The Microsoft rumour-mill goes into overdrive

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Following Google’s Chrome OS announcement yesterday, there is much speculation on the web today that Microsoft is going to make a big announcement of their own at their conference on Monday.

The rumours began after notorious tech-blogger Robert Scoble claimed via FriendFeed to have some information regarding a possible announcement to his pal Diego. “Diego, no, it’s one of Microsoft’s primary businesses,” he wrote. “Did you know Microsoft has 14 billion dollar businesses?”

Reports are now suggesting the Microsoft may be announcing a new version of Office that not only syncs via the cloud, but will work in the cloud without the need for any actual software to be installed.

If true, this would be a major attack on Google Docs. It’s interesting to note that the domain office.com has recently been sold and is currently unoccupied. I wonder…..

Be sure to visit Tech Digest on Monday where we’ll be bringing you any important news from the Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans.

(via TechCrunch)

Panda launching free cloud-based antivirus product

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If you want an antivirus product, but you’re not keen on having a weighty product bogging down your system, you might be interested in taking a peek at a new beta release from Panda Antivirus.

It uses proprietary technology that’s been developed over three years to identify new malware applications in as little as six minutes from their release into the wild. It also handles nearly 50,000 new samples a day. To improve performance, it scans executable files immediately, but the rest of your PC when it’s idle.

It’s free because Panda wants to use data from your computer to identify new threats. What Panda hopes will be ‘millions of users’ will send heuristics info to a central server that can crunch all the data nearly in real-time.

The program takes up 50MB on your hard disk, and just 17MB of RAM when in use. Panda hopes to get this down to 12MB by the time it’s officially released. Of course, if you’re not connected to the internet, you lose a certain amount of protection, but given that the internet is the source of most virus activity, that’s not such a big issue, really.

Panda Cloud Antivirus (via Cnet)

OnLive – top end PC gaming on your TV for less than a subscription to Xbox Live

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I started out as a PC gamer with a 486 and single speed CD drive. I was one of those people who entered the constant upgrading loop to try and keep up with the must have games of the time. Then something happened: I moved out and had to deal with rent and bills – suddenly keeping my PC up to date wasn’t quite the priority of yesteryear and I slipped slowly into console ownership. But what if there were a way to play the latest PC games in top resolution through your TV without the need to upgrade your hardware? And what if this were to cost less than the current consoles on the market? Well, I think at that point I’d probably proudly clutch my mouse once more, but that’s never going to happen, right? Wrong, if OnLive has anything to do with it.

The OnLive service, seven years in the making, will allow games to stream games to their front room – it’s essentially cloud gaming. Whereas previously your controller of choice would play the game in the same room, now you’ll be controlling the game on OnLive’s central servers, where the video will be streamed back to you. All you need is a basic computer – even a netbook should do it – and a broadband connection to send and receive the data.

Amazon makes a terabyte of public data available on its servers

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Amazon’s got quite a bit of spare server capacity. In its goal to become the world’s top online retailer, it bought so many servers that it’s now also running a cloud computing business on the side that’s actually rather cheap.

Last night, Amazon announced on its Amazon Web Services blog that it would be making a terabyte of public data available to its cloud computing users, for them to do whatever they like with.

The data includes stats from the US bureau of transportation , an *entire* dump of Wikipedia, the DBPedia knowledgebase (which includes info on 2.6 million people, places, films, albums and companies) and all publicly available DNA sequences, including the entire human genome.

There’s also a bunch of other stuff, and it’s all being made available at lightning-fast speed in machine-readable databases to Amazon’s cloud computing customers. It’ll take a while for the internet to really get to grips with this stuff and use it, but anything that’s about freeing up data and information is wholly supported around here. Three cheers for Amazon.

What would you do with the data? Work out why your trains are always late? Work out how many degrees of link separation a random Wikipedia article has to another? Use the human genome to create a clone army and take over the world? Share your ideas in the comments, and make me your second-in-command as world leader.

Amazon Blog (via ReadWriteWeb)

MWC 2009: Windows Mobile 6.5 unveiled by Microsoft in Barcelona

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Late last week, in a small office near Holborn, Microsoft showed Tech Digest Windows Mobile 6.5, and shared its vision for smartphones that the company hopes will combat Apple’s growing appetite for the sector.

At the opening of Mobile World Congress today in Barcelona, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer unveiled the company’s new mobile OS to the world. The new features are split 50:50 between interface and usability.

Let’s talk usability first. Microsoft’s stated goal with Windows Mobile is to make things take fewer clicks to do. Instead of clicking five times from a locked handset to reading your email, the company wants to minimise the hassle.

The next version of Windows Mobile will feature a brand new home screen, lock screen and a fresh look to the interface that echoes Vista and Windows 7. The home screen looks remarkably Zune-y, which is unsurprising given the praise heaped upon Microsoft’s MP3 player’s interface, and the recent integration of the Zune team into Windows Mobile.

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The phone-is-locked screen will now allow you to unlock straight to specific applications, allowing you to move from a locked phone straight to email, text messages, voicemail, calendar and missed calls with one movement.

The look and feel of the software has been upgraded too. There’s more colour scattered around, and the scroll bars match the feel of the desktop version of the OS, rather than echoing Windows 3.1 as they did previously.

Lastly there’s a redesigned start menu – instead of a drop-down list, you now get a honeycomb of different applications. Microsoft claims that a series of hexagons makes the best use of the space, but I rather suspect that the redesign is more about making the product more visually distinct – something that Windows Mobile has always struggled with.

So how about new features? Well, there’s the previously-talked about “Skymarket”, which is now called Windows Marketplace. That will bring the 20,000 applications developed for Windows Mobile into one central place to better combat Apple’s App Store.

Microsoft told Tech Digest that it won’t exercise as much editorial control over the contents of its app store. Applications that aren’t permitted in Apples store because they compete with things that Apple itself is trying to do, like browsers, will be welcomed with open arms into Windows Marketplace. Microsoft says that the bar for entry will be based on the quality of the code, not the content.

There’s also a new version of Internet Explorer – IE Mobile 6. This will feature increased performance and better rendering of desktop-sized pages. Microsoft says that having one of the oldest browsers on the market means that they’ve learnt a lot about how to make a browser. I think it’ll be interesting to see how it compares with Fennec and Opera.

Lastly, Microsoft’s unveiled a service called “My Phone” that will act as a cloud backup of your contacts, photos, calendar items, mail and documents. It may launch sooner than the main OS, and grant a rather measly 200MB of data initially.

It’ll be free, but Microsoft suggested that more storage might be available at a price, for syncing music collections and the like. Needless to say, you’ll need to decide for yourself whether your data package is adequate for syncing photos and music, but anyone should be able to sync contacts and other text-based data.

The handset where we saw all this in action – an HTC Touch Pro, not a slow phone – crawled in the demonstration, so it looks like Microsoft still has a lot of optimisation to do before Windows Mobile 6.5 is ready for primetime. The OS is due in Q4 2009, so there’s still time, but let’s hope that Microsoft applies some of its learnings from Vista to Windows Mobile, and doesn’t release a product that’s too weighty for its own good.

GDrive gets official description, looking more real by the day

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Inspired no doubt by recent mentions of the GDrive in various bits of code, aspiring hackers are now trawling through Google’s entire codebase looking for references to the mythical cloud storage service. As a result, more nuggets of info are surfacing, including this description of the service:

“GDrive provides reliable storage for all of your files, including photos, music and documents. GDrive allows you to access your files from anywhere, anytime, and from any device – be it from your desktop, web browser or cellular phone.”

Interesting bits: “All your files” and “music” are mentioned. Maybe they’re not bothered about intellectual property issues after all. Still no mention of the originally rumoured “unlimited”, though.

(via Google Operating System)

Related posts: GDrive rumours solidify – code spotted in Google Apps | Rumours of Google planning an incredible unlimited cloud storage service

GDrive rumours solidify – code spotted in Google Apps

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The rumours around Google’s GDrive, which we reported on the other day, look to be gaining steam. First, there was a mysterious menu option appearing in Picasa for Mac, and now code’s been added to Google Apps that references a ‘webdrive’. There’s even a little icon for it.

I’ll reiterate my comment from the other post – this isn’t likely to be ‘unlimited’ storage. People have too much crap for Google to allow that, and most of that crap is dubiously-acquired intellectual property like movies, games and music. Google’s had problems with that with YouTube, so I find it unlikely that they won’t put restrictions on the service.

More likely, we’ll see a limited storage, limited file upload service that doesn’t do very much more than what you can already do with Google Docs and Google Mail. When will we see it? My money’s on ‘fairly soon’.

(via Google Operating System)

Related posts: Rumours of Google planning an incredible unlimited cloud storage service | Google adds tube map to Google Maps

Rumours of Google planning an incredible unlimited cloud storage service

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Whispers around the intertubes would have you believe that Google has something very special planned for this year – unlimited cloud storage. It would mean that if you’ve got a fast enough broadband connection, then you’d no longer need more than a tiny hard drive – everything else could be stored online.

For the record, I don’t think Google’s quite there yet. Even their email product is officially limited, when its competitors’ products aren’t. There’s every chance that we’ll see some sort of limited storage product released by the Goog in 2009 but, well, the ‘unlimited’ label – I just don’t think it can happen yet.

(via ShinyShiny)

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Microsoft to announce MobileMe competitor

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Next month at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Microsoft will be announcing three new web services, which will rival Apple’s MobileMe ‘cloud’ services. First in the list is “SkyMarket”, which we’ve posted about before.

Then there’s “SkyBox”, which will allow syncing of data into the cloud. There’ll be automatic backup and restore services, remote access and management of phone data and easy communication and sharing with others. There’ll be syncing of contacts, email/SMS, calendar items and pictures into the cloud. Most interestingly, Microsoft could be planning to offer this to non-Windows-Mobile phones.

Lastly, there’s “SkyLine”, which will be the enterprise version of SkyBox, targeted at small businesses. They’ll be able to setup their phones with Microsoft’s Exchange hosting with their own domain names. I should note that all these are codenames, so it’s highly likely that they’ll be called Windows Live Somethingorother when they finally get announced.

(via Neowin)

Related posts: Microsoft to launch “Skymarket” for Windows Mobile 7 | Ballmer: Zune to show up on Windows Mobile, Android/Apple bashing

Good OS launches gOS Cloud – a tiny cloud operating system

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Good OS, or gOS, is a company that makes custom Linux distributions, and it’s just released gOS Cloud – a very stripped-down distro that promises to load a web browser (which looks suspiciously like Chrome) in a matter of seconds. You get an OS X-style dock launcher for opening web apps, and Skype’s being mentioned too – which seems to indicate that it can load non-browser-based applications, too.

The OS is designed to boot alongside Windows, and the company is working with netbook makers to produce an ultraportable which runs both this and XP. Look out for that early next year, and perhaps a release of the OS in the meantime.

Good OS (via DownloadSquad)

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