Windows Live rooted in MSN's past

Of the eight or so services that Microsoft showed off Tuesday at the
launch of Windows Live, its new Web-based consumer tools, the vast
majority are reincarnations of products that the company had either
released or tested under the MSN brand.

"A lot of the Windows Live services are things that had already been
in development by MSN," Directions on Microsoft analyst Matt Rosoff
said.

The main Live.com Web page is similar to the Start.com page that has
been in testing since earlier this year. Windows Live Mail is a
long-planned update to Hotmail designed to make the service more like
desktop e-mail software. Other existing products, like Microsoft's MSN
Spaces and its OneCare security service, are also joining the Windows
Live party.

Windows Live is most certainly not an online version of Microsoft's
venerable operating system, as the name might imply. But the company
insists the move is more than a name change.

Indeed, some of the technology that Microsoft demonstrated goes beyond
not only what MSN has done, but also what Google and Yahoo have
covered in their personalization efforts.

The most striking examples were ways of tying Windows Live to the
desktop. On stage, Microsoft showed how people could share file
folders with instant-messaging buddies and use the Live.com page to
view not only Web content, but also things like recently opened
documents or a corporate SharePoint portal.

Forrester Research analyst Charlene Li said that some of what
Microsoft outlined represented an improvement over the personalization
features offered by Yahoo and Google's services. But she also chided
Microsoft over the Live.com site's complexity.

"I don't think my mom will be able to use it," Li said, pointing out
that those that want to use Windows Live have to start out with a
nearly blank page and build from there.

Moreover, adding small applications, known as "gadgets," is no easy
task. At the moment, people must go to microsoftgadgets.com, copy a
special URL, then go back to Live.com and follow a series of "advanced
options."

"Sorry for the inconvenience," Microsoft notes on its gadget site. "We
will provide a more seamless experience very soon."

Gadgets are important for Microsoft, because it plans to use them
throughout both Windows Vista (the upcoming update to its operating
system) and Windows Live. The same types of traffic maps and photo
viewers that can be dropped onto a Live.com page will also be able to
exist on a permanent sidebar within Vista.

Microsoft also plans to use gadgets as the way to add locally stored
information, such as recently opened documents, onto the Live.com Web
page.

Eventually, Microsoft hopes to make using gadgets as easy as dragging
and dropping the desired application onto either Live.com or the Vista
sidebar.

Bulked-up Messenger coming
Some of the biggest new things that Microsoft demonstrated as part of
Windows Live are coming in an update to Messenger. Although the
instant-messaging engine exists today, the Windows Live incarnation
will include a number of new features, including social networking and
Internet telephony.

In the demo on Tuesday, Microsoft showed how the service would let
someone call a contact's phone as easily as sending a text instant
message. That seemed to be a shot across the bow of companies like
Skype and Vonage, which provide voice over Internet Protocol calling.

However, Microsoft has now clarified the pricing of the Internet
calling service, saying PC-to-phone calling will be a paid service,
even during public beta testing. The company also said it will work
with a yet-unnamed partner to provide the VoIP calling, rather than
get in the telecommunications business itself.

Another feature of the new Messenger presented was the ability to
share folders with a buddy. The idea is that dragging a file on top of
a contact would allow you to create a shared folder. That folder would
exist on both members' desktop and stays up-to-date with any changes
to the file. While that capability was built in-house, Microsoft said
Thursday morning that it is buying another service, called
FolderShare, to assist in its Windows Live efforts.

Another service demonstrated, but is not yet available, is Windows
Live Local. In his presentation, MSN vice president Blake Irving
outlined a local search service that included elements of Microsoft's
Virtual Earth mapping. Eventually, the company could add tools that
enable members or their buddies to create annotations, creating a
personalized map of their favorite spots in the city.

Microsoft also showed off a preview of a mobile search tool as part of
a mobile version of Windows Live. With the service, Microsoft is
aiming to have a compact Web search page that can find a nearby
restaurant or gas station. It will be viewable via both Windows Mobile
devices and ordinary cell phones that have a Web browser. The tool is
not yet available, but should be in beta "soon," Microsoft said in a
posting on its Web site.

Channeling the spirit of Hailstorm
The whole point of launching Windows Live even with some rough edges,
Microsoft insisted, is to get a sense of what it is that people want.
The company is also banking on its ability to rapidly update and
improve its services, following the model of MSN, Google and Yahoo.

"A lot of people are characterizing this as a response to Google, and
in some ways, maybe it is," Rosoff said.

But the analyst also noted that the notion of delivering software as a
service is a company approach that predates Microsoft's rivalry with
Google.

"The idea of moving to online services has been kicking around
Microsoft for a long time," he said. Indeed, Microsoft had a
companywide meeting in the late 1990s at which top executives outlined
plans to deliver all manner of software as a service.

"Like many things around the Internet that were predicted to happen
quickly, they're not wrong, they're simply things that take more
time," Gates said in a March interview.

Previous Next Back in 2001, Microsoft developed what it called .Net
My Services, better known by its code name "Hailstorm," that was
intended to offer many services now on the agenda for Windows Live.
For instance, Hailstorm would have created a "myDocuments" service for
sharing files and personalization tools like "myProfile" and
"myDevices."

In all, Hailstorm, which Microsoft shelved in 2002 due to privacy
concerns and weak partner support, would have defined more than a
dozen such services, according to documentation distributed at the
time.

"Since then many, many things have happened," said Ray Ozzie, the
Microsoft Chief Technical Officer who has been put in charge of the
company's overall services push.

Rosoff said that Microsoft was, in many ways, ahead of the game when
it first considered the notion. "The business model wasn't there.
There were still some technology barriers as well."

www.news.com.com

Drug May Slow Intestinal Cancer

A new drug has been shown to dramatically delay the progression of a
rare type of intestinal cancer in patients who have run out of options
because their tumors have outsmarted even the latest high-tech drug.

Sutent belongs to a new class of cancer drugs that target multiple
tumor activities at once. Doctors are hopeful it will usher in a new
era of combinations of finely targeted drugs that can greatly improve
the prognosis of cancer patients, in much the same way that
triple-combination therapy has revolutionized HIV treatment.

Conventional chemotherapy drugs kill cancer cells, but they also
damage healthy tissue. The newer generation of drugs specifically
target tumor cells and leave the rest of the body alone. However, they
hone in on a single tumor function, don't work for everybody and can
stop working after a while.

Sutent, or sunitinib malate, seems to shrink tumors by simultaneously
starving them of blood, blocking signals that tell them to grow and
spread, and causing cancer cells to die. It is being tested in
patients for whom the latest targeted drugs have failed and has shown
promise in previous studies in kidney and breast cancer patients. It
is one of more than 10 multitasking drugs being studied in various
types of cancer.

The research, presented Thursday at the European Cancer Conference in
Paris, studied Sutent in 312 people in Europe, the United States,
Australia and Asia with a type of cancer called gastrointestinal
stromal tumor, or GIST.

The prognosis of this cancer had been dire until the targeted drug
Gleevec, or imatinib, came along about five years ago. However,
Gleevec stops working for most patients within two years as the tumor
develops resistance to it.

In the study, two-thirds of patients, who had all developed resistance
to Gleevec, got the new drug, while one-third received a fake
treatment.

Sutent delayed the time to progression of the tumor from 6.4 weeks to
27.3 weeks, the study found. It is too early to tell whether the
treatment is saving lives.

The study was paid for by Sutent's developer, Pfizer.

The findings are good news for GIST patients, said Dr. Gordon McVie of
the European Institute of Oncology in Milan, Italy, who was not
connected with the research.

"There was a fear when imatinib was so successful that when resistance
occurred, that was going to be it," said McVie. "What's really
exciting is that behind Gleevec came two more buses this one, and a
second drug. These drugs have lifted everybody's expectations all over
again."

But experts agree the promise of Sutent and other such drugs goes
beyond GIST, which is being used as a proving ground for other cancers
because scientists understand its simple circuitry.

"It has huge scientific implications, that's for sure," said Dr. Jose
Baselga, an oncologist at the Valla d'Hebron Hospital in Barcelona,
Spain, who was not tied to the research.

The study's leader, Dr. George Demetri, associate professor of
medicine at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, said the
findings will help scientists think more creatively about more
complicated cancers.

"We are trying to put together the rule book on cancer," he said.

The experience with HIV therapy, where huge leaps in survival were
seen after triple combination cocktails came along, has provided good
lessons for cancer, Demetri said. Testing of Sutent in combination
with other drugs is already under way, he said.

"The cells probably have a rather limited repertoire of tricks they
can fall back on. If you put pressure on one pathway, the cell finds a
different pathway to squeeze around. But if you block that pathway
too, the cell is stuck. They get trapped, they can't grow and they
die," Demetri said. "That's the theory."

www.cbsnews.com

Estonian Hackers Charged With Cracking Business Wire

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) went after two Estonian
men, charging them with hacking Business Wire, distributor of
corporate press releases. The SEC say they utilized information
gleaned to make profitable trades.

Lohmus, Haavel & Viisemann, an Estonian financial services firm and
more specifically, two of its employees, Oliver Peek and Kristjan
Lepik with a scheme involving electronic theft and trading of more
than 360 confidential press releases issued by more than 200 U.S.
companies. The SEC says since January 2005, the company has made at
least $7.8 million in illegal profits.

"Our action today demonstrates that we will seek out and stop
securities fraud wherever we find it. Whether in an old-fashioned
boiler room or, as in this case, in the high-tech environs of the
internet, such conduct will be met with a swift and vigorous
enforcement response," said Linda Chatman Thomsen, Director of the
Commission's Division of Enforcement.

The Commission's complaint alleges that, in June 2004, Lohmus became a
client of Business Wire for the sole purpose of gaining access to
Business Wire's secure client website.

Once defendants had access, they surreptitiously utilized a software
program, a so-called "spider" program, which provided unauthorized
access to confidential information contained in impending nonpublic
press releases of other Business Wire clients, including the expected
time of issuance.

The complaint further alleges that the information fraudulently stolen
by the defendants has allowed them to strategically time their trades
around the public release of news involving, among other things,
mergers, earnings, and regulatory actions.

Using several U.S. brokerage accounts, the defendants have bought long
or sold short the stocks of the companies whose confidential press
release information they have stolen, and purchased options to
increase their profits.

This is another dimension to hacking and cybercrime. These gentlemen
managed to garner access to the internal workings of a major press
release distribution network and used the information to their
advantage.

Many times the crimes are denials of service or phishing scams but
this is no less significant and one more area that could stand to be
watch a little more closely.

www.securitypronews.com