Pc News

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My Yahoo Upgrade Coming Soon

Yahoo Inc.'s My Yahoo service, which lets users aggregate content and services on a single Web page, will soon get a significant upgrade, the company's chief executive officer said Tuesday.

The enhancement to My Yahoo is part of the company's continued emphasis on giving its users tools to personalize their Internet experience, said CEO Terry Semel at the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference in San Francisco, which was webcast.

"In the next few weeks, you'll see My Yahoo take on a new form and a new shape," Semel said. "We've been working on it for some time."

My Yahoo was launched in July 1996, and as such is a precursor to the many customizable Web pages and personalization services that came later and are a standard feature of many news sites and consumer and enterprise portals.

At My Yahoo, people can access services like Yahoo Mail and choose, to an extent, the types of news, information and sources that get featured on the page.

Some of My Yahoo's most recent enhancements, introduced over two years ago, include support for content syndication feeds like RSS and Atom and a version for mobile devices.

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Mozilla Issues Fixes for Firefox, SeaMonkey Flaws

The Mozilla Foundation has published a fix for a "critical" JavaScript vulnerability in the Firefox browser and the SeaMonkey application suite.

The fix, released Monday, targets Firefox versions 2.0.0.2 and 1.5.0.10, as well as SeaMonkey versions 1.1.1 and 1.0.8. An earlier fix for a JavaScript problem allowed scripts from Web content to execute arbitrary code, the Mozilla Foundation said in a security update.

The vulnerability allowed uniform resource identifiers, or URIs, in image tags to be executed even if JavaScript was disabled in the program preferences, Mozilla said. Disabling JavaScript does not protect against the flaw, so the foundation recommended that users upgrade the applications to new versions.

Mozilla's Thunderbird e-mail client was not affected by the vulnerability, it said.

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HP's New Multifunction Inkjets Take on Laser-Based Versions

Recent trends suggest that your next printer may well be a multifunction unit. Though PC World's Top 10 single-function inkjet and color laser printer charts continue to prove popular, our recent multifunction Inkjet Best Buys list has experienced enormous traffic.

According to research from market research firm (and PC World sister company) IDC, multifunction printers (MFPs)--sometimes called all-in-ones--accounted for around 67 percent of the overall inkjet market in 2006, and the figure is forecast to rise to about 85 percent by 2011. Though inkjets have made the transition, multifunction models are still a minority in the color laser space: 25 percent as of 2006 and predicted to hit about 40 percent by 2011.

If you're not sure whether to opt for an inkjet or laser MFP, our multifunction printer buying guide explains the pros and cons of each type.

"For small-to-medium businesses (SMBs), inkjet devices dominate. Inkjet shipments currently outnumber monochrome lasers by about a 3-to-1 margin and color lasers by more than 8 to 1 in the SMB market," says Keith Kmetz, vice president and director of IDC's Hardcopy Peripherals Solutions and Services program. "Small offices and small businesses are still adopting inkjet" printers, he adds.

With that in mind, let's take a quick look at Hewlett-Packard's new business inkjet MFPs that are set to go on sale this week.

Inkjet MFPs That Rival Lasers
Each model in HP's new L7000 series touts built-in ethernet networking and PictBridge support (for direct-from-camera printing) to complement their shared printing, scanning, and copying at up to 2400 by 4800 dots per inch, plus 33.6-kbps fax (with 125-page memory) capabilities.

The $299 L7589 AiO replaces the Officejet 7210, the $399 L7680 AiO (pictured left) supersedes the Officejet 7310 and the top-of-the-line, $499 L7780 AiO takes over from the Officejet 7410.

While the entry-level Officejet L7589 uses a 2-line LCD display, the Officejet L7680 and Officejet L7780 introduce extra features including a 2.4-inch color display, duplexer for automatic two-sided printing, legal-sized scanner glass and the ability to scan directly to multiple folders on multiple PCs over a network (a new feature HP calls Direct Digital Filing). The $499 L7780 (pictured right) also ships with an extra underside 350-sheet paper tray, built-in 802.11b/g wireless networking and ReadIris Pro optical character recognition (OCR) software.

Each model incorporates HP's Scalable Printing Technology, which the company says delivers faster print speeds at improved quality over previous models. For instance, HP says that in draft mode, the L7000 series can print up to 35 pages per minute (ppm) in black-and-white, and up to 34 ppm in color. Those quoted numbers are quite competitive, but we are, of course, working to get some units to test performance for ourselves. The company says that the L7000 series is capable of sharp, laserlike quality, albeit at reduced print speeds of 12 ppm for black-and-white and 10 ppm for color.

The L7000 models use HP's Vivera ink system (4 ink tanks by default, with six colors an option) for deep black text, and photos that are vibrant, quick-drying, and water-spill resistant. Based on its #88 Vivera Ink supplies, HP claims the L7000 series models can print color and monochrome pages as low as 7.7- and 1.5-cents per page, respectively. That's certainly competitive against many color lasers.

HP also is now shipping its new $149 Officejet J5780 AiO (shown left), which includes a tri-color/single black tank print system, 2-line LCD display and 33.6-kbps fax with junk-fax blocking.

Paper handling comes in the form of a 100-sheet input tray and 35-page automatic document feeder. HP rates the J5780's output at 30 ppm black and 24 ppm color.

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Apple Fixes iTunes for Windows Vista

Several weeks after rival Microsoft Corp. rolled out Windows Vista to consumers, Apple Inc. has updated iTunes to run on the new operating system -- although "a few" problems still remain, Apple said yesterday.

The company also issued a security update for its QuickTime multimedia player software, patching eight vulnerabilities; According the Apple warning, all could be used to execute arbitrary code, a scenario most researchers equate with a critical threat.

More than a month ago, Apple warned Microsoft Corp.'s Vista users to stay away from iTunes -- the software for buying music tracks and loading tunes onto iPods -- until further notice.

However, iTunes 7.1 "addresses a number of compatibility issues with Windows Vista," said Apple. But the software still isn't quite right. "iTunes 7.1 is recommended for use with most editions of Windows Vista; however, Apple is actively working with Microsoft to resolve a few remaining known issues."

On Apple hardware, iTunes 7.1 has been updated to support the upcoming Apple TV hardware, due out later this month.

QuickTime's security fix, meanwhile, patched Mac and Windows versions of the player; all eight vulnerabilities affected the Windows edition, while seven involved the Mac version. All could be exploited with various malformed files, since the bugs are in how QuickTime parses files formats, including MIDI, PICT and QTIF.

Tagged as QuickTime 7.1.5, the update can be downloaded from Apple's support site. Mac OS X users can also retrieve the patches using the operating system's update feature, while Windows users can launch the Apple Software Update utility to snag the update.

The release was the second update to QuickTime this year, and the third overall for the Mac. In late January, Apple patched the player to fix a flaw disclosed by the Month of Apple Bugs project.

iTunes 7.1 can be downloaded from the Apple site.

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Sony PlayStation 3 Home Beta Site Now Up

During Wednesday's keynote presentation, Sony's Phil Harrison mentioned that, while the finished version of Home for the PlayStation 3 would be available in fall of this year, there would be a beta of the program that would be made available in April. It looks like Sony's getting a bit of a head start on the process, however, since a new Web site opened up Thursday, advertising the impending release of the beta trial. Currently, it doesn't say much, but what it does say is this:

Welcome to Home Beta.

Home is a real-time 3D, networked community that serves as a meeting place for PLAYSTATION 3 (PS3) users from around the world, where they can interact, communicate, join online games, shop, share content and even build their own personal spaces. Home will be available as a free download from the PLAYSTATION Store and will launch directly from the PS3 system's Home Menu.

Keep checking back on this site to register an interest in taking part in an exclusive closed Beta Trial of Home

We'll keep you updated as soon as we hear more.

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Nintendo Announces Wii's First U.S. Online Title

Even with Shigeru Miyamoto's keynote just minutes away, Nintendo has already made a huge announcement at GDC regarding this year's second quarter lineup for the North American market. And the focal point of this lineup is the announcement of Pokemon Battle Revolution, the first Wii game that will take advantage of the console's online capabilities.

But in addition to being the first online title, the impending release of Pokemon Battle Revolution also marks the first game to feature Wii and DS connectivity. Through this feature, users not only have the option of importing saved characters from the upcoming Pokemon Diamond and Pokemon Pearl, but they can also use the DS as a makeshift controller.

Pokemon Battle Revolution has already been available in the Japanese market since last December, but will be released for North American audiences on June 25th. Other upcoming Nintendo titles for the Wii include Super Paper Mario on April 9th, Mario Party 8 on May 29th, and Big Brain Academy on June 11th. Upcoming Nintendo DS titles include Pokemon Diamond/Pearl on April 22nd, Planet Puzzle League on June 4th, and the "Opera" web browser also to be released on June 4th.

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Nintendo Legend Discusses Wiis and Miis

Nintendo legend Shigeru Miyamoto told a packed room at San Francisco's Game Developers Conference this week that the company is currently developing a new Wii channel that would allow users to enter their self-created Nintendo Mii representatives in contests. Miyamoto also announced that Super Mario Galaxy for the Wii is planned for release sometime in 2007.

But apart from these snippets, not much else was revealed. Still, one thing was made clear, as it has many times in the past: Miyamoto certainly knows how to put on a show.

Games for a Broader Audience
Miyamoto made several key points in his speech. First, he reiterated the idea that has become Nintendo's mantra ever since the announcement of the Nintendo DS: Creation of games for a broader audience. He said it has been his interest throughout much of his career to make games with an appeal so broad that even his wife, a strict non-gamer, would develop a genuine interest in them. Although Miyamoto experienced a minor victory when he assured his wife that there were no enemies to fight in the the game Animal Crossing, true success came with Nintendogs, followed closely by Brain Age. And with the release of the Wii, she fancies herself to be a "true" gamer now, having made Mii avatars for the entire extended family and even all of their neighbors, he said.

Balance and Teamwork
The second point Miyamoto emphasized was the importance of balance and teamwork. Using the design of the Wii controller as an example, he illustrated that Nintendo went through a number of prototypes before finally resting on the idea of a remote control, but he stated that the final design only came through a group collaboration on the part of many of Nintendo's design teams.

Risktaking
His third point was the importance of taking risks. When confronted by producers about the number of functionalities that would be lost in the development of such a radically different controller, Miyamoto stressed instead the amount of functions that would be gained. He claims that he's always willing to take a chance in the development of a game because what ultimately motivates him is the potential smiles on the faces of those who will play his games. Miyamoto said that, if he stays true to himself and believes that the risks he takes will result in more happiness for gamers, then he feels that those are acceptable risks.

Tenacity
One other important trait in a developer, he claims, is tenacity. Miyamoto had his heart set on producing a visual face-making program for some time, but said that the corporate heads failed to see how a marketable game could be created from it. Even after failed attempts to revive the idea for the N64's disk drive and the GameCube, he never gave up trying. He eventually discovered, however, he said, that another Nintendo development team had been working on a similar project for the DS only recently, so he jumped at the chance to work with them for a few months. However, in the process, he berated himself and his team for failing in what others had successfully accomplished.

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Three Minutes With Flickr's Co-Founder

Flickr, the lauded photo management and sharing site, recently celebrated its third anniversary and IDG News Service had an opportunity to chat with co-founder and general manager Stewart Butterfield about Flickr's growth in size and quality, its status as a Yahoo Inc. company, near and long-term plans, as well as peanut butter.

An edited version of the conversation follows.

IDGNS: Flickr just turned 3 years old. How do you think it will look and operate three years from now?

Stewart Butterfield: We have a concrete vision to be the eyes of the world, the primary source for sharing and discovering what people see all around the world. I don't see that changing any time soon. The challenge is how we make it bigger while still maintaining the same quality and sense of intimacy with now 7.2 million registered users and 23 million monthly unique visitors. It comes down to urban planning in a way that a massive city like London has all kinds of cozy little neighborhoods. Making something like that happen is a huge and challenging thing.

We also tie very well into Yahoo's newly articulated mission, which is to connect people to their passions, their communities and the world's knowledge. Flickr has a really interesting role to play in that. We have a lot of people who are passionate about photography but there are literally thousands of groups on Flickr about gardening and knitting and all kinds of other passions people have. Flickr is a great medium for those interactions as well.

News Feature Coming?
IDGNS: If you're the eyes of the world, do you foresee Flickr getting a news component?

Butterfield: Yes, we already allow for that and it already happens but it's not surfaced nor packaged up very well. But almost every day, Flickr is used as a source for photos that either don't exist anywhere else or that there's just a bigger variety on Flickr. A good example is when the New York Yankee player's plane crashed into a [Manhattan] building. A text bulletin went out on the wires but there weren't photos available, so the Yahoo front page team did a search for "NYC crash" on Flickr and found the first couple of photos that had been posted and weren't available from any other source at that time. By the time photos started coming out of the wire services, there were dozens and dozens of images from different people on Flickr, and that's where the Yahoo front page pointed to, linking to the Flickr photos. Expanding that capability and making it easier so it's not a manual process is definitely something we're interested in.

The flip side is that it doesn't have to be big, breaking international news for it to be significant to people. ... We did a big round of geotagging features in the second half of last year and are always looking to improve those as well. We have more than 12.6 million geotagged photos. It's easy to imagine a future where you can say: "Show me photos taken within the last 15 minutes within a kilometer of me." That gets very interesting, obviously.

Concern for Photographers
IDGNS: Are you planning anything to help your community of photographers to sell or commercially syndicate their photos?

Butterfield: It's something we're evaluating and looking at different approaches. The interesting thing about the New York crash case is that there wasn't any time to negotiate rights to use those photos on the Yahoo front page, so they linked to the photos on Flickr. If you're a photo editor in any kind of news environment you can't negotiate one-off licenses with a bunch of different people because it's just too time consuming.

IDGNS: Will you at some point have a mechanism where photographers have previously stated how their photos might be used if someone's interested?

Butterfield: We have nothing to announce in that regard but it's certainly in the realm of my imagination.

IDGNS: Who do you see as Flickr's main competition?

Butterfield: That's a very interesting question because we talk about this all the time. When we first got to Yahoo, a lot of people on the business side wanted to know how big was the market and what percentage we had. I'd always say, much to their frustration, that the market is Flickr users and we have 100 percent of it. I still think we don't have any real direct competition. I'm sure one day we will.

In a sense, we compete with other photo-sharing sites, but we're offering something very different. Flickr really created a new class of application, a new product category and a new kind of use. In another sense, if people spend a lot of time with Flickr and are deeply engaged with it, we compete indirectly with sites where people go to hang out, like Facebook, MySpace. But I definitely don't see us in direct competition with them.

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Report: AT&T May Scale Back Yahoo Partnership

Feeling that its partnership with Yahoo Inc. yields fewer benefits than in the past, AT&T Inc. wants to trim the deal's scope and seek more favorable conditions for itself, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

Specifically, AT&T seeks a revision of how the companies share ad and Internet access revenue in their years-long agreement to sell co-branded broadband services to consumers in the U.S., the Journal reported, quoting anonymous sources.

Negotiations have already begun for renewal of the pact, which ends in April 2008 and which Yahoo originally struck in 2001 with AT&T predecessor SBC Communications Inc.

Back in 2001, AT&T needed Yahoo more than it does today to market its broadband services to consumers, because broadband is now in higher demand, the article states.

Yahoo gets between US$200 million and $250 million in annual revenue from the partnership, and could see its bottom line affected if those payments were reduced, according to the Journal. The profit margins on these AT&T fees are generally higher than the margins Yahoo enjoys from its other operations, the paper said.

More indirectly, traffic to Yahoo's Web sites and usage of its services could be affected if the pact is scaled back, the Journal said. The joint customers obtain, along with the AT&T broadband connection, a suite of Internet tools from Yahoo, including e-mail accounts, PC security software, a photo management application and exclusive videos.

Industry analyst Rob Enderle of Enderle Group doesn't find the news surprising. "I don't think Yahoo is providing AT&T with that much value and I'm not convinced that Yahoo is getting that much value from AT&T," he said.

In 2001, AT&T needed an Internet company to partner against the combination of the newly merged AOL and Time Warner Inc., but the once popular trend of selling Internet access along with online services has pretty much disappeared, Enderle said.

"Now AOL is nowhere near the power it once was, and people are shopping for their Internet connection separate from their [online] services. The need to have both [tied] has gone away," he said.

Meanwhile, AT&T hasn't helped Yahoo much to combat the rise of Google Inc., Enderle said. "Like anything else, partnerships are formed when there is an advantage and they tend to fall apart when that advantage goes away. Here, the market conditions that created the partnership in the first place have largely evaporated," Enderle said.

Asked for comment, AT&T sent a joint statement that says the companies have "the most successful partnership in the industry" thanks in large part to the ongoing dialogue they maintain. "Though it is not appropriate to speculate on future plans, we frequently collaborate on our existing partnership to ensure that we deliver the most innovative broadband experience to our customers now and in the future," the statement reads.

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NASA Describes Quantum Chip

The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration confirmed Thursday that it built a special chip used in a disputed demonstration of quantum computing in February.

NASA engineers used their experience with sub-micrometer dimensions and ultra-low temperatures to build a quantum processor for Canadian startup D-Wave Systems Inc., said Alan Kleinsasser, principal investigator in the quantum chip program at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

D-Wave claimed to demonstrate a prototype quantum computer during a news conference Feb. 13 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California. But industry experts became skeptical when D-Wave revealed it had left the computer at its Vancouver office, then conducted the demonstration over a Web link.

"You could characterize our announcement as being met with enthusiasm from industry and skepticism from academia," D-Wave CEO Ed Martin said in an interview Feb. 27. But he said the event served as proof of concept of the technology, and that D-Wave's potential customers are businesses that don't care how the technology works as long as it can solve their complex models. He plans to start renting time on the machine to customers in 2008.

"Businesses aren't too fascinated about the details of quantum mechanics, but academics have their own axes to grind. I can assure you that our VCs look at us a lot closer than the government looks at the academics who win research grants," Martin said.

He described D-Wave's computer as a hybrid, running applications on a traditional, digital computer and using a single quantum processor as an accelerator or co-processor. Martin said the back end is a rack-mounted PC with an off-the-shelf processor, but wouldn't cite the specific brand.

The crucial part is the quantum chip, which is a processor built from the superconducting materials aluminum and niobium, then chilled in a tank of liquid helium. It achieves supercomputing speeds because its basic data units -- called qubits -- can hold both the values 0 and 1 simultaneously, and instantly share those values among all the qubits. A standard digital processor assigns a specific value to each data bit, and handles them one at a time.

D-Wave designed the quantum chip and then contracted with NASA to build it. The request was nothing new for engineers at the Microdevices Laboratory (MDL), a unit of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who were accustomed to building superconducting circuits for clients such as Hypres, a company in Elmsford, New York, and for instruments used aboard spacecraft such as the European Space Agency's Herschel mission.

"There has been activity in MDL in quantum technology, including quantum computing, for around 10 years," Kleinsasser said. "Superconducting quantum computing technology requires devices and ultra-low [millikelvin] temperatures that are also required in much of our sensor work. A couple of years ago, D-Wave recognized that JPL is capable of producing the chips it wished to design. There is no [private] industry that can deliver such superconducting devices. So, we worked out a collaboration that produced the chips that D-Wave is currently using."

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Antivirus Products Outperform Microsoft OneCare in Tests

Nearly a year after Microsoft Corp. introduced Windows Live OneCare, the company's first foray into the security market is still getting low marks from analysts and users.

A recent report comparing the antivirus products of various vendors ranked Microsoft's product at the bottom in terms of detecting potential security threats.

At the same time, users are complaining that OneCare, which includes firewall, antivirus, backup and antispyware software, quarantines the entire mail store of their Outlook and Outlook Express programs, making it impossible for them to retrieve e-mail.

AV-Comparatives, a project in Austria overseen by security researcher Andreas Clementi, published the antivirus comparison report, which also looked at products from Symantec Corp., McAfee Inc., Kaspersky Lab Ltd., BitDefender, Fortinet Inc., F-Secure Corp. and several other antivirus products from smaller vendors.

In detecting Windows viruses, worms, macros, scripts and other OS threats, Microsoft ranked last out of the 15 vendors tested, detecting them 91 percent of the time. G Data Software AG's Anti-Virus Kit (AVK) ranked first with 99.6 percent detection, while products from three vendors -- Kaspersky Anti-Virus, MicroWorld Technologies Inc.'s eScan and F-Secure Anti-Virus -- tied for second with 99 percent detection. TrustPort Antivirus Workstation from AED Ltd. came in third with 98.9 percent detection.

In preventing intrusion through backdoors, Trojans and in other malware detection, Windows OneCare also ranked last out of 13 vendors, with 79.6 percent detection. TrustPort came in first at 99.5 percent detection; AVK came in second with 99.4 percent detection; and AVIRA GmbH's AntiVir Personal Edition Premium came in third with 98.9 percent detection.

If ranking low in its rates of malware and virus detection isn't enough to irk users, a recent update to the product has been quarantining the Outlook.PST file, which stores mail in Outlook and Outlook Express, users reported recently on a Microsoft Windows user form.

"This is the most unacceptable act Microsoft has ever committed," groused one user, with the log-in TG4752, on the forum. "I run a small business and I am screwed. I have no way to respond to e-mails because I made the mistake of trusting Microsoft ... and all of my e-mails and contacts are gone."

Microsoft confirmed the problem via e-mail Friday, and said it will update the Windows Live OneCare engine to fix the problem as part of its monthly patch release cycle.

The company also offered the following step-by-step fix to recover lost e-mail in the meantime:

-- Close Outlook or Outlook Express

-- Click change OneCare settings in the main OneCare user interface

-- Click on the viruses and spyware tab

-- Click on the quarantine button and then select the pst or dbx file and then click on restore.

To ensure that the problem does not continue until the next update, Microsoft said users should also do the following:

-- Click change OneCare setting in the main user interface

-- Click viruses and spyware tab

-- Click on the exclusions button

-- Click on the add folder button

-- Navigate to the specific folder that contains the .dbx or .pst file to be excluded.

-- Click OK.

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GoDaddy says its Servers are Ready for Time Switch

A GoDaddy.com Inc. customer is seriously concerned that this domain registrar and hosting company may not be ready for the switch to Daylight Saving Time (DST) on Sunday.

In a series of e-mail exchanges and phone calls, George Baltzell was told by GoDaddy.com's tech support team that the company is exempt from patching its servers because it is based in Arizona, which doesn't observe DST. "That's a silly response," Baltzell said.

Baltzell, who lives in St. Louis, contacted GoDaddy.com's tech support after he crafted a short script using the PHP language to verify that the company's servers had been tuned for the DST switch, which comes earlier this year. His test showed that the GoDaddy.com servers are still acting according to the old DST rules, he said.

"Thank you for contacting Online Support. As Daylight Savings [sic] does not apply to our servers, since we are on Arizona Time and our time zone does not change, our servers wouldn't update," reads one of the replies he received, and which he provided to IDG News Service.

He wrote back to GoDaddy, saying that despite being in Arizona, their servers needed to be patched, otherwise timestamps would be wrong when communicating with computers in other areas. He even provided them with the code he used for his test, but didn't hear back.

When informed of this situation by IDG News Service, GoDaddy sent via e-mail a statement from Chief Information Security Officer Neil Warner. It said GoDaddy has conducted risk analysis on all its systems in preparation for the DST switch, as well as contacted its vendors and received recommended patches.

"Further, over the weekend, Go Daddy developers and quality assurance teams will be monitoring the transition process closely. As for our corporate headquarters being located in Scottsdale, Arizona, while the fact that we do not participate in DST minimizes potential impact, we are taking all precautionary steps to ensure our customers, located all over the world, are not impacted," the statement read.

Told of GoDaddy's response, Baltzell was puzzled about the different message he got from the technical support team. On Friday, his test continued to indicate the GoDaddy.com servers haven't been patched, he said.

The main site he hosts with GoDaddy.com is St. Louis Places to See. He is particularly concerned for a page in which he tracks power outages in the St. Louis metro area, because timestamps are an important part of it.

Whatever ends up happening, Baltzell's opinion of GoDaddy.com has been soured by the experience. "Their tech support response is such a non sequitur, it has me wondering whether I should switch to another company," he said.

In 2005, President Bush signed into law the Energy Policy Act of 2005. Among other things, it orders that, beginning in 2007, the start of DST be moved from the first Sunday in April to the second Sunday in March. It also shifts the return of standard time from the last Sunday in October to the first Sunday in November.

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Dynamics Gets its Own 'Duet'

Microsoft is set to unveil a new product designed to more tightly integrate its back-end Dynamics business applications with its desktop Office suite. It's an approach the vendor has already taken with applications rival SAP under their codeveloped Duet software.

"Duet was a good learning example," said James Utzschneider, general manager of Dynamics marketing at Microsoft. "What we're offering is a superset of what you get with Duet."

Known as Microsoft Dynamics Client for Office and SharePoint, the new lightweight licensing tool will be on display Monday at Microsoft's Convergence conference in San Diego.

Apps to Access ERP
The Microsoft offering is a way for companies to give all their employees access to the information held in their organizations' back-end enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications without having to train them on Dynamics or equip each worker with their own full-blown copy of Dynamics. Instead, the workers can access the ERP information from within their Office applications or via Microsoft's SharePoint Web portal.

The Dynamics Client includes as many as 12 so-called "self-service" ERP applications built into Office and SharePoint. The applications include Time and Attendance for Dynamics GP, Project Time and Expense for Dynamics SL, and Dynamics Snap Business Data Lookup for Dynamics AX.

The product is due to begin shipping in May. It comes in two flavors. Microsoft Dynamics Client for Microsoft Office and Windows SharePoint Services costs $195 per user. Microsoft Dynamics Client for Microsoft Office and SharePoint Server, which includes a copy of the vendor's SharePoint Server 2007 software, is priced at $395 per user.

"The feedback we got from Duet was awesome at the starting point," Utzschneider said. "But users said they'd like the ability to customize." The new Dynamics Client gives Microsoft's customers and partners the necessary access rights to information and processes managed by Dynamics so they can build their own Office business applications, where the suite becomes the front end to accessing the ERP data.

Built on Duet
Microsoft and SAP released the first version of Duet in June 2006. The integration software enables users to access data and processes from SAP's mySAP ERP applications via Microsoft's Office suite. It includes integration capabilities for different business scenarios such as time, leave, and organization management.

Back in January, Dennis Moore, SAP's general manager of emerging solutions, said his company and Microsoft were on track to ship Duet 1.5 later this year along with development tools so that third parties will be able to customize and build on top of the Duet-enabled scenarios.

Rival ERP vendor Oracle claims it's had tight integration in place between its applications and Microsoft's Office for some time.

"Duet? We did all that five years ago," John Wookey, senior vice president of applications at Oracle, said in a recent interview. "PeopleSoft, Oracle and Siebel did it and we don't charge extra for it," he added, describing Duet as "the most uninspiring thing I've seen in the software industry."

At its conference, Microsoft is also announcing industry-specific tools for its Dynamics business applications, so they are more suited to specific vertical markets.