Microsoft unveils plan to revolutionise web

By CHRIS BARTON

WASHINGTON STATE - Microsoft yesterday revealed .Net - its long-awaited next generation of Windows services that promises to change the way we use the web across PCs, hand-held computers and mobile phones.

But while the software giant will spend $US2 billion over the next two years developing the strategy and enticing software developers to build to its new platform for the internet, it will be some time before consumers and businesses see results.

Announcements such as .Net are known in the industry as vapourware events - big on show and the promise of things to come, but short on substance. Sometimes they are an accurate prediction of what is ahead, and when the largest software company in the world has one, people come from far and wide.

Some 400 journalists and analysts heard chairman Bill Gates outline a plan to tie all computing devices - from desktop PCs to cellphones - to the internet in such a way that, regardless of the device, information such as e-mail, diaries and documents is synchronised.

"It's about connecting people, it's about connecting devices, it's about letting people share, it's a very software-centric strategy.

"It's the most ambitious thing we've ever put ourselves through," said Mr Gates.

"Our goal is to move beyond today's world of standalone websites to an internet of interchangeable components where devices and services can be assembled into cohesive, user-driven experiences."

While the company seeks to redefine software as services, it also has a central role for its ubiquitous Windows operating system.

Demonstrations of handwriting and speech-recognition software gave a glimpse of how people may soon be driving their computers and included a prototype tablet PC allowing people to read digital ink books and to make handwritten annotations on pages.

Also shown was new web-browsing software employing a universal canvas letting users automatically create a single view of information from multiple web pages and standard software applications such as word processors and spreadsheets.

The interconnected, easy-to-use .Net future was fleshed out with videos of how people may use the technology: such as a teenager giving voice commands to her videophone PC, collaborating with her friend on a school project, pausing briefly to play an interactive computer game, then buying the latest concert tickets online; or an elderly couple receiving e-mail via their television - a photo of the grandchildren at the zoo taken with their mobile phone-cum-hand-held PC with built-in digital camera automatically zapped into a digital photo frame on the mantelpiece.

Core to the .Net strategy is Extensible Markup Language (XML), a web standard for exchanging data, and new XML-based software tools that allow businesses with different computing systems to communicate.

Mr Gates said XML, combined with other software, provided the technology to make the much-heralded information agent a reality.

Information agents - intelligent software that can be set to automatically carry out tasks such as searching the web - have long been seen as a way to cut through the mass of information on the web to provide only what each individual user needs.

* Chris Barton is attending Microsoft Forum 2000 in Redmond.