Silverlight 4 beta now available

Microsoft have just announced Silverlight 4 beta today at PDC09, that is available for download today. Silverlight 4 promises to enhance the overall user experience, improving speed, performance and rendering for browsers.

Silverlight 4 was demonstrated today with some practical applications that are able to take pictures and modify the image in real-time, using a web-based service. The service lets you take a picture of yourself and modify it in real-time to adjust your appearance, and even change the colour of your shirt.

Microsoft released some statistics on Silverlight 3, being installed on 33% of all computers and mobile phones during summer 2009.

Silverlight 3 is now installed on approximately 45% of all computers and mobile devices around the world today.

Silverlight was also demonstrated with Microsoft's own search engine, Bing, where it was able to split the image into a puzzle and scatter the image around. This application was also used with a YouTube video, being able to scatter the page and still being able to play the video in real-time.

A new desktop Facebook application using Silverlight was demonstrated using a drag and drop feature for images, including folder groups. The application demonstrated smooth scrolling through images and comments without any interruption.

Silverlight also showed off a video on-demand video third-party video application that allows the user to rewind, fast-forward and even pause live or recorded TV, all using your browser. Microsoft also showed off a demo of a football game that allowed multiple camera angles, even available for a live broadcast

 

source: www.neowin.net

Windows Mobile 7 UI confirmed by Microsoft?

Microsoft confirmed today that the company will unveil its plans for Windows Mobile 7 at the MIX 2010 conference in March next year.
Microsoft Office Vice President Kurt Delbene confirmed the news at the end of day two at the Professional Developers Conference here in Los Angeles. Little is known about Windows Mobile 7 except that it has been plagued with delays.

Screenshots of the rumoured interface leaked in March this year and Microsoft officials refused to confirm or deny. Interestingly, Microsoft has posted a shot of a Windows Mobile interface on its Office 2010 beta site that looks identical to the rumoured Windows Mobile 7 shots. Is this Windows Mobile 7, something in-between or just concept?

Office 2010 Mobile site:

Previous leaked shots:

 

source: www.neowin.net

Microsoft demos Internet Explorer 9

Microsoft today demonstrated an early, three week old, build of Internet Explorer 9 at Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference 2009.

IE 9 will take advantage of the power of the GPU for all page rendering and developers can exploit this using CSS, DHTML and javascript. In just three weeks Microsoft believes performance has increased for IE9 resulting in smoother rendering and improved performance. Interoperability and standards support is increasing and features such as rounded corner CSS support will be built in. A new JS engine will also be built into Internet Explorer 9.

Microsoft offered no time lines or indications as to when a build of Internet Explorer 9 will be available publicly. Steven Sinofsky, President, Windows and Windows Live Division, mentioned that Microsoft had only begun working on Internet Explorer 9 three weeks ago, according to our sources the latest internal build is labelled 7658.0.091116-1745.

 

source: www.neowin.net

Adobe Flash Player 10.1 Prerelease and AIR 2.0 Beta Now Available

Adobe is making a big push today with new versions of its popular media platforms Adobe Flash and Adobe AIR. With Flash Player 10.1 prerelease (a cross between a beta and a release candidate), Adobe actually brings a lot more features than the small .1 update in the version number would have you believe, including support for multi-touch and other media capabilities. More exciting though is the new AIR 2.0 beta, a hefty release with a bunch of new features and updates.

The biggest new feature in Adobe Flash Player 10.1 pre-release is multi-touch and gesture support. Obviously, you need a device with a touch screen, but the technology is becoming increasingly popular, especially in mobile devices and also in desktops and laptops, now that Windows 7 has shipped with full multi-touch support. Moreover, the runtime can take advantage of the hardware decoding capabilities, available in most of today's devices, to render H.264 encoded videos. Adobe says this saves energy, improving battery life, and also uses up less resources.

The latest Flash Player is the first step towards realizing the goals of the Open Screen Project, with which Adobe aims to enable developers create a single app that would work on any device, mobile or desktop, without the need to be specially designed for smaller screens and the likes. At this point, the 10.1 release isn't available for smartphones, but it should come for Palm's WebOS by the end of the year and for Android devices in early 2010.

Adobe has big plans for AIR, its multi-platform runtime, which allows developers to build just one app for all of the major desktop platforms Windows, Mac, and Linux. With AIR 2.0 the company has introduced some handy features, both on the system level but also with the platform itself. The latest update comes with significantly improved memory management, AIR being known to be a resource hog, something that should make AIR apps a lot more appealing. The platform also includes all of the features and updates of the Flash Player 10.1, which is build-in.

 

source: www.softpedia.com

Windows 7 vs. Windows Vista - 234% More Sold Boxed Copies

Windows 7’s overall superiority to Windows Vista has translated into the latest iteration of the Windows client, leaving its predecessor in the dirt in terms of commercial success as well. Windows 7 RTM has been embraced by over three times more customers compared to Vista RTM in the first week on the market alone. Market research company, The NPD Group, indicated that initial sales of the boxed, retail copies of Windows 7 dwarfed those of Vista’s. In the first few days on the U.S. market, Microsoft sold 234% more boxed copies than Vista, noted The NPD Group.

“Microsoft’s program of early low-cost pre-sales, high visibility marketing, and aggressive deals helped make the Windows 7 software launch successful,” revealed Stephen Baker, vice president of industry analysis at NPD. “In a slow environment for packaged software Windows 7 brought a large number of customers into the software aisles.”

Microsoft executives, including Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer, had revealed during visits in Taipei and Japan that Windows 7 sales were strong. However, Microsoft has so far failed to confirm the data provided by The NPD Group. At the same time, the Redmond company has yet to make public any official sales figures associated with Windows 7.

Still, although it outsold Vista by 234%, Windows 7 delivered a smaller boost in actual revenue. Statistics provided through the NPD’s weekly tracking service, reveal that actual Windows 7 dollar sales were only 82% higher than Vista. This can be explained through not only the consistent discounts on pre-sales that Microsoft offered, but also through less sales of the Ultimate flavor of Windows 7, as Microsoft worked to focus consumers more on the Home Premium and Professional editions.

And, as was expected, the launch of Windows 7 also contributed to pushing sales of Windows PCs, although to a lesser degree than Vista did starting with the end of January 2007. Sales of Windows 7 computers were 6% less than those of Vista machines, in a maker that reveals an overall 49% year-over-year units growth, and 95% over the week prior to Windows 7’s general availability on October 22nd, 2009.

“A combination of factors impacted Windows 7 PC sales at the outset, but the trajectory of overall PC sales is very strong leading into the holiday season,” added Baker. “Vista had a slight advantage at launch, as January traditionally has a bigger sales footprint than October. The other hurdle Windows 7 faced was sales of PCs with older operating systems (XP and Vista) were high, making up 20 percent of sales during the Windows 7 launch, compared to just 6 percent of older operating sales during Vista’s launch week."

 

source: www.softpedia.com

Firefox 3.5.5

Google is not the only browser maker releasing a minor update for its browser this week. Mozilla, which has recently refreshed both versions 3.5 and 3.0 is currently pushing an update to v3.5.4, which was offered at the end of the past month. Users of the latest stable version of Mozilla’s open source browser now have available for download Firefox 3.5.5. Version 3.0 of the browser was not updated this time around, although Mozilla traditionally offers 3.5.x and 3.0.x refreshes in tandem. The exception was generated by the introduction of v3.5.4 last week.

On October 27th, Mozilla made  Firefox 3.5.4 and Firefox 3.0.15 available and also stability and security updates for their respective versions. However, it appears that insufficient testing was carried out on 3.5.4. This made necessary the delivery of Firefox 3.5.5 at a little over a week, since the previous release of the open source browser hit the download tubes.

“As part of Mozilla's ongoing stability and security update process, Firefox 3.5.5 is now available for Windows, Mac, and Linux as a free download. We strongly recommend that all Firefox users upgrade to this latest release. If you already have Firefox 3.5, you will receive an automated update notification within 24 to 48 hours. This update can also be applied manually by selecting "Check for Updates..." from the Help menu,” explained Samuel Sidler, Quality Assurance engineer at Mozilla.

According to Mozilla, stability issues have been identified following the availability of Firefox 3.5.4. The company moved fast and had all fixes in place by Saturday of the past week, and moved to ship Firefox 3.5.4 on November 5th. Moving forward, Mozilla is planning to offer the next stability and security updates for supported versions of Firefox in mid-December 2009. Firefox 3.0.16 and Firefox 3.5.6 will be offered to customers the coming month.

 

source: www.softpedia.com

Mandriva Linux 2010 Officially Released

After Canonical showed off their latest operating system, Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala), it is now time for another Linux mammoth to take the spotlight. In other words, Mandriva Linux 2010.0 was just released a few minutes ago, after two Alpha versions, one Beta and two Release Candidates, totaling more than four months of hard work. With this article, we are proud to present the new features that are included in the new Mandriva Linux release. Don't forget that Mandriva 2010.0 can be downloaded for free either as a Live KDE and GNOME CDs or a 100% Free DVD/Dual CD/Mini CD, for both i586 and x86_64 architectures (see download links at the end of the article).

Under the hood of Mandriva Linux 2010.0:

· Linux kernel 2.6.31;
· GNOME 2.28.0 desktop environment;
· KDE 4.3.2 desktop environment;
· EXT4 filesystem;
· X.Org 7.5;
· X.Org server 1.6.5;
· Moblin support;
· New artwork.

The Mandriva Linux 2010.0 feature tour:

· Improved boot performance - through various tweaks and hacks, the boot performance has been greatly improved since Mandriva 2009 Spring. The suspend, resume, hibernate and shutdown functions are also a lot faster;
· Amazing new boot splash - powered by Plymouth, the new boot splash looks much better than in previous releases of Mandriva Linux;
· Better installer - the hard drive partitioning step in the Mandriva Installer has been redesigned to be more user friendly;
· 4 new themes - Mandriva 2010 comes with four themes, one for each edition (Free, One, Powerpack and Flash). The themes can also be used independently, by installing the "mandriva-theme-< flavour_name >" packages;
· 10 new, beautiful wallpapers - both KDE and GNOME desktops include many new and interesting wallpapers from various photographers around the world. By default, the wallpapers are designed to change depending on the hour of the day;
· Landscape screensaver - a new screensaver offers a slideshow of various beautiful landscapes from around the world;
· The KDE 4.3.2 desktop environment - as the default desktop, KDE 4.3 comes with the beautiful Air theme, Plasma enhancements, file previews and video thumbnails in Dolphin, new effects, new Plasma widgets, Nepomuk integration, KDE 3 data migration support, Amarok 2.2, KMess 2.0.0 instant messenger for MSN Live, KOffice 2.0.82 and Digikam 1.0;

· The GNOME 2.28.0 desktop environment - available in the GNOME One Live CD, it offers better Webcam and Bluetooth support, an improved Time Tracker panel applet, the Empathy instant messenger, the Epiphany web browser, the Evince document viewer (with support to save and edit annotations), the Pitivi video editor, improved Totem (with DVD navigation and playback resume support), better GNOME Power Management that supports multiple batteries on laptops and hard disk spindown, Snowy sync support for Tomboy, and many more;
· Moblin support - Mandriva Linux 2010 is the first Linux-based operating system to include a full Moblin environment. The "task-moblin" package needs to be installed. After that, choose "Moblin" from the session list in the connection manager;
· Sugar Desktop support - like Moblin, the Sugar desktop is also present in Mandriva Linux 2010. By installing the "task-sugar" package, the Sugar desktop environment will be available in the session list, on the login screen;
· Better support for Intel graphics cards - thanks to the new UXA acceleration method and DRI2, the new driver for Intel graphics cards improves the overall performance/stability (including suspend and resume) and reduces display flickering during boot;
· Support for modern netbooks - the support for hardware components found in latest netbooks on the market, such as Asus Eee PC models, the Acer Aspire One or the MSI Wind, has been greatly improved;
· Mozilla Firefox 3.5 - as the default web browser, Firefox 3.5 offers an improved performance, support for HTML5 < audio > and < video > tags, support for Ogg Theora videos, support for Ogg Vorbis audio streams, private browsing mode, location sharing and new themes;
· OpenOffice.org 3.1.1 - everything is improved in this release, from the Microsoft Office 2007 filters, the screen appearance, the file locking, the Comments, the Calc performance, KDE4 and the grammar checker integration;
· VirtualBox 3 - the latest version of the powerful and free virtualization software from Sun Microsystems offers Guest SMP for no more than 32 virtual CPUs, support for playing Direct3D 8 and 9 games on Windows guest machines, support for OpenGL 2.0 for Linux, Solaris and Windows guests;
· Elisa Media Center - with a brand-new interface, this project is now known as Moovida;
· Wine 1.1.32 - with improved support for DirectX 10, OpenAL, HTML, JavaScript, Gecko integration and overall performance improvements;
· Phoronix Test Suite - the famous system benchmarking and testing suite is now included in Mandriva Linux 2010;
· USB Startup Disk Creator - just like Ubuntu, Mandriva also provides a little tool, called Mandriva Seed, to make a bootable USB stick that will help you install Mandriva Linux 2010 on netbooks or workstations without a CD-ROM device;
· New network monitor tool - replacing the old net_monitor, Network Monitor will provide users with a complex network traffic monitoring application.

 

source: www.softpedia.com

Firefox 3.6 Beta for Windows 7

The first fully-fledged Beta development milestone of the next generation of Mozilla’s open source browser is currently available for download. Testers and early adopters that have been waiting for Firefox 3.6, codenamed Namoroka, to evolve from Alpha stage are now free to access, download, install and start test driving the Beta 1 build. In addition to being the first Beta for Firefox 3.6, the development milestone offered by Mozilla is also the first example of a third-party browser to embrace Microsoft’s latest iteration of the Windows client. Just like the native Internet Explorer 8, Firefox 3.6 Beta 1 is designed to play nice with Aero Peek and Thumbnail Previews via the new Windows Aero Taskbar (Superbar) in Windows 7.

As you can see from the screenshot included below, Firefox 3.6 Beta users can now take advantage of the some of the same graphical user interface enhancements in Windows 7 as those running IE8. While Google and Opera are lagging behind when it comes down to tailoring their browsers to Windows 7, the same is not valid for Mozilla. And as Windows 7 became available for purchase on October 22, 2009, customers running the OS in combination with Firefox 3.6 will certainly enjoy the bells and whistles of the new Windows Aero GUI.
“The Mozilla community is proud to release Firefox 3.6 Beta 1 for download. This beta version of the next version of Firefox is built on the Gecko 1.9.2 web rendering engine, containing many improvements for web developers, Add-on developers, and users. The Mozilla community appreciates your feedback and assistance in testing this preview of the next version of Firefox. Your beta software will update itself periodically, and eventually will be updated to the final release itself,” revealed Mike Beltzner, Mozilla's director of Firefox.

Mozilla was initially planning to release Firefox 3.6 Beta ahead of October 22, but the amount of blockers pushed back the release. Beta 1 of Firefox 3.6 was also delayed this week by the necessity to respin after a last minute issue was discovered. Mozilla is looking to offer Firefox 3.6 Release Candidate (RC) in November and to release the final version of the browser also by the end of the next month, although all pointers indicate that the complete Firefox 3.6 could slip in December.
Mozilla enumerated some of the changes in Firefox 3.6 Beta:

“* This beta is available in more than 50 languages - get your local version.
* Users can now change their browser's appearance with a single click, with built in support for Personas.
* Firefox 3.6 will alert users about out of date plugins to keep them safe.
* Open, native video can now be displayed full screen, and supports poster frames.
* Support for the WOFF font format.
* Improved JavaScript performance, overall browser responsiveness and startup time.
* Support for new CSS, DOM and HTML5 web technologies.”

source: www.softpedia.com

Ubuntu 9.10 Officially Released

After six alphas, a beta version and a release candidate, we are pleased to announce that Ubuntu 9.10 is here, today (October 29th), available on mirrors worldwide (see the download links at the end of the article). It is our greatest pleasure to introduce you guys to the highlights of this new release dubbed Karmic Koala. It all began on February 20th, 2009, when Mark Shuttleworth announced the Karmic Koala operating system, the next major release of the popular Ubuntu Linux operating system. Ubuntu 9.10 is also the eleventh release of the Ubuntu OS and will be supported for 18 months on both servers and desktops.

Under the hood of Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala):

· GNOME 2.28.1 desktop environment;
· Linux kernel 2.6.31.1;
· EXT4 filesystem;
· X.Org 7.4;
· X.Org server 1.6.4;
· Mesa 3D DRI 7.6;
· Compiz Fusion 0.8.4;
· Xsplash 0.8.4;
· New artwork.

The Ubuntu 9.10 feature tour:

· Improved boot times - Once again, the boot speed has been improved through various modern tweaks;
· New default filesystem - EXT4 is now the default file system for new installations;
· New boot loader - GRUB 2 replaces GRUB Legacy to support EXT4 file systems;
· New boot splash theme - Usplash has been revamped. It is slicker, better looking;
· New X-based splash screen - Called Xsplash, it offers a beautiful, animated splash image before and after the login screen;
· Home encryption - Yes! It's back and improved. It can be found on the installer's "Who are you?" step;
· Revamped login screen - GDM (GNOME Display Manager) has a new skin (in tone with the new Xsplash), and has been greatly improved with lots of features;
· 20 new wallpapers - from various photographers around the world;
· Cosmos wallpaper slideshow - includes 9 wallpapers with planets and stars that automatically change every 30 minutes;
· Revamped Human theme - the default theme has a new window border and it now includes the Humanity icon set;
· 5 extra GNOME themes and one extra icon theme - Kin, Impression, Night Impression, Hanso and Turrican GTK themes, and the Breathe icon theme are all available from the default software repositories;

· Easy access to numerous GNOME themes, icons, splash screens, login window themes and desktop wallpapers - By clicking the "Get more backgrounds online" and "Get more themes online" in the Appearance Preferences dialog, you will gain access to many wonderful themes for your GNOME desktop environment;
· XZ compression - available in the default software repositories, the brand-new XZ high-compression algorithm offers smaller archives compared with current alternatives. It replaces LZMA;
· Ubuntu One - enables users to store and share their files online. It can also synchronize their Tomboy notes and Evolution contacts;
· Ubuntu Software Center - It replaces Add/Remove in order to make application management more user friendly. It offers better descriptions and screenshots for many programs. Installing applications has never been easier;
· Better Computer Janitor - the system cleaner utility has a new interface and it's smarter when removing the cruft;
· Better 3D desktop effects - Still in charge of the beautiful Ubuntu desktop effects, Compiz Fusion features additional plugins for better desktop usability;
· New Disk Utility - a tool that offers hard drive monitoring, through S.M.A.R.T. It can also be used for disk formatting and partition management;
· Empathy Instant Messenger - It replaces the great and wonderful Pidgin multi-protocol messenger, with a Telepathy-based client for better GNOME integration;
· Improved document viewer - Evince protects your system from malicious PDF files;
· 25 language translations - including Spanish, French, Brazilian Portuguese, Italian, German, Swedish, Hungarian, English, Simplified Chinese, Russian, Japanese, Dutch, Portuguese, Danish, Finnish, Catalan, Czech, Korean, Polish, Bulgarian, Slovenian, Greek, Traditional Chinese, Galician and Basque;
· New software development tool - Quickly is a new piece of software that helps developers easily build and share applications for Ubuntu;
· Better power management - HAL has been finally replaced by udev and other modern technologies for better handling of your laptop's battery, hotkeys and storage devices;
· Better support for Intel graphics cards - The Intel video driver features the new UXA acceleration method and KMS (Kernel Mode Setting), which improves overall performance (including suspend and resume) and reduces display flickering during boot;
· New input method framework - The new IBus tool replaces SCIM to allow greater flexibility. It is designed for the anthy, hangul, chewing, m17n, rawcode, pinyin and large tables input method engines.

Included applications:

Accessories:
· Calculator 5.28.1 (an arithmetic, scientific or financial calculator);
· Character Map 2.28.0 (permits to insert special characters into documents);
· Baobab 2.28.1 (disk usage analyzer);
· Gedit 2.28.0 (a small and lightweight text editor with intuitive spell-checker);
· Seahorse 2.28.1 (passwords and encryption keys manager);
· Gnome Screenshot 2.28.1 (saves images of your desktop or individual windows);
· Gnome Terminal 2.28.1 (allows you to use the command-line);
· Tomboy 1.0.0 (desktop note-taking application).

 

Graphics:

· F-Spot 0.6.1.3 (photo manager);
· The GIMP 2.6.7 (image editor);
· XSane 0.996 (scan, copy and fax images).
Internet tools:
· Empathy 2.28.1 (multi-protocol instant messenger);
· Evolution 2.28.1 (powerful e-mail client);
· Firefox 3.5.3 (the ever-popular web browser);
· Vinagre 2.28.1 (remote desktop viewer);
· Terminal Server Client 0.150 (rdesktop, vncviewer, wfica, xnest frontend);
· Transmission 1.75 (lightweight BitTorrent client);
· Ubuntu One 1.0.2 (online file storage).

Office tools:

· Dictionary 2.28.1 (a tool to search word definitions and spelling in an online dictionary);
· OpenOffice.org Suite 3.1.1 (spreadsheet, presentation, drawing and word processor).
Sound and Video:
· Brasero 2.28.1 (CD/DVD burning application);
· Totem 2.28.1 (DVD-Video, DivX, XviD, WMV, MOV player);
· Rhythmbox 0.12.5 (Last.fm, radio and music player/organizer);
· Sound Recorder 2.28.1 (audio recording tool).
System Administration Utilities:

· Computer Janitor 1.11 (a tool that removes obsolete files and cleans your system);
· Palimpsest Disk Utility 2.28.0 (disk drive management and configuration utility);
· Ubuntu Software Center 1.0.2 (software installer/updater tool).
...and, as usual, a lot of wonderful games for all ages!

 

source: www.softpedia.com