Get ready. The evolution is coming. Microsoft Corp. today announced at the Tokyo Game Show 2008 that the New Xbox Experience, a transformation in home entertainment, will launch on Wednesday, Nov. 19. On that day, millions of Xbox 360 owners worldwide will experience a completely new Xbox 360 that is fun, social and simple to use — and puts more entertainment at their fingertips than any other device connected to the TV.

Not one of the millions who already have the Xbox 360 at the heart of the family room? No problem. Microsoft also announced that beginning this month, buy any Xbox 360 video game and entertainment system, and games are free.

Ed Bott: I’m reading more and more about Windows 7 lately as PDC approaches and Microsoft begins revealing more snippets of information about its most secretive product ever. In most of that coverage, I’ve noticed an assumption that Windows 7 is going to be the final name of the product. I’ve been guilty of leaping to that conclusion myself.

But a reader asked the other day why Microsoft is calling it Windows 7, and as I worked on my response to that question, it struck me that it’s entirely possible, even likely, that the next release of Windows will get a new name before it hits the streets. (Keep reading, and I’ll give you a chance to compare your prediction with mine.)

A Microsoft Springboard Virtual Roundtable on Tuesday examined Windows Vista performance, fielding technical views from some panelists that had actually carried out system upgrades.

The general opinion among the group was that Service Pack 1 for Vista had transformed the much-maligned operating system into an ideal solution for enterprise IT managers.

Yesterday Ed Bott brought up the topic of Windows 7’s moniker, now fellow ZDNET colleague brings up the important issue of Microsoft’s marketing of the product. Will Windows 7 continue to carry the same amount of SKU’s as Windows Vista? The strategy has received a lot of backlash, persons note that it confuses users from making the right choice. Then again, the purpose of so many editions of Vista was to make buying the right version Windows for your needs easier. Looks like a lot of us never got that message.

Sometimes Microsoft makes it too easy to point out how slow and stupid the company has gotten with little Stevie Ballmer in charge. Take, for example, Microsoft's claim that Ballmer knew next to nothing about his company's "Vista Capable" marketing campaign. And, therefore he shouldn't have to testify in the Vista class-action lawsuit that accuses the company of deceiving customers with the campaign.

In a statement to the court, Ballmer said, "I was not involved in any of the operational decisions about the Windows Vista Capable program I was not involved in establishing the requirements computers must satisfy to qualify for the Windows Vista Capable program. I was not involved in formulating any marketing strategy or any public messaging surrounding the Windows Vista Capable program. To the best of my recollection, I do not have any unique knowledge of, nor did I have any unique involvement in any decisions regarding the Windows Vista Capable program."

There's so much that's wrong with this that it's hard to know where to begin.

The Application Compatibility List for IT Professionals is a Microsoft Office Excel-based spreadsheet containing software applications which have earned the status of “Certified for Windows Vista” or “Works with Windows Vista.”

Additionally, this list contains applications with a status of “Compatible.” "Compatible” means that the application has been reported by the publisher as compatible with, or supported on, Windows Vista. These applications have not gone through the Microsoft Windows Vista Logo Program.

While the title of this post might indicate that there is a sweeping document collaboration strategy that all teams and people use, that’s not the case necessarily. We are big at dogfooding which is a made up verb indicating that we love to try out our own software and tools in our everyday jobs just the way our customers do.

To that end, this post will describe a successful multi-national document collaboration effort surrounding the recent publication of the Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Team Foundation Server 2008 guidance that was recently published on MSDN.

The guidance for this heavily anticipated documentation will be released in phases over the next few weeks and appear in a developer center located under the SharePoint developer center.

Analyst firm Gartner put Microsoft at the top of its "leaders" category for information access technology, which includes enterprise search. The ranking is part of an Oct. 1-revised Gartner Magic Quadrant 2008 report. Gartner predicts that revenue for the global enterprise search market will reach $1.5 billion by 2012, growing from $860.3 million in 2007.

Gartner defines "information access technology" as solutions that find information for retrieval and analysis by end users. Enterprise search solutions are considered a key part of this category. Other capabilities, such as federated search, content classification and clustering, are included in Gartner's definition.

We promised that this blog would provide a view of Engineering Windows 7 and that means that we would cover the full range of topics—from performance to user interface, technical and non-technical topics, and of course easy topics and controversial topics. This post is about User Account Control. Our author is Ben Fathi, vice president for core OS development. UAC is a feature that crosses many aspects of the Windows architecture—security, accounts, user interface, design, and so on—we had several other members of the team contribute to the post.

We continue to value the discussion that the posts seem to inspire—we are betting (not literally of course) that this post will bring out comments from even the most reserved of our readers. Let’s keep the comments constructive and on-topic for this one.

FWIW, the blogs.msdn.com server employs some throttles on comments that aim to reduce spam. We don’t control this and have all the “unmoderated” options checked. I can’t publish the spam protection rules since that sort of defeats the purpose (and I don’t know them). However, I apologize if your comment doesn’t make it through. --Steven

Joe Wilcox: Microsoft sure doesn't seem too worried about clickjacking. Should it be? Should you be?

With all the recent buzz about clickjacking, a blog post is long overdue. So this afternoon I contacted Microsoft's PR agency with the simplest softball question—and some opportunity to promote Internet Explorer 8 security. My, but did I get an unexpected response.

No, Microsoft is not getting into the car-wash business. But it is releasing "Touchless," multitouch software from Microsoft Office Labs that uses a regular Web camera and everyday objects as input. You can think of this as a low-end version of its Touchwall technology, which uses more precise lasers to detect movement and objects. The software developer kit is available now under an open-source Microsoft Public License. The SDK only works on Windows (what did you expect?).

Microsoft SharedView is a fast, easy way to share documents and screen views with small groups of friends or coworkers; anytime, anywhere. Use SharedView to put your heads together and collaborate - create, convey, and communicate…across physical boundaries, through firewalls, and down to the smallest details.

Application roles have been around forever, but have you really ever implemented them in SQL Server? For that matter, do you really know what they are and how to use them? Here's a quick look.

Before we begin, though, let's look at how application security can be implemented in SQL Server. There's debate over which model is better and I am not endorsing any specific one. Regardless of whether you use SQL Server Logins or Windows Authentication, you still have to decide whether an application uses a single login to access SQL Server (and all appropriate database objects), or allow users to have their own login.

Virtualization is hot nowadays, but Terminal Services has been abstracting the presentation layer of remotely run applications and desktops for years. A lot has changed over the years, and with Windows Server 2008, Terminal Services has truly become a mature, robust presentation virtualization platform.

For those of you who may not be aware of these, the IPD Guides (Infrastructure Planning and Design Guides) are a series of guides that can help you with your planning.  And your design. 

• Windows Server 2008 File Services

  This guide provides the basic building blocks upon which many other infrastructure services are based. Enjoy peace of mind in knowing that all critical phases of the plan are included, allowing you to establish a good foundation for future expansion. Download this guide now.

• Windows Server 2008 Print Services

  The goal of this guide is to enable you to strategically plan your print infrastructure. By analyzing your printing needs, you will be able to design print servers with sufficient memory and spooler capacity. Efficiently designing printer pools can help you avoid problems before they begin, erase performance bottlenecks, and serve your customers more reliably. Download this guide now.

Windows Vista displays a big scary dialog when the hard drive's on-board circuitry reports that the hardware is starting to fail. Yet if you go to the Disk Management snap-in, it reports that the drive is Healthy. What's up with that?

The ritual of assessing Microsoft's latest incarnation of Internet Explorer (IE) is upon us again. This time it's the beta release of IE 8. There are, of course, the usual Microsoft detractors who have nothing positive to say about the software giant's browser and advise us all to use Mozilla's Firefox if we want safer surfing.

As browsers are probably the most commonly used software application, IE's security features are certainly of critical importance. In this article, we'll examine what's new in IE 8 and whether Internet Explorer has turned a corner when it comes to security.

Unlike Toshiba Corp., which is still strictly against Blu-ray disc (BD) format, Microsoft Corp. has always said that it might release an external Blu-ray optical disc drive for the Xbox 360 video game system if there is demand. According to market sources, the software giant does have plans to offer its customers a BD option.

Toshiba-Samsung Storage Technology Corp., a joint venture between Samsung Electronics and Toshiba Corp., has been contracted to manufacture external Blu-ray disc drives for Microsoft Xbox 360 game console. While the exact specifications of the product are unknown, it is rumoured that Microsoft aims at $100 - $150 price-point for the device in order to compete against Sony PlayStation 3 with Xbox 360 + external Blu-ray drive combination.

Mary Jo Foley: Nice find by blogger Kit Ong (which I saw via Long Zheng): Microsoft’s cloud operating system platform is named — or at least codenamed — “Windows Strata.”

“Come learn how to build a new type of application designed from the get-go to live and breathe within Live Mesh. ‘Mesh Applications’ can be accessed from anywhere through a web browser as well as run locally (and offline) on user’s desktop and can take full advantage of many Mesh value-add services such as a dedicated sandbox, online and offline synchronized storage, auto deployment and update, identity, application catalogue, social computing and more. Learn about the Mesh Application architecture and lifecycle as well as how to build Silverlight 2 and JavaScript Mesh Applications from ground up.”

John Behneman: A new feature released with the 4.1.2.21 & 4.2.1.21 versions of the SoftGrid Client is the ability to run SoftGrid Packages without a Virtual Application Server (VAS). While we do have some documentation on installing and configuring the client to run in standalone mode I thought I would post a couple additional notes as well.

Microsoft Office Labs released Tuesday its Touchless SDK for developers to experiment with multi-touch technology.

With the SDK, developers can build multi-touch applications that use a color marker and webcam for input. Utilizing the webcam, applications can track the location and size of the color marker to enable multi-touch functionality without touching a surface, according to Microsoft.

The SDK can be used to build games or applications that could, for example, browse through media, said project developer Mike Wasserman. A demonstration of the technology can be viewed here.

Paul Thurrott: Never has such a good idea been so badly bungled. Microsoft originally envisioned Windows Ultimate Extras as one of many differentiators for its high-end Windows Vista Ultimate edition. Of course, back in mid-2005, when these plans were unfolding, Microsoft was still struggling to define the various Vista product editions. It planned a Small Business edition, for example, but ultimately decided against it. And for Windows Vista Ultimate, Microsoft originally planned to include a number of features that never came to fruition, including a Game Performance Tweaker, a podcast creation utility, online "Club" services, extended A1 subscriptions, free music downloads, free movie downloads, Online Spotlight and entertainment software, preferred product support, and custom themes. (I first revealed these plans in my September 2005 article, Windows Vista Product Editions Preview.)

Greetings, Todd here and I wanted to take a few moments to talk to you about an issue that arises from time to time. I will start this time-related issue exploration with a worst case scenario.

The Primary Domain Controller Emulator (also known as the PDCe) in your forest root has a hardware issue which requires the replacement of the motherboard or even the replacement of the machine due to theft, fire, water based fire suppression system damage, etc, etc… The motherboard or machine is replaced and the machine is started.

Sometime shortly after the motherboards or system replacement it is noted that AD replication is failing, everywhere.

There's a difference between building a new database engine, and building tools that are bundled with an existing database engine for a new product. So even analysts may be surprised to learn the next SQL Server is not two years away.

At a conference in Seattle yesterday that was apparently accompanied by at least one demo that was not on its original schedule, Microsoft made mention of a product with the code-name "Kilimanjaro," in association with SQL Server.

Microsoft has halted — temporarily, according to company officials — sales of its Software Licensing and Protection (SLP) Services product.

It's hardly unexpected, but Facebook has integrated Microsoft's Live Search into its site.

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes: Here's a tale of how a humble Mac Mini system outperformed my cutting-edge quad-core system. It’s also a story of how Apple can’t write good software for the Windows platform.

The other day I was chatting to George Ou about professional grade digital SLR cameras that offer 1080p video capability. He then mentioned how his system (an Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz PC system with an NVIDIA 8800GT GPU)