Silverlight Showing Up on Nokia Handsets Soon

Posted By: JD Lewin | Mar 4th, 2008 @ 11:55 AM | 6,927 Views | 2 Comments

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In one of the first of many newsbombs coming out of everyone's favorite desert oasis this week, the Silverlight team will announcing the porting of Silverlight to Nokia Series 60 mobile devices. Given that the Finnish juggernaut represents a majority of the smartphone market, support for Silverlight on Nokias (in addition to the previously-announced WinMo device support) will help bring the next web to the pockets of the masses.
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Tags: mobile, Nokia, silverlight, Symbian, WinMo

Microsoft Issues New Product Principles: The Ozzie Effect

Posted By: JD Lewin | Feb 21st, 2008 @ 8:28 AM | 7,940 Views | 0 Comments

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Microsoft this morning announced four guiding principles for it's major products, including Vista, Office, and SQL Server. Ensuring open connections, data portability, enhanced support for industry standards, and open engagement with the industry have all been listed as prioritied for current and future versions of the company's products.
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Tags: APIs, development, interoperability, Microsoft, Office, standards, windows

Skyfire browser for Windows Mobile supports Flash et al

Posted By: JD Lewin | Jan 28th, 2008 @ 11:30 AM | 9,720 Views | 3 Comments

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The race to enable embedded web content on mobile devices is a serious one, as clearly none of us enthusiasts will be happy until Youtube videos and Myspace music players are available at all times. Enter Skyfire and their browser for just about any WM5/6 device, which uses some server-side voodoo to enable wicked browsing speed and no lack of code support. While it's currently in private beta, if you ask really nicely you may get the hook-up.

(via Engadget)

Tags: browser, Flash, mobile, windows mobile

UPDATED: Windows Live Photo Gallery beta not public

Posted By: JD Lewin | Jun 27th, 2007 @ 2:22 PM | 11,890 Views | 9 Comments

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The new beta of Windows Live Photo Gallery ~~is now available~~ and it’s an important update for any photo enthusiast using Vista. The new version includes connectivity with Windows Live Spaces most importantly, allowing the user to easily upload photos to their Spaces account. Kip reports on LiveSide a quick rundown of the beta’s features. Also online are a few screenshots of Windows Live Folders, which will provide a place online for Live users to store and share their large files. Keep an eye on the Windows Live betas site for more as the summer marches on.

UPDATE: The WL Photo Gallery beta has only been seeded internally, and a public beta won't be available until later this year. We'd like to see integration with more photo services than Spaces by the time this gets released, so hopefully it's been designed to allow an intrepid user to write a plug-in.

Tags: beta software, photography, web services, Windows Live

Office 12 docx files are zips in disguise

Posted By: JD Lewin | Jun 22nd, 2007 @ 4:46 PM | 12,926 Views | 2 Comments

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Take any document created in an Office 12 app, rename said document with a .zip extension, and browse that file’s contents from Windows Explorer. Welcome to the magic of Office’s XML implementation, where every document is simply a bundle of XML data. This little hack will provide you hours of needless content-editing fun for those who have Office 12 installed, as well as a sneaky way to replace the images in your coworker’s trip report with photos of our favorite popular music star.

Tags: hacks, Office, XML

Microsoft Research demos multi-touch laptop prototype

Posted By: JD Lewin | Jun 20th, 2007 @ 4:05 PM | 21,834 Views | 2 Comments

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Hot on the heels of the Microsoft Surface computer comes the Cambridge kids from Microsoft Research with their latest creation. Steve Hodges’ Dell laptop now sports multi-touch input, courtesy of a small collection of infrared sensors attached to the rear of the display. The video in Long Zheng’s post shows the usual pinching and sliding, along with some input from a traditional remote control.

Tags: portables, research, surface computing

Adobe renames Apollo web technology as AIR

Posted By: JD Lewin | Jun 14th, 2007 @ 3:01 AM | 6,414 Views | 0 Comments

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Today the public beta of AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) goes live, ending the alpha chapter of its life as Apollo. As has been previously mentioned, the technology allows web developers to use their existing kung-fu to create applications with all the behavior and most of the abilities of traditional desktop apps. Adobe has a gallery of sample AIR applications online, of which the Yahoo-powered MapCache we’re playing with is particularly entertaining. Hopefully in the coming months we’ll see this ecosystem grow, if for no other reason than to update our Facebook profiles from the airplane.

Tags: adobe, desktop development, web development

HTC Touch skips the buttons and brings the cool

Posted By: JD Lewin | Jun 5th, 2007 @ 5:56 PM | 16,459 Views | 3 Comments

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Without a doubt the hottest Windows Mobile handset for the next couple months will be the HTC Touch. A 2.8 inch touch screen takes center stage, allowing you to navigate the device’s media features with your oldest and most favorite input device; your finger. The standard set of Bluetooth 2.0 with AD2P support, 802.11b/g, 2.0 megapixel camera, and microSD expansion slot are all powered by WinMo 6 professional. We’re certainly curious about how useful a device without some sort of dedicated text input will become, and when we’ve had some time with one you’ll hear our verdict.

Tags: HTC, mobile devices, touchscreen, winmo 6

Windows Home Server add-ins grow your backup powers

Posted By: JD Lewin | Jun 5th, 2007 @ 3:40 PM | 22,462 Views | 0 Comments

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Terry Walsh has started We Got Served as a place to gather up all the how-to’s and add-in’s for Windows Home Server. Considering WHS is still working through its beta phase, imagine our surprise at the handful of excellent pieces that have already been built! If you’re a big photo nut, Photosync will keep your Flickr and WHS Photos folder in sync. For the constant travelers, Wake on LAN will power up (or down) any of the machines connected to your WHS. And for the extra secure solution, KeepVault will backup the contents of your WHS online, for yet another layer of redundancy. Keep an eye of the WHS team blog as they march closer towards release.

Tags: add-in's, photography, Windows Home Server

Vote for Silverlight in the Webware 100 awards

Posted By: JD Lewin | Jun 4th, 2007 @ 5:59 PM | 12,113 Views | 3 Comments

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CNET's Webware 100 is a simple enough contest to determine the most appreciated services in the Web 2.0 universe. There are areas to choose your favorite bit of media, commerce, networking, and plenty of others. This year the Publishing category includes Microsoft Silverlight, a technology close to our hearts, amongst some steep competition. Get out the vote and let the world know what are the best pieces of the web landscape. If you need some encouragement be sure to check out the Silverlight Showcase of incredible web apps from MIX07.

Tags: awards, silverlight, web2.0

J.D. Lewin