New toolkit makes Eclipse into a Silverlight IDE
When Microsoft first introduced Silverlight a few years ago, it was with the stated promise of becoming a truly cross-platform development system for graphic interactivity and video. The full extent of that promise is still being delivered, in ways that many at the time hadn't really anticipated. The latest such crossover was previewed yesterday: a release candidate for an open source development toolset for the Eclipse development environment -- which itself is available in free and commercial versions -- that enables programmers to build applications that use Silverlight front-ends without having to rely on Visual Studio or Expression Studio.
Up to now, Silverlight has been considered a UI toolset that's made to be developed using Visual Studio. Now, Eclipse4SL from Soyatec -- a company that has received funding from Microsoft for this project -- gives developers tools for creating and deploying Silverlight panels, including the accompanying C# functionality and XAML interface code, that are very similar to their counterparts in Microsoft's commercial Visual Studio versions. All this in an environment that's better known as the IDE of choice among Java and JavaScript developers.
Here's something that sells well in a bleak economy: set-top boxes
Networking and telecommunications market research company the Dell'Oro group released research today that shows the IPTV subscriber base grew to 23 million, nearly doubling the total of the prior year. As a result, the set-top box business is booming.
Cisco and Motorola were the top STB makers in both cable and IPTV, and Thomson was at the top of satellite boxes. While Europe receives the most IPTV set-top boxes, Verizon and AT&T's aggressive IPTV marketing made North America a major contributor to the market's growth.
Dell confirms new layoffs, may number hundreds
A spokesperson for Dell Inc. confirmed to Betanews this afternoon that the company is undertaking a new round of staff reductions at locations worldwide. This in response to an official with the Dell desktop computer manufacturing facility in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, confirming some 300 staff reductions there today, to the local NBC affiliate station.
Though it was couched as not an official announcement, the spokesperson told Betanews, "We did make some staff reductions today in North Carolina and in other Dell locations globally. Today's actions are consistent with the streamlining that has been underway in our business for more than a year as part of our ongoing initiative to remain competitive by enhancing our efficiency and underlying cost structure."
EC extends the deadline for Microsoft to defend itself
With two weeks to go before the original eight-week deadline for Microsoft to present its response to the European Commission's latest Statement of Objections, the EC announced late today it has granted Microsoft's request to extend the deadline another three weeks, to April 21. This from EC spokesperson Jonathan Todd, in statements to Reuters and other sources.
Microsoft was ordered to prepare an oral statement for the EC as a defensive response to the Statement. That defense would center on the company's continued bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows. How the EC receives that response will determine whether it pursues legal action against Microsoft, the result of which could include a new round of fines. Spokesperson Todd has also intimated to several sources that Microsoft may also be compelled to give customers who are setting up or upgrading to Windows 7, the option of installing alternate Web browsers.
Let the music play: NY State passes on download 'iTunes tax'
New York governor David Paterson and leaders of the state legislature stated on Wednesday that thanks to incoming federal stimulus money, the state will stand down on plans to "nuisance tax" a wide assortment of goods, including music, movie and ebook downloads. For now, anyway.
The proposed 2009-10 budget also included an extension of sales tax to cable and satellite TV and radio; like the 4% "digital property sales tax," that idea has been dropped. Other items from which the threat of new taxation has been lifted include non-diet soda, live theater, haircuts, and bowling. The NYS budget is due on April 1.
Google kills free text message iPhone app
Infinite SMS, an iPhone app that allowed free text messages through an experimental open Google protocol, has been shut down.
Google debuted the SMS in Chat lab at the very end of 2008, which allowed Google Talk users to send messages to mobile phones from their instant messaging window.
How should the US government spend $7.2B in broadband funds?
At Tuesday's first inter-agency meeting in Washington, DC around the US government's new $7.2 billion broadband stimulus package, the government put out strong calls for public input in the form of both comments and program proposals.
Government interest is particularly big on the question of "how there can be better inter-agency coordination of broadband initiatives in order to develop a report on rural broadband strategy," said Michael Copps, acting chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, one of three federal agencies involved in divvying up the hotly sought after funds among Internet access providers of various shapes, sizes, and persuasions.
Google's new interest-based ads look less like 'Big Brother' than 'big bother'
This morning, Google's initial experiment with so-called behavioral advertising officially emerges from beta. The company's categorical system for targeting users' interests is now officially under way, with tracking of responses to ads now active by default for all users who read Google AdSense-affiliated sites (including Betanews).
As a video posted to Google's advertising support site explains, Google's system is already maintaining cookies on users' computers that contain codes relating to categories of the users' interests, both ascertained and designated. A user may go to Google's preferences site (linked above) to choose specific interest categories, which are less like department store categories and more like content categories.
Apple unveils a new, tiny iPod Shuffle
The new iPod Shuffle was introduced today, revealing a device completely free from buttons and measuring only 1.8" (45mm) x .7" (17mm) x .3" (7.62mm) in size. Jacobim Mugatu would approve. To shrink down the device to half of the size of the last generation Shuffle, the controls have been moved to the headphone cord. A simple three-button switch allows for play, pause, skip, volume, and activation of the new 4 GB USB Shuffle's banner feature.
VoiceOver gives the Shuffle the ability for it to speak song titles, artist names, and playlist categories in any of 14 languages.
Google: Windows 7 users should be able to choose any browser, any time
In its first statement in response to Microsoft's decision announced over the weekend to enable Windows 7 users to deactivate and/or uninstall Internet Explorer 8 after the operating system's setup installs it, a spokesperson for Google, which makes the Chrome browser, told Betanews overnight that not only should Windows users be given the option to choose their browsers during setup, but to do so every time they turn their machines on.
"We have not yet been able to see the planned new features of Internet Explorer but are looking forward to examining them when they are released. The Internet was founded on choice and openness and this requires a level playing field with multiple options for accessing it. From the moment a computer is turned on, people should be able to access a range of browsers easily and quickly," the spokesperson stated.
Nokia expands its music reach
Number one mobile phone maker Nokia has been fleshing out its portfolio of services since late 2007 with its Ovi portal, resurrected N-Gage mobile gaming platform, and most recently with its Comes with Music initiative. The latter, which now has a slogan as unwieldy as its name ("Your Music Player is Ringing!") has been expanded into more markets and onto more devices.
The Nokia Music Store is currently available in 15 markets. The United States still has not yet gotten the service, but is expected to "later this year." Today's announcement added Mexico, Portugal, Norway, and South Africa to the Comes With Music roadmap. Through the software, users can rip or burn CDs, browse the online store, stream, purchase, organize, and sync their music collections with compatible devices.
An inter-office squabble could have triggered a Baltic cyber-war
A Russian official speaking on an infowar panel last week revealed that his assistant was responsible for the 2007 cyber-attacks that crippled the nation of Estonia. The only person surprised was Nargiz Asadova, the moderator of the discussion.
Sadly, the statement by Sergei Markov, an official from the pro-Kremlin Unified Russia party, has garnered only mild interest in the general press. (Almost no one I queried Tuesday even remembered the attacks, which knee-capped financial and government institutions as well as the nation's Internet traffic. It was started over the proposed relocation of a statue. Seriously.) Markov claimed that the assistant, whom he refused to name lest it imperil the man's visa applications, undertook the act as a patriotic gesture against perceived fascism (in, again, the relocation of a statue).
Critical no-click Adobe vulnerability fixed, for some
What a great world we'd live in if legitimate businesses were as eager to save us trouble as toil as the malware guys are, right? A critical zero-day flaw in Adobe Reader and Acrobat can be used to attack a Windows machine without even opening the infected file -- the height of convenience indeed.
A buffer-overflow flaw is news to nobody familiar with Windows, but the service targeted, the Windows Indexing Service, may not be familiar to all. That service provides an index of files on the system -- it's how you can see the title and author and so forth for a PDF document in Windows Explorer, or how you view thumbnails if that's your Explorer preference.
Windows Mobile app devs get similar deal to iPhone devs
The trickle of information about Microsoft's Windows Marketplace for Mobile increased substantially this morning as the company unveiled its developer program for the mobile app store. Microsoft today opened the Windows Mobile 6.5 developer program.
Developers will pay an annual registration fee of $99 which covers five submissions (selling more than five apps will cost an additional $99 each), and will receive 70% of the revenue drawn from sales in the Windows Marketplace for Mobile. The fees and revenue share are in the same league as those laid down by Apple with its iPhone Developer Program.
Green: Not just for Kermit and data centers anymore
IT really is getting greener, notes a new report out from Forrester Research, and now it's time for the green effort to get, well, IT-er. Forrester researchers suggest that the stimulus may spur plenty of advances to business process and strategy as well as public policy and infrastructure.
The "Mapping IT's Green Opportunities" report, released last week, doesn't dismiss what it calls "Green IT 1.0" -- the efforts to improve the energy and carbon footprints of corporate IT departments with virtualization, improved power management and the data-center-centric like. But, say the analysts, there is "a new horizon of green IT 2.0" ahead, involving both business and public concerns.
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