Microsoft held its tenth annual Research Faculty Summit on Monday, and the focus was on data en masse -- processing it quickly and helping scientists make sense of it once it's gathered. Three projects shared the spotlight in Redmond.

Two of the three, Dryad and DryadLINQ, are intimately related. Both support high-performance computing. Dryad itself is an engine for making it easier to implement distributed applications on Windows HPC Server 2008 clusters. As its information page explains, "A Dryad programmer can use thousands of machines, each of them with multiple processors or cores, without knowing anything about concurrent programming."

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Here's this morning's piece of analysts' wisdom for you: "Teenagers never use real directories (hard copy catalogues such as yellow pages). This is because real directories contain listings for builders and florists, which are services that teenagers do not require." This from an analyst report with a big financial services name behind it, that's just out this week. Two things here: Kid, ask your girlfriend when you get one about the florist thing, and is everyone else as relieved as your reporter that one generally survives the teenage years? More on that in What's Now; first, it's party time on your BlackBerry.

RIM launches MyBlackBerry social "network"

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At this morning's Worldwide Developers' Conference in New Orleans, there were some who had prematurely speculated that Microsoft was ready to release Windows 7 to manufacturing (RTM) as soon as today. When it didn't, the headline went out that Windows 7 was "delayed" -- it wasn't.

But some business customers will begin ordering Windows 7 a few weeks later than anticipated, maybe not so much on account of delay as bad speculation that was never responded to. September 1 will be the start date for volume license customers to place their orders for Windows 7, including for upgrade versions. As a Microsoft spokesperson confirmed to Betanews this afternoon, Microsoft will discount the price for Windows 7 Professional upgrade licenses by 15% for a six-month promotional period. That means that volume license prices could start at $152, while Vista licenses during the same period remain at a base price of $179.

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When the iPhone 3G S debuted in June, Apple simultaneously announced that the iPhone 3G, the new device's year-old, 8 GB predecessor would be dropping to a scant $99. What the Cupertino computer maker didn't announce was that the price for refurbished iPhones (i.e., phones that were previously owned, but returned within 30 days) would also be dropping to a price less than 15% of the 3G device's original cost.

AT&T is now offering refurbished 8 GB iPhone 3G for only $79 with a two-year contract, a considerable drop from the $150 price tag from six months ago.

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Tomorrow, Microsoft has a Patch Tuesday collection slated to include a fix for a hole known to Microsoft and outside security researchers for nearly a year and a half. Today, Redmond's got another, newly revealed, major flaw to contend with.

The vulnerability in Office Web Components' ActiveX implementation, versions 10 and 11, is currently known to be under attack, according to a post by Fermin J. Serna of Microsoft Security Response Center's Engineering team. If a user running Internet Explorer goes to a malicious Web site that hosts the exploit, the attacker could gain whatever rights the user has (translation: owned) and execute malicious code in the usual fashion.

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Now that the latest chatter coming from the UK surmises that streaming music services such as Spotify are hot among teenagers, while p2p-based music sharing is not, Microsoft is reportedly about to debut its own contribution to Britain's music streaming boom.

The Telegraph reported today that Microsoft's UK Web portal MSN will be launching a streaming music service this month that is "similar in principle to Spotify."

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Welcome back, Microsoft. After a few years of getting your butt kicked by Google, it's nice to see you waking up from your monopolistic slumber. You seem to finally get it that both Windows and Office don't have indefinite or guaranteed futures, and you're willing to hang yourself out over the edge a bit to keep them both relevant.

This week, Office 2010, the new version of Microsoft's productivity suite, is being shown to developers and media this week at the company's Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans. It includes browser-based versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote that should forever banish bitter memories of Microsoft's initially half-hearted online productivity efforts.

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Perhaps it was an accident that Microsoft released a series of Office 2010 preview videos this morning, instead of another chapter in its non-revealing "Office 2010: The Movie" theatrical trailer. The videos themselves were pulled down from Microsoft's servers, along with the micro-site that accompanied them, but not before search engine caches everywhere captured them, and not before blogger Long Zheng gathered them in one place.

This morning, these Microsoft-produced videos show extensive screen shots and demos of each primary Office 2010 component at work, although the appearance of the early code-name "Office 14" in a few of those shots indicates that videos may not necessarily be depicting the most recent build, being distributed to Technical Preview participants as soon as today.

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Beloved Japanese role playing game franchise Dragon Quest has enjoyed frenzied launches for more than twenty years, with lines that make Apple's launch queues look piddly by comparison.

Last Friday, Dragon Quest IX: Hoshizora no Mamoribito, the latest installment in the series was launched for the Nintendo DS, and long lines of customers shelled out their ¥5,980 for a copy of the game.

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Adobe Systems today released the public beta of ColdFusion 9, the company's application development platform and has unveiled the Eclipse-based ColdFusion Builder Integrated Development Environment (IDE). Adobe went for three simple categories of improvement with this release: Increase user productivity, improve integration with popular enterprise software, and simplify the workflow between Adobe products.

To increase user productivity, server administration has been simplified in this version, with the Server Manager application, which lets multiple ColdFusion servers be managed centrally through an AIR-based app. New tools seek to simplify the development process, such as ColdFusion-as-a-Service which gives access to ColdFusion services through AMF (Action Message Format) and SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) without having to write ColdFusion Components (CFCs). Also, integration with Hibernate's object relational mapping (ORM) lets developers build database-independent applications without the need to write any SQL.

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First rollout of Office 2010 code due today

Morning of July 13, 2009 • If you're feeling a bit damp this morning, look around you, because there could be a leak going on. Yes, as fully anticipated, there's clear evidence of a leak in the latest build of Office 2010, which is expected to be officially shipped to certain select Microsoft partners as soon as today. The leak indicates that shipment has already begun, and that Microsoft's "friend" is not cooperating.

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If only the French government had had this much determination against the Nazis. The French Senate last week once again passed a version of the HADOPI online copyright infringement bill, this time adding a step after the three accusations in which a judge may choose among three penalties: a ban from the Net, a two-year prison sentence, or a $415,000 fine.

Those accused of "allowing" illegal downloading -- if a third party used their connection to do so -- would face a $2,075 fine or a month's cutoff from the Net.

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The creative end of the music industry is drawing ever closer to a nexus: a point where composing, recording, distributing and publicizing music meets. You could be holding it in your pocket right now, and it's not the same point of convergence sold by the ounce that drove the industry in the past. It's the ubiquitous, lionized, and oh-so-lucrative iPhone.

Recording

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This episode of Recovery is not brought to you by unfortunate war-and-revolution metaphors for what are, in the end, simply disagreements over operating systems, professional sports, reality television competitions, or other non-combat-related features of life in the developed world. May these be as close as these metaphors' creators ever get to enduring actual warfare.

Even if neither you nor I are ever apt to be invited to a TED gathering -- which brings together leaders from Technology, Entertainment, and Design -- the TED organization's Web site has a marvelous collection of video of presentations made at its conference over the years. It's a great way to spend ten minutes or so when YouTube's leaving you feel a little slimed and Hulu is... look, you cannot keep re-watching the Warehouse 13 premiere. They'll air another episode next week. Until then you will simply have to calm down, and I'm suggesting that you're better off with TED, and not least because it's... applicable.

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Download Microsoft Silverlight 3 from Fileforum now.

After going live just a little bit early, Silverlight 3 is now an official release. The third iteration of Microsoft's rich internet application platform largely viewed as the chief competitor to Adobe Flash (but really an AIR rival) was officially launched this morning at a Microsoft event in San Francisco alongside Expression 3, the latest version of the company's design and development studio.

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