003: Longhorn