1) vnunet.com: SAP will back .Net: German software giant SAP AG said it would back both Microsoft's .Net strategy and rival Sun Microsystems' Java technology, rebutting reports this week that SAP would give its full backing to the Sun platform.SAP North American spokesperson Bill Wohl said a lot of interest had been created by the inaccurate and incomplete newspaper story. "We've spent the last 24 hours trying to balance it." According to Wohl, the UK's Financial Times got the story wrong; they relied on the wrong sources.

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2) SAP Chooses Sun Micro Platform Over Microsoft : SAP, Europe's biggest software group, has decided not to use Microsoft's .Net software platform and is instead backing a competing offering from Sun Microsystems. Hasso Plattner, SAP chief executive, will announce next week that the German group is to adopt Sun's J2EE architecture, a development platform for enterprise software based on the Java programming language, to run SAP software. SAP's move is likely to be a blow to Microsoft, as the German group has one of the largest customer bases of any business software developer.

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3) Microsoft shows off research goodies - Tech News - CNET.com: Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates on Wednesday demonstrated technologies for transcribing spoken Chinese, making handheld computers aware of when they're being touched and moved, and adding emotion to computer slide shows. At an event recognizing the 10th anniversary of Microsoft Research, Gates indulged his fondness for technology, raising hopes for a world where computers will become more useful. "The message you'll get is one of incredible optimism," he said as he described Microsoft's vision for its research labs.

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4) Microsoft Clippy:

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5) ZDNet: Enterprise: Microsoft: Big plans for Great Plains: Microsoft to rewrite Great Plains' apps in two years in C#. It's a familiar scenario: Microsoft Corp. settles into an inauspicious market toehold as competitors pay no heed – only to wake a few years later to find themselves obscured by the company's long shadow. It happened with Windows and Office. Now, the plan is to make it happen with Great Plains Software Inc.'s business applications. The software became part of Microsoft's portfolio when it acquired Great Plains this year. "All the business software in the world will be replaced," said Microsoft VP David Vaskevitch, the mastermind behind the acquisition. "It will be a 10-, 15-, even a 20-year process. You can rewrite SAP [AG], but it will be 10 times easier to rewrite Great Plains."

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