Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to Address Web 2.0 and the Future of the Internet

SAN FRANCISCO — Oct. 18, 2007 — Microsoft Corp. Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer will participate in a keynote conversation with John Battelle today at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. Ballmer will address the industry opportunity for business transformation on the Web, as well as product and services milestones for Popfly™, Silverlight™, Live Search and Windows Live™.

“Microsoft is committed to supporting new business models on the Internet, and has an exciting — and growing — portfolio of Web technologies that is helping to catalyze the growth of Web innovation,” said Ballmer. “This is an incredible time for developers, designers, advertisers, marketers and consumers to plug into and take advantage of the opportunities to experience and grow businesses on the Web.”

Microsoft technology milestones being featured at the Web 2.0 Summit include the following:

  • Popfly goes public. Microsoft today announced the public beta release of Popfly, a tool built on Microsoft Silverlight, which provides a fun and easy way for anyone to build and share “mashups,” gadgets, Web pages and applications. Popfly provides anyone — even those with no programming experience — with a simple way to make creations without code and share them on social networks such as Windows Live Spaces and Facebook. Popfly enables users to do the following:

    • Add some pizazz to their Facebook profile, blog or personal Web page by adding games, slide shows, “Halo® 3” stats or eBay auctions.

    • Build a Web page for a club or organization, such as a soccer team page that would include a schedule, photos and videos from past games, directions to upcoming matches, and more.

    • Leverage blocks from Popfly partners, such as Twitter, Facebook and Dapper, to drive site awareness and traffic.

More information about getting started with Popfly can be found online at http://www.popfly.com.

  • Windows Live Photo Gallery adds publishing support for Flickr. Microsoft released a new beta version of the Windows Live Photo Gallery, a free tool for managing and sharing photos for Windows Vista® and Windows® XP SP2 users. Starting today, the new beta version now offers a Publish on Flickr option directly from Windows Live Photo Gallery, extending the photo publishing options for the service to allow consumers to publish photos to either Windows Live Spaces or Flickr with just a few clicks. With these new options, consumers have a single end-to-end solution for helping get photos directly off the camera, onto the PC and then up on the Web for quickly and easily sharing with friends, family or the world. The Windows Live Photo Gallery is available on the Windows Live betas page at http://get.live.com and Windows Live Photo Gallery customers will receive the beta update via Microsoft Update.

  • Live Search for Mobile and Maps add features. New local and mobile search features have been added to the Live Search service. The new features and enhancements are designed to make it easier for people to find what they need at home or on the go through significant innovations in mapping, imagery and driving directions, as well as new services to make the mobile search experience easy and powerful. Also newly available is Live Search 411. Customers can gain toll-free* access by dialing (800) CALL-411 (800-225-5411) from any phone to find and connect to local businesses and other local information such as weather updates, movie showtimes and airline information. People using a cell phone with Internet access can also receive links to traffic maps from Live Search 411.

More information about these releases can be found online at http://www.livesearchmobile.com and http://www.livesearch411.com. Live Search is available at http://www.live.com.

  • Adoption of Microsoft Silverlight. The vibrant ecosystem of Silverlight partners and customers continues to grow worldwide. Only one month after the launch of Silverlight 1.0, the number of partners participating in the Microsoft Silverlight Partner Initiative has already grown to more than 50 organizations, and over 40 customers have delivered Silverlight applications. Customers come from countries around the world including Austria, Australia, Brazil, China, Ecuador, Egypt, France, Indonesia, Italy, Malaysia, New Zealand, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Thailand, the United Kingdom and the United States.

To help even more organizations take advantage of Silverlight, Microsoft is pleased to announce that Silverlight 1.0 is now available in 10 languages: Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish. More information about Silverlight and new customer applications —ranging from digital marketing and gadgets to entertainment and news and information — can be found on the newly redesigned Silverlight community site at http://www.silverlight.net.

Attendees will be able to see how O’Reilly Media is using Silverlight and Popfly at the Web 2.0 Summit. This demonstration is also available online at http://www.popfly.ms/users/Team/web2summit.content.

  • Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. Microsoft also announced commitment from its Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007 partners to expand community-building capacities and social computing opportunities in the workplace:

    • Atlassian Software Systems Pty. Ltd., one of the industry’s top wiki providers, announced that a new set of plug-ins, available today, enable bidirectional information flow between both collaboration platforms.

    • NewsGator Technologies Inc., a leading RSS company, announced the general availability of NewsGator Social Sites, a collection of site templates, profiles, Web parts and middleware that will enhance the social computing capabilities for SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0.

More information about these releases can be found online at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2007/oct07/10-17SharePointPartnersPR.mspx.

About Microsoft

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

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