U.S. users of Microsoft’s MSN Mobile began to see advertisements on the service for the first time yesterday. Users in Belgium, France, Japan, Spain and the U.K. have been viewing ads for a while now. The technology for mobile advertisements comes from a recent acquisition by Microsoft of ScreenTonic. Paramount Pictures and Jaguar Cars are among the first companies to advertise on MSN Mobile in the U.S. market.
Microsoft has brought someone aboard to serve as its “Director of Linux Interoperability” and head up the Microsoft/Novell Interoperability Lab — and his name will be familiar to people in the open-source community.
In an e-mail late Thursday night, a Microsoft representative said the role will be filled by Tom Hanrahan, who was most recently the director of engineering at the Linux Foundation, the group created through the recent combination of the Free Standards Group and the Open Source Development Labs.
Over the past several weeks, there was some speculation that the release of Windows Vista would force Apple to delay the launch of Mac OS X Leopard while it resolved Windows Vista compatibility issues with Boot Camp, but the news of Boot Camp update should calm those fears. Boot Camp 1.2 is capable not only of running the 32-bit version of Windows Vista but also of displaying the system’s much-touted Aero graphics.
Higher-end Home version of the Microsoft OS appears in PCs sold in first week of Vista’s availability.Microsoft Corp.’s wish that consumers purchase the premium versions of Windows Vista rather than the most basic version of the OS may be coming true, according to the findings of a research report released today.
