A report by the Info-Tech Research Group says that more than twice as many enterprises develop with Microsoft’s .Net than Sun’s Java. Of 1,850 organizations surveyed, half focus primarily on .Net and 12% focus on it exclusively, as opposed to just 20% who focus primarily on .Net and a mere 3% that rely on it exclusively.
Granted, the methodology might influence the percentages larger than they actually are (after all, even I can name more than five other developer platforms more popular than .Net without breaking a sweat), but its safe to say that Java is about as popular as male pattern baldness.
(via Digg)
photo by mrjojo under CC license
December 6th, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Developers |
2 comments
Microsoft has announced the availability of FeedSync, the RSS feed data syncing/sharing specification formerly known as SSE, and they’re releasing it under a Creative Commons License.
SSE (Simple Sharing Extensions) is an exciting idea with a lot of potential, if developers take advantage of it. I’ve talked about it before, but the gist is that applications can subscribribe to data feeds (like calendars subscribing to calendar event feeds), and any time the feed changed, all the applications connected to it would be updated with the new data. Calendars could subscribe to multiple event data feeds, and all the feeds would continuously stream updated data into the calendar.
The spec is available at feedsync.org for anyone to use, and it supports RSS and Atom feeds.
December 6th, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
General |
2 comments
The latest trailer for Grand Theft Auto IV is out and available at Rockstar’s website, as well as the Xbox Live Marketplace. This one emphasizes mostly the plot elements of the game, and makes it clear that the graphical wonder of the previous trailers is gone. There are a ton of elements in the trailer that they’ve missed the details on and don’t look any better than in the previous generation of games.
With very little time to go and the game already delayed, they don’t have time to get the little details right, which is worrisome. The lighting may be better and everything shiny, but the smaller objects don’t look real, they look like polygons. I buy these games for the storyline, not the graphics, but the graphics of this game have been so hyped that based on what we’re seeing, a lot of people are going to be dissapointed.
December 6th, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Xbox 360, Xbox |
one comment
Microsoft has taken off the beta tag, cleaned up the code, and released the final versions of its HD Photo plugin for Adobe Photoshop, ready for you to download for free. Get the Windows (XP and Vista) version here, and the Mac OS X (Tiger & Leopard) version here. Both work on Photoshop CS2 and CS3, and are unsupported but work in some fashion under older versions of Photoshop and Elements.
The old beta expires at the end of the month, and this version is better anyway, so go pick up the final release now.
December 6th, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Adobe |
no comments
Microsoft is sending out the latest versions of its service packs this week, in preparation for public release next week.
Office 2007 Service Pack 1 is expected to ship the week of December 10, next week. Looks like, based on what Mary Jo Foley reported and had confirmed, that this will be a final release, not a beta or release candidate. If so, that’s amazing work.
Nick White has already posted about Windows Vista Service Pack 1 on the official Vista blog. The release candidate 1 (RC1) is being passed around now, and the public release has been confirmed for sometime next week.
Windows XP Service Packs 3 also has an RC1 that is now being passed around, though no word on the public beta, or even if there will be one.
December 6th, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
XP, Vista, Office, Windows, Applications |
no comments
There’s a new Windows Vista Sidebar Gadget, and this one is designed to simplify the process of finding Vista Sidebar Gadgets. The Gadget checks Windows Live Gallery every 30 seconds and displays a new, random Gadget, with a thumbnail image of the Gadget and the star rating, so you’re always seeing new Gadgets you might want to download. If you constantly need new Gadgets to fill that Gadget-shaped hole in your heart, then this is one for you.
On a side not, could Microsoft please start letting Gadget developers upload considerably larger and more detailed images of the Gadget? This isn’t 1998 anymore, and there’s no reason to have 100×100 images as the only visual advertisement for a product. Who is trying to save bandwidth here?
December 6th, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Sidebar, Vista, Windows |
no comments
I wanted to re-download the Dead Rising demo (my game disk is scratched up) to show to a friend, and the download failed after 1% with the error code of 80070570. What’s the reason? As far as I can tell from various discussion forums, the reason you get the error and the download failure is because the download is old and has been removed from the Xbox Live servers.
That’s a real shame, if it’s the real reason. There’s no need for Microsoft to remove old game demos, especially a demo of a popular game people are still going to be picking up for years. They only need a single copy of the demo, and it only wasted bandwidth when in use, not when it’s just sitting there on a server. Demos should last as long as you can pick up the game in a store, since they cost almost nothing and can only help inspire people to buy more games.
A back catalog is an important thing, and if Microsoft is removing older demos, it isn’t honoring its back catalog. That’s a mistake.
December 6th, 2007
Posted by
Nathan Weinberg |
Xbox 360, Xbox |
11 comments
