Category: microsoft

Chromium Project uses Timer Resolution to debug battery life issue

Based on the information at https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=46531 it looks as if Timer Resolution has been used to identify and verify an issue with Chromium.

Chromium is the open-source project behind Google Chrome. I use Chrome every day on my work laptop and also no my netbook. I had no idea that Timer Resolution had helped to create such a great browser!

Math Editor in Windows 7

As I mentioned earlier I’ve been playing with Windows 7, I also just download a legit version for the 64bit edition from Microsoft, you can too from http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/beta-download.aspx

Something that I stumbled upon when clicking around in the menus was the Math Editor. I wish I had this back in my Uni days, you can see a quick review at http://www.gottabemobile.com/2008/10/29/windows-7-math-input-panel-screenshots/

Basically it turns your scratchy math equations into nicely formatted equations. Now if this is compatible with a symbolic solver like MatLab then this will be a very nice tool for more than just reports.

iPhoto – Nice! Now I see the future of photos

One thing I liked at MacWorld from Apple was the new version of iPhoto. Are Apple and Google competing for digital asset management supremacy? Google releases a version of Picasa for Mac that would have been an improvement over the old iPhoto. The next day Apple announce a new version of iPhoto that takes it to the next level.

Face recognition, Geo-tagging, linked to social networks. Now they have face recognition how long till they include other objects like buildings, cars, and animals? What if this information is shared with search engines? How about Photosynth, what if it grabs all the photos tagged with a location. What if you (or the friends you share images with) have images of that location over a number of years? A small slider at the bottom on the screen allows you to see the view change over time… make that into a video and now you’ve got a screen saver I’d like to have.

Windows 7 – First Take

Got my first hands on look at Windows 7 today. It was running under VirtualBox so the speed wasn’t outstanding but I have to say I liked what I saw.

Visually not much was new but the tools and utilities seem to have had a sensible make over. Installing was a breeze and faster than I remembered for any of the Vista Betas that I used.

Seems Microsoft might have learnt from the Vista debacle and made an OS with some substance.

Browser Wars – Return of the Choice

A long time ago before the dot com crash there was a war. The mighty Netscape lost the war and the evil Microsoft dominated the Internet ever since.

The rebel forces of Netscape went into hiding as Mozilla. Along came the New Hope, Firefox with new powers that the Death Star (a.k.a. Internet Explorer) could only dream of.

Yesterday the latest in the new breed browsers was released from Google which now means that all 3 of the big players in Web 2.0 have released browsers for Windows.

Apple Safari – http://www.apple.com/safari/

Google Chrome – http://www.google.com/chrome/

Microsoft IE8 – http://www.microsoft.com/ie8/

And Firefox is at Version 3 – http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/

Just like last time, these are all free products. The web has evolved into an application platform and it is clear the this is what Google aims to capture with it’s release. I’m not sure why Google decided to go it alone when they did appear to have some kind of relationship with the Firefox group.

Guess time will tell as to who will win this round of the browser wars.

Microsoft Mesh and Google App Engine – Up in the clouds

Google App Engine was publicly discussed first but the Microsoft Live Mesh project wasn’t far behind.

Somehow since I’m in Australia and that the weekend it all went live I was offline I can’t seem to get an account with either.

The Google version at least lets you download a local test server and sandbox to play in but for now it is only in Python.

The Microsoft version has more freedom in terms of the programming language you choose to use by seems more restrictive as to who they will let play with the Beta.

Although these two technologies are different on the surface (and inside in many places) they WILL end up competing for the same applications, developers, and users.

Why? Well simply because if you breakdown what each of them really offer the application developer then you’ll see that they are both going to do the same thing just in a slightly different way.

At this point in time I’d say that the Microsoft offering looks more featured and has the desktop support needed to ease users into the true Web 2.0 application world but Google isn’t one to give up easily and they will have to Open Source/Linux community on side from day one… Will this become the browser war of next few years?

What if Apple only pick one to support natively on the iPhone? Who is the bigger threat to them, Google and Android or Microsoft and Windows Mobile?