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Microsoft stand-up to Apple
Microsoft stand-up to Apple
Stand-up comedian and television star Jerry Seinfeld has been enlisted by Microsoft to help promote Vista.
Mr Seinfeld is to star along with Bill Gates in a number of advertisements refuting allegations that Vista is a failure, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Apple has been behind a number of adverts which have made fun of Vista's alleged problems and Microsoft announced that it was planning an aggressive campaign to help Vista's flagging image.
Read the whole story here.
-Ken
Mozilla drags IE into the future with Canvas element plugin
Mozilla drags IE into the future with Canvas element plugin
Most browser implementors are quick to adopt emerging Internet technologies, but Microsoft can't or won't make Internet Explorer a modern web browser. Despite some positive steps in the right direction, Internet Explorer still lacks many important features. Its mediocrity has arguably hampered the evolution of the web and forced many site designers to depend on suboptimal proprietary solutions.
IE's shortcomings won't hold back the Internet for much longer, however, because Mozilla plans to drag IE into the next generation of open web technologies without Microsoft's help. One of the first steps towards achieving this goal is a new experimental plugin that adapts Mozilla's implementation of the HTML5 Canvas element so that it can be used in Internet Explorer.
The Canvas element allows web developers to programmatically render interactive bitmap images in HTML content. It was invented by...
Adobe Flash ads launching clipboard hijack attack
Adobe Flash ads launching clipboard hijack attack
Malicious hackers are using booby-trapped Flash banner ads to hijack clipboards for use in rogue security software attacks. In the Web attacks, which target Mac, Windows and Linux users running Firefox, IE and Safari, hackers are seizing control of the machines clipboard and using a hard-to-delete URL that points to a fake anti-virus program. According to victims on several Web forums, the attack is coming from Adobe Flash-based advertising on legitimate sites including Newsweek, Digg and MSNBC.com. Here is a Mac OS X user explaining the attack...
Story at blogs.zdnet.com.
PS4 and Xbox 720 due by 2012, says Crysis firm
PS4 and Xbox 720 due by 2012, says Crysis firm
The president of game developer Crytek has predicted that the successors to the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 will appear within the next three to four years.
Cevat Yerli was hosting a talk titled "The Future of Gaming Graphics" at the ongoing GC Developer Conference in Leipzig, Germany, when he said that the PlayStation 4 and Xbox '720' will arrive in 2011 or 2012.
He stressed that the dates are just our [Cryteks] estimate and claimed that neither Microsoft nor Sony have revealed any juicy next-generation console development timelines to him. But that's what his company is working to.
Read what else they had to say here.
-Ken
Gamers Hit By Fines From Lawyers
Gamers Hit By Fines From Lawyers
Thousands of gamers who have shared files illegally online are about to get a nasty surprise through the post - a fine for hundreds of pounds.
The makers behind popular games such as The Lord Of The Rings and the Colin McRae rally series are set to serve 25,000 people with the legal notices.
The families targeted must then pay £300 to settle out of court or face the possibility of a trial.
They are accused of sharing games by top makers Atari, Codemasters, Topware Interactive, Reality Pump and Techland, illegally.
Read the whole story here.
-Ken
Office 14: Alpha testing to begin before year-end
Office 14: Alpha testing to begin before year-end
While Microsoft has made a few public and well-calculated moves to prepare the way for Windows 7, the company has said almost nothing (at least intentionally) about Office 14.
On August 15, however, there was mention of an Office 14 alpha release on one of the Microsoft blogs that I read skim regularly. That post, about PerformancePoint Server, mentioned the Office 14 (O14) alpha TAP (Technical Adoption Program) release. The monitoring and analytics component of PerformancePoint Server (Microsofts business-scorecarding server) will be part of the O14 TAP, the posting said. And the alpha process for that O14 TAP is slated for November/December 2008. From the post (which since I blogged this has disappeared):
The Alpha process will begin in the November/December timeframe this year. When you submit, please identify as a PPS M&A candidate. The deadline for submissions is August 28th....
USB 3.0 will not be forked
USB 3.0 will not be forked
Concerns over potential multiple versions of the next generation of USB have dissipated, after Intel made part of the draft specification available to other companies.
Companies such as AMD and Nvidia had been complaining that Intel, which is driving the specification for USB 3.0, also called SuperSpeed USB, was withholding key details about the technology. Intel denied the claims. Many had feared a split in the USB 3.0 specification, which would have created difficulties for manufacturers and consumers alike.
However, on Wednesday, Intel announced the availability of the Extensible Host Controller Interface (xHCI) draft specification for the USB 3.0 architecture. The accompanying statement included an endorsement by AMD.
Read the whole story here.
-Ken
Congratulations Apple, you made the iPhone less stable than Windows Mobile
Congratulations Apple, you made the iPhone less stable than Windows Mobile
After a couple of weeks since the iPhone 3G launch, I gave in and picked up a device at the Apple store just over a week ago to personally give it a try. It is a good device, but the only two improvements over my original iPhone are the 3G support and GPS. The 3G has been very spotty, especially compared to the solid reception I am seeing on the Nokia E71-2, N95-3, and HTC Advantage. I saw 3G at work for the first couple of days, but for the last four days all I get is an EDGE connection. GPS is nice and I have actually used it twice to help me quickly navigate around traffic jams and in an unfamiliar area, but I could have just used Google Maps and the approximate position on my original iPhone to do the same thing. Recently the device has almost ended up going airborne across the room because of the constant instability with both 3rd party and native applications and I am...
Credit crunch effects to hit IT sector in 2009
Credit crunch effects to hit IT sector in 2009
Technology companies face being hit by the "credit crunch" and a downturn in business in 2009, according to a prediction by leading analyst Richard Holway.
The technology industry analyst, a former director of Ovum, the IT research analysis and consulting company, forecast that the sector's resilience so far to the effects of the global squeeze on finance will not last.
In an interview with Computer Weekly, he predicted that revenue across the IT sector will decline in 2009, a recession for the industry of up to 2%.
Technology companies dependent on discretionary spending, especially on consumers buying new products, will be "badly hit", he said. "Their outlook is looking much less healthy than they were a year ago, even six months ago."
Read the whole story here from ComputerWeekly...
Why We Need Fat Pipes: The Top 5 Bandwidth-Hungry Apps
Why We Need Fat Pipes: The Top 5 Bandwidth-Hungry Apps
Unless youre actively seeding torrent files or dream of one day having HD content streamed from the web to your TV, the debate over managing networks can seem hopelessly abstract. To help the rest of us understand why fast networks with a lot of capacity are so important, I asked networking giant Cisco for what it considers to be the top five bandwidth-hungry applications. Cisco mined the data it gathered for its visual networking index and came up with the top five in the consumer, business and mobile categories. I have chosen the following five based on how much bandwidth they use and how much speed they require in the network. While they dont take up much capacity today because theyre not in widespread use, they are representative of what one could do with a fast network with a lot of capacity.
Read about the Top 5 Bandwidth-Hungry Apps...
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