Windows 7 without Internet Explorer ?
Source: arstechnica
Microsoft has announced that it will ship a special version of Vista’s successor in Europe, titled Windows 7 E, without Internet Explorer 8. The browser-less version, a reaction to an antitrust investigation by the EU into whether Microsoft is abusing its dominant position with Windows and Internet Explorer, will be distributed in all member nations of the European Economic Area as well as Croatia and Switzerland.
Windows 7 E is reminiscent of media-player-free Windows XP N and Windows Vista N, which Microsoft offered in Europe also in response to an EU antitrust investigation. Unlike the N versions, which proved to be very unsuccessful—as Europeans simply purchased the full retail versions and OEMs refused to include them on their systems—Microsoft is not planning to offer a version of Windows 7 in Europe that includes IE8. This means that none of the versions of Windows 7 sold in Europe will include a Microsoft’s browser.
As first reported by CNET and confirmed by Microsoft, OEMs will have the option to add the browser back in, ship another browser, or ship multiple browsers. ”The E versions of Windows 7 will include all the features and functionality of Windows 7 in the rest of the world, other than browsing with Internet Explorer,” Microsoft notes. “Computer manufacturers will be able to add any browser they want to their Windows 7 machines, including Internet Explorer, so European consumers who purchase new PCs will be able to access the Internet without any problem. Consumers will also be able to add any Web browser to their PCs, to supplement or replace the browsers preinstalled by their computer manufacturer.”
Microsoft notes that the decision affects both OEM and Retail versions of Windows 7 products. While OEMs will have access to a free “IE8 pack” that allows them to add the browser back in, consumers who purchase retail copies will not have a browser that they can use to download a browser. Therefore, Microsoft will offer IE8 via CD, FTP, and retail channels. It looks like Mozilla, Opera, Google, and Apple will have to do the same if they want European Windows 7 adopters to have access to their browsers.
Microsoft does not currently have plans to remove Internet Explorer from any versions of Windows XP or Windows Vista, nor from the Windows XP mode add-on for Windows 7 Professional and Windows 7 Ultimate.
Recently, the EU has been asking companies what they saw as the best way to remedy the browser-bundling situation, and was even considering a way to get Microsoft to bundle third-party browsers with the operating system, forcing users to choose which browsers to download and install as well as which to set as the default. Microsoft wasn’t so keen on the idea of distributing third-party browsers, so it has apparently taken the matter into its own hands and decided to remove IE8 altogether, knowing that the EU already approved of the N editions.
This isn’t what the software giant originally wanted to do, as it had previously argued in its legal filings with the EU that the browser was an integral part of the operating system. With the release of the Windows 7 Release Candidate, Microsoft has made it possible to remove IE8 (the beta did not allow this), along with many other Windows components. [W]e’re committed to launching Windows 7 on time in Europe, so we need to address the legal realities in Europe, including the risk of large fines,” says Microsoft. “We believe that this new approach, while not our first choice, is the best path forward given the ongoing legal case in Europe.”
The European Commission is of two minds on Microsoft’s move, pleased by the possibility of OEMs being able to offer multiple browsers, but disappointed that Microsoft itself is not providing consumers with the choice. “As for retail sales, which amount to less than 5 percent of total sales, the Commission had suggested to Microsoft that consumers be provided with a choice of Web browsers,” the EC said in a statement. “Instead Microsoft has apparently decided to supply retail consumers with a version of Windows without a Web browser at all. Rather than more choice, Microsoft seems to have chosen to provide less.”
The timing of this decision is quite ironic: the browser space has never been as competitive as it is now. Furthermore, rivals continue to chip away at Internet Explorer’s market share month after month. Still, third-party browser makers like Opera, Mozilla, and Google have been pushing the EU for tough sanctions against Microsoft. Unless the EU has objections to Microsoft’s decision, it looks like new Windows 7 PCs sold in the EU will be IE-free.
Tiny video projector for iPhone
Thanko has released a new tiny projector, which measures 61 x 37 x 60mm and weighs in at just 142g.
It can be used with your iPhone, iPod, or PC and it can project an image up to 45 inches with a resolution of 640 x 480 and a 200:1 contrast ratio with 10 lumens brightness.
You can expect a 45″ screen size at 2m away from the projector and just 14″ at only 60cm away. With its dimensions it can easily fit into your pocket.
This super tiny pico projector is a gadget that will make you look really cool at meetings or when you want to give a presentation.
You can buy it for $321.30 from GeekStuff4U.
Twitter’s Growth May Be Illusory, Says HubSpot Report
Tweet, tweet,” chirped the robin outside my window yesterday. Given the Wall Street Journal’s report last month that 32.1 million people now have Twitter accounts, it seems like much of humanity is poised to join the robin and his avian cohorts in tweeting.Not everyone who has a Twitter account is using it though, according to the second “State of the Twittersphere” report, published yesterday by Cambridge, MA-based HubSpot. The Internet marketing company looked at more than 4.5 million Twitter accounts over nine months and found that they are not as lively as might be expected, with more than nine percent of users owning inactive accounts and almost 55 percent never having tweeted at all. What’s more, about 53 percent of users have no followers (as if my red-breasted pal were singing in a sound-proof room).
Twitter has expanded at an astounding rate (see chart below), having had 1.6 million users just a year ago. But the HubSpot report reveals that much of that growth may be illusory. Even with celebrities like Ashton Kutcher and Oprah Winfrey gushing about Twitter and acquiring millions of followers, the report shows that more than 55 percent of users aren’t following them, or anyone else.
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.“Like many new technologies, part of the challenge is helping users understand how they might use it and why it’s important,” said Dharmesh Shah, chief technology officer and founder of HubSpot in an e-mail interview. “It’s extremely simple in its execution, but leaves a lot up to the users to come with how they might use it.”
Just owning an account does not, it seems, a tweeter make. Those who actually use it do tweet an average of once a day. The problem, according to an informal survey I conducted of about 15 Twitter users, is that most people don’t do (or think) much of interest, so even if they constantly tweeted their lives, it wouldn’t attract more followers. There is also confusion over whether Twitter should be used for personal events the way Facebook usually is, or treated more professionally like LinkedIn or other professional social networks.
There is even the question of when to reply to tweets. My friends, and Shah, seemed to agree that Twitter is not the best system for talking with people. “Having actual conversations is actually pretty hard,” Shah said.
It may just be a matter of quality. If people write more interesting tweets, more people may follow them and be inclined to improve what they post themselves. Perhaps I’ll ask my feathered friend for some tips on how to tweet as well as he does.
Google polishes competition charm offensive
Source CNET
SAN FRANCISCO–Google continued to lay the groundwork Wednesday for an antitrust defense in the event that the federal government decides to take a formal look at its core business.
U.S. regulators have been scrutinized parts of the company in recent months, probing topics such as Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s role on Apple’s board of directors and Google’s proposed settlement with book publishers on Google Books. In that vein, the company one month ago kicked off an effort to burnish its image, calling on the press, members of Congress, ad agencies, and publishers to convince them that when it comes to its overall business, Google is a not a threat.
Inside a conference room in Google’s San Francisco office, executives ran through essentially the same presentation leaked last month by the consumer activist group Consumer Watchdog, focusing most of their efforts on trying to paint a picture of Google as just one part of a large Internet ecosystem, as opposed to a dominant search giant.
“We do have to win users back on a regular basis,” said Dana Wagner, senior competition counsel at Google. “We want to be the next Google; we’re not done with search.”
Even though its name is widely used as a verb to describe “Internet search,” Google argued that it faces competition from places like Amazon and eBay, where potential customers also search for information about a product. It likewise compared its earnings data–revenues, profits, and lobbying budget–to some of America’s largest technology companies, such as Microsoft, AT&T, Verizon, and IBM, with far more resources than Google.
Executives also noted that Google competes for advertising dollars against essentially the entire world. Television, newspapers, magazines, billboards, and other Internet companies all want advertising dollars too, and Google’s share of the total ad revenue market is just 3 percent, said Peter Greenberger, industry relations manager. Its share of the total Internet ad revenue is 30 percent, the largest single piece of that pie.
These are all clear signs that Google would attempt to paint the relevant market in any antitrust case it may face in the future as extremely broad. That’s one of the first battlegrounds in which lawyers for Google and the Justice Department would face off, and really a key part of any antitrust case.
Several years ago, enterprise software-maker Oracle successfully made a similar argument in an antitrust fight over the eventual acquisition of rival PeopleSoft. While Justice lawyers attempted to narrowly define the market for software suites intended for multinational corporations, Oracle argued that the Web and upstart competitors made such a narrow definition impossible.
There’s little question of Google’s dominance in search. Its share of the search market is around 64 percent, and its revenue share of search advertising is higher, in the high 60s or low 70s, a Google representative estimated. Microsoft is making a renewed commitment to competing against Google in search that might have already paid off in the form of a point or two of market share gain, but that only gives it 11.1 percent.
So there’s a question how tough the competition really is. Some wonder if Yahoo, the distant second in search, is willing to take on Google in its back yard under new CEO Carol Bartz.
Another point made by Google is that competitive search providers on the Internet “are just a click away,” a phrase that has been repeated ad nauseum by Google executives since its goodwill tour began in May. It resonates because it’s true: anyone dissatisfied with their search results can easily type yahoo.com or bing.com into their browsers, something Microsoft is counting on with its huge ad campaign around Bing. Unlike desktop software or corporate applications, there’s little “lock-in” on a search engine.
However, any scrutiny on this score is likely to center around competition in search advertising, not search queries, as was the case last year when Yahoo and Google got within hours of finalizing a deal to let Google’s AdSense technology place ads on Yahoo’s sites before Google backed out over concern the Justice Department would scuttle the deal.
Wagner insisted that the potential Yahoo deal “had nothing to do with search. It was an advertising partnership.” Google backed out of the deal because it realized it would have to take on a very public fight with a government agency to make the deal happen, and it was worried about the effect on its brand should it go down that road, he said.
That comes to one of the core parts of Google’s argument: the company is trying to make the case that because of its principles and philosophies, it can be trusted to do the right thing despite its position in the market.
“If there was ever a situation in which Google had a legal fight with an agency, it’s because we were doing something that was good for our users and good for the economy,” Wagner said. “There’s a lot of companies for which I wouldn’t do this job. I would not be doing this at Halliburton.”
The Justice Department may not buy that line of thinking. The new assistant attorney general for antitrust, Christine Varney, was quoted last year as saying, “I think we’re going to continually to see a problem, potentially, with Google, who I think so far has acquired a monopoly in Internet online advertising lawfully.”
Now, in the very next sentence, Varney was careful to note: “I do not think they have done anything other than be a spectacular, innovative company.” Nonetheless, there’s a reason why Google is on a charm offensive.
Apple Design Awards ceremony celebrates great iPhone, Mac apps
Source: MachWorld.com
The annual Apple Design Awards are a bit like the Oscars. Sure, in the week-to-week of the film industry, people might be more concerned about the box-office take, but it’s the critical reception that really helps the high-quality products shine. Similarly, the listings for the top-selling programs in the App Store might grab the attention of consumers, but the ADA exists to reward technical and design excellence in software engineering for Apple’s platforms.
The awards, which acknowledge both Mac and iPhone apps, are judged by a team of engineers inside Apple. This year, 65 engineers worked in addition to their day jobs to winnow down the huge pool of competitors into just a handful of winners. Judges looked for a handful of criteria in handing out awards, among them technological innovation, technology integration & adoption, connectedness, localization, design & quality, and performance tuning & optimization.
The ceremony’s hosts, Apple director of Software Technology Evangelism John Geleynse and Apple senior director of developers relations, Shaan Pruden, presented awards in several categories. Geleynse opened the presentation by saying how much things had changed since last year’s awards, when Apple touted the 1,700 Web apps submitted for the iPhone. “At that time, that was amazing,” said Geleynse. “That was a big number. But man, how the world has changed,” he added, referencing the more than 50,000 native apps in the App Store.
This year’s awards differed from previous years, with Apple bestowing the bulk of awards in “showcase” categories instead of the usual categories like Best Mac OS X Game, as a result of the amazing breadth of submissions. Each showcase category—Mac and iPhone—featured the four best apps on the platform. In addition, there were a handful of other categories for awards.
For their pains, each student winner receives a prize package consisting of a fully-loaded 15-inch MacBook Pro, a 30-inch Apple Cinema Display, an iPhone, an iPod touch, an Apple Developer Connection membership, as well as reimbursement for their travel expenses. Meanwhile, commercial devs win two of the prize packages.
To start off the night, Pieter Omvlee took home the ADA for Best Mac OS X Student Product for his product, Fontcase. Described as “iPhoto for your fonts,” the application was introduced by Apple’s Pruden who added that it was “nothing like” the classic Mac OS’s Font/DA Mover. Rather, Fontcase is an attractive program that let you view and organize your system fonts, choosing the ones you want to enable, and helping you pick the perfect typeface for your needs.
The first winner in the Mac OS X Leopard Developer Showcase was Marketcircle’s Billings, a time-tracking and invoicing program aimed at freelancers and small businesses. Geleynse praised the program for the way it exposed user-interface elements only when the user needed to be exposed to them, and showed off the program’s ability to easily keep track of time spent on a project and create custom invoices.
Versions, a joint effort between Pico Software Development and Sofa, was the second to take home a showcase award. A slick graphical user interface for Subversion, the most used open-source version control software, Versions was a great hit among the ADA’s crowd, composed largely of software developers.
The third application to win the showcase award for Mac OS X was Cultured Code’s Things. Things is a simple task-management system for both teams and individuals. In addition to the program’s supreme ease of use, Apple’s Geleynse lauded the complimentary iPhone app that the team had developed, saying that was a key reason that it snagged the award.
BoinxTV received the fourth and final Mac OS X showcase award. The app allows users to turn their Mac into a virtual TV production studio with the ability to quickly and seamlessly add video effect layers on top of footage from a connected FireWire camera or internal iSight. Geleynse showed off a quick video he’d made with the application using effects to create an impromptu sports show.
Moving along to the iPhone side of the affair, Wooden Labyrinth 3D snagged the award for Best iPhone Student App. Unfortunately the winner, Elias Pietil, was unable to attend the awards from his native Finland. The app, a version of the classic wooden labyrinth game, garnered praise for the way it used the iPhone’s accelerometer to reflect the movement of the device in the animation of the wooden labyrinth.
Next, Apple handed out an award for the Best iPhone OS 3.0 Beta App to Intermap Technologies’s AccuTerra, a recreational GPS-mapping application. The app uses forthcoming iPhone 3.0 technologies like in-app purchase to allow users to buy more detailed maps of various geographical areas of interest. The program allows users to plan, track, and share hiking and biking trips. Users can activate the iPhone’s GPS feature to track not only their exact route, but also later “play it back”, including showing geocoded photos at the places in the trip where they were taken.
The iPhone Developer Showcase awards commenced with an award for atebits’s Twitter-client Tweetie. Geleynse said that the the iPhone app and atebits’s subsequent Mac OS X version were a great combination and also complimented the program’s excellent design and user interface. (Macworld’s own Jason Snell even made a brief appearance in a list of recent tweets.)
Topple 2, by ngmoco, followed up with the second award, with Apple’s Geleynse demonstrating the tower-building game and its careful use of the iPhone’s accelerometer and adoption of OpenGL ES and UIKit technologies.
The third winner of the iPhone Developer Showcase was MLB.com At Bat 2009. In particular, the impressive infrastructure that MLB put behind the mobile app won it much praise and Geleynse showed off the ability for the app to show scores, Gameday information, video highlights, and even the ability to switch between home and away radio announcers.
Finally, the evening was rounded out with a win by Postage, from Rogue Sheep. The iPhone app allows the quick and easy creation of gorgeous electronic postcards, with the ability to add additional graphics filters.
The hosts wrapped up the evening by congratulating all the winners and saying how hard it was to pick the winners from the pool of so many great submissions. Subsequently, they challenged developers to create great applications for next year’s awards by building on the technologies to come in Snow Leopard and iPhone 3.0.
Meanwhile, you can browse all of the currently-released iPhone app winners in our App Guide ADA 2009 collection.
