First signs of the Obama administration's technological aptitude
The early choices to lead the transition team for President-Elect Obama not only indicate the diversity of background that he promised during his campaign, but also a continuing attention toward comprehending modern technology.
Not quite two days after his historic election as the nation's 44th president, Barack Obama's transition team already has an active Web site. Located at change.gov, it maintains many of the templates used by the Obama campaign, though very quickly tailored for the purposes of maintaining an open forum for citizens to comment on, and contribute to, the process of transition of power in the executive branch.
Theme for WinHEC is a drive toward simpler, broader device compliance
One of Vista's biggest faults in consumers' minds has been that so-called "supporting devices" don't truly seem to support the operating system -- turning them on the first time means fighting the OS. Microsoft wants that to change.
With much of the Windows 7 news actually having been divulged the week before at PDC, it was left for Microsoft corporate vice president and Windows chief Steven Sinofsky and his new partner, Core Operating System manager John DeVaan, to set a theme for WinHEC 2008 in Los Angeles that distinguished their efforts from Windows Vista while at the same time maintaining a respectable level of enthusiasm.
A peek into private browsing in the next Firefox 3.1 beta
It's a race now to be the first to implement an evidence-proofing feature in an RTM of a Web browser. The fellow in charge of making it work for Firefox made his suggestions known over the weekend, and he wants to keep things simple.
It's rare that Mozilla Firefox finds itself in the role of playing catch-up in the feature department. But with a special private mode that suspends the recording of cache and history data already showing up in both Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 and even the earliest betas of Google Chrome, the open source developers at Mozilla are stepping on the gas for a feature they've actually considered for several years.
Google / Yahoo partnership is scrapped
Citing the possibility of protracted scrutiny from government investigators, Google's senior counsel this morning stated his company has decided to back away from its AdSense sharing deal with Yahoo.
"After four months of review, including discussions of various possible changes to the agreement, it's clear that government regulators and some advertisers continue to have concerns about the agreement," reads a statement from Google SVP and Chief Legal Officer David Drummond this morning. "Pressing ahead risked not only a protracted legal battle but also damage to relationships with valued partners. That wouldn't have been in the long-term interests of Google or our users, so we have decided to end the agreement."
Discount brings street price of Windows Home Server down to $100
After a price reduction over the weekend for the shrink-wrapped System Builder Edition of Windows Home Server, at least one online retailer extended that discount to customers, while others sell out their inventories at 62% higher.
The OEM editions of Microsoft operating systems and applications are typically sold without the fancy box, and with licenses that stipulate their use in pre-installation for computers that are to be resold, but that stipulation has historically never been enforced. Almost a decade ago, the OSR2 bundle of Windows 98 -- what many at the time called the most stable edition of that system, even though it wasn't really a separate build -- ended up being sold in retail establishments such as Egghead and CompUSA.
A peek at an early build of the new Win7 taskbar
One of Mac OS X's most successful features has been its zooming apps dock, which has been mimicked in third-party utilities for Windows. Windows 7's new taskbar looks more similar, but its changes are already themselves being changed.
The "pre-beta" edition of Windows 7 handed out at PDC 2008 last week appears on the surface to contain only a slightly revised version of the Windows Vista taskbar, if only temporarily. But developers were actually given hints that an early build of the Win7 taskbar was hidden behind a protective barrier.
Amid a perfect storm, Sirius XM faces a shareholder lawsuit
It's difficult to make the case for conspiracy against the competition when XM and Sirius had no competition prior to their merger. Still, a shareholder plows ahead with his campaign against the merged entity, despite a global crisis.
In recent days, analysts have speculated on various ways that US satellite radio provider Sirius XM can complete the funding of its merger and stay afloat, including issuing more stock and even possibly taking the company private. While all of that remains in the realm of speculation, a Sirius XM shareholder whose name is all too familiar to executives who hail from Sirius, has amended his lawsuit in US District Court in California, in an effort to stop what he describes as a conspiracy to monopolize the satellite radio industry by eliminating existing competition and erecting barriers to new competition.
Sprint Xohm service expands to DC and apparently parts of N. Virginia
In an impromptu test this afternoon conducted jointly in Reston, Va. by BetaNews' Nate Mook and InformationWeek's Nick Hoover, a successful Xohm connection was made -- indicating that service is also extending to the suburbs.
Initial tests show the Reston connection to yield 4.8 Mbps downstream and 1.3 Mbps upstream. That's even faster downstream than our Baltimore test three weeks ago, where we achieved 2.6 Mbps downstream and 2.4 Mbps upstream. A wireless upstream connection of over 1.0 Mbps is still a considerable achievement.
Microsoft security report points to downtrend in malware
There's fewer reports of malware in the wild for the entire industry, Microsoft said this morning -- an indication, it says, that the security field is getting smarter. But once again, do undisclosed vulnerabilities simply not count?
In a more circumspect report than those the company published previously, Microsoft is saying today that the general trend toward malware distribution worldwide is continuing on a decline, and that Microsoft may be contributing to that decline through a reduction in Windows-targeted malware by more than one-third.
PDC 2008: What did we learn today?
Every year, PDC sets the pace and the mood for commercial software development over the next 12 months. So has the trumpet been sounded for the great exodus into the cloud? All this week, we've listened for the signs.
LOS ANGELES - The mood at this year's Microsoft Professional Developers' Conference was noticeably changed among both attendees and company representatives -- not altogether replaced, but certainly altered. In nearly each and every venue, there was a palpable energy, but I wouldn't call it "enthusiasm." I would, however, definitely call it "motivation."
PDC 2008: Toolkit for asynchronous programming emerges from robotics
On Wednesday at PDC, research took center stage, as the company took time to show off its virtual telescope and its experimental engineering projects. But one of these projects is something that applies to big business, not just laboratories.
LOS ANGELES - You might think that a real-world implementation of something that emerged from a project at the Robotics division of Microsoft Research would have something to do with, perhaps, just maybe, a robot. But one of the big surprises at this year's PDC was the emergence of a runtime toolkit for enterprise software developers that ostensibly enables a new -- or, more accurately, unimplemented -- method for dealing with very large scale tasks and problem-solving, that's directly inspired by the way Microsoft is programming robots to deal with complex tasks dynamically.
PDC 2008: Cross-platform .NET surprisingly makes a fast game scripting engine
An open source project to make a common language runtime for Linux, Mac, and iPhone that's .NET-compatible, has ended up succeeding in an area no one may have expected at first: as an artificial intelligence provider for gaming engines.
LOS ANGELES - The annual Microsoft PDC conference is perhaps the least likely place you'd expect to find a demonstration of an open source programming and scripting environment that runs on Linux and Mac. But the scripting language in this case is C#, created by Microsoft. And what's most impressive about Mono, the open source implementation of the .NET Framework CLR (which also, by the way, has a version for Windows) is that it's being implemented as host of a replacement for the scripting language in one of the most popular cross-platform MMO gaming engines: Unity3D.
PDC 2008: Will multitouch change the Windows application?
The research and resources that Microsoft has invested in its Surface project will soon pay off for everyday Windows users, with new multitouch functionality being added to Windows 7. But how soon will Windows apps feel the change?
LOS ANGELES - The next version of Windows will enable more multitouch applications, but it cannot automatically convert apps to multitouch that haven't had the capability before. There is a way to enable the scroll bar controls to register vertical and horizontal scrolling capability in case their container app happens to be running in a system that has multitouch, but that's the limit of how much conversion that the next Windows API can do by itself.
PDC 2008: Windows 7, WS2K8 R2 will get PowerShell v2
At the early morning session on the final day of PDC 2008, architect Jeffrey Snover officially confirmed that Windows 7 and the R2 edition of Windows Server 2008 will both get version 2 of PowerShell as standard installation options.
In addition, Snover said, thanks to the ability for an upcoming version of the .NET Framework to run in systems without graphical overhead, PowerShell v2 will also be supported in Server Core, the streamlined, command-line-only installation option for Windows Server introduced with the 2008 edition. Server Core is typically meant for systems that do not need to be administered directly, and can instead use remote management tools.
PDC 2008: Look out for the 'delighters' in Windows 7
Color, a Microsoft design team discovered with the aid of a focus group, is quintessential to a positive user experience. In advising developers to add delight to their apps, a team leader made a revelation about Windows 7's mission.
LOS ANGELES - During a mid-day session on best practices for designing applications to take advantage of Windows 7, Microsoft's principal design manager Samuel Moreau told attendees that his team was charged with the task of building new visual elements into the new user interface specifically to make users feel better about the operating system.
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