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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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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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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Office 2007 32bit & 64 bit : The difference

Make no mistake about it, Office 2010 is also a platform, not just a productivity suite. Customers generally turn to a variety of third-party extensions that build on top of Office. Incompatibility and lack of support in this regard are inherent problems, especially with the ecosystem needing to catch up with 64-bit Office 2010.

“We strongly recommend most users install 32-bit version of Office 2010 on both 32 and 64-bit Operating Systems because currently many common add-ins for Office will not function in the 64-bit edition. The 64-bit installation of Microsoft Office 2010 products will be available for users who commonly use very large documents or data set and need Excel 2010 programs to access greater than 2GB of memory. There may be technical issues with the 64-bit version and in order to install a 64-bit version of Office 2010 product users must have a 64-bit supported operating system on their PC,” Microsoft notes.

Continue Reading | Softpedia

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March 11, 2010 · Filed Under Microsoft

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Windows 7 Shamrocks Theme Pack

Microsoft uses the Windows Personalization Gallery to not only let customers running the latest iteration of the Windows client customize their desktops with unique imagery, The Shamrocks theme brings to desktops a few wallpapers that are bound to resonate with Irish nationals more than with other users of Windows 7. As the theme’s label implies, the content features a lot of green and the shamrock, both symbols of Ireland. Saint Patrick’s Day, also referred to as St. Paddy’s Day or even Paddy’s Day, is an annual celebration of Saint Patrick, without a doubt the most prominent patron saint of the island.

The three-leafed clover theme is available just in time to allow Windows 7 users with Irish blood to personalize their desktops in accordance with the upcoming Saint Patrick’s Day. As all content on the Windows Personalization Gallery, the Windows 7 Shamrocks theme is offered completely free of charge.