Opera Beta 10.50 with Widgets Desktop for Windows

to exceed Chrome, Opera now create a new breakthrough for some serious Headway in keeping itself relevant when it introduced a new JavaScript engine for its upcoming revision. The latest edition of the Opera 10:50 beta 2 for Windows contains no major new features, some minor feature improvements, and is mostly a bug-fixing release that incorporates around 100 changes since the first beta.

Also, in an effort to prevent attention from drifting away from the Mac version of Opera 10.50, the publisher has also announced a new release candidate for the beta. While that milestone is unusual, it's not unheard of for browser publishers to do this. Mozilla released Firefox 3.5 beta 99 last summer, just prior to moving Firefox 3.5 beta 5 up to release candidate status.

Changes to the Windows version include what appears to be modest but detectable improvements to the new Carakan JavaScript engine. In tests limited because of time constraints, I scored the new Opera beta on the SunSpider JavaScript test. Over three runs, it averaged 386.4 milliseconds, compared to the 435.6 ms for the pre-alpha on the same computer. Opera 10.50 beta 1 scored just above 400 ms, albeit on a different computer. For comparison, today's update to the development version of Google Chrome averaged 416 ms over three runs on the SunSpider test on the same computer that Opera 10.50 beta 2 was tested on.

These tests are not absolutes, and even running the same test on the same browser will score differently depending on whether the browser is "warm" and in use or "cold" and freshly booted, but they do provide a snapshot that the new Opera engine is extremely competitive.

Other changes to Opera 10.50 beta 2 include a visual tweak for Windows XP users, moving the tabs on top for when the default Windows XP theme is used. Windows XP users who use "classic" mode won't see the change. An Opera Widgets panel has been added to the Opera user interface, and the RSS news reader and e-mail client have also received tweaks.

While there are still minor bugs in ancillary features that prevent it from being a stable release, the core browsing features feel well-integrated and smooth.

The Mac release includes multiple bug-fixes from the previous pre-alpha version, including improvements to Carakan, typing speed tweaks, fixing the context menu in the Speed Dial feature, and crash fixes.

Super Mario Galaxy 2 lands (May 23, 2010)

you've ga probably familiar with this one game,,, what else could it be the Super mario games .. we all expect of course expecting the final details on the Nintendo DSI XL at Wednesday morning's conference in San Francisco, but the gaming community was pleasantly surprised to learn about the release dates for titles in two of the company's most recognizable franchises.

The sequel to what's arguably the Wii's best games, Super Mario Galaxy 2, will arrive on store shelves in just three months on May 23. While The Game was first announced at last year's E3 2009 press conference, the sequel was mostly written off as a lock-in for the 2010 holidays.

We can not say we thought We'd see Metroid: Other M before the end of 2010 either, but sure enough the next Metroid game will launch June 27. Other M will be a departure from the recent trilogy of first-person Metroid games, instead serving up a hybrid of third and first-person action.

These two major announcements come after recent reports of developers abandoning the Wii for the PS3 and other third-party developers' distaste with the console's online offering. It's no secret the Wii has suffered from a lack of quality releases as of late, so we're imagining this PR move is designed to quiet the crowds. Of course, now we're even more anxious to hear about the company's holiday lineup that will probably be announced at the E3 2010 expo in a few months. Rumors have already begun to swirl about a new title in the Zelda franchise.

Twitter firehose in turn by yahoo

You know the birds twitter ????.. that bird now been used by Yahoo to find customers,,,

Yahoo has agreed to purchase access to the Twitter firehose, adding real-time Twitter content to both search results and Yahoo profiles. The company has been featuring Twitter content in search results for some time but plans to augment those results now that it will receive content directly from Twitter rather than having to pull it from the service through public APIs, said Jim Stoneham, Vice President of communities at Yahoo.

Google and Microsoft announced similar plans months ago at the Web 2.0 conference. Yahoo will continue to integrate Twitter into the box content places it above the trendy search terms such as "Obama" or "Olympics," but with the deal, Yahoo will be able to integrate much more content, Stoneham said.

Yahoo users will also be able to view their Twitter feeds and post to the service directly from the Yahoo accounts, similar to the Yahoo announced plans to let Facebook users update their profiles from their Yahoo accounts. The search results should start Appearing Wednesday, but it will take longer for Yahoo and Twitter to integrate their data in order to integrate the streams from the two sites.

The battle is on to see if search engines can analyze, rank, and display real-time data from services like Twitter in a relevant way. It's early days so far, but this could be the next Battleground in the search market now that everyone is trying to augment search results with structured data.

For Yahoo, it's also an attempt to blunt the amount of time users spend on competing sites like Facebook by giving those users a way to integrate social-networking their lives into their Yahoo e-mail and instant-messaging lives. "It's a continuation of our drive to make Yahoo the one place to be," Stoneham said.

Financial terms of the deal with Twitter were not disclosed. Yahoo said it negotiated its own deal with Twitter - rather than simply allowing Microsoft to integrate real-time search results under their partnership - because content deals signed by either party before regulators approved the deal search would not automatically transfer over. Also, Yahoo's deal is a bit more expansive than Microsoft's since it is enabled Twitter users to link their Twitter accounts with their Yahoo accounts.

Amazon and Microsoft sign patent deal

Microsoft on Monday announced a cross licensing deal with Amazon. As part of the Pact, Amazon will pay Microsoft an undisclosed amount of money, though the two sides did not disclose more details.

The deal covers both Amazon's Kindle product as well as the company's use of Linux-based servers. Microsoft has maintained that many implementations of Linux infringe on its patents and has signed numerous licensing deals that cover Linux with both companies that sell Linux-based software and those that use the operating system in their hardware.

Microsoft, which started an intellectual property licensing push in late 2003, has deals with scores of companies ranging from Novell to Samsung and Fuji Xerox.

"We are pleased to have entered into this patent license agreement with Amazon.com," Microsoft deputy general counsel Horacio Gutiérrez said in a statement. "Microsoft's patent portfolio is the largest and strongest in the software industry, and this agreement demonstrates our mutual respect for intellectual property as well as our ability to reach pragmatic solutions to IP issues regardless of whether proprietary or open source software is involved."

Microsoft launches Windows' Phone 7 Series "for mobile

To compete with rivals (Apple, Research in Motion and Google) Microsoft Corp. launched a new operating system for the phone to return to the leading position.

Just a few years ago, Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) was embedded in about a quarter of all smartphones sold. It's now in less than 10%, with competition coming from the iPhone and BlackBerry. Google (GOOG, Fortune 500)'s Android has only made a crowded space even tougher for Microsoft.

* Facebook
* Digg
* Twitter
* Buzz Up!
* Email
* Print
* Comment on this story


windows_mobile_7.03.jpg
Microsoft's new operating system is made up of "live tiles" that are updated in real time.

Now, after months of speculation, Microsoft has confirmed that 7 will be a tiles based interface and include live access to Facebook, plus its own offerings X-Box Live for gaming and Zune for music and photos. Its search engine Bing is also included.

Microsoft says it looks like nothing on the market and the advantage lies with consumers gaining instant access to all these offerings on their smartphones.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told CNN that this is a major push for the company to get back in the mobile space. He said 7-based smart phones will be manufactured by the likes of Qualcomm, Samsung, LG, HTC, HP, Dell, Sony Ericsson, Toshiba, and Garmin-Asus.

The variety of hardware partners will provide customers with choice in a "one size does not fit all" mobile world, said Microsoft's senior vice president of mobile communications business Andy Lees. For instance, he said, some phones will be equipped with keyboards, while other will not.

But all phones running the new operating system will include certain features, such as 4-point multitouch. Lees said Microsoft will reveal the range of phones closer to the holiday season launch.

The phones will be available on multiple networks, including T-Mobile, Sprint, and Verizon, as well as international carriers such as Telefonica, Vodafone, SFR, Telestra and Telecom. Lees said carriers will be able to enable their own innovations, software and services to work with the Windows operating system.

He added that Microsoft has "deeply engaged" partnerships with AT&T, which launched the first Windows Mobile smartphone in the United States 2003 and is the exclusive carrier for Apple's iPhone. Lees also called out Microsoft's partnership with France Telecom Group's Orange, which introduced the first Windows-based smartphone phone in 2002.
'Step in the right direction'

The features of the new operating system are a "step in the right direction," said Todd Day, mobile and wireless at Frost & Sullivan. But he cautioned that Microsoft's business model could wind up being an obstacle to the success of the 7 Series.

Unlike Google's Android, which is open source and available to manufactures for free, Microsoft requires handset makers to purchase licenses.

"The revenue model is shifting, and it could be a real catch that Microsoft's system charges licensing fees when everyone else is offering open source operating systems," said Day, adding that mobile operating systems generate profit through advertising sales and search revenue.

Despite the criticism, Ballmer said Microsoft has no plan to alter its model.
0:00 /1:29Ballmer on Windows 7 for mobile

"I think there's something clean and simple and easy to understand about our model: we build something, we sell that thing," he said during the Web cast. "My parents, like most other parents, say, 'When something is free, you take a look and find out where the real cost is.' Our plan is clear and direct, and we plan on staying with the model we're on."

One way Microsoft can compete, Day said, is by connecting its mobile operating system to its PC operating system.

"Right now, the mobile product is a completely separate product from Windows 7, but I wouldn't be surprised to see them integrate the two, and I think it would help them," Day said. "Documents on your home computer would be accessible through the cloud on your Windows mobile phone, and the look and feel would be similar so users could interact with their phones like they do with their their computers at home."
Tiles instead of icons

The Windows Phone 7 Series' software experience is designed to "fundamentally focus on what's most important to each individual user," said Joe Belfiore, Microsoft's corporate vice president for Windows Phone Program Management, during a Web cast from Barcelona.
0:00 /5:01Microsoft sees a big year ahead

The operating system's start screen is made up of several "live tiles" that are updated in real-time. So instead of seeing an icon for a Facebook application, Belfiore explained that users will be able to browse through their contacts and get live updates from their Facebook, Windows Live and other social media services in one hub, without moving in and out of various applications.

Users will be able to create live tiles on their start screens for contacts to get constant updates for certain individuals.

Though the iPhone has been outselling the Windows Mobile devices for two years, it recently beat Microsoft in terms of active smartphone users, according to data from comScore.

At the end of 2009, BlackBerry continued to hold the lead with 41.6%, followed by the iPhone with 25.3% and Microsoft came in third with 18% of the smartphone market share.

While Google (GOOG, Fortune 500)'s Android still ranks fifth behind the Palm, its market share climbed the most during the fourth quarter, rising to 5.2% from 2.5% in September.

Microsoft is now being released Up-date for windows 7

Microsoft is now being released Up-date for windows 7. The Windows Activation Technologies Update for Windows 7, which will be released later this month, closes more than 70 "activation hacks," according to Joe Williams, general manager of Microsoft's Genuine Windows unit, responsible for anti-counterfeiting measures. The update will also check with a server periodically to see if there are further hacks that need to be addressed, though Williams said no personally identifiable information about the user will be sent to the server.

In an interview, Williams cautioned about the dangers that come with using nongenuine versions of the operating system, citing a German study that looked at several hundred copies of Windows 7 that were posted online and found that nearly a third had some type of malware.

"We do see malicious code--everything from easily discoverable malware to keyboard recording," he said. "There's all sorts of things we've seen that puts our customers at risk and their data at risk."

The update will be available for manual download from Microsoft's genuine Web site on Feb. 16 and from the Microsoft Download center the following day. Later this month, the update will also be offered through Windows Update as an "important" (but optional) update.

Williams said the new update will remain optional and that those who choose not to install it will still be able to get other Windows updates, a position that marks a fairly sharp contrast to the once hard line Microsoft was taking against piracy.

With the first release of Windows Vista, Microsoft took an aggressive stance, shifting users it determined to have nongenuine versions of the operating system into a severely limited "reduced functionality" mode. In that mode, all users could do was access the Internet for an hour a day.

However, Williams said that Microsoft heard from customers, businesses, and governments that the restrictions were to draconian and decided to try a different approach.

In the first update to Vista, Microsoft relaxed things considerably, choosing instead to just prominently notify users that their version was not genuine.

Starting with Vista Service Pack 1, users saw their background changed to black and a message that their version was nongenuine, as well as getting a dialog box encouraging them to activate a genuine copy. One could choose to do so immediately, or, after 15 seconds, could click an option to activate later.

With Windows 7, Microsoft eased things even more, allowing users to immediately choose to deal with the issue later, although those that choose that option are notified of some of the benefits of genuine software.

Williams declined to say whether Microsoft will close any of the activation hacks with the first service pack to Windows 7, noting that the company has not yet confirmed any plans for that update. Microsoft did close a number of activation holes in Vista with the service pack to that product.

Williams said Microsoft has put much of its focused on informing customers that may have been duped into buying a PC with non-genuine software.

"We are pretty realistic," Williams said. "People who are actively pirating will try to find ways to continue to pirate."