If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Several Microsoft watchers have speculated that Microsoft may release the Windows 7 beta to Microsoft Action Pack subscribers on or before the 5th January.

Microsoft posted a note to its partner site regarding the latest Microsoft Action Pack Subscription quarterly update kit. In the update Windows 7 is included as "download only". The packs content is due to start shipping on "January 5, 2009, depending on region, and continues with the first month of each subsequent quarter (January, April, July, and October). Allow 15 to 30 business days to receive your kit."

Despite the rumours we still believe that little will occur over the holiday season and Microsoft will make Windows 7 beta 1 available at Steve Ballmer’s CES keynote on January 7th.

Microsoft recently sent beta invites to potential testers and Microsoft employee Scott Wylie revealed build 7004 in a blog posting last week. According to sources, Microsoft has finished the Beta 1 bits and they have been signed off as build 7000. Build 7001 and 7002 have been reserved (skipped) and 7003 onwards marks the new RC branch.

Ballmer is widely expected to announce the beta to a packed hall full off CES attendees on January 7th 2009.

Image courtesy of Rafael Rivera

Starting today, some of EA’s biggest titles are available for purchase for the first time on Valve’s Steam, a huge online superstore for Windows games. The first games availiable are Spore, Warhammer Online, Need for Speed Undercover, Mass Effect, and FIFA Manager 09, along with the hugely popular Crysis, Crysis: Warhead, and SiN Episodes: Emergence. Another batch of games is soon to hit Steam too, such as Mirror’s Edge, Dead Space, and Command and Conquer: Red alert 3.

The prices are comparable to the retail prices, except, there are two major differences: No physical product and no DRM on EA’s part. If you have a fast broadband Internet connection and don’t mind downloading the games, you can probably live without the physical CD and product key. The second exception comes as a huge surprise, as EA’s latest games (such as Spore) have been ridiculed and boycotted due to strict DRM restrictions, such as not being able to install the game more than three times without calling up EA technical support for help with activation. SecuROM is no longer present in the Steam releases, and instead uses Valve’s own form of DRM, which is much more loose: Don’t go crazy. As long as you have a reasonable amount of PC’s hosting the game at once (not 1000 for example), you will be able to play the game and redownload it when necessary.

EA has contributed this move to help drive Christmas sales, and plans expansion up to the point when titles released to retail are also released on Steam.

Australia has been known to have high levels of censorship. It should come as no surprise to those in the land down under that the government is planning to filter P2P and Bit Torrent traffic in live pilot tests.

Senator Conroy went on the record saying "technology that filters peer-to-peer and Bit Torrent traffic does exist and it is anticipated that the effectiveness of this will be tested in the live pilot trial".

It is a drastic step to filter out all P2P and Bit Torrent traffic as it assumes that those channels are only used for piracy. One example of legitimate use is the popular online game World of Warcraft. This game uses a Bit Torrent system of distrubution for its updates. Like any technology it can be used for both good and evil and choosing to block all on the account that it is only used for piracy is taking censorship to new levels.

Unsurprisingly the idea has fueled a serious debate in Australia; "I’m aware that this proposal has attracted significant debate and criticism ? on this blog and at other places in the blogosphere," Senator Conroy said. Many of the complaints stem around the idea that Senator Conroy is acting as a big brother.

If the Senator has his way and the filter is kept in place how far will the government be allowed to intervene? Simply blocking a technology for the potential illegal use is a preposterous idea as nearly all software can be used for malicious activities; it’s the user who makes the decision.

When it comes to PCs and laptops, Microsoft had little to fear with Linux as much as it does the Mac. But now the new threat to Windows comes in the form of ‘netbooks’ - lightweight, low-cost laptops that typically use Intel’s low-powered Atom processor and don’t come with substantial amounts of RAM or powerful graphics processors. They’re designed mainly for browsing the Web, handling e-mail, writing memos, and taking care of simple word-processing or spreadsheet chores.

Netbook sales will reach an estimated 60% growth in 2010, compared with 18% growth for standard notebooks says a September BNP Paribas report. So obvious is the future in Netbooks. But the hardware demands of Vista can’t be met by Netbooks (and a reason why Microsoft keeps extending XP’s lifetime) and Linux is ideally suited for lower-powered netbooks. At least 30% of the existing low-cost netbooks run on Linux.

Microsoft sees Linux on netbooks not just as a niche market, but as a threat to Microsoft’s desktop share as well. It’s finally taking Linux seriously as a desktop operating system, and Windows 7 is looking to be the tool Microsoft has designed to kill Linux. At Microsoft’s recent Professional Developers Conference, where the pre-beta of Windows 7 was unveiled, Steven Sinofsky, Windows Senior Vice President, showed off Windows 7 on his Lenovo S10 and said it used less than half of the netbook’s 1GB of RAM.

Jerry Shen, CEO of Asus, announced that he plans to release versions of the Eee PC powered by Windows 7 in mid-2009, including a touch-screen version. With netbook return rates much higher for Linux than Windows XP versions, the high point for Linux netbook sales will be from now until the launch of Windows 7. After that will come the inevitable decline. Ultimately, consumers will be the ones to tell us what they really want in a device like this, and how they would use them.

Microsoft Live Labs recently announced Seadragon for iPhone which indicated Microsoft’s interest with the iPhone. Microsoft’s Live Search team has now joined that list and has released Live Search for iPhone, though the announcement was made in the MacRumor’s forum last week unlike the official announcement of Seadragon.

Live Search for iPhone is not an iPhone app unlike Google Mobile App. The Live Search team has tuned their mobile website for iPhone. It’s an iPhone-friendly version of the Live Search site which means that the entire search site is now tailored for the iPhone’s screen.
Some of the features announced are:

• iPhone Friendly: The entire search site is tailored for the iPhone’s screen
• Personalization: You can add widgets like a local weather forecast or stock quotes to your Live Search homepage
• Saved locations: You can now save favourite locations like Home and Work
• Walking directions: Live Search now supports walking directions as well driving directions
• Mobile web results: Mobile web results now appear on top of results with a quick description
• Encarta answers: Encarta answers automatically appear on top of results

As the default search engine cannot be changed in iPhone (other than to Yahoo), the only thing Live Search lovers can do is to set it as their homepage or bookmark it.

Image Courtesy: MacRumors Forums

EA announced last week that they have teamed up with Crytek to provide gamers with a free 10 days of Crysis Wars - the multiplayer version of Crysis Warhead. It has been available to play since Friday, December 19 at 9:00 AM (Pacific Time) until December 28 at 11:59 PM, and gamers only have to register and download to play.

The 10 free days come at the same time as a ‘Holiday Pack’ is released for the game, featuring two new maps for Crysis Wars: Savannah, and Frost. The Savannah map is a PowerStruggle map, whereas the Frost map is a TeamInstantAction map. The two new maps are available both for current owners of the game and for those taking advantage of the 10 free days offer. A new patch (1.3) was released earlier in the month, fixing some map and performance issues, which has already been included in the Crysis Wars download.

EA and Crytek announced a free weekend back in October, also for Crysis Wars. The game is considered by Crytek to be separate from both Crysis and Crysis: Warhead, although is currently sold only with Crysis: Warhead.

The game can be downloaded at MyCrysis, although you’ll have to register first, freely of course. So if you haven’t already seen the great graphics, this is a free chance to do so - although time is limited.

Scott Wylie, Microsoft’s New Zealand Director of Development and Platform Strategy, revealed a Windows 7 build 7004 screen shot on his blog yesterday.

The build in question was compiled on the 3rd December with the tag 7004.0.081203-1830 according to Winfuture. Microsoft employees were given access to the beta build earlier this week with a welcome message that read "Thank you for joining us on our shared journey to Windows 7. The work we’ve done is largely based on the feedback we’ve gotten from you before and throughout the development process. We rely on beta testers, like you, to help refine the product before it’s commercially released. If you haven’t already installed the Beta, we want you to! Please refer to the Installation Instructions to get started".

Build 7000 is due to be beta 1, build 7004 is the next branch that starts for the RC/RTM phase. From the small screen shot you can tell that the folder icons on the desktop are coloured blue like Live Mesh folders and have a glass tint across them. As the screen shot is so small it’s hard to tell whether any elements have truly changed visually. We expect the blue coloured folders are simply Live Mesh synced folders rather than newly coloured folders.

Microsoft is expected to announce the Windows 7 Beta 1 on 7th January 2009 at Steve Ballmer’s CES keynote.

How might technology influence a college student in the future, and what can we expect from our learning institutions in regards to advancements? In which type of environment will students find themselves learning in 10, 15 or even 20 years from now?

Technology in its current form serves to provide a sense of ease in school life. In its present form students can enrol in courses, send and receive assignments, view grades and even view uploaded lecture audio/video or notes. Technology has also emerged as the best research platform available; it is able to present a vast expanse of information while allowing for the content to be the latest and most accurate. Without technology providing the ease of use it does in these areas, more student time would have to be allocated to the monotonous tasks and less time to the important tasks such as studying for that upcoming exam or proofreading that all important essay.
The future will prove to simplify things even more. I predict that laptops will have progressed to the point where a professor may interact with all machines present in his/her classroom from their own, sending us documents, PowerPoint presentations, videos, etc. near instantly. Perhaps a device similar to the Microsoft Surface will be available at every desk, and the students would be able to login with a Windows Live ID and have access to their entire student profiles, homework and all. The future of technology will serve to keep us more connected to school, even when we aren’t currently there.

The desktop as we currently know it will have been revolutionized and serve to be more than a "space for icons and wallpaper". The desktop will be extremely interactive through the use of widgets, real-time news updates, etc. It will also be cloud-based so that one may carry their desktop with them no matter to which device or where they are connected. Students who are not able to attend class for whichever reason will be able to connect via their desktop to a live feed of their lectures, and furthermore even participate in the discussions either through type or voice conferencing.

As computing makes the shift from static to dynamic (or cloud) computing the need to stay connected and updated regardless of device is paramount.. No longer will you arrive at class realizing you forgot to print out your essay and that you only have it on your home PC. Within a few clicks, you would have access to all your files. We are already seeing the beginnings of this with Windows Live Mesh and the future looks bright. I can already imagine walking into a Library on campus that is fully equipped with Surface PC’s that allow me to compute as if I were in my own living room.

Office will be completely cloud-based and store all preferences via a Windows Live login, allowing for trans-machine accessibility. The hallmark programs of the Office line will still be in use, but perhaps not in their separate forms. We may see one Office applications with the potential to do what the separate applications have done and to save or publish in one universal file format. OneNote perhaps will be able to intelligently listen to a lecture video and extract key terms based on nuances in the human voice that stress importance; this will serve to add a new dimension to student note-taking and increase student efficiency.
Smartphones in the future will serve as laptops now; imagine wirelessly transmitting a PowerPoint presentation from your mobile device to a projector. The ease of sharing documents by means of instant transfer between devices similar to the present day Zune’s ability to share music between Zune-to-Zune will make group collaboration seamless.

Continue reading @ Neowin.net

Apple released a statement warning users upgrading from Leopard, about the newest available upgrade for Mac OSX to 10.5.6. The problem occurs from an incomplete software update getting into the update process that can cause Mac OSX to cause errors during the "Configuring Installation" window process.

Apple recommends users, if they haven’t already, to force the software update process to quit the download, remove the partial update from your library and re-download the update. This problem is also been found in the standalone update from Apple’s web site, and the combo update.

If users still faced with problems updating their Mac OSX machine, they are encouraged to contact Apple with related issues.