Software & Web

1 November 2006 - License transfers aren't the only thing the EULA for Microsoft's Windows Vista OS limits. The license also puts restrictions on how benchmarks of certain components of the OS can be published, another issue that is raising eyebrows as Microsoft still has not clarified how changes will specifically affect users. According to the Vista EULA, because the OS contains "one or more components" of the .Net Framework 3.0, users can conduct internal benchmarking of those components, but can't disclose the results of those benchmarks -- or measurements to compare rival products -- unless they comply with conditions found at a Microsoft Web site.

20 October 2006 - NVIDIA today announced NVPerfKit 2.1, a comprehensive suite of next-generation performance tools for the debugging and profiling of OpenGL and Direct3D software applications for Windows and Linux. Developers using NVPerfHUD 4 experience an average performance improvement of 35%, and find an average of 11 rendering bugs. By offering access to low-level performance counters inside the driver, as well as hardware counters inside the GPU, NVPerfKit 2.1 helps developers determine how applications use the GPU by identifying and confirming resolved performance issues for substantial time savings during application development.

19 September 2006 - Microsoft will start testing an Internet video-sharing service called Soapbox, the software company's answer to Web sensation YouTube. Soapbox is one facet of Microsoft's strategy to create attractive Internet content to lure away billions of Web advertising dollars from market leaders Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. Offering everything from funny home videos to clips from old TV shows, YouTube sprang out of nowhere late last year as an entertainment break for millions of broadband Web surfers. In August, the site had 34 million visitors, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. Soapbox will be offered to a limited number of users during an invitation-only test phase, but Microsoft said it will go fully live as a part of MSN Video within six months. In a departure from its past strategy of restricting MSN Video to its Internet Explorer browser and Windows Media Player, Microsoft will make Soapbox available for various browsers including Mozilla Firefox and Apple Computer Inc.'s Safari. The runaway success of free-to-view online video sites has raised the question of whether rights holders such as music, TV and movie companies should be compensated, even if clips are uploaded by users.

17 July 2006 - San Francisco, CA, July 11, 2006 - Havok, the premier provider of interactive software and services to digital creators in the games and movie industries, announces today the official release of Havok 4.0, a modular suite of artist tools and run-time technology that dramatically accelerates the development of cross-platform, cutting edge electronic games and special effects for films, meeting the needs of the world's top developers and producers. Havok 4.0 enhances Havok's industry-leading game-play physics and animation products (Havok Physics?and Havok Animation?. It also introduces two new products - Havok Behavior?and Havok FX?- to accelerate development of sophisticated interactive character behaviors, and to deliver an unprecedented level of physically-based "special effects" phenomena. The combined 4.0 solution represents a best-of-class SDK and tool set that puts power and flexibility in the hands of today's leading game developers and film effects wizards.

13 July 2006 - Microsoft's decision to delay Office 2007 last month appeared to foreshadow a similar fate for Vista, especially as CEO Steve Ballmer said in May the OS was on track to ship "early in the year"—omitting to reference the official January 2007 launch date. Bill Gates has now elaborated on the Vista launch situation with a statement that is none clearer: according to Gates, there is an "80 percent chance" that Vista will ship in January. Gates didn't clarify whether this probability was liable to change over time, although he added that he would be "glad" to delay the launch if beta testing reveals the OS is "not ready for prime time."

21 May 2006 - The Core Duo battery drain saga that was originally reported by Tom's Hardware has resurfaced. Anand Shimpi later correctly proved that the battery drain bug had absolutely nothing to do with Core Duo, but was actually a problem with Windows XP SP2. Just yesterday, Microsoft got around to publishing a fix for the problem.

2 May 2006 - Adobe today announced that its Macromedia Flash technology has been adopted by Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. and integrated with the PSP™(Playstation®Portable) system software version 2.70 – which became available on April 25th in Japan, North America and Europe. PSP users will be able to play Flash enabled games and view content on popular web sites and at the same time experience superior Web browsing capabilities when visiting millions of Flash powered web sites on the Internet.

14 April 2006 - Mozilla has released the latest version of Firefox with several security fixes, improvements to its stability as well as native binary support for Macintosh with Intel Core processors. As of this instant Mozilla hasn't disclosed the nature of the security fixes, the most serious of which could lead to remote code execution. Having checked Secunia earlier today, I saw no critical exploit listed there. So it must be one they have uncovered and fixed before anyone has discovered it. The nature of the exploit is likely to be disclosed within hours.

27 October 2006 - Microsoft finally attempted to clear up confusion over licensing of Windows Vista for power users who rebuild their PCs on a regular basis. But the answer from the software vendor did little to placate some users, who are still upset about Microsoft's one-machine transfer policy for Vista. Microsoft users who frequently change the hardware configuration of the system running Vista may fail Vista's new Software Protection Platform software-validation feature more than once. If they did, they would be required to purchase an additional license or use Microsoft's support services to activate Vista on a newly configured machine. The situation is similar to what many XP power users experience today, and that Microsoft has improved the algorithm used to determine what hardware configuration changes constitute a new device. The bottom line is that the hardware tolerance of product activation for Windows Vista has been improved and is more flexible than that for Windows XP. Microsoft believe these improvements will better accommodate the needs of their PC enthusiast customers.

28 September 2006 - Intel is working with Bapco on "Ecomark," a Sysmark-based benchmark that will take into account sleep times of a processor and even indicate how the user has to spend to run a computer system (without monitor) based on a very specific processor. Preliminary numbers provided by Intel indicate that an entry-level desktop Core 2 Duo system may cost just under $14 per year, while the mobile T7600 version is estimated to cost less than $10. Current benchmarks do not take into account that faster processors finish their tasks earlier than slower ones and therefore save power during the time chips are still working. Ecomark will recognize such scenarios and most likely will provide benchmark data that is very different from today's power-related benchmarks, such as Mobile Mark.

19 July 2006 - After officially cutting support for Windows 98 and Windows ME last week, Microsoft has unveiled a trimmed-down version of its flagship operating system dubbed Windows Fundamentals for Legacy PCs. Windows Fundamentals is based on the Service Pack 2 release of Windows XP Embedded, a spin-off of Windows XP Professional aimed at embedded devices. According to an older report by CNet, Windows Fundamentals—previously code-named Eiger—is essentially a thin client that can only run a few programs locally. Such programs include Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, and anti-virus software. However, the limited functionality allows the operating system to be squeezed onto much older systems than vanilla versions of Windows XP: CNet says Fundamentals can run on machines with original Pentium processors and just 64 MB of memory.

14 July 2006 - SUNNYVALE, Calif., and REDMOND, Wash. — July 12, 2006 — Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq: “YHOO”) and Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: “MSFT”) today will begin limited public beta testing of interoperability between their instant messaging (IM) services that enable users of Windows Live® Messenger, the next generation of MSN® Messenger, and Yahoo!® Messenger with Voice to connect with each other. This interoperability — the first of its kind between two distinct, global consumer IM providers — will form the world’s largest consumer IM community, approaching 350 million accounts.

13 July 2006 - New figures from web analytics firm OneStat show a significant rise in Mozilla Firefox's popularity in the United States. The browser now holds a usage share of 15.82% in the U.S., OneStat says, a sizeable jump over January's figure of 12.55%. This gain largely occurred at the expense of Microsoft's Internet Explorer, which has now sunk below the 80% mark in the U.S. with a usage share of 79.78%.

14 May 2006 - Microsoft is hip to the latest trends on the Internet, and blogging will be a part of the user experience with Office 2007. Joe Friend, lead program manager for Word 2007, discussed in his blog that Word 2007 will offer blog authoring and publishing.

26 April 2006 - The 3rd National e-card Competition 2006 is now on! Organised by River Valley Primary School and Crescent Girls’ School, with the support of Adobe, The Singapore Tourism Board, ITX Solutions Pte Ltd and ASKnLearn Pte Ltd, this competition aims to promote Singapore as a unique tourist destination. Open to all primary and secondary school students in Singapore, the competition invites students to form teams of two to four persons to create their own static or 20-second animated e-card using Adobe’s Macromedia Flash animation software. The deadline for registration is 15 May 2006 and the closing date for entries is 16 June 2006.

14 April 2006 - Google has opened up yet another beta program. This time, the company is showcasing its Calendar service. Google Calendar is fully integrated with GMail and can even recognize dates from email messages and add them to your calendar. Google Calendar features the ability to share calendar information with family and friends, integrated search, mobile access with event reminders and notifications and of course it's absolutely free. The service supports calendar data from Apple iCal, Microsoft Outlook, Yahoo! Calendar and any application that support .XML or .CSV files. Google Calendar supports IE 6.0+ and Firefox 1.07+ on Mac, Linux and Windows platforms.