Microsoft Corp. announced on Tuesday that David Porter will join the company as corporate vice president of Retail Stores. He will lead Microsoft’s efforts to create a better PC and Microsoft retail purchase experience for consumers worldwide through the development and opening of the company’s own retail stores. Porter will report to Microsoft Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner. He is joining Microsoft from DreamWorks Animation SKG, where he was head of worldwide product distribution.

“I am delighted to welcome David to Microsoft,” Turner said. “This is an exciting time with our strong lineup of upcoming product releases including Windows 7 and new releases of Windows Live and Windows Mobile. We’re also working hard to transform the PC and Microsoft buying experience at retail by improving the articulation and demonstration of the Microsoft innovation and value proposition so that it’s clear, simple and straightforward for consumers everywhere. David’s unique and diverse background, coupled with his deep retail roots and distribution understanding, will be an invaluable asset in this long-term effort.”

“There are tremendous opportunities ahead for Microsoft to create a world-class shopping experience for our customers,” Porter said. “I am excited about helping consumers make more informed decisions about their PC and software purchases, and we’ll share learnings from our stores with our existing retail and OEM partners that are critical to our success.”

Defining the time frame, locations and specifics for planned Microsoft-branded retail stores will be Porter’s first order of business. The purpose of opening these stores is to create deeper engagement with consumers and continue to learn firsthand about what they want and how they buy.

Porter, whose new role and focus will complement the work Microsoft is already doing with its retail partners, will work in close partnership with leaders of existing retail programs in Microsoft’s Entertainment & Devices Division.

Before joining DreamWorks Animation in 2007, Porter spent 25 years at Wal-Mart Stores Inc. in roles of increasing responsibility and seniority in store operations, merchandising and information technology. In his last role at Wal-Mart, Porter was vice president and general merchandise manager of Entertainment, where he served as a strategic point of influence throughout the Wal-Mart business.

Porter’s first day at Microsoft will be Feb. 16, 2009.

While Microsoft executives like to talk about Apple as an insignificant company with less than 5% of the worldwide market share of all PCs and servers sold, the Mac maker now has more cash than Microsoft and earns more than half of its profits and over three fourths its revenues.

For the quarter ending in September, Microsoft released revenues of $15.06 billion, net profits of $4.37 billion, and a reserve of cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments that added up to $20.7 billion.

Apple reported $7.9 billion in revenues and $1.14 billion in net profit, but those numbers don’t include most of its iPhone business, which is hidden away in subscription accounting under GAAP rules. For that reason, Apple also released its real earnings: $11.68 billion in revenue and $2.44 billion in net profits. The company also reported a cash position of $24.5 billion.

Microsoft’s quarterly revenues grew by 9%, compared to Apple’s non-GAAP revenue increase of 75.1% year over year.

via. AppleInsider

It hasn’t been too awfully long since Windows Vista SP1 hit the intertubes for real, but the Vista team is already talking up SP2. Granted, we all know Redmond is focused on moving beyond all of this Vista hoopla and forging ahead with Windows 7, but there’s apparently still some work to do on the outfit’s current OS. Unfortunately, the latest update isn’t exactly enthralling, as we’re given no set time frame for launch and we’re not shown any forthcoming changes that really get our juices flowing. For instance, Vista SP2 will add Windows Search 4.0 for faster and improved relevancy in searches, the Bluetooth 2.1 Feature Pack, ability to natively record data on Blu-ray media and Windows Connect Now (WCN) to simplify WiFi configuration. Wait, did you just yawn? You did. We saw it.

On Thursday, Microsoft issued a rare, out-of-cycle patch for a vulnerability in the Windows Server service that handles remote procedure calls, which allows programmers to run code either locally or remotely.

In issuing MS08-067, Microsoft warned: “It is possible that this vulnerability could be used in the crafting of a wormable exploit.” Entitled ‘Vulnerability in Server Service Could Allow Remote Code Execution (958644)’, the specific vulnerability has been assigned a National Vulnerability Database designation of CVE-2008-4250.

Microsoft rates this patch as critical for Microsoft Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, and important for Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. It also affects versions of Windows 7 pre-beta in limited release. The patch replaces MS06-040.

Microsoft normally issues patches on the second Tuesday of each month, which has been deemed Patch Tuesday. But out-of-cycle patches are not without precedent. Recent examples include the Windows Animated Cursor Remote Code Execution Vulnerability (April 2007), a vulnerability in Vector Markup Language (September 2006) and a vulnerability in the Graphics Rendering Engine (January 2006).

Microsoft said there have been only limited and targeted attacks to date.

The company added that a firewall should block network resources from attacks from outside the enterprise perimeter.

The patch is available via Microsoft Update or the individual bulletin for MS08-067.

via. ZDNet.co.uk

Microsoft will give those at next week’s Professional Developer Conference a chance to do more than just write software for the Surface. They’ll also have the opportunity to buy a developer version of the machine.

PDC attendees will get a 10 percent discount, but the machine will still set them back $13,500 (?8,800), even with the discount.

The cost for developers is higher because it includes five software developer kit licences. However, even commercial customers are paying $12,500 for the Surface. That’s above the $5,000 to $10,000 initial cost Microsoft said to expect when it announced the Surface back in May 2007.

“We’re not far off from our initial target,” Surface computing unit general manager Brad Carpenter said in an interview on Thursday, “but we would like to get the price down. Over time, with economies of scale and [higher sales volume], the prices will go down”.

Its price tag was among the reasons Robbie Bach, Microsoft’s entertainment division president, thought about killing the Surface as a commercial product, although it survived with Bill Gates as a strong backer of the effort.

Still, even if they can’t afford one, developers will get plenty of face time with the Surface at PDC. There’s a session on developing for the Surface as well as three hands-on labs.

And developers at the PDC will be the first to get their hands on a new software developer kit for the Surface. Microsoft had been limiting developer access to a handful of pre-selected partners.

Not all of the 6,000 developers at the show will be able to get the newly available software developer kit, Carpenter said. Microsoft is capping the offer at about 1,200, but that should cover at least all those who attend one of the sessions, he said.

Microsoft is also planning a ’scavenger hunt’ at PDC, where developers can place a special tag on each of the 16 Surface units scattered throughout the show. Even though the number of Surface machines in commercial use is low, Carpenter said that now is the time to get a broader range of developers writing programs for the product.

“We believe the opportunities are endless,” Carpenter said. “By reaching out to the developer community at PDC, we want to tap into their innovation, their creativity.”

Microsoft also will talk at the show about the overlap between developing for Surface and developing multitouch applications for Windows. Windows 7 will support multitouch gestures, though there will be some divergence between the Windows 7 and Surface implementations.

The developer paths will converge more with Windows Presentation Foundation version 4, “which will be a little after Windows 7″, Carpenter said.

World, get ready because Bill Gates is returning. His new company is called bgC3. The truth is that very little is known about it, except its trademark categories, and the fact that they have a web site showing a very pretty logo.

Bill Gates’ new venture has a federal trademark as a think-tank, covering:

? Scientific and technological services.
? Industrial analysis and research.
? Design and development of computer hardware and software.

The company is not being created in his garage, though: He has opened a small office near his home, apparently full of high tech toys including a Microsoft Surface used as a guest book.

via. Gizmodo

David Morgenstern, a writer for ZDNet has published a very interesting article about being contacted to write material touting Vista over Mac OS X.

Vista is much better than Mac OS X, right? For the enterprise. And how much will it take to get you to write up that thesis?

Such was the pitch that arrived in my inbox today from marketing company Studio B., a Great Neck, N.Y., marketing company associated with Microsoft and the Microsoft Press. The firm wondered if I?d like to write some ?corporate custom content? for a client.

According to the Studio B. site, the company ?supported? the Microsoft Commerce Server 2007 rollout with marketing sales and marketing tools as well as providing trainers for early adopters.

One of our customers has asked us write up a technical marketing case for Windows Vista over Mac OSX in the enterprise. I?m contacting you to see if you know anyone who would be interested and capable of writing this based on background materials we have.

The candidate should have a good understanding of client systems in the enterprise and the technologies behind issues that are important in the enterprise (deployment, manageability, work group and policy management, security, suitability of developer platforms for line of business applications, tech support, licensing, TCO).

We have some background materials that include a 75 page technical document called ?Apple in the Enterprise? and other summaries of technical points, but it all needs to be put together to make the case.

It?s not too hard to figure out who the customer is here. The price to sell out the Mac in the enterprise is $15,000. But my guess is that this fee may be negotiable upwards depending on the brand of the author in question.