Latest Technology News

During another overflowing demonstration here at PDC, long-time Microsoft developers Don Box and David Langworthy (two of the most popular presenters every year) introduced developers to M, the new modeling language for data.

The term modeling is being introduced here in more than one context, and for the realm of enterprise application developers, it refers to the ability to produce a workable schema that may or may not be populated with explicitly typed data. The need for more direct modeling has been known for long enough, though perhaps not understood; it hasn't occurred to people that the task could be approached through the use of another language.

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Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer sent the following memo to partners and customers about the Windows Azure platform that was announced at PDC 2008 this week and the company's software plus services vision. It's a long read, but important if you want to stay on top of where Microsoft is headed.

Subject: A Platform for the Next Technology Revolution

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Just two weeks after releasing Windows Embedded Standard 2009 based on Windows XP, Microsoft said Tuesday that the next version -- code-named "Quebec" -- will be built atop the Windows 7 code base.

The news is significant, because it indicates that Microsoft is serious about making Windows 7 capable of running on devices with limited power. During the PDC keynote Tuesday, Microsoft Windows head Steven Sinofsky showed the audience a netbook (or sub-notebook) running Windows 7. Most netbooks currently ship with Windows XP or Linux.

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Two long-running disputes involving the Web's most prominent search sites appear to be nearing resolution this week, with wins for both human rights and book lovers.

First, Microsoft, Google and Yahoo have jointly announced the completion of guidelines covering standards of operation in countries with laws that conflict with our own standards of free speech and human rights.

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Taking advantage of current bargain-basement stock prices, rural phone company CenturyTel today purchased another company in the same category , Sprint spin-off Embarq, for $5.8 billion.

With more consumers now using wireless and cable services, rural phone companies are undergoing line losses.

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Finally delivering in full the product which originally brought it to prominence, MTV Networks has opened MTV Music, a destination site for music videos, delivered in a fashion similar to YouTube.

MTV broke ground as the first channel dedicated strictly to airing music videos in the early '80s, and broke further ground as the first network to air reality television in the early '90s. It may be a little late to the party when it comes to social video, but the Viacom property purports to have more than 16,000 classic videos and exclusive MTV performance footage. By focusing the brand on that for which it's known best, MTV music stands to outpace YouTube in music video content.

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The "cloud" grew a little more crowded today, as Yahoo announced plans to host the open source-enabled Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS) in an offering specifically geared to colleges, universities, and other educational institutions.

Yahoo today introduced Zimbra Hosted for Education (EDU), a new SaaS edition of its open source e-mail and collaboration software which is tailored to partial or whole campus deployment among students, faculty, staff and alumni at educational institutions.

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Yesterday, Google Labs announced new experimental features that can add other Google apps into the Gmail viewer.

The three new features found under Settings > Labs add new boxes in the left navigation panel in Gmail. One is a dedicated Google Calendar gadget that shows upcoming appointments and gives alerts when a schedule event occurs. Another is a gadget dedicated to Google Docs, which makes all of your documents searchable and accessible from within Gmail.

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In what will undoubtedly be perceived as Microsoft's response to Google in the Web applications field, the company this morning gave a first peek into Web-based versions of its Office components, which it's presenting as supplemental to the main Office package.

Though the Web-hosted versions of Microsoft Word and Excel bear respectable similarity to their desktop-hosted counterparts, and even though they will probably be fully capable of running on their own, Microsoft representatives this morning at PDC 2008 introduced these components as supplements to Office -- moreover, as features customers get access to by purchasing and using Office 14.

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Update: We have posted the answers to some questions

We're going to be sitting down shortly with Mike Nash, Vice President of Windows Product Management, who heads up Windows 7 development. Now that the news and screenshots are out there, what else do you want to know about Windows 7?

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A one-day offer of free software has servers at CodeWeavers Digg-ing out of a hole not unlike the one the OpenOffice.org project found itself in a couple of weeks ago -- the performance pit of extreme popularity.

Back in July, the CEO of CodeWeavers issued the "Great American Lame Duck Presidential Challenge" to the White House, saying that if President Bush met one of several economic or security goals, the company would offer their wares free for a day. As of October 14, Osama bin Laden was still on the loose and the jobs market is still appalling, but the price of gas has dropped sufficiently for Jeremy White to make good on his promise. (Nothing in the challenge said the price drop couldn't be caused by economic chaos. It really does pay to be specific.)

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Sony's PlayStation3 metaverse Home that was unveiled over a year ago is finally approaching the beta phase, and subscribers to Sony's online magazine Qore are receiving the first keys outside of private beta to test the service.

In March 2007, when Home was officially unveiled, a large-scale beta was expected to take place "in April prior to the final launch." Then, at the Tokyo Game Show six months later, Sony Computer Entertainment CEO Kazuo Hirai announced the service would be delayed until spring.

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Giving a nod to developers who've apparently given a lot of feedback, as well as "certain commercials," Microsoft's platform chief Steven Sinofsky acknowledged that perhaps User Account Control in Windows Vista may have been...a little annoying. In turn, Windows 7 has additional UAC settings.

"We got a lot of feedback about Windows Vista," Sinofsky said, before pausing several seconds for the inevitable developer response. Given the vast amount of response he received, he said, "We have to do what developers do." That is, to sit back, re-evaluate, and say, "What did we learn from that?" That, he said, is what engineering is about.

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The 3.0 version announced today enhances secure connectivity, with Wi-Fi integration, USB support, SSL and support for a FAT32-compatible file system. Both touch and gesture support has been added to user interface options.

The .NET Micro Framework is designed for embedded systems, extending the .NET platform to handheld devices and smaller. Developers working with .NET MF can utilize higher level programming languages to control resource-limited devices.

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After another long, lofty, and philosophy-laden introduction from Microsoft's Ray Ozzie this morning, the #1 new feature being discussed in the "cleaned up" Windows 7 is improved file and application access.

The rethought Windows 7 taskbar, while not exactly like the dock in Mac OS X, certainly borrows some inspiration from it. Based on the early demonstrations given by Julie Larson-Green this morning, we're seeing a kind of sliding dock that is just as tall as the current taskbar, but which omits the text to the right of icons. The identities of running programs or active documents is ascertained by moving the mouse pointer over the icon.

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