Microsoft multimedia issues have started when the market wanted to start listening to music and watch movies on computers. The need to make the internet more interesting using sound, picture and videos have begun, when we got bored with those static pages of information.

People started to need more out of their computers, they were playing games on their PC’s listening to the game sounds and connecting better sound speakers to their computers and using their computers as media centers, to listen to music, watch movies, etc…

Microsoft has thought of all of that when they started and their new operating systems included some basic tools, for listening to music and sounds, and watch movies. At first, the quality was quite poor, but as computer’s equipment progressed, as sound cards have become more advanced and sound speakers had better quality, and included subwoofers, the demand for a more advanced and better quality software multimedia solutions have increased.

Microsoft rose to the challenge,
and developed their “Media Player” software, which in time got updated and better for playing any of the multimedia types of files. Microsoft learned to use the new “Codec” techniques that have been developed and included all of the suitable plug-ins to increase the support that the media player needed to be able to produce the most effective and the best quality they could deliver to give us the quality we needed.

• Media player Codec Pack

Since Microsoft has ruled most of the end user’s computers as the leading operating system, the media player was part of their system and was the default player for those type of needs. There is some competition out there to the Microsoft’s player, some of them even I prefer better, than the media player, like the “KMP player” for movie watching, or the XBMC multimedia center for listening to music, but I have to say that Microsoft was a pioneer in that area, and for that, they have my respect.

Microsoft has been developing programs for us to use with their Windows operating systems, as we started working on their graphical operating systems. Windows operating systems have been curving away for graphical programs, as the Windows operating systems became common and more users preferred their operating systems.

Microsoft has developed many programs, applications and utilities for us to use, and somewhere available free with their Windows operating systems and somewhere available for purchase. I will go over some of them, reminding us what Microsoft offers us. I will divide their applications to groups:

• Internet applications
• Office applications
• Graphic applications
• Utility applications
• General applications
• Development applications
• System applications
• Business applications
• Entertainment applications

Internet applications:

Live Messenger – Microsoft has developed the known messenger which started as MSN Messenger, and now it is called Live Messenger, which is a chat messenger that let you add your friends, talk to them with or without video or type your chats on the joined message screen. The messenger has also been developed for the MAC (Macintosh) – users.

Microsoft Silverlight – This is a Microsoft web application framework that is like the “Adobe Flash” which includes multimedia, graphics, and animations all in one environment.

Microsoft Agent – This is a technology that was developed for speech recognition purposes. It included animated characters, text-to-speech engines creating an agent that represents a human or a cartoon figure.

Live Mesh – This application by Microsoft, was designed for synchronization purposes. It enabled to share and synchronize files and folders across devices. It created a web shared folder (up to 5GB), which was available to all other devices using a FeedSync engine, which will update any change automatically to the devices which are connected to it.

Bing – (Search engine) – Bing is Microsoft try to beat the Google search engine. Even though the Bing search engine was forced on to Microsoft applications and browsers, it still doesn’t lead the internet search engines.

Windows Mail – This e-mail application was designed to replace the old “Outlook Express” and it was started on the Windows Vista operating system. This application supported the more advanced protocol IPv6, Messages where stored on different files instead of one database file, the user’s profile was not defined using the registry (which enabled to completely copy the whole account elsewhere), stronger junk-mail and phishing engines have been added.

Live Writer – This application was created for Blog publishing. It enabled photo and map publishing functionality and with a new API which enabled more rich designed customizations.

Office applications:

Microsoft Office – The Microsoft Office suite application was one of its huge steps, with a long line of office applications. This office suite was one of the most successful applications out there, and almost everyone is using it at home or at the office. The success of these applications made Microsoft produce a suitable version for the MAC (Macintosh) operating systems called Office 2008, which enabled Mac users to enjoy the great office suite by Microsoft even when MAC was the competitor of the Windows OS. The Office 2008 also enabled users who wanted to move from the Microsoft Windows environment to the MAC OS to be able to use the Office suite they were already used to work with.

Microsoft Works – This suite was a smaller version of the Microsoft original office suite. It included fewer features and was less expensive. It included the Microsoft WORD, Microsoft EXCEL spreadsheet, and a database. This version enabled students to be able to afford and use those basic applications that they needed for their studies.

Microsoft Communication Server – This application was created to enable a communication infrastructure for enterprise connection tools, which included instant messaging, peer-to-peer, file transfers, user communication using a presence service, voice and video calling, PSTN and SIP trunking.

Graphic applications:

Microsoft Expression Studio – This suite of tools was designed for creating web applications and designs using media formats of any kind. The package included the Microsoft expression Web, Blend, Design, Media, and Encoder.

Utility applications:

Most of these utilities are built-in on your Windows operating system and have become essential tools that we got used to considering as obvious, and they are:
Microsoft Security Essentials – This application is a new free Anti-Virus program for your licensed Windows operating system by Microsoft. So far it seems quite good and stable.

Microsoft Calculator – This is just a computerized calculation application that adds, subtracts, multiply and divides any mathematical exercise you might need to perform. It is simple but effective when you just need to calculate something while you work on the Windows operating system.

Microsoft Paint – This application enables some basic photographic drawing and photo manipulation. You can save your work in JPG, GIF, PNG, BMP file formats.

Microsoft Reader – This application was designed for e-book reading. It was included in Windows CE and Pocket PC and although many e-books are now PDFs, there are still e-books are in “.LIT” (literature) file format which suits the Microsoft reader.

Microsoft Notepad – This is just a text editor, which is mostly used for copy/paste purposes to preserve a simple text design for web applications, or just write something that you want to design later. A more advanced notepad that programmers are using is the notepad++, which includes more advanced features.

Microsoft Defender – The defender is an anti-spyware application to keep spyware from spreading on your Windows operating system. It comes as default on Vista and Windows 7 operating systems and you could download it free for Windows XP and Windows server 2003.

Microsoft Chart (Graph) – This application enabled charts and graphs to be combined into the Microsoft Excel & Access applications.

Microsoft SteadyState – This application is a tool that replaced the shared computer toolkit which is for administrators to better control shared computers, by using hard-disk protection and more advanced user management.

General applications:

Microsoft MapPoint – This application by Microsoft enabled users to integrate, view, edit maps. This was an application for business use, to chart maps to fit the organization’s map design, of branches or any other information intended to be placed on a map, like a free map designer.

Windows Media Player – This used to be one of the most used video/music player application. Today there are more likable video/music players like the KMP player which is my favorite, but it is still a usable application that comes built-in the Windows operating systems.

Windows Movie Maker – This application enabled edit, creation, and design of movies.

Windows Virtual PC – This is Microsoft virtual attempt in competition with VMWARE. This virtualization application is available on the Windows 7 operating systems.

Worldwide Telescope – This application by Microsoft was designed for those outer space lovers who love to look at stars. This application creates a virtual space view as if you were looking through a telescope.

Development Environments:

Visual FoxPro – This is an object-oriented and procedural programming language for developers and was suitable for COM-based programming. The 2.6 version was suitable for MAC, DOS, Windows and Unix operating systems.

Microsoft Visual Studio – This is one of the most successful and most common applications for developers. This is an IDE which been used to create the console, GUI, web applications, websites,  web services, and many more designated uses. The Microsoft visual studio included a code editor, a debugger, designer and included products like Visual C++/C#, Visual Basic, Visual Web Developer.

System applications:

The system applications included the Command.COM and the Windows PowerShell.

Business applications:

For the business side, Microsoft developed Server-side applications, which have become the Pillars of the Windows business network environment which included: Windows Server System, Microsoft Small Business Financials, Microsoft Commerce Server, Microsoft BizTalk Server, Microsoft Forecaster, Microsoft Dynamics, Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Exchange Server, Microsoft Virtual Server, Microsoft CRM

Entertainment applications:

Microsoft also has designed fun entertaining games like Age of Empires series, Freelancer, Halo series, Microsoft Flight Simulator series, Midtown Madness series, Rise of Nations.