Microsoft’s new Vista commercials had a marquee slot for their full debut – the 79th Annual Academy Awards. The costly ABC ads were broken up into segments, which the company calls unique. The commercials, referred to as “Wow”, each feature stimulating moments, such as the one where NBA star LeBron James is impressed by a little kid’s basketball moves and says “wow”. The commercials have the power to capture one’s attention, but many had no idea what was being sold. But each commercial ends with “Every so often you experience something so new, so delightfully unexpected, there’s only one word for it”.

Wow. Sunday’s Academy Awards marked the beginning of Microsoft’s extended global marketing campaign, with a goal of delivering 6.6 billion viewings of Vista ads over the next few months. The budget is estimated around $500 Million, though the company has not given details.

Norton 360 was released this month, nine months after Microsoft’s managed service OneCare was released. It touts all-in-one security for $79/year. It includes a firewall, antivirus software, antispyware scanning software, antiphishing protection, backup and restore and computer diagnostics tools. All this can be found on Microsoft’s OneCare Live service, which goes for around $49/year. Both programs can be installed on up to three PCs. Other than price, or perhaps brand preference, the difference between the two suites is that Norton’s allows for online backup. 2GB are included free, and additional storage can be purchased for a small fee. Note that Microsoft’s OneCare requires removal of all antivirus and firewall applications before starting. Symantec also claims lighter processor load and faster performance. Whatever you decide, it appears managed online security services are the way to go this year!

Nuance Communications, the market leader in speech and imaging solutions like Dragon Naturally Speaking, has acquired BeVocal Inc. The acquisition of the provider of self-service customer care to wireless carriers was for $140 Million. BeVocal specifically provides support with handset activation and sales of add-on features. Nuance sees BeVocal’s expertise and established relationships with carriers such as Cingular Wireless and Virgin Mobile as a great opportunity to expand Nuance’s presence in the mobile market.

In line with its strategy to create a nimble set of productivity tools with Internet tie-ins, Corel released a free beta version of its new WordPerfect Lightning today. Lightning includes basic word processing and note taking tools: Navigator is a floating window that displays a list of files and notes in progress; Notes allows for basic word processing like formatting, bullets and screen shots; Viewer is a speedy program for opening PDF files and DOCs. Lightning synchronizes content on your hard drive with online folders at Joyent, which offers a generous 200MB of storage as well as e-mail, a calendar, bookmarking and collaboration capabilities.

Gather Ideas - Capture your ideas in an easy-to-use workspace.
View Documents - Look at at, read, print and save multiple document types in one place.
Organize Your Thoughts - Use the familiar ‘tree and folder’ structure to arrange information.
Share With Others - Send notes to friends and colleagues, inviting content and comments.

Download the Beta Version Free!

The U.S. Energy Policy Act of 2005 extended Daylight Savings Time in the U.S. by approximately four weeks. Beginning in 2007, DST will start three weeks earlier (March 11, 2007) and end one week later (November 4, 2007). The goal of extending DST is so the sun will set one hour later, therefore minimizing energy use and the demand for electricity to light households.

The following everyday devices and programs will likely have incorrect time zone settings during the new four-week period: clocks, cell phones, PDA’s, fax machines, VOIP phone systems, computer operating systems, IT systems and more.

Most applications will be fixed with a simple patch. Here are some links to information and patches from major vendors:

Apple
Blackberry
Cisco
IBM
Juniper
Microsoft
MySQL
Novell
Oracle
Red Hat
Sun Microsystems
WordPress

A common workaround for many devices is to turn off the function that automatically adjusts the clock for DST. This can be done in Windows, for example, by right-clicking the time on the task bar; clicking “adjust date/time”; clicking the “time zone” tab; and un-checking the box that says “automatically adjust clock for DST changes”.

*Please note, DST is not observed in Hawaii, Puerto Rico or Arizona.