A while ago, Internet Explorer 8 beta 2 was released to the general public which meant it was ready for some general testing. Most of the new features on IE8 were created to catch up with all the much better competing browsers. However, there were some good new features that make it unique. Of course, lots of criticism has also come up, saying how bad IE8 compared to other browsers like Firefox. But it's a Beta, so you shouldn't expect too much from it. I was pretty surprised to see how far IE8 had progressed from IE7, but it still has a ways to go.
Here's a brief review of the unique features of IE8 Beta 2:
The accelerators, which were called activities in Beta 1, are definitely a great improvement and very useful tool in general for most people. With plenty of different activities to choose from, and probably plenty more to come (it's open to developers so custom accelerators can be built), it'll provide convenience for the users. It's kind of like AnswerTips except with a lot more options.
Web Slices is also a new feature that is helpful to get you the information you want from your favorite websites without having to load them. I personally won't have much use for it because I don't check for updates to things much but they are useful and you can think of it as a mini feed reader that reads websites instead of feeds, which is quite interesting.
Their new tab system is also much improved and shows that they are starting to innovate on existing features. Now, tabs are color coded in groups, so that whenever you click on a link to go to a new tab, the new tab will be in the same color category for easy browsing. You can also close groups of tabs together.
They've also got the visual search which is in my opinion pretty useless. It really doesn't do anything to help you search for better results unless all the search results look the same except for the images.
By the way, if you haven't tried beta 2 yet, I suggest you don't. It's highly unstable and has many bugs which are bound to happen because it's still a beta. There are enormous amounts of errors that can occur, and it sometimes closes by itself randomly. Fortunately, their backup system is great! It actaully boasts the ability to back up your tabs properly and quickly. Also, it can just close one tab after it finds that only one tab is responsible for errors.
That pretty much sums up IE8 beta 2, except I should mention that with IE8, the IE line of uncompliant browsers will stop. Now, webmasters' two CSS sheets are no longer for IE and the other browsers, but instead for IE7+under, and IE8+firefox and all the other compliant browsers. I hope IE8 will prove to be a great browser. After all, IE still holds the dominant position in terms of market share, which means most people are still plagued by IE7's lack of features and performance and are putting up with it by being too lazy to switch, or just want to be loyal to Microsoft. IE8 still has a lot of catch up to do, but at least Microsoft seems to be finally showing some interest in this browser field.
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Sunday, August 31, 2008
Microsoft finally shows new interest with IE8 Beta 2
Competitors take aim at iPhone 3G holes
The latest craze has been all about the iPhone 3G, getting over 1 million sales in its first weekend. It's the phone that everybody's just been waiting for, and you can bet there's lots of competitors that are jealous. With lots of iPhone hype all around us, it's become the the coolest gadget you can get. Unfortunately, nothing is ever perfect, and such is the same with the iPhone. Although, we're not exactly sure who to blame for the latest network problems that many American iPhone users have experienced in the San Francisco area.
Right now, most people are blaming AT&T for the network problems on their 3G high speed network. Apple's got a great track record of delivering well when it's called for, and there are millions of Apple fans out there that believe Apple can do no wrong.
I personally believe it's something to do with Apple. I don't think AT&T is really causing the problems here, seeing as 3G users in other countries are also experiencing reception issues. Whether or not it has to do with the chip from Infineon, is beyond me. From what I can gather from users themselves, it seems that it's not just certain cities that experience the problem. It seems that some people who live in the same area have conflicting experiences, which is strange. AT&T's network is generally reliable for almost all the other mobile phones they provide service for. I suspect that it's a communication problem between the iPhone, the new radio chip, and AT&T's network. Perhaps the dropped calls are because of Apple's software, and the network problems themselves (like low signal qualities) are caused by the new radio chip. Anyway, enough of an intro, let's get back to our main topic.
While the iPhone is suffering from plenty of complaints, Verizon is trying to take advantage and claiming that their 3G network is better than AT&T's. Verizon is doing its best to tell everyone how bad the iPhone is, and how they offer better services. Verizon's Jeffrey Nelson, a Verizon corporate communications executive, has been sending tons of messages almost daily for the past two weeks, informing analysts of the various articles and blog posts concerning the issues with the iPhone 3G network. They seem to be bent on making everyone see it their way. Who wouldn't? With a massively popular device like the iPhone, competitors will no doubt love to cause an uproar and perhaps steal some of the iPhone's glory.
Are you going to switch to Verizon because of this? Probably not. I think even existing Verizon customers who have switched to the iPhone and experience these problems aren't likely to switch back. AT&T and Apple may not be giving any information on these 3G issues, but that may just be because they don't have much experience working together, when both of them like to have full control. Verizon, I've heard has incredibly bad customer service and hasn't changed at all. Sometimes I wonder why people are still using Verizon at all (although, their network and products are pretty good, it's only the customer service that needs some improvement).
Despite these recent problems, I think the iPhone is going to stay a long time. In the future, people will probably even forgot that this ever happened. I just hope Apple and AT&T can resolve this soon, so everyone will be happy. There is a lot at stake here for both these companies, and I think they will be able to meet the expectations of everyone. But for now, if you're unhappy with the status of the 3G network, just temporarily use Edge whenever your signal is bad. More updates later if anything happens.
Update: I almost forgot, but if you want to help fix this issue for everyone and are an iPhone user, you need to get the update that was released earlier. I think most people have probably already gotten the update, but it's important that everyone gets the update, because, if you don't get it, it doesn't just affect you, it's pretty much a network wide problem, so if you haven't gotten it, get it immediately.
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Saturday, August 30, 2008
Audio ads for internet radio saving the industry?
Web applications like Pandora, Imeem, Shoutcast, and a host of other related sites provide access to Internet Radio. Those sites are just some of the most popular ones out there. Unfortunately, Royalty fees have been going up and up, ever since the decision was made by the Copyright Royalty Board for the following per performance rate in creases:
2006 - $.0008 per performance
2007 - $.0011 per performance
2008 - $.0014 per performance
2009 - $.0018 per performance
2010 - $.0019 per performance
These rates are far too high, and it's been a long fight for lower rates. At the current rates, most of the revenue produced on even large webcasters are been eaten up. Since last year, many webcasters have even closed. However, there may be a solution, and that solution is to find new revenue sources, such as audio ads.
Most webcasters rely on ads on their websites, but it is possible to use ads directly on their services to gain more revenue. While this may be a great way to get more revenue to sustain themselves, it also might be annoying to a lot of listeners.
Just think, hearing an ad after every song? Well, it might be annoying, but just like the video ads on many video sharing services out there, we'll have to put up with it. Otherwise, those services may be just gone. It's a part of service evolution. I think it's a great idea to start using targeted audio ads. With the new iPhones and mobile technologies, a lot more people are also using free online internet radio services more. Pandora said their growth rate was up almost 40% thanks yo the iPhone. These services are becoming more popular, and there has to be a way to provide it for free. If the royalties are causing so much distress, then maybe audio ads and other new revenue sources will be a good sacrifice to keeps these sites going.
It's a large industry that's going to keep growing, and higher royalties aren't going to stop it.
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Dear Adobe Vents are getting to Adobe
In our world, we have vents all over the place. But do they go where we want them? It seems that indeed they do, and are a backdoor to sneak in stuff, whether it's people like in those movies, or the air for a refreshing breeze. Dear Adobe, a site that lets people rant on about Adobe Systems Software is clearly getting to Adobe.
So what is Dear adobe exactly? It's a site that started when Erik Frick and Adam Meisel had a conversation "complaining about Photoshop. Both of us being Web design nerds, we figured, 'Why not create a forum for people to vent? Who knows, maybe Adobe will listen," as written in their Dear adobe blog post.
Well, Adobe certainly heard about it. Photoshop Principal Product Manager John Nack recently wrote on his blog about Dear Adobe, and saying
Just because it would be unprofessional of me or others to rant about this or that aspect of the company in public, don't for a second think it's not happening behind closed doors. As I remind my teammates, "I swear because I care"--and I care a lot, at high volume. It is, to borrow a phrase, "an up-at-dawn, pride-swallowing siege that I will never fully tell you about."I guess there will always be a way for complaints to get somewhere. Are you a regular user of Adobe products too? Then maybe you should go and rant about stuff as well. Maybe your own comments will get heard too, after all, even a a statement like "You f___ing f___ers should be in jail just for calling that software" was heard and given a reply from Caleb Belohlavek of Adobe.
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Friday, August 29, 2008
Better Satelite imaging resolution from google to come
Soon, Google will be upgrading their satellite imaging by using a new higher resolution satellite for their services. Google maps and Google Earth are two such services that use Google's current satellite imaging technology which, at its worst, can only be used for large geographic objects at 15 square meters per pixel.
The new satellite will be provided by GeoEye, and in their deal, google will be the exclusive right holder for the use of GeoEye's satellite for an online mapping service. It also includes the placement of the google logo on the satellite itself. This new satellite will be able to provide resolutions of 41 cm but under the liscense with the U.S. government, google will only be allowed to provide 50 cm resolutions.
I think this will probably be a useful upgrade to google maps for people who like to pick out specific locations on their map. Although, I really don't think this higher resolution will actaully do anything to help the majority of people. Google's current technology can already see individual houses, and there's not much more beyond that, that people need. Perhaps it will have a better use in the future. Would you like this new resolution? Leave a comment and discuss it here.
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Youtube isn't safe from the lawsuit yet
As I post earlier about the Youtube case and how Youtube is probably going to be more confident but not exactly safe yet, this is pretty much a confirmation of that, with some more reasons, and details.
Like I said before, Veoh complies with the DMCA and removes videos upon request. This is probably the biggets distinction between Veoh and Youtube.
The copyright infringement lawsuit that was filed by Io Group against Veoh, was filed BEFORE Io Group asked Veoh to take down the video (I'm not sure if they did at all...). That's basically the biggest reason why the copyright lawsuit didn't go through. Veoh is clear about taking down videos that are infringing on copyright, and they do complies with their policies. All the companies have to do, is just ask them to take it down (basically alerting them about the problem). Now Io Group it seems decided to start filing their infringement lawsuit before telling Veoh anything. Obviously, Veoh's not in the wrong.
With Youtube's copyright case, Viacom had actually told Youtube about 100,000 times to take down the videos before suing them. The thing is, Youtube had been responding if only slightly. What we should note here is that the veoh victory was probably benefitial to youtube but they're not fully off the hook. If Viacom can prove that Youtube's business is based on piracy as was done in the Napster and Grokster cases. I think, really, the win in the copyright infringement case just puts in stone what online video sharing services should be doing and what they can't do. As long as Youtube continues to follow their current policies (or even adds better rules). Plus, Youtube is going to start using some more antipiracy technologies in September, which I can think will prove that youtube is taking measures to stop piracy and this will likely be a stump to Viacom's lawsuit.
PS: As I was writing this post, somebody told me youtube might close in september. Now that's just foolish (no offense). First, google buys it for $1.65 billion and now they wanna clsoe it down? I don't think so. Second, if thye were gonna close it, why plan to use new antipiracy technologies? If you have any information about this rumor, give a comment.
Veoh defeats copyright lawsuit
I'm sure we all know what Veoh is. And if you don't, well Veoh is a video sharing website just like youtube, except it also has a bunch of features like Veoh TV, internet TV and lots more. Anyway, since Veoh is like youtube, and youtube has been complained against for copyright infringements, there's bound to be lawsuits and complaints against Veoh too, especially now that it's becoming much more popular than before.
Veoh has just recently won their copyright infringement lawsuit. The copyright lawsuit began in 2006 by Io Group and has dragged on for a while. Veoh managed to defend themselves by saying they complied with the DMCA laws and the court found that this was the case. What exactly did they do?
Well, Veoh said that their program was self controlled and thus they had no active role in it, which meant they couldn't control what went on their website. Plus, they also deleted videos that copyright owners asked them to delete. This is no doubt true and IMO it's quite fair.
With this new victory against the copyright infringement lawsuit, Youtube has more confidence that they too will win the battle against Viacom's $1 billion infringement lawsuit. This was the statement from Google that was on a Wall Street Journal post:
It is great to see the court confirm that the DMCA protects services like YouTube that follow the law and respect copyrights...YouTube has gone above and beyond the law to protect content owners while empowering people to communicate and share their experiences online.Unfortunately for Youtube, simply because Veoh won their case doesn't mean Youtube will as well. There is a very important reason for this. And IMO, Veoh is a completely fair video sharing website while Youtube may have some problems in their case. (Not that I'm against Youtube, just that they need to brush up their system) You see, Veoh actually holds liscensing for many or some of its videos from copyright owners. Youtube, on the other hand does not. The court also issused a statement about other unscrupulous video sharng websites not being able to hide under this protection. It may have been referring to sites like Youtube. Though, I don't think youtube is likely to be defeated. In fact, I don't think any website that immediately removes video content upon request is going to be defeated.
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Getting past spam filters with Art
ASCII art has been around for a long while. But news is, it can be used for getting past spam filters.Recently, there have been much more of this kind of spam than ever before. You may soon see some of this spam as well in your inbox (Yeah, I said inbox not junk, not a typing error ).
Most spam filters detect spam by keywords or url links that filters detect as spam websites. However, with ASCII art, spam filters won't be able to detect the spam messages. This is because the art is basically a huge number of characters that together form a message while individually meaning nothing. Unfortunately for the spammers, we have no need to worry about this because of its current inefficiency.
By using this technique, spammers can't use clickable links and the messages can easily be unclear even to the reader. This makes the spam messages pretty useless. If you'd like to find out more about ASCII art, you can jsut search it up, and you'll probably find a lot of generators for ASCII as well.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Javascript Speed up on Firefox 3.1?
Mozilla programmers are creating a new feature to come in Firefox 3.1 called TraceMonkey which they say will drastically improve the performance of Javascipt items running on Firefox.
Many of you probably noticed even if you're not very familiar with online applications, that most web based applications involving image editing or 3D graphics or other things that Javascript generally doesn't run fast with, are compiled with Adobe Flash or other such technologies. Apparently, this new feature of Firefox will allow Javascript to run twice as fast as it currently does on Firefox 3. For many tasks involving Javascript, their speed will be several times faster.
Tracemonkey is a just-in-time compiler. Javascript is usually interpreted by the browser line by line as the program runs, which is a much slower process than if the software was precompiled into a binary file (such is the case with normal software). It seems that TraceMonkey's name is made of two key aspects of this feature. the Monkey coming SpiderMonkey, firefox's current interpreter, and Trace for the tracing technology that TraceMonkey uses to find the most important parts of a javascript software and also find the loops of activity that occur. Tests have already shown TraceMonkey's effectiveness and it will probably be first implemented in 3.1 Beta.
I myself am a Firefox user, and in the time of this writing, I'm using Firefox 3. I will be glad to see this come through 3.1 as well as the other new features. If Javascript can load much faster this way, then perhaps we'll see a much more widespread use of Javascript and in new areas.
The Qwerty Keyboard
This is our first Helpful answers post, and I hope you will like it.
For those of you who have always wondered about "Why do we use the Qwerty Keyboard?", you can now relax and see the answer here.
Some of you may think or just assumed that it is the best keyboard style perfected for speed. This is not the case. There are two important stories here that will make you understand the impact and history of the Qwerty Keyboard. We'll start with why we use it.
I don't really need to go into deep detail here, so I'll just give you the short story. Basically, in the 1870s, an inventor created the QWERTY keyboard because the alphabetical keyboard caused people to type too fast, when the technology was yet to catch up, causing lots of problems and "clashes" with the keys. Eventually, after a long time of trial and error, this keyboard was created with the brand name "TYPE WRITER" being able to be typed only using one row (first row). The Qwerty keyboard is far from being the perfect keyboard, when most people are left (edit, sry I meant Right) handed, and most keys that the English language use a lot of are on the left side.
Now, let's take a look at how people got the misconception of QWERTY being the fastest keyboard around. This is actaully quite ambiguous but it really boils down to a challenge that somebody had from somebody else. It goes like this, someone with the alphabetical keyboard challenged a QWERTY user in a typing contest of some sort. Most people used the 4 finger type and peck method of typing at the time, including the challenger. However, the QWERTY user hired a professional typer who memorized the whole QWERTY layout and who used the 8 finger typing method. I'm sure you can guess who won and how much faster...
And that's the end of this Helpful Answer post. Remember, you can always ask questions in the comments if you'd like to see your own question answered.
BlitzTech Update August 2008
Hello everyone, this is a notice of some recent changes and some upcoming changes to Blitztech Blog.
As some of you may have noticed already, the site look has changed sginificantly, including the background and colors. A number of minor changes have also been added to the blog or deleted. Here's a quick list of all or most of the changes that have taken place here at BlitzTech.
1. Background image
2. Header and sidebar colors
3. More sidebar gadgets like the latest software gadget on the left sidebar and the new Technorati favorite gadget on the right side bar.
4. There is now a PayPerPost button under every post, where you can click to review our posts and get paid for reviewing our posts.
5. The author link in the comments section have now been made DoFollow.
Now we can move on to the upcoming changes. Although none of these will be absolutely sure, I just want to give everyone an idea of what might be coming and possibly explain some things. Soon you will see some posts that are not Labeled. These are probably posts that have nothing to do with the topic, or just advertisement posts that I don't want to categorize. Any posts that tell you it is sponsored does not necessarily mean its my endorsement.
I'll also be introducing 2 new sections, the Off-Topic Section, and the Helpful Answers section that some of you may not understand their purpose. (I only explain sections that readers ask me to explain or that I deem to be confusing). First, the Off-Topic Section is really, just off-topic posts. It may have to do with recent events or my personal experiences with certain products. The Helpful Answers section is somewhat of a Q&A section where any readers can post comments on any post with a question, and you will likely find an answer in that section soon after the comment post. On top of that, I will also provide useful information about certain technological products or interesting information that I find.
This will be all for now. Stay tuned for next month's updates, as our blog is ever expanding and changing. Don't forget to leave your feedback in the comments. Remember, BlitzTech is now DoFollow for all author links, as updated this month! If you want to support our blog, there is currently no donation options and probably never will, but you can always use the buttons provided under every blog post to review our posts, or share the news!
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Google Searches just keeps climbing
In June, Google's searches rose by 19%, while total searches rose by 6.3%. Obviously, it seems that more and more people are searching, and picking google to do their searches.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Enterprises downgrading from Vista
I've always suspected that the claimed higher sales of Vista from Microsoft's studies were simply because they wouldn't offer XP anymore. Maybe now we've got some confirmation. An article from TechNewsWorld (click here to view) is talking about how Devil Mountain Software conducted a study of over 3,000 machines and concluding that 1/3 of companies are getting the pre-installed Vista computers or just buying Vista and then downgrading to XP.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not anti-Microsoft. Never was, and I'm actually in support of Microsoft. I just think that if Microsoft wants to claim higher sales for Vista, they should also tell us about how many people are exercising their downgrading option. I personally see no reason for such companies to downgrade. If you've already got Vista, why do anything about it? It's not like Vista really hampers your work. My personal experience with Vista is that it's a really good product with is better than XP was with just some problems that need to be fixed.
Although the study was probably inaccurate as well. There's been 180 Vista liscenses sold and only 3,000 machines were studied. There's really no way to prove any of these surveys seeing as they can just select a group of companies that hate Microsoft or something similar to that. And then Microsoft could select a bunch of pro-microsoft people for their studies. The only thing you can really rely on is probably experience and your friend's experiences with these things if you want to know if you should get Vista. If that question is bothering you, refer to my earlier post called Vista or No Vista.
U.S. mobile phones sales are going down
With the economic slowdown and lots of competition in the mobile phone market, sales are going down.
Apparently, the sales volume is going down about 13% while the sales revenue went down 2% this 2nd quarter as compared to last year's. Contradicting this is the rapidly increasing sales overseas. Nokia, for example is selling more and more phones globally.
The drop in sales in the U.S. is not surprising, especailly when you consider that most people already have phones and are bound to contracts which make it difficult to upgrade. Obviously, the same factor is applying to other countries, except that it's the other way around because most people in other countries don't already have cell phones and are not bound to any contracts.
Despite all this, companies are now selling more expensive phones than ever. New popular phones with tons of features like the iPhone and the new Blackberries are being sold at a much higher rate than before. The only problem is, prices have been slashed since the first quarter, so the expensive phones aren't that expensive anymore.
All this probably had to come sooner or later. It's just a matter of time before companies currently producing phones and selling in the U.S. are going to have to make some serious changes to their marketing plans and possibly a major shift to global marketing.
New Search Innovation from Microsoft
As Microsoft continues to trail search giants Google and Yahoo at 3rd place, they seek to attract more of the market with their new search innovation which could also raise certain questions.
This new idea is based on using previous search queries and search patterns of the user. They believe that by doing this, they can make searching easier for the user, seeing as "often users use search engines to explore subject areas broadly", as said by Satya Nadella, senior vice president of Microsoft's search, portal and advertising platform group.
The problem here is that by monitoring search patterns to produce results like this, the information can also be used to further target audiences with ads. This could also lead to higher priced ads. The main problem is with the intrusion of privacy. Basing ads on keywords is much less invading than if the ads were served to highly targetted audiences based on their searching pattern.
In my opinion, this is really nothing to worry about. It's a small price to pay for better searches, and I don't think it really affects anything. If you don't want to be bothered by the ads, then jsut don't look at them or consider them, seeing as they're probably not in your search results anyway. I generally have a policy of not clicking on the ads unless the companies' websites actaully appear in my search results as well. I also don't think that changing the search results by relevant patterns will help much. It's not like a search result is going to move 2 or 3 pages because of this. Though if it does, then maybe it will help.
Monday, August 18, 2008
iPhone vs. Blackberry Bold
I've seen a lot of different articles in different places talking about how the iPhone will be competition to the smartphone lines from Blackberry. This is very inaccurate for the consumer. It should be that the Blackberry is competition to the iPhone, and even then, that still sounds bad, because it's an obvious choice of which one is better, unless we're talking about the older versions of the iPhones and Blackberries.
Here's why:
1) The new Blackberry bold is far too expensive even with a contract and will probably be outrageous without a contract, with Rogers listing the Blackberry bold for $399 on a three year contract with further expenses from the plan. That's even more than the 16 GB iPhone!
2) The New Blackberry also has only 1 GB of Storage which means that you can store far less on your Bold than your iPhone.
3) The overall hardware specs are no match for the iPhone, especially when you consider that it's more expensive than the iPhone. Plus, for the consumer market, the iPhone apps and capabilities are probably much more attractive than the Bold.
However, it's a different story for the corporate world, seeing as many of the Blackberry Bold's applications are very useful in the corporate world. Businesses will probably see the Bold as a viable competitor to the iPhone for now, unless the iPhone can seriously improvement on functions such as email, text messaging, and other functions required by businesses.
In my opinion, the iPhone certainly gets you more bang for the buck as the hardware is much better, and when you have the hardware, the software comes easily.
BlackBerry Bold to hit Canada
This week, the New Blackberry Bold 9000 will be coming to Canada via Rogers Communications Inc. This new blackberry is a high end model that matches the screen resolution of the iPhone but not the screen size.
Rogers will be the sole carrier for the new Blackberry Bold in Canada and AT&T will be the sole carrier of the Bold in the US.
Rogers has not disclosed the price of the coming Blackberry but it may be extremely expensive.
The Bold was already released in Germany, and for comparison, here are their prices.It's about 459.95 euros ($680 US) without a plan. And with a plan, it is 129.95 euros ($190 US).
Apparently, according to a leaked image on CrackBerry, Rogers will be charging $399 with a 3 year contract. Although this image may be false, it seems to look pretty official. Generally, with a 3 year contract, it really shouldn't be that expensive, being even more expensive than the iPhone. But we'll have to wait for the price to be confirmed.
Although the iPhone is going to be a serious competitor in the smartphone business, most people think the Blackberries are better for emailing and messaging because of the keypad instead of being touchscreen. The Bold will only be the first of many models Research In Motion plans on releasing. They say they will release a touchscreen model called the Thunder.
Live Mesh Expands
Microsoft announced the expansion of their Live Mesh in a blog post. If you didn't know yet, Live Mesh is a software to allow synchronization among many devices, which you can find more info on, if you search up Live Mesh.
Previously, this service was only available without a wait list to the USA, but was then expanded to include the UK, New Zealand, and Australia. It has now been expanded to also include Canada, India, and Ireland.
They still have a limit to the users they'll allow to their preview without a wait list so those who want to take advantage should do so quickly.
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Microsoft creates a new blog for Windows 7
Microsoft has recently created a brand new blog with the topic of Windows 7. their first post was on the 14th and we can anticipate more information about Windows 7. However, they have learned from Vista, and so they are being more cautious in releasing details of their new OS.
In their second post, they wrote,
"We, as a team, definitely learned some lessons about “disclosure” and how we can all too easily get ahead of ourselves in talking about features before our understanding of them is solid. Our intent with Windows 7 and the pre-release communication is to make sure that we have a reasonable degree of confidence in what we talk about when we do talk. Again, top of mind for us is the responsibility we feel to make sure we are not stressing priorities, churning resource allocations, or causing strategic confusion among the tens of thousands of partners and customers who care deeply and have much invested in the evolution of Windows.
As Vista required significant hardware investments to run it and also had many problems when first released, Windows 7 promises to deliver a much improved Vista. They will no doubt fix all or at least most of the problems that happened with Vista. By the time Windows 7 finally comes out, the hardware world will have greatly improved and will likely be able to meet with the demands of their Windows 7 Project. For everyone who held out on buying Vista, it's only a year and a half away from a (hopefully) much better OS.
Should Companies pursue legal action against Mygazines?
Mygazines.com is a site that allows users to share view magazines online. However, this is obviously going to cause copyright problems.
It first launched in late July, with no ads and being free to join. Digital copies of magazines could be easily read and commented/rated on. Time Warner's Time Division says that they want to try and shut down the site. But for Mygazines, it seems that they have escaped being prosecuted by law.
Their domain name is registered in the Caribbean and its servers hosted in Sweden. Thus, U.S. copyright law will be unable to prosecute them.
I think the real question is whether or not the magazine producers should pursue legal action at all. When digital copies of magazines are uploaded and viewed, the original ads from the magazine are also exposed. Theoretically,the magazine companies could then charge more for space advertising because of the higher exposure of their magazine. It's common knowledge that many magazine companies deliberately take a loss in newsstand sales simply because they want more public exposure for their magazine, which allows them to charge more for advertising. Most magazines generally make their money off of advertising and not actually single copy sales, or even subscriptions. Plus, when people view the magazine online,the magazine companies can save on printing costs.
However, the biggest disadvantage here, would probably be that many magazine companies would lose out on subscriptions and advertisers might refuse to view the online exposure as public interest in the magazine. Though I believe that to be unlikely. Obviously, if magazines could charge more for advertising then that would make up for lost sales and then some. As Mygazines is still very new, we'll just have to wait and see how it plays out. Post a comment and tell us what you think of this situation.
Thursday, August 14, 2008
200,000 iPhone Order Possibility
HSBC the global banking company is considering to possibly order 200,000 iPhones and adopt it as their official corporate mobile device. That would mean that they could leave behind the BlackBerry Smartphones.
This is a huge decision and could lead to a massive iPhone order. When the iPhone was first release,many companies were unsure of whether or not to standardize it due to lack of availability and little support for Microsoft's Exchange email platform.Both of these problems have been fixed and companies can now consider switching to the iPhone.
Although the iPhone has been very popular for the individual consumer, it may not be fully suited by corporate use. However, Apple has added new tools to the new iPhone 3G to support corporate use.
It seems to me that the iPhone has good points and is probably as capable as the BlackBerry in terms of corporate use. However, the BlackBerry's superior email capabilities may keep them alive for the moment. It really all depends on how much more popular the iPhone can become. If the iPhone continues to gain popularity, it's possible that more and more companies will start to consider using the iPhone as a standard.
D.C. Tech lobby group behind the scenes
A Washington D.C. Tech lobby group may be the secret authors of an article which Mel King placed his name on,on the Harvard Crimson.I found this to be very interesting in many ways. You can see the original article that I saw here.
As the article points out,Mel King placed his name and an opinion piece that was completely contradictory to what his position was previously.This pro-Comcast article may have been written by LawMedia Group which Comcast hired.That would account for the article being so contradictory.
LawMedia Group is emerging as a highly secretive group that is lobbying for all kinds of companies including Microsoft, whom the represented to lobby against the Google-Yahoo advertising deal. That there are such lobby groups doesn't surprise me. What does surprise me is how incredibly secretive they are.
Until just recently, it appears that their websites was mostly full of password-locked pages. No clients,no employee names,no founder names,and no principals are given either.
Unfortunately for LMG,they've been found out and are now in the spotlight. the media had discovered that they may have had to do which certian anti-walmart op-eds supposed to be authored by Charles Steele Jr. And they are once again in the spotlight now.
It seems that LMG was highly involved in King's op-ed.Perhaps an obvious fault by LMG was placing the exact same statement from a letter supposedly witten by Rev. Jesse Jackson in King's op-ed. "People of color make up 33 percent of our population but own just 3 percent of all broadcast TV stations--and research shows that the number of owners is plummeting at alarming levels." Obviously, either someone from LMG copied it, or happened to be the same author and just reused it to save time. Even stranger is that Jackson denied having made the statement even though it was in the letter to the Federal Communications Commission.
If LMG wrote such statements for all these people, then who else have they been writing for? What about other companies? And exactly how deeply involved has LMG been in these topics? It seems to me that as time goes by, the truth will slowly unravel itself, regardless of how much LMG tries to hide or deny it.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Olympic Digital Fireworks
Ever since the the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics of '08'08'08 was broadcast everywhere, everyone's been talking about it. However, it seems that even the opening ceremony used some digital editing. Apparently, the Olympic footage of certain fireworks including the 29 footprints were edited into the video. Of course, the fireworks did happen, it just that they were prerecorded for safety reasons.
It was a very good simulation and I don't think it's really that big of a deal. I think it shows how much dedication the Chinese have to put on the best show they could safely. Even the helicopter shaking of the camera and the Beijing pollution was simulated.
I believe that such an act does not merit any concern and after all, it was a great show.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Unwrapping the 3D with Unwrap Mosaic
This brand new technology demoed by Microsoft (Click for Video) is capable of allowing people to edit certain things onto video objects as easily as it can currently be done with digital photos.
"What we've done is built away of patterning the essence of a video in a single pattern," said Andrew Fitzgibbon, who presented the technology Tuesday at the SIGGRAPH trade show in Los Angeles. The key to that technique is that unwrapped or flattened image."
The research technology was dubbed Unwrap Mosaic. Like it name suggests, it works by unwrapping 3D objects into a sort of flat image.
Here's what I think of it. It's a great advancement, but it was to come sooner or later. Although the aspect that really differs from the editing in the movies I find quite interesting. If anybody wants to edit a face, then in the movies, it would be done by using a model of the face. But this brand new technology can edit moving video directly. Although it remains a research technology for now, we can hope that it will become widely available soon.
Vista Or No Vista?
Ever since Vista came out,everybody's been complaining about it. But the real question is, should you get vista? This question is asked a lot by businesses who are unsure of whether or not they should upgrade to vista. Less frequently is it asked by consumers.
This questions really isn't all that hard to answer. Let's start with businesses.If you have yet to upgrade to vista now, then it's probably best never to upgrade to vista. After all, XP will receive critical support until 2014 and the new Windows 7 will be released in 2010. It seems obvious that, due to Vista's lack of positive feedback, if you don't already have it by now, just don't get it. Unfortunately, it may not be as simple as this. Microsoft said that it would easy to upgrade from Vista to Windows 7, but they didn't say anything about upgrading from XP to Windows 7. Although this shouldn't be too much of a problem, it is something to think about. If you already have Vista, then there's really no need to downgrade to XP. XP is not significantly better than Vista, and Vista does boast considerable security benefits.
Now we move on to the home use of Vista. Well, the best advice I can give you, is just stick whatever came with the computer, unless the operating system is below XP. All these operating systems don't really make that much of a difference in day-to-day use unless you're a hardcore gamer or something like that.Even then, Vista isn't a bad choice. If the computer came with an Apple operating system, then I'd still suggest that you stick with what it came with. Changing it is really just a waste of time for the average home-user.
And that's the end of it. Let's hope that Windows 7 will be much better than Vista.
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