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Here is an earlier post which was shown in TED.

This is the most innovative thing I’ve seen Microsoft do in years. It had a huge emotional impact on me, as I realized the way my son will see the Universe will forever change, thanks to the work of two guys in Microsoft Research (Curtis Wong and Jonathan Fay). We meet both of them and get a look at why the WorldWide Telescope created a stir at last week’s TED Conference. Coming soon, you’ll get another look inside Microsoft Research as we get a tour of the new building that the researchers themselves help design. Tons of innovative ideas there that you’ll appreciate learning from.

I couldn’t help but spot this as I was searching a few minutes ago:

Could this be the latest new updated look for Live Search? It’s not official yet, but I might have stumbled upon that by accident. And to tell you the truth, I actually like it better. Why?

Well it’s super simple than the current big bar UI. The top bar is more minimized and practical. There’s the really cute magnifying glass next to the search box. And the other good stuff is also the same. Though it would be neat if the orb would still function as it is, and you could see your display icon next to your username on the right. I would mind those larger sized.

Wouldn’t you agree that this is far better than the current look? Tell me your opinion. I always thought the top bar took up way too much space.

If you click the hyperlink I gave you at the top, you can refresh it several times to take a look at it. If you search, and the revised look goes away, just do another/several refresh(es). Really neat. I can’t wait to see this live.

Source: msftandthefuture.spaces.live.com

by Michael Muchmore

A week after the first Internet Explorer 8 beta, the Mozilla Foundation tried to steal some of Redmond’s thunder with its own one-upping fourth beta release of the next-generation Firefox 3 browser.

The new beta sports an improved download manager; full-page zoom; better integration with Vista, Mac OS, and Linux; improved location bar auto-completion; and better performance and memory usage.

On the surface, the new beta Firefox 3 Beta 4 doesn’t look much different than Beta 3, but Mozilla states that it incorporates more than 900 enhancements from the previous version. Chief among these are performance and memory usage improvements, and in PC Magazine’s initial testing of the beta, we experienced noticeably snappier browsing and program loading. We did notice, however, memory usage growing while remaining on a single web page—PCMag.com—which ballooned from 50 Mbytes to the mid 60s over the course of a minute. Browser startup time was vastly improved, taking just 2 seconds to load, compared with the first beta’s 25 seconds.

The new download manager always shows you how much time is remaining for your download to complete. It also features a search box so that you can find a previous download based on the web site where you found the software. A pause button is handy if you need your connection bandwidth for other tasks in the middle of a large download.

Icons, toolbars, and menu styles for the Windows Vista, Mac OS X, and Linux versions of Firefox 3 are now tailored to look like the native interface elements in those OSes. For the Mac Firefox now uses OS X widgets and spell-checker in web forms and supports Growl notifications.

One of Firefox 3’s most useful new features—location bar autocomplete—has gotten even better. When you start to type a web address in the “location bar” (elsewhere known as the “address bar”) Firefox uses a smarter algorithm and larger display to help you get to a site you’ve previously visited. According to Mozilla sources: “Results are returned according to their frequency (a combination of frequency and recency of visits to that page) ensuring that you’re seeing the most relevant matches. An adaptive learning algorithm further tunes the results to your patterns!”

The new beta browser version is available in 40 languages for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. You can obtain it from Mozilla’s Firefox download site. Keep in mind that the beta is intended for testing, development, and bug reporting, so it’s not recommended for use as your primary browser. That said, this version feels far more fully baked, speedy, and stable than the earlier betas.

The Firefox development team has determined that they will need to produce a fifth beta of Firefox 3 after this, because of the number of blocker bugs remaining in the current code. The internal deadline for beta 5 is March 18 and general release will follow that by two weeks, if it follows the pattern of previous releases.

While Apple Computer may have finally released its iPhone software development kit (SDK) earlier this month, developers who’d been waiting to get their hands on it are already whining about the numerous restrictions and problems encountered by them.
Yes, Apple head honcho, Steve Jobs, has attempted an explanation, a rather stiff one: “You don’t want your phone to be an open platform with anyone writing applications for it, and potentially gumming up the provider’s network.”

But that doesn’t undermine or offer a solution for the several problems the developers are facing (at least saying they are facing).
To enumerate:
Some developers say they can’t begin to download the SDK from dsauthweb.corp.apple.com before getting started on it. Others are complaining that the set-up package just doesn’t install on their systems.
The list isn’t over yet. VoIP services aren’t allowed via cell networks though they’re allowed over WiFi. SIM unlocking may be forbidden; but elsewhere in China and other parts of the world, thousands are doing it unabashedly. Further, only published APIs can be used; and only in the way Apple dictates. Applications cannot write data anywhere except in their designated areas. The “iPhone Human Interface Guidelines” poses a major problem: supposedly a public document, only a registered iPhone developer can see it.
There’s more to come. Just one application can run at a time; in case developers need to leave a particular application, it quits by itself. Third-party applications — not even instant messaging applications — can run in the background.
Further, Apple’s own admission — the beta version of the SDK isn’t yet ready to go on 64-bit systems. Programming can be done only in AJAX and not in COCOA. There are other problems like with the user interface. Also, data synchronization is limited only to iCal, Mail, and Safari as of now.
So with all these problems, and with hackers already having released hacks before the release of the iPhone SDK, we wonder whether they’ll now devote their restless energies to releasing programs to break all these barriers.

BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) - European Union regulators have given a green light to Google Inc.’s US$3.1 billion (€2.13 billion) bid for online ad tracker DoubleClick, saying the deal will not hurt competition for online ads.
Critics have complained the deal would give Google too much power.
But the European Commission says it found no proof that Google and DoubleClick would be able to squeeze out competitors. That is because Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL provided «credible» alternatives for placing ads on Web sites.
The commission says Google and DoubleClick are not currently rivals. It says Google’s purchase even of a potential competitor would not hurt competition in the online ad market.