2019 – versiunea Microsoft

Cu toate hibele si problemele pe care le am cu/impotriva Microsoft, cred ca nimeni nu poate pune la indoiala ca firma americana a fost o firma vizionara si ca are, vrem sau nu, un cuvant greu de spus in ceea ce priveste tehnologia in urmatorii ani.

In cadrul unei prezentari recente, presedintele diviziei Business din cadrul Microsoft, Stephen Elop a aratat lumii o frantura din cum Microsoft vede anul 2019, in viata fiecaruia dintre noi.

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GMail/GFail – Noutati si conspiratii

Ultima isprava a Google nu vine decat ca un avertisment ca nu suntem inca gata sa ne mutam cu “catel si purcel” online. Ca fara un backup solid la aceste informatii mai bine nu te apuci de treaba.

Mai mult, ultimele zvonuri (neconfirmate inca) spun ceva despre un posibil atac catre Google drept cauza a acestei intamplari. Fara sa dam in conspiratii, ca sincer nu-mi plac. 

La revenirea online a Gmail (pe toti cred) ne-a intampinat un mesaj cum ca cererea mea de intra in contul google e similara cu o cerere automata a unui virus sau aplicatii spyware (“looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus of spyware application”) si am fost rugati sa introducem un captcha. Acum fie ca are vreo legatura cu realitatea fie ca au incercat ca repornirea sa se faca “smooth” nu stiu.

Al doilea argument ar fi cautarea dupa “gmail down” facuta in Google Search (nu in blogsearch) care genera in primul rezultat ceva continut pornache (mai multe aici si aici). 

Sperantele sunt legate doar de posibilitatea ca atacul (in caz ca a existat unul) a fost doar formal si nu s-a ajuns la date confidentiale ale userilor (conturi, parole etc.)

Colac peste pupaza, coincidenta sau nu, ce moment mai potrivit puteau sa-si gaseasca cei de la Microsoft sa anunte POP3 gratuit pentru utilizatorii de Hotmail si Live.com. Pentru cine vrea, eu nu sunt inca hotarat sa ma intorc, o sa-i mai dau o sansa gmail-ului, iata datele:

POP server: pop3.live.com (Port 995)
POP SSL required? Yes
User name: userul de hotmail nume@hotmail.com
Parola: parola de la contul de live sau hotmail
SMTP server: smtp.live.com (Port 25 or 587)
Authentication required? Yes
TLS/SSL required? Yes

Apple Market Share on the Rise

Coolness factor, design, an intelligent business decision to switch to Intel processors (2006) and an excellent positioning strategy pushed Apple back into the game in the computer market.

Apple’s retail market share is 14 percent, and 66% for PCs costing $1,000 or more. And all this is still growing. For the first quarter, Windows notebooks had “zero percent” growth year over year. By comparison, Apple notebooks had 50 to 60 percent growth.

Apple’s success above $1,000 defies some of the conventional retail thinking about PCs, where the emphasis is on lower pricing and greater features. “Consumers don’t care about features,” Stephen Baker, NPD’s vice president of industry analysis asserted. “People see a value proposition in an offering that gives them a great experience.”

Stephen said Apple appeals to the right segments, like multiple-computer households. Consumers that are buying a second, third or even fourth PC have different buying priorities, such as ease of use.

But the retail stores make a huge difference. “Apple has got better distribution than it’s had in the last 15 years,” Stephen explained. “They’re in the right spot right now. There’s the iPod advantage. But the big thing is the stores.”

Longhorn Sneak Preview

The August 2005 issue of PC World magazine has a sneak preview into Longhorn, next year’s Windows release, complete with screenshots.

    The most recent build of Longhorn–Microsoft’s next Windows–has some impressive visual touches, including the kinds of translucent objects found now in Apple’s OS X, and more powerful ways of finding files. But it doesn’t yet exhibit any breakthroughs in productivity, or promised features such as security improvements and smarter connections to handheld devices.

Well it seems that most of the big improvements are in the GUI field since:

    in spite of announced planned enhancements such as monitoring of outbound data (Windows XP’s firewall watches inbound traffic only), protection against malware, a new type of restricted user account, and a secure startup scheme to ensure that a PC hasn’t been tampered with, Longhorn so far has the same minimal security toolbox as Windows XP with Service Pack 2.

More info: Microsoft Windows codenamed Longhorn

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Assault on Microsoft

The next two years will be crucial for software giant Microsoft. Under attack on numerous fronts, it could falter – or fight back to become even more dominant. That’s the way an interesting article on the topic starts on BBC homepage.

Starting by criticizing Microsoft multiple security issues or ar cry from real life projects like M.Home the article is making a short round-up of the more increased Microsoft competition on various fields from search, to operating systems, browsing or even the popular Office suite.

Companies are not afraid of competing with Microsoft anymore,” says Marc Benioff, the boss of salesforce.com, which offers a service over the internet which competes with Microsoft in the lucrative market for “customer relationship management” software.

Here is Microsoft’s problem: while rivals try to pick off its software offering one by one, new ways of writing software – for example open source – speed up the pace of innovation and threaten Microsoft’s business model.

The fate of “Longhorn” is a case in point. The much-heralded successor to Windows XP is badly delayed and key components won’t be ready for launch.

Search is not enough

The so called search engines war, is not a search engine war anymore. The war was taken further to advertising, blogging, news and so on. Whatever service from any of the three major competitors in the field, is proved succesfull or potentially succesfull, is taken over by the other two. There was Bloggers from Google. Then just like this there was MSN Spaces from Microsoft (which actually didn’t prove to make too much buzz around). Now, Yahoo! doesn’t like to be left behind, and start teasing us about their future blogsphere presence: Yahoo! 360°. The new blogging service promise to integrate most of Yahoo! functionalities: photos, LAUNCHcast station, Yahoo!Messenger, probably MyYahoo and most likely the very rumored Yahoo!’s text ad system designed to compete with the succesfull Google AdSense.

Talking about AdSense and contextual ads, Microsoft’s Internet group is developing a pay-per-click ad-bidding system that pairs search results with sponsored text messages from advertisers called adCenter. Meanwhile, Google seems to prepare for the two new major competitors in the marketplace and is revising its AdSense policy, adding some small (for now) changes to it out of which the most important are:

  • new ad formats – AdLinks
  • allowing user to disclose their incomes generated by the program (what better promotion Google needs than the success stories that, I think, will invade the web after this change in policy)
  • updated payment options – offer checks to be sent in local currencies to 35 countries and Electronic Funds Transfer to 15 countries

I am looking forward to see how things will move from now on since AskJeeves, the fourth major player in this game, is not making too many moves lately.

Internet Explorer 7.0 Beta this summer

Beta versions of Internet Explorer 7.0 will be available this summer for Longhorn and XP SP2.

During his keynote address at the annual RSA Conference today, Bill Gates, chairman and chief software architect at Microsoft Corp., announced continued innovation and technology investments including future enhancements for safer Web browsing, such as plans for a new version of Microsoft Internet Explorer for Windows XP Service Pack 2 customers.

More details on Microsoft PressPass and IEBlog

Hotmail Upgrade

Hotmail upgradeMy Hotmail account got finally upgraded, well too late after Yahoo! did its upgrade, and after I switched to Gmail.

On the other side, it seems that the field of war between the three giants is getting bigger and bigger as Yahoo! annouced another upgrade to their email account storage as well as some other improvements.