Did you hear about Microsoft WorldWide Telescope? WWT is an application that runs in Windows that utilizes images and data stored on remote servers enabling you to explore some of the highest resolution imagery of the universe available in multiple wavelengths.
DigiKnow® is a Post series of tips about what is new, hot topics, trends in technology?, You may get inspired! You may rise the flame of innovation inside you.
People now are arguing about DigiKnow® Origins. Some of them says it is (Digital Knowledge) and others says it is (Did you know?) but in American accent.
In addition to releasing the Internet Explorer 9 beta today, Microsoft showed off work the Bing team is doing to incorporate HTML5 into the search engine and optimize it for the new Web browser.
IE9 supports much HTML5 and incorporates hardware-accelerated graphics processing. More information on the browser is here.
But check out the below demo video of HTML5 and Bing. Also, you might want to scope out a video I posted last week with some other things Bing is doing with HTML5.
Developers now have all the tools they need to create applications for Windows Phone 7, the smart-phone operating system Microsoft is depending on to get it back into the mobile game.
The software giant Thursday morning released the final version of the Windows Phone software development kit, or SDK, which includes scaled-back versions of Microsoft's standard development tools. The free bundle comes just a month or two before Microsoft releases Windows Phone 7 to the public, still slated to happen for the holiday shopping season.
"It's been a pretty long journey, where we came from, and I'm happy with where we're at," Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president of Microsoft's developer platform, said at a media event Wednesday night in Redmond.
Leaders on the Windows Phone team know there's a lot riding on their product and know they're facing an uphill battle. About 18 months ago, when Microsoft began work on the replacement for Windows Mobile, it was clear the team had to start from scratch.
In 2007, Apple released the iPhone and changed the mobile landscape. Windows Mobile, once a market leader, started falling out of favor. The App Age had arrived.
Charlie Kindel, general manager for the Windows Phone partner program, said his team recognized they "needed a massive change."
"When we started the project," he said, "we know we'd basically be starting from ground zero on the application front."
Today there are 250,000 apps in the Apple App Store. There are 50,000 apps for Google Android. When Windows Phone 7 launches, there likely will be just a few thousand apps -- if that.
To deliver a success, Microsoft must entice developers to make apps for the Windows Phone platform. Hence the importance of today's SDK -- though the majority of the tools have been available since a beta release in July.
But to Brandon Watson, a Windows Phone evangelist, it's not a race to get as many apps as possible.
"Which is more important to you: quality of apps or quantity of apps?" he said.
Microsoft's developer tools are well-established, and there's a venerable army of developers that use them. The company hopes its status among software makers will bring plenty of high-quality -- and, certainly, low-quality -- apps to Windows Phone 7.
Microsoft also has been working with big-name companies that will release Windows Phone apps. It has already shown off Associated Press, Foursquare, Pandora and other apps -- on Wednesday it showed off some more, including Twitter, Flixster, OpenTable, Travelocity and Netflix. (Video demos and information on those are coming.)
The SDK released Thursday includes:
Virtual Studio 2010 for Windows Phone
Expression Blend for Windows Phone
a Windows Phone emulator
XNA Game Studio
Wednesday night, standing behind a demo bar at The Commons on the Microsoft campus, Guthrie fired up the limited version of Virtual Studio, loaded a template and immediately started coding. Expression Blend enables developers to polish an app into something that looks and functions elegantly.
"If you want an app -- I use this expression -- that looks so good you want to lick it, you really gotta use those design (techniques)," he said.
Once an app is finished, it will go into the Windows Phone marketplace. The new app store will open in early October, Watson said, then Microsoft will start accepting submissions.
Developers will be required to pay a $99 annual subscription fee (the same price as Apple's) to submit their applications, said Todd Brix, senior director of the marketplace. They can submit an unlimited number of paid apps, but up to five free apps -- those that users can download for nothing -- before paying a $20 submission fee for each additional free app.
As for requirements, Brix said, Microsoft has three main ones:
Apps cannot contain malware or steal private information.
Apps must comply with local regulations, such as FCC requirements.
Apps must perform well -- little crashing, quick boot-ups, and acceptable memory and bandwidth use.
(The full list of certification requirements is here: PDF.)
And as for content?
"We do have a certain content filter that eliminates things such as hate speech, eliminates things like pornography, eliminates things like drugs and alcohol," Brix said.
"We don't have any restrictions on how many fart apps," he laughed, referring to Apple's new App Store terms. "We'll let the consumers determine that. May the best fart app win."
Microsoft is pulling out all the stops to mark the launch of the open beta for Internet Explorer 9, a web browser the company promises will “beautify the web.”
The IE9 beta launches today here at the Design Concourse Center in San Francisco with a major gala that includes hundreds of developers, journalists and Microsoft employees, as well as a live band playing on pedestals in the lobby.
“The browser is a stage. It is the backdrop of the web,” said Corporate Vice President of Internet Explorer Dean Hachamovitch.
Microsoft says that IE9 is a reinvention of the browser. It not only includes greater HTML5 and web standard compliance, but also the ability to turn any website into an application on the Windows taskbar. Thee websites are pinned to the taskbar, providing users with a one-click option to a their favorite websites. It also includes Windows 7’s jump lists; any website that supports them will provide a quick menu to its most popular webpages.
The focus of IE9 is on the “regular consumer,” which may irk those of us who generally have more than 10 or 20 tabs open at any given time. Tabs appear on the right side of the address bar, decreasing the amount of real-estate for tabs. To help decrease tab overload, they are grouped based on different websites within the taskbar.
Perhaps IE9’s biggest selling point is hardware acceleration. The company has used four developer previews to show off the speed of IE9 compared to its competitors. IE9 harnesses the PC’s hardware to accelerate graphics, videos and text. The result is that IE9 is able to render heavy graphic interfaces far better than even Chrome or Firefox.
The IE9 beta is available for download today on the Beautify the Web site Microsoft has launched as part of its promotional campaign. We have had access to the IE9 beta for a while now and will be posting our thoughts and reviews soon. In the meantime, let us know whether you believe Microsoft can get back into the browser game with IE9.
