Posts Tagged ‘software/news’

JavaScript, graphics performance improvements on tap for IE9

// November 19th, 2009 // No Comments » // Tech News

The first information about the next version of Microsoft’s web browser was revealed at PDC on Wednesday. The announcement described three main areas of improvement: JavaScript, web standards, and graphics technology. IE9 will contain a new, significantly faster JavaScript engine, it will have richer support for web standards like CSS 3, and it will use the new Direct2D and DirectWrite technology for its graphics and text rendering.

Running Windows 7 under OS X: Ars reviews VMware Fusion 3

// November 18th, 2009 // No Comments » // Tech News

VMware Fusion 3 was released last week into the anxiously trembling hands of desktop virtualization junkies, and we’ve run the release through a gamut of heavy tests to see if it’s able to meet the hype. At first glance, 3.0 doesn’t look to be teeming with new features, but the changes that are there are significant:

Have we started to fill our carbon sinks?

// November 18th, 2009 // No Comments » // Tech News

Each year, human beings put vast amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere through processes like the combustion of fossil fuels or the clearing land for agriculture. Thankfully, the majority of it doesn’t stay there, as there are a number of significant carbon sinks that pull somewhere around 60 percent of human emissions back out of the air, dissolving it into the oceans and sequestering it in growing forests. One of the worries about our continued carbon emissions is that these sinks could eventually start to fill, increasing the challenge involved in limiting the levels of atmospheric carbon. Two new studies have looked at the issue, and they come to what appear to be very different conclusions. Any process that removes carbon from the atmosphere can act as a carbon sink. These include basic processes like having the gas dissolve into the ocean, to more complex ones, like the sequestration that appears to take place in mature forests. The cumulative impact, however, is huge; carbon sinks are estimated to remove about 60 percent of the CO 2 that human activity puts in the atmosphere annually. (The remaining 40 percent is termed the airborne fraction.)

Microsoft: Azure to go live in January, for pay in February

// November 17th, 2009 // No Comments » // Tech News

Microsoft plans to transition its Windows Azure cloud computing platform from preview to full production capacity on 1st January next year, Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie announced at the annual PDC conference on Tuesday. The service, currently operating as a free Community Technology Preview (CTP), will remain no-cost throughout January; from February 1st it will start accumulating charges. The cost schedule was previously announced in July.

Microsoft selling crapware-free PCs in its stores

// October 28th, 2009 // No Comments » // Tech News

Not only is Microsoft reselling select Windows 7 PCs normally sold by its hardware partners, but the company is making sure they come only with the software it wants. Yes, that means that if you buy a PC from Microsoft, it won’t come with the usual “crapware,” though it won’t be a clean install either. Microsoft is still bundling its own software, including Windows Live Essentials and Microsoft Security Essentials, as well as Adobe software. Last Thursday when Windows 7 officially arrived, Microsoft opened up its first store in Scottsdale, Arizona (a second store is to follow in Mission Viejo, California). As expected, the store was stocked with Windows 7 PCs from various OEMs, and Microsoft even went the extra mile by selling them at its online store , though only in the US. It didn’t become clear until recently, however, that Microsoft was doing more to these PCs than just picking them up and putting them on display.

Google Wave: we came, we saw, we played D&D

// October 26th, 2009 // No Comments » // Tech News

From the early days of the printing press to the dawn of the VHS era, it’s been a clichĂ© that the first thing humans do upon inventing a new medium is distribute pornography with it. While this clichĂ© may hold true for most humans and most media, there is one conspicuous exception: the computer geek. From Nethack to play-by-post forums on the WWW, the first thing that computer geeks do upon inventing a new medium is play Dungeons and Dragons with it—the porn comes later, after the role-playing game itch is scratched. Thus it was that when I finally got my Google Wave invite and did a bit of poking around, I wasn’t the least bit surprised to quickly discover a handful of Wave-based roleplaying games already in progress, and many more in various stages of planning. In the past few days, I’ve watched games from the sideline and talked to some Game Masters and gamers—there seems to be an emerging consensus that Google Wave has as much RPG potential as any platform since the venerable and proverbial tabletop.

Windows 7 is here

// October 22nd, 2009 // No Comments » // Tech News

Windows 7 is now for sale around the world. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is officially kicking off the Windows 7 launch at an event in New York City. Microsoft’s partners will be unveiling new hardware and OEMs are now no longer recommending Vista to consumers and are switching their default choice to Windows 7. Today is easily the most important day for Microsoft this year (the operating system’s RTM date of July 22, 2009 comes in at a close second place). Here’s everything you need to know about what’s happening today.

Windows 7 engineers: how feedback shaped the final release

// October 21st, 2009 // No Comments » // Tech News

Last night, we had the pleasure of talking with three members of the Windows 7 product development and planning team: Bernardo Caldas, Group Product Planner; Steve Scallen, UX Research Manager; and Cameron Turner, Group Program Manager for Telemetry. We had a lot of questions we wanted answered, but due to time constraints and a handful of other factors, we stuck to the topic of how feedback shaped Windows 7. That being said, they still had quite a story to tell.

Hands-on: doubleTwist’s iTunes alternative leaves us wanting

// October 7th, 2009 // No Comments » // Tech News

Amazon has just gotten more competitive with iTunes on the desktop via a new release of doubleTwist for the Mac and Windows , which now offers an Amazon MP3 front-end as well as integrated media software and support for numerous handheld devices. The software, which launched Wednesday, comes courtesy of Jon Lech Johansen (”DVD Jon”), famed for his own personal war on DRM before dropping DRM in music became en vogue . doubleTwist’s goal is clearly to offer a clean and very iTunes-like interface for playing media and buying from Amazon MP3, though our initial experiences left us a little disappointed.

Apple may have Google Maps replacement waiting in the wings

// October 1st, 2009 // No Comments » // Tech News

Apple has had a fairly comfortable relationship with Google in the past—CEO Eric Schmidt had a place on Apple’s board, Google is the default search for its Safari browser, and Google Maps and YouTube are first-class applications on the iPhone. Apple has even created a maps API that allows iPhone developers to easily include Google Map data directly into their own apps. However, earlier this year Apple bought a small startup that created its own Google Maps competitor. The purchase may be a sign that growing competition between the two companies—which resulted in the recent resignation of Schmidt from Apple’s board —could be causing a rift in the once-friendly alliance. Apple bought online mapping company Placebase in July of this year. The only source of the information at the time was a tweet from a company that used Placebase’s PushPin API, noting the deal was “all hush hush.” Though Apple made no public announcement, the purchase was confirmed yesterday when Computerworld noticed that founder and CEO Jaron Waldman listed his current position as working in the “Geo Team” at Apple. Furthermore, websites for both Placebase and the PushPin API now just redirect to documentation for the API.

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