Next Silverlight 2.0 beta to appear this week
Developers going home from TechEd 2008 in Orlando (just as the admin folks arrive for the following week's demos) could find a delightful surprise in their annual tote bags: the newest plug-in for Visual Studio.
A very brief notice appearing on the blog of Microsoft .NET developer evangelist G. Andrew Duthie early this morning confirmed news coming from Tech·Ed 2008 for Developers in Orlando: The company's corporate vice president S. Somasegar told attendees that he expects the next beta of Silverlight 2.0, the company's portable graphics platform, before the end of this week.
Yahoo's latest Messenger beta goes its own way
It's clearly not a button-down, businesslike IM client: Having experimented with a special Vista version that apparently didn't go over well, Yahoo now is adding personalized polish to its latest free personal messenger, still in beta.
Download Yahoo Messenger for Windows beta build 9.0.0.1389 from FileForum now
Adobe launches its latest test of Buzzword online WP
The viability of AIR as an application platform is only becoming more clear with today's revamp of Buzzword, Adobe's online word processor, now part of Acrobat.com. BetaNews spent some more time with Buzzword this morning and afternoon.
Buzzword does not feel like an online app. Typically, when one thinks of running applications in his Web browser, a decade of experience has already taught him to expect to type his data into postage stamp-sized controls, click on Submit, and wait a few hours. Buzzword flies in the face of that expectation by delivering a snappy, well-presented, original front end that doesn't take a month to learn.
Adobe extends Acrobat branding to Web services
For years, Microsoft hasn't really had serious competition in the general-purpose applications space. But if Adobe succeeds in transplanting its Acrobat brand into word processing and online services, Microsoft could have a fight on its hands.
Originally, "Adobe Acrobat" described its reader for Portable Document Format files, and the software used to create them. As "PDF" evolved to become a brand in its own right, Adobe shifted the "Acrobat" moniker to refer more exclusively to the software used to generate PDF files.
OASIS approves a Web services standard that could ease 'mash-ups'
Must every spreadsheet you ever use until the end of recorded time be an "Excel spreadsheet?" A protocol for making functional data more versatile for Web portals, so users can choose their own tools, is taking its next evolutionary step.
The definition of "portal" with regard to the Web changes by the year; and while sites such as Yahoo would like for it to still be somewhat synonymous with "home page," today, Web services engineers use the term to mean some central location where Web services can be used collectively. And though sites such as Google have tried to instantiate that vision by making JavaScript widgets collectible together through pages such as iGoogle, Web engineers today have a more functional vision in mind: They see the next "portal" as the network-empowered equivalent of yesterday's "desktop."
Microsoft gives in, will share scanning service spec with working group
In one more demonstration that it's taking a different stance with regard to the intellectual property it uses, Microsoft has dropped its objection to an IEEE working group making use of a Web services protocol it developed for Vista.
Removing a roadblock that might have continued to prevent an alliance of printer and tools manufacturers from implementing a Web services-based specification for document scanning devices, Microsoft announced yesterday it will go ahead and provide its Scan Service Definition 1.0 for Web Services on Devices, to the IEEE's Printer Working Group.
Twitter developer hints it may not be hot on Ruby on Rails after all
Can the recent plague of technical problems affecting text communications service Twitter be blamed on the language on which its platform was designed? Earlier, the company said no...but some within the company are hinting otherwise.
Two weeks ago, following the rapid spread of rumors that the Twitter service -- recently besieged with technical troubles -- may be abandoning the Ruby on Rails development platform in building a replacement platform for itself, the company's co-founder Biz Stone flat out refuted those rumors in a comment to BetaNews.
Adobe to unveil its second edition of PDF Print Engine
The PostScript era may at last have shuffled off its mortal coil, as the next generation of Adobe's printing workflow and reproduction system for PDF gets set to roll out to OEMs this summer.
At one time -- longer ago than it sometimes seems -- the software print engine of the modern world was based around PostScript, and Adobe was on top of the world as the champion of that format. The first editions of PDF were perceived as not so much an encapsulated PostScript but as an abbreviated alternative to it, mostly for ordinary text documents. But as that standard evolved into the format of choice for Web-based brochures and marketing literature, its capability to reproduce images and graphics eventually exceeded that of PostScript.
EC task force recommends a 'plan of action' for IPv6
A recommendation to the European Parliament regarding implementation and support for IPv6 addresses clearly states that legislators should, pretty soon, most definitely, whenever they can, do something.
European and Japanese Internet policy experts are now in agreement that the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority will likely run out of possible octet-based IPv4 addresses to assign to prospective registrants as soon as 2010. A recommendation by a task force led by the European Commission (PDF available here) states that as of January 2008, only 16% of the span of IPv4 addresses will be available in the IANA pool.
VMware invests in an SMT provider in its battle against Microsoft
Public perception is half the battle, especially when the prize is a virtual one. Yesterday, VMware placed a big bet that it could be perceived as a full-service provider like Microsoft, by acquiring a systems management tool company called B-hive.
Last year, Microsoft officials admitted they didn't hold any expectations for their company to suddenly become perceived as the world leader in virtualization, even if they end up outshipping VMware or Citrix XenSource quantitatively by virtue of the availability of Hyper-V for Windows Server 2008. But it did intend to leverage its existing position not only as an operating system provider but as an indisputable competitor in systems management tools, as a way to offer customers at least a complete package.
Russinovich's Windows toolkit goes live, quite literally
Admins now have immediate access to any of Sysinternals utilities from any Windows computer, without having to install anything first.
There really aren't all that many EXE files that people would automatically feel are safe enough to run from a remote Internet server, directly from the command line. But probably taking up most of the spaces on that short list are the invaluable utilities of Mark Russinovich, who maintains the Sysinternals brand now for Microsoft.
First release candidate for Microsoft Small Business Server 2008
The next edition of Windows Server's pre-configured server operating system for small business hit the wires this morning, with both Standard and Premium packages, in 32- and 64-bit editions, available for preview.
Download Microsoft Small Business Server 2008 RC0 from FileForum now.
Dell offers a new peek at an old UMPC prototype
It's cute, it's red, it has a Dell logo, and for many, it's enough. The buzz machine has been reignited, after Michael Dell gave a prominent Gizmodo writer another peek at something small it's been cooking up in its laboratories.
It would appear that Carlsbad, California, is the place for big companies to break technology news, and that the D: conference could be the new COMDEX. There, in a move reminiscent of the Dell of old, Michael Dell gave a Gizmodo correspondent a peek at a little red laptop that has the industry abuzz this morning.
Google Earth's 3D landscapes now available through browser plug-in
With a simple tweak to the JavaScript code that embeds a Google Maps control in a Web page, your site can now have a fully operational Google Earth control.
The three-dimensional, zooming and scaling 3D satellite views of Planet Earth have already become a fixture on TV and Internet news sites, giving viewers the most photo-realistic views of the world's hot points like Iraq, Afghanistan, and China. Now, Google's 3D maps are finding a new home along with most of Google's other popular tools: in the Web browser.
Windows 7 multi-touch SDK being readied for PDC in October
As details continue to emerge about Microsoft's evidently well-made plans for its next operating system, we learn that full documentation for how multi-touch capabilities will work in Windows, will be ready for demonstration by this fall.
For Microsoft's next Professional Developers' Conference currently scheduled for late October in Los Angeles, the company plans to demonstrate the use of a system developers' kit for producing multi-touch applications for Windows 7. Such applications would follow the model unveiled yesterday by executives Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer at a Wall Street Journal technology conference in Carlsbad, California yesterday.
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