In a post yesterday on the Longhorn developer blog, Microsoft asks for customer input on some networking features Microsoft is considering including in Longhorn, the next generation of the Windows operating system: […] The Microsoft network product team is investigating ways of resolving peer-to-peer connectivity problems in Longhorn, and we would like to get customer […]
Category: Software
Kick-starting a broadcasting revolution
New Scientist: Twice a week, Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson co-host an internet radio talk show. No big deal. What is a big deal is that Holtz lives in California while Hobson lives in the Netherlands. And neither has access to a radio studio. Yet with a couple of PCs, a broadband connection and a […]
Do people hate Oracle?
In an analysis in The Register, Philip Howard of Bloor Research discusses the database market and how vendors like IBM, Computer Associates and Microsoft are targeting Oracle and seeing weaknesses in the latter’s marketing (among other things). He says: […] Is it because [competitors] (and others) see weaknesses in Oracle? I don’t see how Oracle […]
Collaborative working with wikis
The Financial Times has an excellent report on why wikis (definition) are an effective collaborative tool for the workplace, quoting examples from three prominent companies: "It helps to think of [a wiki] as a sort of online whiteboard," says Gary Boone, research manager at Accenture‘s technology laboratories. "We set up a blog and wiki system […]
Quite a number
vnunet.com: Over 180 million computer users have downloaded Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2), and Microsoft said […] that it is working to make life more secure for those using non-XP systems. Microsoft released SP2 in August last year. Quite a number of people (and businesses) didn’t upgrade automatically via Windows Update amid concerns primarily […]
Social software: Out of the lab and into mass culture
As someone who’s more into the ‘fusion cuisine’ side of new communication tools and channels rather than the theoretical/cerebral analysis side, I tend not to spend an extraordinary amount of time in digesting long essays and white papers about new media or social networks. Give me the executive summary every time. That changed this morning. […]
Manage your iPod with Winamp
News earlier this week that the next version of iTunes will enable you to sync your podcasts directly with your iPod, without needing separate podcatching software, has been eclipsed by this news in Wired News about Winamp: iPod users are raving about a plug-in that makes the Winamp digital jukebox a better way to manage […]
Hot Recorder is hot for podcasters!
If you’re a podcaster, and you don’t have any kind of professional-type hardware (a mixer, for instance), and you’re looking for almost the perfect way to record interviews via Skype relying just on software, then this is the solution for you. Purely by chance, I discovered HotRecorder this afternoon. And let me tell you straightaway […]
Solving PDF irritations in Firefox
Don’t you find it really irritating when you click on a link on a website or blog and then discover that the link is to a PDF file? That usually happens after you’ve clicked the link. The PDF starts loading and takes forever because it’s a big file, or has loads of graphics, it’s a […]
The consequences of email blacklisting
During last weekend, Shel and I learned that the domain of For Immediate Release, our podcast blog, was included in a couple of email blacklists. These are databases that include the addresses of domains known to be the source for spam email. And on Monday, I learned that my domain, the domain of this blog, […]
Orders of magnitude and overload
As I sat at my PC at gone midnight last night, doing email catchup, reviewing comments to various blog posts and RSS feed scanning, I thought – this is ridiculous. I have various software tools that are supposed to help me be more productive and all I’m doing is spending more time on a never-attainable […]
Flaky Gmail servers
I’ve been seeing this more frequently in recent days: This is a Gmail error message which pops up from your system tray in Windows when the Gmail notifier – a very useful tool – can’t connect to the Gmail server, with the little icon in the system tray showing an exclamation mark. I realized just […]
Konfabulator 2 rocks
This says it all about the folks behind the latest version of Konfabulator, an application that lets you run a wide range of programs called widgets on your desktop. (Tech explanation: it’s a JavaScript runtime application that runs little mini-programs, ie, the widgets, on the Mac and Windows operating systems. Also see this explanation in […]
Microsoft tech webcast bonanza
If you can’t get to TechEd US, Microsoft’s annual get-together of IT professionals and software developers, there is a way you can still be part of it. Angus Logan in Australia has a list and links to all the webcasts that will be done from the event which started yesterday and runs until 10 June. […]
The next wave in video communication
I received a press release in my email overnight from Stuart Jacobson at Santa Cruz Networks announcing vSkype, what looks to be a very cool tool for holding video conference calls via Skype. Skype Journal has the scoop on the story, though, with a detailed post last night by Bill Campbell: Today Santa Cruz Networks […]
vSkype rocket
Launched in beta just three days ago, the vSkype video conferencing plug-in for the Skype internet phone sevice has certainly grabbed the attention of an awful lot of people. From an email conversation last night with Stuart Jacobson, vSkype CEO: […] You might be interested to know that we have had ~50,000 downloads in 36 […]
The continuous alarm bell for telcos
BBC News interviewed Niklas Zennstrom, the CEO of Skype, on Friday. The wide-ranging interview includes commentary on Zennstrom’s early venture with Kazaa and discusses Skype and its impact on traditional telephone services. The most interesting part of the interview: […] He believes Skype will take away revenue from phone calls, which is the bulk of […]
NewsGator Online adds support for podcasts
One immediate user benefit from last month’s acquisition of FeedDemon by Newsgator is that a new version (beta) of FeedDemon’s FeedStation podcatcher was released yesterday which supports NewsGator Online and, soon, NewsGator Outlook Edition: […] FeedDemon has had cool podcasting support since v1.5, with a helper application called FeedStation. FeedStation did the work of downloading […]
Success for Dutch business blog meeting
One of the great things about presenting on new media communication channels to a group of people of which over 90% are active bloggers is that it certainly keeps you focused on the precise relevance of the points you’re making and which they’re expecting to hear about. That was very much the case yesterday when […]
Microsoft really embraces RSS
Lots of buzz in the blogosphere and in mainstream media about the news today that Microsoft will be building support for RSS into Longhorn, the next release of the Windows operating system due in late 2006, and not only in the next version of Internet Explorer. Business Week Online has a good summary of today’s […]