Microsoft announces Xbox Music
Whether you think Microsoft wants to be Apple, or not, the company continues to roll out products designed to compete with its major rival. Today’s announcement is for Xbox Music, a digital music service for the Xbox games console, which will also appear as the default music player in Windows 8.
The service, which goes live tomorrow and will be available in 22 countries from launch, is a cross between Spotify and iTunes. Users will be able to listen to songs or full albums for free, create artist-based streaming radio stations, and put together music mixes and playlists. The iTunes element comes in the form of a music store, which will allow users to purchase and download tracks. The store will reportedly offer over 30 million songs, some four million more than Apple's store. There will also be over 70,000 music videos on offer.
Google releases mod_pagespeed, part of its effort to make the Internet speedier
Aimed at developers and webmasters, Google introduced the open-source Apache HTTP server module 'mod_pagespeed' in beta form almost two years ago, and now it is finally available as a stable release that is ready to be deployed.
Touting features such as automatic website and asset optimization, more than 40 configurable filters, open-source nature and individual deployment, mod_pagespeed is part of the Mountain View, Calif.-based corporation's efforts to improve the Internet experience by offering performance improvements to web pages. Together with PageSpeed Service, it's part of PageSpeed Optimization Libraries project that is designed to provide best performances practices for Internet pages.
Box touts bigger, better, all-new experience
Cloud storage service Box is changing with a fresh, new look and introduction of document editing and connections. Editing capabilities follow a recent trend, as Google and Microsoft add similar functionality to their online "Drive" services.
The cloud storage service has reached 14 million users and 140,000 businesses, and with the latest update promises a completely new experience with emphasis on collaborations and content.
Google Cultural Institute delivers history lessons through technology
History is often overlooked and rarely highlighted in technology, of lesser importance if you will. Google decided to put history in the foreground with the introduction of the Google Cultural Institute by using technology as a foundation.
Seventeen partners, including cultural foundations and museums, contribute to the project through their archives of letters, first-hand video testimonials and manuscripts, as well as other resources. The Google Cultural Institute offers 42 new historical exhibitions that are available for online viewing and includes stories detailing significant events of the 20th century. The Holocaust, D-Day and the Apartheid are all major turning points in human history, and highlighted in a digital form by the Mountain View, Calif.-based corporation.
Get a life! Microsoft isn't trying to be Apple
Yesterday's Steve Ballmer "devices and services company" letter unleashes a torrent of idiot punditry. I can only laugh at the sheer stupidity of writers infatuated with the idea Microsoft wants to be Apple, or putting forth such lunacy to sack pageviews.
Read Ballmer's 1,300-word missive again. Microsoft's focus on devices and services has little to nothing to do with Apple. The cloud-connected device era is here and Microsoft embraces it to maintain computing relevance. The company has been on this course for years. Research and development takes time, and the good ship Microsoft is too large to change course in a few months -- or even a few years. The sheer number of carefully coordinated new (and largely changed) products shipping simultaneously (or soon after) clearly indicates a massive undertaking long planned.
Steve Ballmer asks customers, partners and shareholders to believe in Microsoft
Today, Microsoft's CEO released his annual shareholder letter, which also is meant for customers, employees and partners. Steve Ballmer's looking back-peering ahead missive comes as the company stands on a precipice between the PC and cloud-connected device eras and seeks reinvention through an unusually strong late-year release cycle that includes Surface tablets, Windows 8, Windows RT and Windows Server 2012.
Under Bill Gates, Microsoft sought to put a PC on every desktop, with software innovation driving that effort. Ballmer describes post-PC Microsoft as a "devices and services company", which aptly describes the fundamental shift in progress. Services focus reminds of IBM, which dominated the mainframe era the PC displaced. This devices and services ambition "impacts how we run the company, how we develop new experiences, and how we take products to market for both consumers and businesses".
'Google in a box' version 7 improves enterprise search
Today, Google updated its enterprise search product, upping the number of supported languages to 60, better improving Big Data capabilities, increasing scalability and providing document previews with search results.
"Administrators can easily add content sources from secure storage, cloud services or the public web and social networking sites", Matthew Eichner, general manager of Google enterprise search, says. "GSA 7.0 also provides Google-quality search for SharePoint 2010, making for a more simple and intuitive, all-in-one search experience".
Microsoft Azure Services come to Windows Server
Windows Server 2012 launched a little more than a month ago and packs quite the toolset. To further complete the package, Microsoft announced the arrival of Windows Azure Services to its cloud-oriented server operating system, though only in beta for the moment.
Microsoft's cloud computing platform services are designed for hosting service providers, which was until recently exclusive to Windows Azure but in July was showcased on Windows Server and System Center. According to the company, Windows Azure Services on Windows Server is now a feature-complete beta release that focuses on delivering a considerable number of improvements over the previous versions.
Windows Server 2012 Essentials released to manufacturing
For those of you still pining for Small Business Server, you'll have to settle for its successor, which is available now for evaluation following its RTM. Microsoft expects the software to be available in "all channels" by November 1 -- or after Windows 8 launches in 17 days. However, preloaded systems will likely come later, but before year's end, while server manufacturers conduct final testing and create system images.
Unlike its predecessor, Windows Server 2012 Essentials adds more cloud utility around a straightforward concept: Provide small businesses or sole proprietors with access to their important information anytime, anywhere and on anything.
IBM introduces new PureData System
Targeting enterprise clients, after PureFlex and PureApplication Systems, IBM has introduced the third member in its PureSystems family. Named IBM PureData System, it is purposefully designed for big data cloud appliances by providing data services to various applications.
The new PureData System family is comprised of two major platforms. PureData System for Transactions, which is aimed at improving data management costs, and PureData System for Analytics, which is designed to analyze large volumes of data.
Get 21GB of space on MegaCloud for free [BetaNews Exclusive Offer]
MegaCloud is a new, free-to-use cloud storage and backup service (compatible with Windows, Mac, Linux, and Mobile) that lets you store, sync and share all your documents, photos, music, videos and more across all of your devices. Unlike some similar services, having a free account doesn’t mean being restricted in any way -- all free users get 16GB of space, divided into 8GB for storage and 8GB for backups.
Well, that’s how much ordinary, everyday free users get. But obviously, as a BetaNews reader you deserve a little extra, so MegaCloud has kindly upped the free storage on offer to 21GB (13GB for storage, plus 8GB for backups) exclusively for us, and all you need to do is click on the link below and sign up for a free account. And if that’s still not enough free space for you, you can get yet more gratis storage simply by installing a mobile app or referring friends to the service.
BBC releases iPlayer Radio
If you're a fan of British Broadcasting Corporation radio programs then you're going to love this. Today, BBC announced the new iPlayer Radio for "PC, mobile and tablet" devices.
BBC iPlayer Radio promises to act as a dedicated radio platform that focuses on making it easier to listen to live, catch-up and archived content across all three types of devices on which it runs on. According to the BBC, the feature set will expand in the coming months, but at the moment includes downloads, clips, live radio alongside videos and social media feeds as well as other features. The spotlight is the new iPlayer Radio app for smartphones, which momentarily is only available for iOS with Android support to follow soon according to the announcement.
Use QR Codes to share documents
QR Codes are pretty much everywhere these days, but few companies really make the most of the possibilities they offer. TagMyDoc is a great example of what can be done with them, and lets you add a QR Code to your own physical documents, directly from within Word, Excel or PowerPoint. When someone scans that code, they’ll get a full copy of the document on their device.
It saves on printing costs, and means you don’t have to worry about how many copies of a document or presentation to output for a meeting, for example, because anyone with a QR reader can get a copy of their own. It’s a great service, but TagMyDoc has just been made even more useful, as it now lets you connect to popular cloud storage services Box and Dropbox, and tag and securely share documents you store there.
Apple gives former MobileMe customers free cloud storage
Early Friday evening I received unexpected email from Apple, offering extra benefit as former MobileMe customer -- a year of extra online storage. Hey, that's 20GB, instead of 5GB. It's good marketing to those of us who paid $99 a year or more for MobileMe. Not that I benefit, being about five months into an Apple boycott.
Apple started transitioning MobileMe customers with iCloud's launch nearly a year ago. The older service officially closed on June 30, with the fruit-logo company offering existing customers extra storage during the transition.
Smart ways of using DNS data [Q&A]
Nominum is the world’s leading provider of integrated subscriber, network and security solutions for network operators and its software currently processes over one trillion Domain Name System (DNS) queries per day from hundreds of network operators worldwide; a number that far exceeds the combined 6.5 billion searches, likes and tweets served by Google, Facebook and Twitter each day.
Its new N2 Platform and Nominum IDEAL ecosystem gathers and anonymizes this data, allowing application providers’ seamless access to it. I spoke to Nominum’s CEO, Gary Messiana, to find out more about how it works and what it means for network operators and consumers.
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