IE 9 Platform preview up for grab

MIX10 has been upto expectations as of yet, Microsoft proved those right who were expecting IE 9 to debut soon. On the second day at MIX10 Microsoft did infact release a Early Platform preview for download. This preview is not the actual Internet Explorer but instead, it is a lightweight frame around IE platform. This preview is designed for developers and not end-users. This preview has the developer tools included. Demos are available on IETestDrive.com.

Internet Explorer 9 enabling GPU-accelerated HTML5 is a milestone for visual computing,” added Drew Henry, general manager of GeForce and ION GPU business unit at NVIDIA Corp. “By harnessing the power of NVIDIA GPUs, Internet Explorer 9 removes the glass ceiling for Web developers, enabling them to build graphically rich, high-performing Web applications.”

Hachamovitch revealed that the new JavaScript engine in IE9 is referred to internally under the codename Chakra, and that it delivers a level of performance almost on par with its rivals. The Redmond company also worked on embracing modern web standards such as HTML5, CSS3, DOM and SVG. Illustrative of the software giant’s efforts is the fact that IE9 now scored 55 out of 100 for the Acid3 Test.

The last demo that Hachamovitch focused on, involved support for HTML5 video. However, the IE GM underlined that early adopters and developers won’t get to play around with HTML5 video support in the initial release of the IE9 Platform Preview. Still, the promise from Microsoft is that full HTML5 video support will be added to the IE9 Platform Preview in a future update.

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March 16, 2010 · Filed Under Microsoft

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Truth Behind the death of Intel’s Larrabee

Intel, a well known company, had plans to Roll out a discrete Graphic card chip better known as larrabee, The GPU ( Graphic Processing Unit ) was beleived to compete with the industry kings in Graphic field i.e. AMD-Ati & nVidia. It was said that Intel was working too hard to develop this GFx chip that was based on x86 architecture. The highly appreciated work by Intel was suddenly annouced as delayed indefinitely.

A industry report by Techeye claimed that a hardware designer at Intel said that Larrabee would have changed the Graphics industry significantly as the platform was more flexible in terms of usability and programmability when compared to AMD or nVidia. Its been sometime now since we see high powered Gfx Chip by nvidia or Ati ( AMD) , As better the technology gets they wont be suporting the x86 architecture, this might give larrabee an edge to compatiblity.

“Intel is not a one-shot company. But there is a whole product plan and roadmap still in place,” an anonymous Larrabee engineer reportedly said. “Intel has the luxury of being able to release stuff in its own time, there are not too many other companies that can do that.”

AMD & Nvidia has their own advantages, Intel might just work again on the Larrabee and we might see something better, unless Intel Kills the project.

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March 13, 2010 · Filed Under Hardware

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News to go

Bill Gates a step back from No.1

Bill Gates’ massive fortune of approximately $53 billion wasn’t sufficient to keep the Microsoft co-founder at the top of Forbes’ annual ranking of billionaires worldwide. Gates is now officially the world’s second-richest man, having lost the top position in favor of Mexican telecom tycoon Carlos Slim Helu. Both Gates and Helu have seen their fortunes explode over the past year, as the world started recovering from the financial crisis.According to Forbes, 164 billionaires that lost enough money to be kicked off the list made a comeback over the past year, to over ten-figure fortunes.

Google Launches Apps Marketplace

“The Google Apps Marketplace allows Google Apps customers to easily discover, deploy and manage cloud applications that integrate with Google Apps. More than 50 companies are now selling applications across a range of businesses,” Chris Vander Mey, product manager for Google Apps Marketplace, wrote. “Once installed to a company’s domain, these third-party applications work like native Google applications. With administrator approval, they may interact with calendar, email, document and/or contact data to increase productivity.

Flash Player 10.1 Will Come to Windows Phone 7

One of the features that Windows Phone 7 OS will lack at launch is Adobe’s Flash Player 10.1, at least this is what Microsoft said back in February at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. However, the upcoming operating system will do taste Adobe’s technology, although it seems that an exact time frame for when that will happen is not available at the moment.

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March 11, 2010 · Filed Under Microsoft, google

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Google vs Google

In todays world, try thinking about search, what hits your mind is Google. You type its G oh, google.com , Wonder why ? Just try searching google news and find out what the search engines have to say, google had almost 5 to ten top stories to share everyday. Is that bad ? certainly not. Before i go ahead with a write up, lets talk about what google really does !

Google currently operates as a search master. As per a common opinion Poll which i conducted, 80 among 100 people might say “google” something and not search it on the web. That means google has a strong hold when compared to others in the market. What else google offers ? It offers you Social networking in more than one way, Wave, buzz, orkut. It gives you picasa as a photo editing and online sharing space. Gmail as a Email portal. Gtalk as the messenger application, Most commonly used by websites is adwords and adsense. If i talk about them all, it will be a long list, lets name some more, imobile, blogger, feedburner, chrome, earth, Sketchup, google maps, latitude & not to forget Youtube.

Now lets think once what google gives out as support. How many products are in beta stage ? Lets talk a bit more about what is going on right now.

Google’s ambitious, new wave of acquisitions may be hampered by the realities of being one of the largest companies on the web. Google already dominates in many areas and, with each new move, competitors and government regulators are getting more concerned and twitchy. The latest example is the AdMob acquisition, which Google announced last year, but that may be challenged by the FTC (the US Federal Trade Commission) likely with monopoly concerns.

Google made waves and headlines when it announced in January that it would stop censoring search results in China even if it meant leaving the country altogether. Since then, though, there has been little information coming from either Google or Chinese officials and some have begun to wonder if the search giant isn’t starting to back down on its initial hard stance.

“We are in active negotiations with the Chinese government,” Eric Schmidt told reporters at a media summit, according to the WSJ. He wouldn’t comment on the status of negotiations, which is to be expected. He did, however, say that there would be news to share soon. “I’m going to use the word ’soon’, which I will not define otherwise,” he said. “There is no specific timetable. Something will happen soon.”

some recent reports published all over the web indicate, google is releasing endless products without testing them, Google criticizes others & threatens them, gives out vibes of monopoly, I wonder whats going to be the future and where google will stand with their OS in market.

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March 11, 2010 · Filed Under google

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Transformation to Hard drives

The year is 2010, its time some thing undergo changes. Technology has never been at ease, it changes everyday, something new turns up and outdates other. Now The Hard drives as we know them , are about to undergo a major format shift, this format shift will be the biggest in the last 30 years. It is being said that by early 2011 all harddrives will change how we the users store our data on them. The HDD’s will use advanced format to achieve this. This enhancement will help store more data, more effeciently & while conserving power usage. But the problem arises when we think that right now many users are still on Windows XP, who dont plan to migrate soon to Windows 7.

“The technology has changed but that fundamental building block of formatting has not,” said David Burks, a product marketing manager for storage firm Seagate.
By change in technology, it means that there were times when the hard drives were just few megabytes in size, and formatting them with a 512byte block partition made a whole lot sense, but what now ? when people are using 1TB ( 1024 GB) as a standard Drisk for their computing needs. This fine resolution on hard drives is causing a problem,manager said, because of the wasted space associated with each tiny block.Each 512 byte sector has a marker showing where it begins and an area dedicated to storing error correction codes. In addition a tiny gap has to be left between each sector. In large drives this wasted space where data cannot be stored can take up a significant proportion of the drive.

Moving to an advanced format of 4K sectors means about eight times less wasted space but will allow drives to devote twice as much space per block to error correction.

“You can get yourself into a corner where you cannot squeeze much more onto the disk,” said Steve Perkins, a technical consultant for Western Digital.

This shift also allows manufacturers to make more efficient use of the real estate on a hard drive.

“We can put more data on the disk,” he said. “It’s about 7-11% more efficient as a format.”

Source | BBC

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March 11, 2010 · Filed Under Hardware, Microsoft, Other

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