Silverlight

Microsoft debuts Silverlight update

Microsoft is launching a revamped test version of its Silverlight software that is designed to broaden the appeal of the company's answer to Adobe Systems' Flash.

Chairman Bill Gates was set to announce Silverlight 2 beta 2 on Tuesday morning at Microsoft's TechEd conference in Orlando, Fla. Gates was also slated to unveil a partnership with IBM to make it easier to build DB2 database applications using Microsoft's tools, as well as updates to other Microsoft tools.

The new release of Silverlight, which will be available for download on Tuesday, includes support for Microsoft's .Net Framework, … Read more

VIA and NVIDIA offer new chips for small systems

It's been a big week for small systems.

On May 29, VIA formally announced (here) its "Nano" family of low-power x86 processors. These chips will be especially valuable in small laptops, UMPCs, and so-called mobile Internet devices (MIDs).

Then on June 2, NVIDIA announced (here) its Tegra 600 family, which is also being marketed for MIDs. But Tegra is a very different animal. It's based on an ARM11 processor core, which can run Windows Mobile or Linux but not Windows XP or Vista.

VIA's Nano processors are based on a new microarchitecture that is a … Read more

Today's must reads: Novell's lead pony, Microsoft on open source, and more

It's my end of quarter, and I can't blog at the volume that you deserve. Only seven posts today....I have failed you! :-)

There were a string of posts, however, that deserve to be noted, even if I lack the time to comment on them in detail. Here they are:

Dana Blankenhorn has one of his best posts yet, this time comparing Novell to a "lead pony" in horse racing. I'm glad to see Novell doing well with some areas of its business, but I agree with Dana that I'd rather see Novell doing this as a real contender, rather than as Microsoft's sidekick (On Novell's Moonlight, Dana writes "...to say [Moonlight] is open source is like calling a lead pony a thoroughbred"). Gordon Haff calls out the "natural" dynamics of markets that limit monopolies beyond a generation or two. In Microsoft's case, "shifting an entire product foundation is enormously challenging and past skill sets and ecosystem don't necessarily travel well from one generation to another." Bingo.… Read more

Flash and Flex continue to blow away Silverlight

Microsoft has been trying hard to get the world to care about Silverlight. Visit Microsoft.com and you'll be forced to install it if you want to stay on the site. Microsoft has also been out on the evangelism trail, talking up its Rich Internet Application platform alternative to Adobe.

As Tim O'Reilly writes, however, it doesn't seem to be having any effect, a fact confirmed by other data, as well. Silverlight is still a dog on the Internet.… Read more

Times Reader headed to the Mac

The New York Times is bringing its e-reader desktop application to the Mac this month. The newspaper publisher unveiled its latest efforts last night, with a slew of screenshots. The Times' First Look post notes that the application will be running on Microsoft's Silverlight technology, enabling rich-media effects and rendering. Users will be able to read, browse, and search the entire publication while offline.

The big difference between the PC application and the Mac version will be the ability to view pages in three different sizes, all of which have been crunched on the company's servers instead of … Read more

Mozilla speaks out against the free-but-proprietary Web apps

Mozilla Europe's founder, Tristan Nitot, has no problem with free software. Indeed, his organization has created some of the best of it. But when software technologies like Adobe Systems' Flash and Microsoft's Silverlight are free but proprietary, they can create all sorts of problems. "Free" without "open" can become a one-way ticket to technology prison.

Adobe has recently taken steps to open up its Flash technology, but Nitot's concern is still valid:

He described the nature of the Web at the moment as open but suggested that "proprietary solutions running on top of the Web are trying to take over"..."So far, there has not been a problem," Nitot said. "Both Adobe and Microsoft have been willing to give (Flash and Silverlight away) for free. But maybe they have an agenda. They're not here for the glory; they're here for the money."

Nitot gave two historical examples of Microsoft and Adobe withdrawing or withholding products from certain platforms: Microsoft's discontinuation of Internet Explorer for Unix and Mac, and Adobe's long-standing refusal to "provide a recent version of Flash for Linux users." He suggested that Web developers should be asking those companies whether they are "sure that Silverlight and Flash will always be available on all platforms (and) run decently on all platforms."… Read more

Democrats vote for Microsoft

If this year's Democratic convention does come down to a floor battle, Microsoft could end up being the real winner.

The Democratic National Convention Committee announced Monday that Microsoft will be the "official software and HD Web content provider" for the convention, which runs August 25-28 in Denver. The move is a vote of confidence for Silverlight, which is in a battle against incumbent Adobe Flash.

The software maker will power real-time online voting systems for delegates as well as live, gavel-to-gavel streaming coverage of the event at DemConvention.com.

"Silverlight multimedia applications will provide an … Read more

Revenge of the desktop app

The cloud is taking over the world of applications, casting a shadow on the desktop. The browser rules. Operating systems are simply plumbing. The Web is the new OS.

The tipping point for the on-demand, software-as-a-service applications has come. No software, as Marc Benioff likes to say, and no downloads. All you need is a browser and Google Apps, Facebook, Amazon.com, MyYahoo, HotMail, Zoho, Salesforce.com, TWiki, or whatever applications (sometimes known as services) you prefer for business or personal use.

If this is really the case, then why is my desktop littered with hybrid applications such as Thwirl, … Read more

Mono project takes Silverlight step closer to Adobe AIR

Miguel de Icaza, who heads up the open-source Mono project, has provided an update on a project to create Silverlight applications that run out of the browser, moving a small step toward what Adobe Systems offers with AIR.

Mono is an open-source implementation of Microsoft's .Net framework. It lets developers use Microsoft tools and languages, like C#, to write applications that run on Windows, Linux, or MacOS.

Part of the Mono project is Moonlight, an implementation of Silverlight that runs on Linux. Silverlight is a browser plug-in for rich Internet applications.

De Icaza said that some of the Moonlight … Read more