Best of Friday Tech October 3, 2008
Posted by mycto in Business Productivity, Infrastructure.Tags: Bailout, eco-friendly, Microsoft, Samsung, Sony
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Happy Friday dear readers–here are a few quick stories making the rounds:
Sony’s new electronic book–the Reader:
Sony Reader
Hit the link for the full story at Gizmodo: Sony Reader
Microsoft cares about the bailout too!
With the US economy in the tank–software giants are suffering as companies are pulling back on spending. This includes even jugernauts like Micrsoft whose stock has taken a beating lately:
Read more on the view from Redmond here
Samsung wants to save the environment too.
Samsung has announced two new eco-miser desktops that use less juice while humming away at your workspace.
Samsung eco friendly models
Hit the link for more info from Engadget
Silver Cloud in the Future for Microsoft October 2, 2008
Posted by mycto in Browsers, Business Productivity, Infrastructure, operating systems.Tags: Google, Microsoft, Steve Ballmer, the cloud
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Did you hear the one about the guy from Microsoft, the guy from Google and the priest? Me neither.
What I did hear today was a lot about Microsoft getting into “the cloud”. What is this cloud and what magic does it perform you ask?
Cloud
The cloud is just a fancy phrase that describes the process where computers that are not at your desk do the majority of crunching / processing and you look at and edit this data on your pc through your browser.
If you look at your computer desktop you probably have a bunch of programs or applications that do things like word processing or spreadsheets or games. The future, will see the significant majority of all human interaction with data in “the cloud” be it on a desktop, a game console (think XBOX) or your phone.
Anyway, Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s excitable CEO proclaimed today that Microsoft will be working on a version of an operating system (OS) that is geared for cloud computing. I believe I predict what this looks like already: strip out everything from the current version of Vista and just present users with an Internet Explorer button. CLICK. BLAM. INTERNET.
Microsoft
What Microsoft really needs is an easy to use online document editing and managing system and storage system. Wait–Google has one of those. Hmmmm. What would a company look like that was made out of these two entities?
Do I Need Chrome? September 12, 2008
Posted by mycto in Browsers, Uncategorized.Tags: browser, Chrome, Google, Microsoft
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Browser Wars
People have been asking me if they need Chrome, Google’s new browser.
Most people get locked into using one browser. It runs. It crashes. They start again. A few people might have two browsers on their computer (Internet Explorer and Firefox) and the odd person might be experimenting with Opera.
So, Google’s decision to get into the browser game is intriguing. Of course, they are better suited to tackle this challenge than anyone. They even toyed with marketing the link to download Chrome from their homepage last week and then yanked it down. Why build a browser?
The simple answer is this: if you can get your users to make your browser the default browser, you have a better chance to keep them directed to your products and services. Google understands that the overwhelming number of computer users still use Microsoft Outlook to read their email. If there is a link in the email for a site and they click on it–10 to 1 those users will be viewing the site in Internet Explorer. Microsoft bundled Internet Explorer with its operating software years ago, and despite a ton of bad press and foot stomping all around, they crushed Netscape from becoming the dominant browser (remember them?). Google’s launching of Chrome is a preemptive strike in a new world where an increasing number of users rely on a browser to read email, do their banking, etc. The browser is the operating system and Google wants that space.
OK. Enough business conspiracy talk. Do you need to change to Chrome?
Do you need more than one good winter coat? Probably not, but sometimes you get tired of wearing the same color all the time. I am using Chrome right now to write this. It is fast, but not noticably faster than any of my other browsers. It imported all my bookmarks nicely for me. The navigation across the top is purely graphical, so they lost anyone who is older than 40.
Interested in trying it? Go here:
