SuperSite Blog : Cloud computing

Windows Marketplace for Mobile Now Available on the Web

pthurrott — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 22:28:15 GMT

When Microsoft launched its new Windows Marketplace for Mobile alongside Windows Mobile 6.5 in early October, the online store was only available via a custom app on compatible Windows Mobile 6.5-based devices. But now, as promised, you can access the store on the web as well, from any PC-based web browser. It looks pretty good. (Queue tired comparison of Apple's 100,000 apps with Microsoft's ~350. Please. I beg you.)

Windows Live Gets YouTube, 18 More Content Partners

pthurrott — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:48:16 GMT

From Microsoft:

This week, 19 new third-party feed partners will be rolling out globally on Windows Live, bringing the total of feed partners up to 75 global web companies, so over 450 million Windows Live customers have even more ways to share what they're doing across the web and communicate with the people they care about. To get a better sense of how these new partners appear in the Windows Live experience, check out the brief demo video here.

Feed partners available to consumers this week at http://home.live.com include YouTube, Break.com and a host of regional web companies (full list available here.)

As of today, Windows Live now has feed partnerships with seven of the leading U.S. video sites, according to comScore – YouTube, MySpace, Hulu, Facebook, Break.com, Daily Motion and CNET – so consumers can easily see when their contacts upload a new video or leave a comment on one of these sites.

In addition to video partners, Windows Live has partnerships with leading web companies in seven different categories, including blogging, music, news, photo sites, portals, reviews and social networking.

Microsoft Reveals Bing Video Experience

pthurrott — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:26:51 GMT

Microsoft today expanded the capabilities of its Bing decision engine to include a new Bing Video destination that combines Bing video search and quality content from MSN Video.

The integrated experience provides a new online video destination that delivers a comprehensive and faster video experience with video search tools from Bing. This new experience offers the widest selection of high quality video services on the web including TV shows, videos, and content from top sites such as Hulu, MSN, ABC, and YouTube. The new Bing Videos experience begins rolling out today and will be fully available on both Bing and MSN by mid-November.

Here's the word from the Bing blog:

Turn off the lights (literally), share with your friends and kick back…you are about to see the latest Bing videos experience.

Starting today and rolling out over the next few days Bing videos will provide a new unified online video destination that delivers a comprehensive, organized, and high-quality video experience. This change will combine the powerful search experience of Bing, with the expertise of MSN video all into one destination.

With the New Bing Video you can now access videos from across the web, MSN’s array of high-quality videos, and videos from sites such as Hulu, ABC, and Youtube. Bing videos viewing options are nearly endless.

Check out the cool new home page which makes it easy to search and browse for the videos you want to see.

SkyDrive Explorer

pthurrott — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 16:06:32 GMT

I've been hoping and looking for some kind of solution that would let people access their 25 GB of free storage space on Windows Live SkyDrive using simple, Explorer-based drag and drop. It's been kind of a tough slog all year, however, with only one solution, Gladinet, which is hard to configure and buggy in use. But now a new contender has arrived, and while it's not perfect, it's much better than Gladinet. It's called SkyDrive Explorer, and as promised, it does provide Explorer-based drag and drop access to your SkyDrive account. The only issue I've seen is that you can't drag and drop collections of folders into SkyDrive. Instead, you can only drag files (at least that I've seen), while manually creating folders on the cloud side.

Anyway, I was hoping to hold off on this one for the podcast, but I've easily gotten 100 emails about it already, so I guess the cat is out of the bag. Thanks to everyone that wrote in about this tool.

Twitter Comes to Bing

pthurrott — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 19:48:47 GMT

Today at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, Qi Lu, President of Microsoft's Online Services Division, announced a new beta feature that enables people to easily search Twitter's real-time information feed directly in Bing. This new feature helps people make better decisions and more fully understand Twitter conversations by collecting, analyzing and uniquely presenting real-time Twitter content.

According to Microsoft, the new Twitter developments in Bing include:

A real-time index of the Tweets that match your search queries in results. This feature makes it easier to follow what's going on by reducing the amount of duplicates, spam, and adult content.
Giving you the option to rank tweets either by most recent or by "best match," where Bing considers a Tweeter's popularity, interestingness of the tweet, and other indicators of quality and trustworthiness.
Providing the top links shared on Twitter around your specific search query by showcasing a few of the most relevant tweets. Additionally, Bing automatically expands those small URLs to enable you to understand what people are tweeting about. Instead of showing standard search result captions, they select 2 top tweets to give users a glimpse of the sentiment around the shared link.

More info can be found on the Bing blog:

Twitter is producing millions of tweets every minute on every subject you can imagine. The power of those tweets as a form of data that can be surfaced in search is enormous. Innovative services like Twitter give us access to public opinion and thoughts in a way that has not before been possible. From important social and political issues to keeping friends up to date on the minute-by-minute of our daily lives, the web is getting more and more real time.

Search needs to keep up.

Today we announced that working with those clever birds over at Twitter, we now have access to the entire public Twitter feed and have a beta of Bing Twitter search for you to play with (in the US, for now). Try it out.

SharePoint 2010 Revealed

pthurrott — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 20:02:02 GMT

At its SharePoint Conference 2009 today in Las Vegas, Microsoft revealed details about the next version of its SharePoint platform.

"By taming the overflow of information across systems and technologies, SharePoint enables organizations to thrive," Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said. "SharePoint 2010 is the biggest and most important release of SharePoint to date. When paired with Microsoft Office 2010, SharePoint 2010 will transform efficiency by connecting workers across a single collaboration platform for business."

SharePoint Server is one of the fastest-growing products in Microsoft’s history, with over $1.3 billion in revenue, representing over a 20 percent growth over the past year. According to IDC, Microsoft attained a significant share of the collaborative content workspace market in 2008, and had the highest growth rate among top vendors with its Microsoft Office SharePoint Server.

During his keynote address, Ballmer talked broadly about SharePoint Server as a business collaboration platform and highlighted three key areas. One was how organizations can respond quickly to business needs with an improved developer platform that makes it easier to build rich content and collaboration applications. Another topic was the enhanced Internet site capabilities that help businesses drive revenue and retain customers on a single platform. The third was the choice and flexibility between on-premises and cloud solutions. At the event, Microsoft showcased the breadth of SharePoint Server 2010 that ranges from wikis to workflows, while Ballmer’s keynote address highlighted features and capabilities such as these:

A new ribbon user interface that makes end users more productive and customization of SharePoint sites easy

Deep Office integration through social tagging, backstage integration and document life-cycle management

Built-in support for rich media such as video, audio and Silverlight, making it easy to build dynamic Web sites

New Web content management features with built-in accessibility through Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0, multilingual support and one-click page layout, enabling anyone to access SharePoint Server sites

New SharePoint tools in Microsoft Visual Studio 2010, giving developers a premier experience with the tools they know and trust

Business Connectivity Services, which allow developers to connect capabilities to line-of-business data or Web services in SharePoint Server and the Office client

Rich APIs and support for Silverlight, representational state transfer (REST) and Language-Integrated Query (LINQ), to help developers rapidly build applications on the SharePoint platform

Enterprise features in SharePoint Online such as Excel Services and InfoPath Forms Services, which make it simple to use, share, secure and manage interactive forms across an organization

The addition of two new SharePoint SKUs for Internet-facing sites, including an on-premises and hosted offer

Microsoft SharePoint 2010 is part of the next wave of Microsoft Office-related products, which includes Microsoft Office 2010, Microsoft Project 2010, Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 and Microsoft Visio 2010, that are designed to give people the best productivity experience across PCs, phones and browsers.

Availability

The public betas of Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010, Office 2010, Project 2010 and Visio 2010 will become available in November 2009.

Get Windows 7 Help From Microsoft on Twitter

pthurrott — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 22:58:44 GMT

From Microsoft:

Today Microsoft launched @MicrosoftHelps, a new Twitter handle that provides customers around the world with help and information on Windows 7, in English. Through this social medium, Microsoft will monitor and respond to real-time Windows 7 tweets and use them to improve the information, support and experience customers have with Windows 7.

Through Twitter, customers will have better access to help when, how and where they need it, key to Microsoft’s vision for customer support. The @MicrosoftHelps team consists of experienced social media agents with extensive knowledge about support resources to get answers to customers questions. In addition to responding to direct tweets, they will monitor the Twittersphere and suggest resources to tweets about Windows 7 problems, issues or questions.

If anyone gets the Internet, it's Microsoft. :)

Google to Reveal More Chrome OS Details Thursday Night

pthurrott — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 00:27:14 GMT

Stung by a recent leak, Google will now host a special event tomorrow (Thursday) night at which they will reveal more details about their mysterious Chrome OS:

Join us for an evening at Google featuring presentations by Paul Rademacher on Google Maps and Ben Goodger on Chrome OS. Presentations will be followed by a short Q&A. Once the formalities have finished there will be further opportunity to meet and mingle with other attendees as well as Googlers from Chrome/ChromeOS, Maps, GMail and Search. Oh, and of course there will be plenty of food and beverages for everyone. We hope to see you there!

Note that the person doing the Chrome OS presentation is Ben Goodger, formerly of Netscape and Mozilla. You know, maybe Microsoft's angst about Netscape wasn't so misplaced after all. :)

Courier User Interface

pthurrott — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 14:32:53 GMT

Gizmodo continues its exclusive look at what is apparently a new Tablet PC design from Microsoft, the Courier. In this new video, you can actually see how the Courier would work in the real world, with a cool page-flipping experience that emulates a real book. It's got multi-touch and stylus support, of course, and all the requisite flicks, gestures, pinches, and other features you'd expect. Is it real? I hope so.

Courier User Interface

An Operating System for the Cloud

pthurrott — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 15:38:32 GMT

You have to be a paid subscriber to read the full article (or just purchase the print version, or pay online per article) but MIT's Technology Review has published a fascinating article about Google's Chrome OS efforts by none other than "Showstoppers" author G. Pascal Zachary. Here's a peek.

Eric Schmidt, Google's chief executive, said no for six years. Google's main source of revenue, which reached $5.5 billion in its most recent quarter, is advertising. How would the project they envisioned support the company's advertising business? The question wasn't whether Google could afford it. The company is wonderfully profitable and is on track to net more than $5 billion in its current fiscal year. But Schmidt, a 20-year veteran of the IT industry, wasn't keen on shouldering the considerable costs of creating and maintaining an OS and browser for no obvious return.

Finally, two years ago, Schmidt said yes to the browser. The rationale was that quicker and more frequent Web access would mean more searches, which would translate into more revenue from ads. Then, in July of this year, Schmidt announced Google's intention to launch an operating system as well. The idea is that an OS developed with the Internet in mind will also increase the volume of Web activity, and support the browser.

Google's browser and OS both bear the name Chrome. At a year old, the browser holds a mere 2 to 3 percent share of a contested global market, in which Microsoft's Internet Explorer has a majority share and Firefox comes in second. The Chrome operating system will be released next year. Today, Windows enjoys around 90 percent of the global market for operating systems, followed by Apple's Mac OS and the freeware Linux. Does Google know what it's doing?

Going after Microsoft's operating system used to be hopeless. When I covered the company for the Wall Street Journal in the 1990s, I chronicled one failed attempt after another by software innovators to wrest control of the field from Bill Gates ...

So for Schmidt to finally agree to develop an OS suggests less a technological shift than a business revolution. Google's new ventures "are game changers," he now says.

What has changed? Google has challenged the Microsoft franchise, further diminishing a declining force. The latest quarter gave Microsoft the worst year in its history. Revenue from its various Windows PC programs, including operating systems, fell 29 percent in the fiscal quarter that ended in June. Some of the decline stems from the global economic slowdown. But broad shifts in information technology are also reducing the importance of the personal computer and its central piece of software, the OS. In many parts of the world, including the two most populous countries, China and India, mobile phones are increasingly the most common means of reaching the Web. And in the rich world, netbooks, which are ideal for Web surfing, e-mailing, and Twittering, account for one in every 10 computers sold.

Good stuff. If you're in a bookstore, grab the October issue and check it out.

AT&T enters 21st century, adds MMS to iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS

pthurrott — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 13:47:05 GMT

Apple:

MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) is now available to AT&T customers.

AT&T MMS requires iPhone OS 3.1 and a carrier settings update.

Here's what it looks like (on a Mac) ...

Unlike other iPhone updates I've installed via iTunes, this one is actually very quick. Very quick. On the other hand, you do have to hard reset the iPhone to enable it. Once it's rebooted, which takes more time than booting a PC, you can use the standard Messages app to send one or more photos with a text message. You'll see the following new toolbar above the virtual keyboard:

Photos have to be added one at a time, which is no big deal. (But I wish Apple would drop the awful iChat-like "thought bubble" UI in this SMS/MMS app. It's just childish looking.)

Needless to say, this being Apple and AT&T, the complaints have already begun rolling in. I'm sure they'll get it right eventually.

Google Sync: Now with push Gmail support

pthurrott — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 16:57:27 GMT

This is big stuff, and if there's anyone actually paying for MobileMe a year from now, well, you already looked like a fool, so what's the difference?

The Google Mobile Blog reports today that Google has added push email support to Google Sync, which previously provided that support for Google-based contacts and calendar on the iPhone (and iPod touch), Blackberry, Windows Mobile, and Nokia S60 devices. Here's the word:

Earlier this year, we launched Google Sync which allows you to synchronize your Gmail Contacts and Google Calendar with your iPhone, Windows Mobile, and S60 devices. Today, we're adding Gmail support to Google Sync for iPhone, iPod Touch and Windows Mobile devices.

Using Google Sync, you can now get your Gmail messages pushed directly to your phone. Having an over-the-air, always-on connection means that your inbox is up to date, no matter where you are or what you're doing. Sync works with your phone's native email application so there's no additional software needed. Only interested in syncing your Gmail, but not your Calendar? Google Sync allows you to sync just your Contacts, Calendar, or Gmail, or any combination of the three.

To try Google Sync, visit m.google.com/sync from your computer. If you're already using Google Sync, learn how to enable Gmail sync.

Good stuff. Enjoy!

Google: Apple DID reject Google Voice. Thus, Apple DID lie to the FCC

pthurrott — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 19:04:05 GMT

Google's response (here it is in PDF format) to the FCC firmly states that Apple lied, pure and simple:

Apple's representatives informed Google that the Google Voice application was rejected because Apple believed the application duplicated the core dialer functionality of the iPhone. The Apple representative indicated that the company did not want applications that could potentially replace such functionality.

[Apple senior vice president Phil] Schiller informed [Google] that Apple was rejecting the Google Voice application.

Google Latitude was also rejected, and Google noted that there was no contact at all from AT&T about these issues. Meanwhile, Google continues to "work with" Apple. You know, as much as you can.

Game, set, match. And if there is anyone out there that still believes Apple, seriously, get a life.

Google Chrome 3.0

pthurrott — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 18:08:31 GMT

Just one year into its life and 2.8 percent market share later, Google Chrome hits the big 3.0...

Thanks to a full year of great feedback from our users, we're kicking off our second year of Google Chrome with a brand new stable release. This stable release incorporates many of the improvements and features that we tested out in our most recent beta release, including a 150% increase in Javascript performance since our very first beta, a freshly redesigned New Tab page, an improved Omnibox, Themes capability, as well as HTML5 features.

If you haven't tried Google Chrome recently, we invite you to give it a whirl. Many of the improvements in this release were inspired by the responses from users, so we're all ears if you have any feedback. If you're already using Google Chrome, you'll be automatically updated to this new version soon, but if you're itching to try this right away, download the latest version at google.com/chrome.

More info at the Official Google Blog ...

This new release of Google Chrome is faster than ever, as we continue to provide a modern browser that starts up quickly from your desktop, and is fast to load web pages and web applications.

Notably, we've improved by more than 150% in Javascript performance since our very first beta, and by more than 25% since the most recent stable release.

When you download and fire up this latest release of Google Chrome, you'll notice that the New Tab page sports a new look. We've redesigned the New Tab page so that it's easy to use and easily customizable, following some rigorous testing.

We've also improved one of the most used and loved features of Google Chrome, the Omnibox. Because it's a search bar as well as the web address bar, the multi-talented Omnibox helps you get to the sites you're looking for with just a few keystrokes. With this release, we've optimized the presentation of the drop-down menu and added little icons to help you distinguish between suggested sites, searches, bookmarks, and sites from your browsing history.

We're very excited about HTML5 becoming standard in modern browsers, and continued to add HTML5 capabilities to this stable release. We're particularly excited about the <video> tag in HTML5, which makes embedding videos in a page as simple as embedding regular images. The <video> tag also allows video playback without a plug-in.

After testing out Themes for Google Chrome in the beta channel, we're finally releasing it in this stable release. Themes allow you to deck out your browser with colors, patterns and images. We'll be bringing more Themes for the browser soon, but in the meantime, you can change the theme of your browser by visiting the Themes Gallery.

MySpace, Hulu and more on Windows Live this week

pthurrott — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 17:48:33 GMT

From Microsoft:

23 new third-party feed partners and 4 new contacts partners will be rolling out globally on Windows Live this week, giving 500 million+ Windows Live customers even more ways to share their online lives and communicate with the people they care about.

What's New:

Feed partners available to consumers this week at http://home.live.com include MySpace, Hulu, Goodreads and a host of regional web companies (full list available here.)

New contacts partners, including AOL, Google and Hyves, join Facebook, hi5, LinkedIn and MySpace this week in allowing Windows Live customers to securely share and exchange contacts between Windows Live and these social networks.

With more than 50 leading global and regional web companies now available on Windows Live, customers can easily share their activities from across the Web from the sites that are most important to them.

More info on the Windows Live Blog:

Last year, when we updated Windows Live services, we added a broad range of partnerships with leading web companies, to make it simpler for you to share your activities across a number of popular web sites with the people you care about the most.

We know that you have a busy life online, with multiple accounts on separate websites for sharing different things in many different contexts – from blog posts to status updates to photos, and more. That’s why we keep adding more feed and contacts partners to Windows Live – so that you have one place to visit to see what your friends are up to, and one easy way of sharing updates with your network.

Not only does this help simplify your life online, it also opens up the possibility of discovery. By adding these feeds to your profile, you can help your friends discover new things and ideas they hadn’t known, and you will get the same experience by learning about some of the things they decide to share.

In April, we rolled out even more partnerships, including some of the most popular international sites for our customers around the world

Today, we are happy to announce that 23 new feed partners are rolling out in Windows Live this week. New feed partners span a variety of online destinations like blogging sites, music and video sites, photo sites, news sites, reviews sites, portals and social networks, including Blingee, BuddyTV, Goodreads, Hulu, Judy’s Book, MySpace, Newsvine, OleOle, Qik and SlideShare. For a complete list of Windows Live partners, click here.

Adding feeds to your Windows Live Profile is easy. Simply click “Add Web activities” on the left side of your Windows Live Profile page, and select the partner sites you’d like to add. For more detailed instructions on how to add these feeds see our previous blog post.

Also, starting today, you will be able to easily invite friends from AOL Google and Hyves to Windows Live, and vice versa. These contact partners join existing contact partners like Facebook and LinkedIn. By providing you the option to bring in your contacts from different networks, Windows Live makes it simple for you to manage your contact lists from one place by consolidating them on Windows Live. For a quick tutorial on how to share contacts between Windows Live and third party sites, refer to this previous blog post by Rob Dolin.

To get started, visit your Windows Live homepage at http://www.home.live.com