The World Wide Telescope is a project from Microsoft Research that made Robert Scoble cry, is now being featured on the latest round of TED Talks. This product looks truly amazing and will probably change the way we see our little spot in the universe. I can’t wait to give this a try with my 5 year old son when it is released this spring!
So I’ve started a new job today (will blog about that later) and my new employer has just sent me a brand new Windows laptop. It’s been about 2 years since I last developed using a Windows machine, so am wondering what essential software I should be downloading to install? What handy utilities and applications do you use in your day-to-day work?
One of the knocks I have heard against Silverlight has been around how long will it take Microsoft to obtain the same penetration as the Flash Player and if not how long, how will they do it?
If Microsoft is able to acquire Yahoo!, it certainly puts them in a much better position to quickly drive adoption of the Silverlight plugin. Based on Alexa traffic ranking, if Microhoo becomes reality, Microsoft will own 3 of the top 5 web properties on the internet. Yahoo is ranked one with a reach of 28% of all global Internet users. Live.com is ranked number four with a reach of 25% and MSN.com is ranked number five with a reach of 17%. Do the math and you get 70% of all global Internet users visiting a Microsoft property every day!
Now of course, MS would have to integrate some Silverlight apps into the popular Yahoo properties, but really that shouldn’t be all too hard.
With Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0 Manager you can remotely manage any number of IIS 6.0 servers from a Windows XP Professional workstation. Sure you could use remote desktop, but if you simply need to start and stop a server or create a virtual directory this tool is perfect!
[Link from Charlie Arehart]
Microsoft is feeling charitable? They recently announced that anyone can have IE6 and IE7 Running on a Single Machine through an offer that allows you to download a free Virtual PC image of Windows XP with IE6. Microsoft Virtual PC is free virtualization software that allows you to run multiple Operating Systems (Windows, Linux or Unix) while in Windows XP. This looks to be a great option for cross-browser testing!
Wow! Did I miss hell freezing over? Microsoft, Google and Yahoo! - the three major search engines - have United to Support Sitemaps. This can be nothing but good for web developers and content creators. Sitemaps are simple XML files that help search engines determine how to spider your site and how often to do it. For more coverage of this news check out some of these links…
This link is a bit old now, but it appears that PC users can Expect Vista to cost significantly less than XP. I wonder if this has anything to do with Apple’s OSX making the move to the Intel plaform and the consitantly low price of the Apple operating system? Let’s hope that Apple can provide some real competition in the OS marketplace - much like what we’re seeing now with Microsoft and IE7, RSS, Office formats, etc. Bring on the competition and the ensuing innovation!
It was a big day of announcements from Microsoft today:
Here is a quick summary of each announcement:
Really Simple Sharing is a pretty important announcement. It represents a very important contribution by Microsoft’s XML/RSS team that adds extensions to the RSS markup language. These extensions essentially turn RSS into a bi-directional technology that will help the process of synchronizing RSS and OPML. This is important as it will make it easier to use RSS and OPML between multiple applications, platforms, operating systems and users. This is a first step in removing some of the usability issues hindering wide-spread adoptance of RSS and OPML. Microsoft has also released these extension under a Creative Commons license, which indicates a move towards openness - which leads to the next announcement…
Next, Microsoft announced that they will be Standardizing the Microsoft Office Open XML formats by bringing the Microsoft Office Open XML formats to a standards body with the intention of eventually making the formats an ISO standard! This should open the door to true interoperability between competitors like Open Office and Corel Office (I think the later is still around). This is a huge announcement. I really don’t need all of the great features that Office has to offer. My needs of these tools are very limited, but I’m forced to use them as I need to exchange and collaborate on documents with my coworkers and clients. So maybe this announcement will mean that in the near future I won’t have to pay a bundle for software that I use in a limited manner, but can opt for the free and able Open Office productivity suite.
Finally, the Redmond company announced Windows Live Custom Domains, which is the launch of Microsoft’s email hosting package. On the outside it looks pretty attractive providing the following features:
For a cost of FREE it looks like a pretty good package, but you should be aware that it is advertising supported. When I first read this, I expected that the ads would show up when you read your emails - which is acceptable given the fact that they are offering this great package for free. But (yes with Microsoft there often is a but), it appears that early users of this service are reporting that the ads are also appended to all the emails you send! Pretty lame as far as I’m concerned. The other small problem (for me at least) is that this package is only available if you live in the 50 US states and Puerto Rico. I’m from Canada (as are 32 million other people) so I guess I won’t be sending email with Microsoft targeted ads.
Michael Arrington from TechCrunch has a great summary and preview of Windows Live. He is calling it “Much more than an AJAX Desktop” and says that “After what I saw today, I despair for many a silicon valley startup. Seriously”. Apparently there are some great features that include Skype like VOIP to POTS phones, and great email integration (as long as you’re using Hotmail).
