Top Items:
Brian Jones / Office XML Formats:
Standardizing the Microsoft Office Open XML formats — Today we are making a really important announcement about our XML formats. We are going to bring the Microsoft Office Open XML formats to a standards body with the intention of eventually making the formats an ISO standard.
RELATED ITEMS:
Martin LaMonica / ZDNet:
Microsoft to standardize Office formats … Microsoft intends to submit file formats for its new Office 12 applications to the European standards body ECMA International. The company hopes this will allay concern about its level of control over document formats.
Scobleizer / Microsoft Geek Blogger:
Microsoft standardizes Office formats - Jean Paoli interview — I just interviewed Jean Paoli, co-inventor of XML (he usually works a few doors down from my office in building 18, so we talk often). He has been bragging to me for days now about what we just announced 22 minutes ago …
Discussion:
Don Dodge on The Next …
Joe Wilcox / Microsoft Monitor:
MICROSOFT DROPS THE BIG ONE — It's tomorrow morning in Paris, where Microsoft has dropped a big announcement that may just reverberate across the European continent to the Americas and beyond. Microsoft has announced that it will submit its XML-based file formats for approval as a standard.
Discussion:
Things That
EFF: Breaking News:
EFF Files Class Action Lawsuit Against Sony BMG — Company Should Repair Damage to Customers Caused by CD Software — The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), along with two leading national class action law firms, today filed a lawsuit against Sony BMG, demanding that the company repair …
RELATED ITEMS:
Matt Daily / Reuters:
Texas sues Sony BMG for spyware violations — HOUSTON (Reuters) - Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott filed a civil lawsuit on Monday against Sony BMG Music Entertainment (6758.T) for hiding "spyware" software on its compact discs in a bid to thwart music copying.
Dave Winer / Scripting News:
Sharing at so many levels! — Microsoft has unveiled a new proposal called SSE, which stands for Simple Sharing Extensions for RSS and OPML. — In 2005, RSS-based aggregators have been around for six years. They come in all sizes and shapes, some inspired by mail readers, others are …
Discussion:
Darwinian Web, Danny Ayers, Raw Blog, InsideMicrosoft, elliptical, Things That, CrunchNotes, WeBreakStuff, Bink.nu, Alex Barnett blog, TechCrunch and John Palfrey
RELATED ITEMS:
Don Dodge / Don Dodge on The Next Big Thing:
SSE - Simple Sharing Extensions - A Microsoft innovation on RSS — Ray Ozzie and the team at Microsoft is working on an exciting new innovation to RSS called SSE, Simple Sharing Extensions. There is a draft specification in place, and sample code will be ready soon.
Peter Lewis / CNN:
Should you wait for the PS3? — Even if the Xbox 360 is a rousing success, Sony will likely still dominate the console universe. — NEW YORK (FORTUNE) - More than 90 million PlayStation 2 consoles have been sold worldwide since the PS2's debut in 2000, compared with some 25 million Microsoft Xboxes sold since 2001.
Discussion:
Kotaku
RELATED ITEM:
Saul Hansell / New York Times:
AOL Joins Start-Up Company to Offer Web Video Distribution — America Online reached an unusual arrangement yesterday with a start-up company that will allow almost any producer of video content to distribute programming on its service, splitting revenue from advertising or fees.
New York Times:
Skype Says RadioShack to Sell Kits for Its Web-Based Phone Service — SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 20 - Skype, the Internet-phone company that eBay Inc. acquired for $4.1 billion, is reaching for the American consumer mainstream by selling its telephone kits in RadioShack stores.
Discussion:
IP Democracy
RELATED ITEM:
New York Times:
Google's Shopping Service to List User's Local Stores — Google executives said last night that the company planned to move quickly to capitalize on its new Google Base database service, adding a feature that lets merchants provide local shopping information.
John Hudson / Wired News:
Monster Scope to Dwarf Rivals — Astronomers are preparing to build the world's largest telescope that could be 100 times more powerful than the Hubble and will peer back to the very beginning of the universe. — The new TMT (Thirty-Meter Telescope) will be the first of a new generation …
Ben Edelman:
Cleaning Up Sony's Rootkit Mess — Late last month, Windows expert Mark Russinovich revealed Sony installing a rootkit to hide its "XCP" DRM (digital rights management) software as installed on users' PCs. The DRM software isn't something a typical user would want; the "rights" …
Chris Pratley / Chris Pratley's OneNote Blog:
Out and About with OneNote Mobile — As part of our ongoing mission to capture all the information you need to keep, it makes a heck of a lot of sense to let you capture information while you're on the go away from your desk - even without your laptop. As you may know, the current version …
Discussion:
jkOnTheRun
Marc Perton / Download Squad:
Windows at 20: 20 things you didn't know about Windows 1.0 — Believe it or not, it's exactly 20 years since Microsoft released Windows 1.0. And, although the company is being fairly low-key in its celebrations of the event (except in Japan), I think it's worth commemorating.
