Get IE8 Activities In Firefox
One of the new features in Internet Explorer 8 is Activities, which lets you contextually use the information on a page with other services, and because it uses some generally open formats, someone’s already adapted it for other browsers. This Firefox extension lets you practically seamlessly use Activities in Firefox, so check it out.
Microsoft’s Extreme Server Makeover Check out this video, spoofing Extreme Home Makeover for the IT world. It’s weird in places, but just watch it, k?
How To Tell If Your PC Supports Hibernation Milo explains how to use POWERCFG.exe to tell if your Windows Vista PC supports hibernation mode, as well as what other power modes your PC supports. It’s an extremely useful tip if you’re running into some power troubleshooting issues.
Halo 3 Heroic Map Pack Now Free
If you’re getting bored of playing Halo online, you’ll be pleased to know that one of its map packs is now free. The price has been dropped 100% on the “Heroic” map pack, giving you three new multiplayer maps for the sweet price of nothing. Enjoy.
Microsoft Releases Popfly Game Creator
Microsoft released a game creator that lets you use Popfly, their free mashup creation tool, to create Silverlight-based games that can run on webpages, Facebook, the Vista Sidebar, pretty much anywhere.
GTA IV Breaks UK Sales Record
Grand Theft Auto 4 sold 631,000 copies on launch day in the UK alone, beating San Andreas’ record from four years ago by over 100 thousand units. The Xbox 360 version beat the PS3 version by 101,000 copies sold, and 360 console sales were up 125%.
Download Free Update to Windows Desktop Search There’s a major update to the search infrastructure used in Windows Vista, and it’s being released as the Windows Search 4.0 Preview. It doesn’t just install on Vista, it works on Windows Server 2008, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003. Download the Vista SP1 32-bit version here.
Xbox 360 Coming To A Hospital Near You
Microsoft is talking about some Xbox 360 kiosks it will be sending to children’s hospitals, as part of a partnership with the Companions in Courage Foundation. The kiosks will be pre-loaded with Y-rated TV shows, G-rated movies, E and E10+ games, and be networked and have a connected headset and Live Vision camera.
Live Search News Launches Microsoft has launched Live Search News, a Techmeme style news site that covers all the usual topics, showing the stories getting the most traction. It’s a style that has worked very well for technology news, and seems to make for a very good overall news site at search.live.com/news
Spiral Vista Sidebar Gadget Check out this Windows Vista Sidebar Gadget; it displays a continuously moving spiral on your desktop. Click on it to cycle through six different types of spirals, letting your computer hypnotize you.
Xbox 360 Posts Another Profit
Microsoft has successfully turned the Xbox division into a profitable, healthy division, resulting in its first-ever profit in a quarter that did not feature the release of a Halo game or holiday shopping season. Its a proud achievement for the company, one that was more than half a decade coming, thanks to an 85% jump in revenue, resulting in an operating profit of $89 million.
Top Japan XNA Games
Check out these Japanese XNA games that won some sort of Spring 2008 best of XNA contest. They look pretty good.
Microsoft Sends “Put Up or Shut Up” Message To Yahoo
Microsoft is sick of Yahoo dragging its feet on MS’s proposed acquisition of the internet company, and has published a stern letter from CEO Steve Ballmer to Yahoo’s board. The letter basically says that Yahoo has had plenty of time to make a decision, and Microsoft wants them to either make a deal or face a hostile takeover. Considering the dragging its feet caused Yahoo to be in this weak position, it should surprise no one that they can’t even lose gracefully.
Data Corruption Bug Fixed in Next Home Server Update The Home Server blog has announced that they have come up with a fix for the data corruption bug that has plagued Home Server users in certain circumstances. Since they are working on Power Pack 1 for Home Server, due for public beta testing next month, they are including the fix with the Power Pack in order to ensure everyone gets it.
Open XML Becomes International Standard
The members of the ISO voted 75% to 14% to approve Microsoft Office 2007’s Open XML file formats as an international standard, removing the barrier erected when the IBM-backed ODF format did the same thing two years ago. The two file formats are now on a level playing field, ensuring that government agencies will choose the better (and more cost-effective) office suite, not the one with ISO certification. ISO controls Open XML now, not Microsoft, and can change any part of the spec, with Microsoft forced to change Office to comply.
Another 11-Cent Dividend Coming To Microsoft Shareholders Microsoft has announced yet another dividend for shareholders, another 11 cents for those invested in the company. Shareholders as of May 15, 2008 will get their dividend on June 12. This will make $4.72 returned to shareholders over the last five years, just over 16% of the stock price.
Silverlight-powered MLB Site Has Disastrous First Week
Baseball season started last week, and the launch of Major League Baseball’s new Silverlight-powered MLB.tv site, where you can pay to watch live games on your computer, had a terrible opening day. With fans paying $20 a month or $120 a year to watch games only on their computer (almost as much as you’d pay to watch a higher quality version on cable or satellite), they were understandably peeved at not getting what they paid for. Now word on whether the problems were on Microsoft’s side or MLB’s, but having such a high-profile launch go bad isn’t a good thing for Microsoft’s important Silverlight technology.
Ribbon Joining Windows 7 User Interface
The Office Ribbon, one of Microsoft biggest software design innovations of recent years, is getting promoted to Windows. The Office UI element will be built into the Windows 7 platform, available for all software developers to access and use in their applications. Quite the vote of confidence, but when you’ve got something good, you should spread it around. Read more about it at Long’s blog.
Xbox Does April Fools Joke Microsoft’s Xbox division sent out an email to all users, informing them of new products from Xbox. They included a wireless helmet, Xbox: The Board Game, a wood-paneled Xbox, and a weather-proof portable Xbox. Also for April Fools Day, Long Zheng “revealed” the lost Windows Vista sounds, uploaded as a collection of Windows 98 sound packs.
Windows Mobile 6.1 Official Launched
At CTIA, Microsoft officially showed off the long talked about Windows Mobile 6.1 update. It includes a new version of the mobile Internet Explorer browser, complete with support for Adobe Flash, Silverlight, H.264. There’s also a new Getting Started Center, the ability to handle more things from the home screen, better touch screen and small screen UI features and other updates.
Microsoft Videos Launching Microsoft has launched a beta preview of Microsoft Videos, a new Silverlight-powered video site that collects the many videos Microsoft creates. Whether you’re an IT pro or developers looking for technical videos, or a gamer looking for video game videos, or a consumer looking for videos about the latest software and Media Center stuff, it’s all there are running in glorious Silverlight.
40% Of Vista Crashes By Major Graphics Chips Proof is out that it is the graphics processor industry that is ruining computing. Data from Microsoft shows that 40% of crashes in Windows Vista were caused by graphics drivers from ATI and NVidia, with 75% of those NVidia’s fault. Since Vista was released, those two companies have been the most negligient in serving their customers with decent drivers, and everyone is suffering as a result. I wish Intel got serious about graphics, because ATI and NVidia have lost any goodwill they had with me an many other users.
Free Portal Song “Still Alive” for Rock Band
Tomorrow, Harmonix will begin giving away “Still Alive”, the end credits song from Valve’s hit game Portal. While tomorrow is April Fools’ day, the song isn’t worth buying for most gamers, and we already know it’s been formatted for the game, so the announcement should likely be legit. Xboxers, download your free song tomorrow (PS3 gamers have to wait a few weeks due to system upgrades) and thank the Rock Gaming Gods.
Here’s a video of the guy who wrote “Still Alive” playing the song in the game last month:
Clippy On The Simpsons
Clippy, the Microsoft Office paperclip, isn’t dead! He was on this recent episode of the Simpsons:
Microsoft May Counter Justin Long With Johnny Knoxville Rumors are that Microsoft is preparing an advertising campaign designed to combat Apple’s smarmy Get A Mac ads starring Justin Long and John Hodgman. In the ads, Johnny Knoxville of Jackass fame would dos something incredibly stupid with his computer, like dropping and destroying his PC while performing a stunt, but is saved by Windows and automatic backups. If done smartly, the ads could work, especially by not being as condescending as Apple’s ads.
(via)
Live Contacts Sharing With Facebook, Bebo, Others
One scary part about signing up for a new social networking site is when it asks for your Hotmail/Gmail/AIM password in order to import your contacts. You can never be sure if you can trust that site with such valuable info, which is why it’s great that Microsoft is working to take the scary out.
They’ve signed partnerships with Facebook, Bebo, Hi5, Tagged and LinkedIn, letting you securely invite Live contacts to be your friends, and invite your friends on those services to chat with you on Live Messenger. The only place you enter your Live ID password is a Live.com website, keeping your valuable info out of everyone else’s grubby hands.
Make Your Own PhotoZoom Collections with Silverlight Microsoft has launched a website that lets you take advantage of their hosting and technology, creating big photo collections that users can zoom in and out of as easily as a Google Map. Called PhotoZoom, it utilizes technology based on SeaDragon/Deep Zoom and PhotoSynth, runs in Silverlight and is hosted on Microsoft’s servers. You can try out a sample album here, or enjoy it embedded below:
Here are two videos from Mix 08 about Silverlight For Mobile, coming soon to Windows Mobile (probably the second quarter of this year) and demo’d at Mix. You’ll need Silverlight to watch them:
Microsoft has announced yet another platform will be receiving a plugin to support playback of Silverlight content, this time Silverlight will be on Nokia phones. The Nokia S60 web browser for Symbian OS phones will support Silverlight when the plugin is released later this year. Nokia Series 40 phones and internet tablets will get Silverlight some time after that, and a Windows Mobile version of Silverlight is expected around the same time.
Perhaps this could be how Silverlight truly one-ups Adobe Flash. While Flash is ubiquitous, support for Flash on mobile devices is a mixed bag, ranging from poor to non-existant. If Microsoft can get Silverlight on a lot more phones than Adobe can manage for Flash, that might prove too tempting for web developers to ignore.
Microsoft is making a ton of announcements pre Mix ‘08. Let’s go through them:
The Windows Live Messenger API - releasing in beta, this lets developers build Messenger right into websites, offering most of the core Messenger features right on the page.
Silverlight Streaming has been updated, going from alpha to beta, up to 10 gigabytes of storage space and 100 megabyte file sizes. Files stream now at 1,400 kbps, with tit free as long as you use under 500,000 minutes per month. File manipulation is also improved, with the ability to use Windows Explorer, plus support for Visual Studio 2008 with Windows Live Tools for Visual Studio.
The Windows Live Contacts API allows users to use their Windows Live contact info with any site while retaining control of their information. Also, Windows Live ID Delegated Authentication allows web apps to request permission from users to access their information.
The Windows Live Photo API allows full control of photos on Live Spaces, without the need to go to the Spaces site. Third party sites can show Spaces photos, thumbnails and download links.
There are two new example Windows Live QuickApps, plus updates to Tafiti.
Microsoft has made a deal with the Library Of Congress, powering the Library’s new interactive materials site with its Silverlight technology, and donating a lot of technology to be used by Library visitors. Microsoft donated $3 million worth of technology, including new library and search tools, as well as Vista-powered kiosks.
Microsoft Silverlight, a graphical browser plug-in, will help power the library’s new Web site, www.myloc.gov, where users will be able to access and personalize interactive materials.
The open source community is up in arms about the proprietary nature of Silverlight, but given Microsoft’s efforts at cross-platform compatibility of Silverlight, as well as the fact that it’s only on one, highly interactive website that would have needed Flash or Silverlight anyways, it’s not that big a deal.
The top five are Conquerator, a frantic real time war board game, like Risk except where your opponent is always making moves while you are trying to attack him; iSheep, where you play a dog herding sheep into a pen; Specimen, where you play a scientist armed with only some tweezers, attempting to ascertain the nature of various blob organisms; Hive, a real-time strategy game with bug coloniesyou have to coax into working for you; and Orblast, where you guide a marble through a maze and fight an enemy AI.
JellyCar is the first of the free new XNA games I played. One thing to note: While the games are free, they are limited to 16 days of play, but there is a way around it that I’ll talk about in a second.
JellyCar is hilariously fun. It uses a cartoon on drawing paper art style, featuring a car and some objects, all of which squish and move in funny ways. Your job is to drive the car to the target, and each level is a puzzle to figure out which mixture of speed, car flipping, car transforming (it can grow, but only temporarily) and use of the environmental objects will get you there.
The art style and the challenging gameplay make for a fun game. Replay value is limited to trying to beat your best time, but getting through the levels first is a unique and enjoyable experience. I’m surprised at how good this game is, and very happy I downloaded it.
JellyCar was known as JelloCar before Microsoft added it to Xbox Live (presumably changed to avoid copyright issues). You can download the XNA version of the game from the developer, Walaber. He’s made available the compiled game in both Windows and Xbox 360 versions, so if you have a Creators Club subscription, you can keep playing past the expiration date. If you don’t have an Xbox 360, download the game for Windows and enjoy this gem.
Microsoft is announcing right now DreamSpark, a new program that gives free developer, designer and related software to college students in 11 countries. DreamSpark goes live today in Belgium, China, Finland, France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States, and gives away free stuff like Visual Studio, Expression Studio, and even Windows Server.
For gamers and game designers, an exciting inclusion in the program is the XNA Game Studio 2.0 software (as opposed to the free Express Edition), as well as a 12-month free membership in the XNA Creators Club, which means free running of XNA games on the Xbox 360.
The full list of free software:
Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition
Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition
XNA Game Studio 2.0
12-month free membership in the XNA Creators Club
Expression Studio, which includes Expression Web, Expression Blend, Expression Design and Expression Media
SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition
Windows Server 2003, Standard Edition
Sql Server Developer Edition
Virtual PC 2007
Visual Basic 2005
Visual C++ 2005
Visual C# 2005
Visual J# 2005
Visual Web Developer 2005
We’re talking over $2,000 in free software, just for being a college student. We’re talking a huge gift to students, letting classes teach this stuff without software costs, lettings students develop software without these costs, and letting any student pick up some stuff to play around with without a monetary commitment.
Students will go to Microsoft’s Channel 8 site to download any of the software, following a third-party authentication process to verify they are a current student.
UPDATE: Channel 8 now has a video interview with Bill Gates about DreamSpark (requires Silverlight):
UPDATE 2: Running through the verification procedure with a college student now. It has a list of 40+ colleges it can do automatically, and an apology for the others:
School or organization not listed?
The world is a big place. We’re doing our best to get every country and school included quickly. If your location or school aren’t available, don’t give up. Click here to find another way to be verified on DreamSpark.
My buddy was verified with a single click. Nice! He just entered his name, social security number and date of birth.
UPDATE 3: Boy, email confirmation is taking forever, still waiting on it 20 minutes later.
UPDATE 4: After about half an hour, the Journeyed confirmation arrived. You need to login before clicking the URL in the email, then you can download everything in DreamSpark. I’m trying the XNA Game Studio 2.0 and Creators Club subscription. You can download using a download manager or direct link.
Downloaded at a blazing 940 KB/s. Looks like everything worked perfectly. Enjoy your free software, students!
I feel like I have to do an update on this every few month; five months later, and still no news on when the Silverlight plugin for Opera will be released. Seven months have passed since an Opera developer said the “Silverlight plugin should now work” in Opera 9.22, and we’re now on Opera 9.25 and still, nothing. I’m in middle of talking to some Opera folks, so I’ll try to get an answer on this one.
Microsoft has chosen Morgan Stanley and The Blackstone Group to run the complicated financial details of its acquisition of Yahoo. Morgan Stanley has strong links with both companies, though Microsoft has avoided using them for anything in nine years, and Blackstone worked on Reuters $17 billion deal last year. Both companies stand to collect $100 million in fees if the deal goes through.
Meanwhile, Yahoo is using Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers. Microsoft often uses Goldman, and Yahoo’s retainer of them could explain why they had to go with Morgan Stanley for this deal.
Bill Gates gave his keynote at the Consumer Electronics Show tonight, and I was liveblogging it, but this site was down due to the massive coverage of my Windows Mobile 7 scoop. Here’s what happened:
Bill Gates talked about how this was his last CES keynote, and his last year at Microsoft. For the first time since he was 17, he won’t be a Microsoft employee. He showed a video package of how his last day might go, working out with Matthew McConaughey, producing an album with Jay-Z, asking Hillary Clinton if he can be her Vice President, asking Bono if he can be the new guitarist for U2, with Brian Williams reporting around the video (Brian said Bill doesn’t believe in paying more than seven dollars for a haircut). Later in the evening, during an Olympics-related video, Bob Costas told Gates to “lose my number”.
Bill mentioned the cloud and services. Will he FINALLY talk about What Ray Ozzie is doing? We can only wish, maybe at CES 2009.
Bill has decided that in his last keynote, he won’t fix the problems of previous keynotes, but instead, once again, focus almost entirely on “vision” and possibilities for the future. He spends a lot of time talking about connected applications and devices, but nothing specific. At least the super-wide-wraparound-screen for his PowerPoints is cool.
Says 100 million people are using Windows Vista, 420 million Windows Live, and 20 million on Windows Mobile, 10 million added in the last year.
Mika Krammer, direct of Windows product management, gets up to talk about Windows. She shows off Windows Live Calendar, Windows Live Events, Windows Live Photo Gallery, all the while subtly using IE7’s Quick Tabs, Windows Vista’s Flip 3D. She creates, live, a panoramic photo in Photo Gallery and uploads it to Live Spaces. These are great features and great integration that roughly 1% of users are aware of. She shows off the live video thumbnails in Windows Live Search.
Mika picks up an HTC Touch and shows off how to send a photo from a mobile device to a Live Space.
Bill is playing around with a Surface computer.
Bill is announcing a new partner for Silverlight: NBC’s coverage of the 2008 Olympics. They will make available video of the events, live and on demand, courtesy of Silverlight.
Robbie Bach comes out. We don’t see him enough! Robbie talks Xbox, mentions 17.7 million consoles shipped, 10 million Xbox Live members, and new partners for Xbox Live: Disney and ABC, bringing shows like Lost and High School Musical, plus MGM for movies, bringin movies like Terminator and Legally Blonde.
Next, he talks Media Center and Media Center Extenders, says Samsung and HP will be announcing today new Extenders, including HP’s Extender TVs. Also, Mediaroom, Microsoft’s IPTV service, which now has 1 million TVs subscribed. He announces DVR Anywhere, which will let you stream shows you record to watch anywhere else, and special applications linked to specific channels that will surround channels like CNN with detailed interactive information. Also, British Telecom will be the first to bring Mediaroom integration with the Xbox 360 as a set-top box.
Next topic is Zune, which is finally being sold outside the U.S., starting this Spring in Canada. Out comes Molly O’Donnel to explain Zune Social. She mentions how Zune Social is becoming a well-used social network, with 1.5 million beta users, and user-created applications for sharing with Facebook.
They bring out a Lincoln car to show off Ford Sync, which is now winding up in a million cards. They also show off a TellMe application on a cellphone. It accesses GPS to see where you are, and then shows a list of movie theatres in the immediate area, when you say just the word “movies”. Then you can say “Buy two tickets for Sweeney Todd at 9:30″ and it’ll actually work.
Bill comes out and shows off a device that can look at people and buildings and actually recognize them. This is extremely impressive, recognizing Robbie Bach, different Vegas buildings, and does some really cool animations. They’re talking about some unnamed device that categorizes videos for you, something phone related. It’s not all clear, because Microsoft just doesn’t do keynotes as well as Apple, but it does look cool.
At the end, Bill and Robbie faced off against each other in Guitar Hero III. Or rather, they would have, if Robbie hadn’t brought out Kelly Law-Yone, Guitar Hero champion, as a ringer. Not to be outdone, or outspent, Bill brought out his ringer: Slash, lead guitarist of Guns N’ Roses. Nice ending, though it felt like the keynote was just a little too short and didn’t reveal anything.
Bob Familiar has an interview at Channel 9 with Professor Mark Frydenberg of Bentley College of Massachusetts. Professor Frydenberg has created a course that leverages Popfly, using it to teach business majors about software architecture and software development.
Professor Frydenberg’s unique approach allows students to grasp complex distributed computing concepts, build and share sophisticated mashups while working with information (photos, news, music) that is relevant to them.
Check out the video at Channel 9, and while you’re there, beg them to find a way to let people embed Channel 9 videos on their blogs, m’kay?
(via Dave)
Today, Jackass 2.5, the extended edition of the high class Jackass Number Two film, comes out on DVD. However, for the last week and the next five days, anyone with a web browser could see the movie for free, courtesy of Blockbuster and powered by Microsoft’s Silverlight. This is probably the first major mainstream promotion for Silverlight, a good thing even if if does feature grown men being chased by gorillas while wearing banana suits.
Also using Silverlight is Entertainment Tonight, the celebrity gossip TV show. They’re using Silverlight Streaming video on their Year In Review 2007 site, like on this page (via Harry Mower).
Microsoft has released the source code for its Silverlight-powered Tafiti search and research web application. This means that a lot of very powerful Silverlight code is now available for any developer to download and use in their applications, with Microsoft’s hard work now anyone’s to modify and resell as part of their own web app. Tafiti has been placed with the other Windows Live Quick Apps, and is a great addition to your Silverlight starter kit.
Check out 
