TechFlash: Seattle's Technology News

With Firefox 3.5 now finished and available for download, Microsoft used the occasion to tout the speed of Internet Explorer 8. Whereas previously Microsoft focused on page load times, the company today made the case that IE8's "Accelerators" make it faster to use.

Accelerators let Web users highlight text on a page and right-click to bring up a menu to automatically insert and use that text on other sites, rather than cutting and pasting. Microsoft offered up a video showing how Accelerators speed up simple tasks, but it made a point of noting that "all tests were performed using the default installation settings for each browser. No additional add-ons or extensions were added."

Why is that important? Well, it just so happens that an easily installed Firefox add-on called KallOut offers similar functionality.

Mozilla released its Firefox 3.5 browser today, and one of the more interesting new capabilities is "location-aware browsing." The feature, which will be familiar to iPhone users, determines the computer's location and asks permission to share it with sites that use it to enhance the functionality of online applications.

The feature grew out of ongoing efforts to bring Firefox to mobile devices. Mozilla decided that it made sense to include geolocation functionality in its PC-based browser, as well. It uses the IP address and wifi signals to determine location, by default, but it also could work with GPS, which is starting to appear in more mobile computers.

Martinez

Maria Martinez, the corporate vice president in charge of the big Microsoft Services division, is leaving the company. Microsoft confirmed the move in response to our inquiry this morning, saying Martinez would be replaced by Kathleen Hogan, current corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Customer Service & Support.

Microsoft Services is the part of the company that provides consulting and product support to the company's big enterprise customers. Martinez's corporate bio, last updated in April of this year, says she leads a team of 17,000 people, but the services and consulting group was among those hardest hit in the company's latest round of layoffs.

Walking through Microsoft's campus the other day, I came across a place I hadn't visited for several years, and realized how much it's starting to feel like a graveyard.

For anyone who's never been there, the company has this great old courtyard in Redmond where for many years it placed plaques in the sidewalk for nearly every piece of software it shipped. Taken as a whole, the hundreds of markers tell the story of the company's rise to the top of the software industry in the 1980s and 1990s.

Each plaque, engraved in classic Microsoft font, was originally placed in the ground in celebration. Windows, Office and other hit products are represented well. But the recent discontinuation of some of Microsoft's best-known consumer brands -- combined with plaques for others that never amounted to much -- make other sections feel like a memorial to fallen products. Click through the pages below for pictures of some of the Microsoft relics commemorated in the courtyard.

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Rumors have circulated for months that Microsoft was looking to unload Razorfish, the Seattle digital advertising agency it picked up as a result of its $6 billion acquisition of aQuantive. Now, the software giant is formally moving ahead with the plan, hiring Morgan Stanley to help find a buyer, according to a report.

One potential buyer is Publicis, the French advertising giant which has a tight relationship with Microsoft, reports the Financial Times.  Quoting an analyst, the newspaper reports that Razorfish -- which employs 2,000 people -- could fetch $600 million to $700 million.

Last fall, rumors also circulated that Microsoft had discussed selling the unit to WPP. At the time of that rumor, Razorfish CEO Clark Kokich told TechFlash that there were "no plans" to sell the company.

Msnbc.com has released a free iPhone application -- built in conjunction with Seattle startup Zumobi -- that allows users to quickly access the news of the day by clicking on a colored peacock feather. For example, if you're looking for sports news just click on the green peacock feather. Politics is shown in blue, while science and tech appears in yellow.

It's been another active week of discussion on TechFlash. Here are some of the comments that caught our eye. Keep up the chatter.

Anonymous on Startups and venture capitalists look to profit on Twitter mania: "The VC desire to latch on to Twitter reminds me of the VC craze for Facebook apps a year or two back. Any winners come out of the fbFund or other Facebook app funds?"

Mike on Is Bing Travel copying Kayak's popular travel Web site? "Microsoft is not copying Kayak any more than Expedia and all the airlines are copying one another. You have to display departure and arrival cities, dates, etc. to function as a travel site. And Kayak's approach is not very "innovative"...creating a list is nothing new."

Timothy James on Microsoft search execs reunite at eBay:  "I didn't know anyone still used eBay. No joke."

Mike Mathieu on Bill Gates wants a better beer keg: "Just a guess, but it probably came in a brainstorm related to cold-supply chains, which are needed to deliver some types of perishable vaccines to places without broadly reliable electricity, like sub-Saharan Africa. The ice cold beer is just a happy side effect."

Seattle-area Internet geeks and environmental groups came together on Microsoft's Redmond campus today to brainstorm about environmentally oriented Web applications in what was billed as a "Green & Geekalicious Hackday." Here are a couple whiteboards where they wrote down some of their ideas. (Click for larger versions.)

What do you think? See anything interesting? What would you add? People at the event focused on using the Microsoft Bing application programming interface, but don't limit yourself if you chime in below.

Microsoft likes to call its Imagine Cup student competition the Olympics of Technology, and it looks like the closing ceremonies this year will live up to that billing. The finals are being held in Egypt, providing a dramatic backdrop for the July 7 awards, including a laser light show. Via the company, here are pictures of the stage going up.

Suzanne Mubarak, the first lady of Egypt, will take part in the ceremonies. The Imagine Cup finals begin July 3 in Cairo. Competitors include the Dickinson brothers of Tigard, Ore., profiled in this earlier TechFlash post. Ray Ozzie, Microsoft's chief software architect, will deliver the Imagine Cup opening keynote this year.

"Introducing Bing, the better way to Google." That's how the folks at CollegeHumor start out this humorous parody of Microsoft's new search engine.

What do you think?

The internal group responsible for "evangelizing" Microsoft's technologies plans to phase out its standalone Channel 8 website for students and Channel 10 site for tech geeks -- folding elements of them into an overhauled version of Channel 9, the company's flagship video site and forum for software developers.

The group is putting a positive spin on the decision, saying it will strengthen Channel 9 and give it more of the content that originally made it popular. Channel 9 will be redesigned and revamped to add live webcasts, better integration with social networks, new technical training materials and more posts from the company's technology leaders.

But the move also reflects the company's struggle to build thriving online communities beyond its core audience of software developers.

What is it with technology companies screwing up payroll for those workers getting the ax? According to TechCrunch, recently laid-off employees at MySpace have been asked to refrain from cashing their final checks due to errors in how the payments were calculated.

That's similar to an unfortunate situation earlier this year when Microsoft overpaid severance to some workers and then asked for the money back. The company changed its mind a few days later and allowed workers to keep the extra money.

Just as Microsoft is becoming a popular destination for former Yahoo search engineers and executives, eBay appears to becoming one for ex-Microsofties.

Microsoft's Hugh Williams, who played a key role in the company's Bing search engine, has left to join eBay, as first reported this week by Silicon Alley Insider's Nicholas Carson. Our calls to eBay this week haven't been returned, but PaidContent.org's Joe Tartakoff confirmed with Williams that he will be leading the company's search development team.

What's interesting is that eBay already employs two former Microsoft search executives, Christopher Payne and Dane Glasgow, who joined the e-commerce and online auction company when it acquired Positronic, their Seattle-based startup, earlier this year.

OK, let’s get to straight to the big controversy: The people responsible for the daily image on Microsoft’s search home page swear they weren't taking a swipe at Apple’s Snow Leopard operating system in February, when they published an attention-grabbing picture of a real snow leopard -- accompanied by text noting that the big cats can’t roar.

Totally unintentional, vows Stephanie Horstmanshof, editorial lead for Microsoft’s search group.

“We weren’t trying to send any hidden messages to Apple or to anyone else," she said, laughing as she remembered the tortured attempts by technology bloggers to find meaning in the picture.

It's no wonder the attention caught the team by surprise. Back then, it was hard to find people who knew what Microsoft's search site was, let alone used it. But the recent rebranding of Live Search as "Bing" has raised the awareness of the company's search initiative, at least temporarily, and put a spotlight one of its signature features -- those distinctive pictures on the Bing.com home page.

Jawad Khaki

Jawad Khaki, a longtime Microsoft executive who was an early member of the Windows NT development team, is leaving the company at the end of the month. Khaki, whose role has been in flux since late 2007, said this morning that he decided it was time to start a new phase of his life, much as Bill Gates, Jeff Raikes and other Microsoft executives have done.

Khaki, 51, was a Windows networking leader for many years, including a role as vice president of Windows networking and device technologies during the rocky Windows Vista development cycle. Khaki was shifted to corporate vice president of the Windows Hardware Ecosystem Group in late 2006, around the time Windows Vista shipped, and remained in that role for about a year before leaving the position in late 2007 and taking an extended leave.