Adobe turns up the heat on AIR with new Flex IDE
The challenge before the big development tools vendors is to build a Web applications platform that's as "open" as is feasible, up to the point where the vendor needs to monetize it to make its investment pay off. Today, it's Adobe's turn.
The race is "on," to borrow the watchword from Adobe's marketing campaign launched this morning, between Adobe and Microsoft to determine whether a graphical, boundary-crossing runtime platform is preferable for delivering applications over the Internet to a Web browser. Microsoft's entry in this field is Silverlight, which leverages the graphical library already in Windows. Adobe's entry is AIR, which has its own leverage -- the near ubiquity of Flash video on the Web.
Dialog: After HD DVD, whither Toshiba?
A multinational, multi-talented, highly diversified technology producer doesn't simply wither away just because it loses one battle -- even a loss as big as HD DVD. But depending on how it chooses to stick around, will Toshiba find itself redeemed? Or liable?
When a minor professional sports league finds it can't compete with the majors, it disbands and goes away. When a television network can't profit from its productions, it ceases operations and follows in the long wake pioneered by the DuMont Network. When a presidential candidate loses, he often fades into the backwoods of history...and fast.
Google's founder steps up the rhetoric against Microsoft + Yahoo
The possible creation of a large, controlling entity on the Internet capable of driving traffic through specific routes, is "unnerving" to the founder of the Web's principal destination.
A casual statement to reporters yesterday by Google founder Sergey Brin has many wondering whether his company is preparing itself for legal combat against a possible Microsoft + Yahoo combination, should Microsoft's plan to sway Yahoo shareholders' opinion against that of its board of directors gain traction.
Microsoft's latest interoperability pledge: How free is 'open' now?
No move by Microsoft to share information with its competitors will ever be taken at face value, and certainly yesterday's new Interoperability Principle will come under very close scrutiny. Is this the opening of the floodgates the EC has been demanding?
In incremental, measured, if slow steps, Microsoft has made some efforts to comply with directives from the European Commission to make its software and protocols more interoperable with products from other manufacturers. Yesterday, the company surrendered one more boundary between its interoperability policy and the EC's dream situation, making a huge chunk of the information it published in response to the EC's order available to developers free of charge.
Dialog: The final format war
Has the end of one of the most embarrassing disputes in the history of consumer technology come too late? Has Blu-ray won one war only to find itself facing a new competitor: video-on-demand?
The historic battle between VHS and Beta ended decisively at the dawn of the era of home-recordable video. VHS had plenty of time to enjoy the spoils of its success. A format war might have erupted at the dawn of the compact video disc era between two groups of vendors led by Philips and Matsushita, though they were able to come to terms in time for the sunrise of DVD's window of opportunity.
Microsoft divides 'small' from 'medium' businesses for its next servers
With fewer businesses purchasing server software a la carte, Microsoft has generally been successful with pre-packaging its multiple server products in attractive combinations. Its newest sets of options, however, take some explaining.
Just when you were getting used to the abbreviation "SMB" (small-to-medium business), comes the time Microsoft decides to divide the category...and even subdivide the divisions. At next week's launch event in Los Angeles, Microsoft will be showing off four sets of packaging options for its next generations of server software, with two pairs of packages divided among small and "mid-size" businesses.
CTP for SQL Server 2008 now available
Its final release has been pushed back to as much as six months after Microsoft's big launch party for it, which is still slated for next week. In the meantime, potential customers are being given a taste of some new and game-changing functionality.
Yesterday afternoon, Microsoft posted its Community Technology Preview for SQL Server 2008, which will be general businesses' first, best look at the next edition of what analysts perceive to be Microsoft's fastest growing product line -- faster than even Windows itself.
Endless reboots force suspension of Vista SP1 updates
The reason it's called "beta testing" is to anticipate and isolate problems. But a big problem reported by some -- not all -- Vista SP1 testers is causing Microsoft to take a step back.
The regular update cycle for testers of Windows Vista Service Pack 1 was suspended yesterday afternoon, following multiple reports of downloaders discovering their automatically updating computers stuck in an endless cycle of reboots. This would mark the second time in two months that pockets of testers reported such a problem.
Intel rolls out double-quad-core platform for gamers
Somehow, Intel has skillfully avoided use of the metaphor "two-by-four" to represent its latest ultra-high-end CPU platform rollout this morning at GDC in San Francisco. But AMD might be feeling like it's been hit by one.
It is probably analogous to the Ford GT compared to the Ford Mustang, and thus serves a purpose more as a platform designed for more consumers to envy than for them to actually buy. But Intel's new enthusiast platform, previously code-named "Skulltrail," looks like it will produce plenty of envy, along with the requisite smoke and energy burning that also come from top-tier automobiles.
Gates says Microsoft won't raise Yahoo bid
Whether Microsoft intends to take its case to Yahoo shareholders, and maybe raise its offer in so doing, remains well within the company's rights. Nonetheless, Bill Gates said, at the very least, that a price hike wasn't necessary.
A multitude of press sources presented conflicting reports on Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates' comments following a speech at Stanford University yesterday. What Gates apparently said was that Microsoft has no plans to raise its $31 per share cash/stock bid for Yahoo, and that's the part that Reuters, the Associated Press, and The New York Times agreed upon.
That's the ballgame: Toshiba bows out of HD DVD
At just after 3:00 am Eastern Time, Toshiba officially pulled the plug on its efforts to promote and manufacture HD DVD home theater consoles and disc drives, announcing its intention to cease all manufacturing and promotional operations by the end of March.
However, the company left open one very small door: the possibility that HD DVD may have a future in notebook PC drives.
Updated: Microsoft clarifies its promise not to sue for OOXML
5:45 pm ET Feburary 15, 2008 - The question of which unilateral promise from Microsoft is supposed to apply to its Office Open XML format suite was supposed to have been clarified this morning by the company. At least that was the plan, and in the end, the matter may actually be settled, but in the middle, at least, there was more than a little confusion.
Here is the story as we now understand it: Microsoft's position, according to a spokesperson with whom BetaNews spoke this afternoon, is that the company did indeed originally release OOXML under the Open Specification Promise (OSP) in September 2006, as indicated by this blog posting at the time from the company's director of corporate standards, Jason Matusow.
EC commissioner proposes doubling terms of performers' copyright
"Oldies" music remains popular among many generations, which could present a window of opportunity for record companies in Europe to take advantage of royalties terms expiring after 50 years. Today, the EC may be looking to shut that window.
While US lawmakers continue to debate whether terrestrial radio stations should, for the first time in their history, pay royalties to performers of the music they play, in Europe, performers have always gotten some kind of a cut, especially from countries where public radio is subsidized through licenses. This morning, the popular European Commissioner for Internal Market and Services, Charlie McCreevy, proposed extending the term of copyright for performers appearing in recorded music from 50 to 95 years.
Yahoo's Yang holds firm on resisting Microsoft
Experimenting with capitalization (in more ways than one), Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang wrote his company's shareholders to explain why he believes Microsoft isn't assessing Yahoo's value fairly.
Yahoo has one of the world's most recognized brands, it has partners whose contributions can't be matched, and it has a tremendously positive cash flow, and it has a world-class search engine infrastructure, argued CEO Jerry Yang in a widely distributed letter to Yahoo shareholders yesterday afternoon. All four of these factors would be diluted if the company were simply to be absorbed as another of Microsoft's brands, he directly implied, referring to Microsoft only in his opening paragraphs.
New legislation could lead to ISP throttling ban
Comcast's response yesterday to its public thrashing by the FCC may have had a second, more important, purpose: A prominent Congressman has introduced legislation paving the way for a ban on Internet throttling.
In the midst of an already overflowing legislative calendar, Rep. Ed Markey (D - Mass.), who chairs the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, introduced a bill yesterday whose end result could be the illegalization of throttling of bandwidth to certain customers by Internet service providers.
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