ZDNet Blogs

Might Microsoft's Midori be 'Cairo' revisited?

Mary Jo Foley — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 04:00:38 PDT

My post a week ago about Microsoft's post-Windows operating system, code-named "Midori," elicited some interesting responses -- and a few potential new clues.

Why you'll have a long wait for Microsoft's next OS

Ed Bott — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 04:00:12 PDT

The recent buzz over Microsoft’s efforts to build a completely new OS from scratch has led to some wild speculation. As my colleague Mary Jo Foley has reported, Microsoft already has an all-star team that’s working on a next-generation operating system. It’s called Midori, and Mary Jo’s sources say it’s in “incubation,” which means it’s on a fast track to being turned into a product. But will Midori replace Windows in the near future? Not a chance. If Microsoft really does turn this project into a commercial product, I believe it will exist alongside Windows for several years, at a bare minimum. To learn why, let’s dust off the Windows history books.

Microsoft's Hyper-V and Spin Marketing - the Parallels view

Dan Kusnetzky — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 03:00:11 PDT

Here's another take on Microsoft’s announcement of Hyper-V. This time, the comments are coming from Serguei Beloussov, CEO of Parallels. Surguei appears to be taking a rather pragmatic view of the announcement and all of the surrounding hype. Here's what he had to say:

News to know: Open Office; Google; Security metrics; IT jobs

Larry Dignan — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 02:10:31 PDT

Notable headlines: Dana Blankenhorn: What could Open Office do with a business model? Adrian Kingsley-Hughes: First look at Ubuntu 8.10 - Intrepid Ibex. Gallery (right) Paul Murphy: Internet abuse and Cloud Computing An IT productivity horror story Robin Harris: Linux for housewives. XP for geeks.Security wrap: Can Mozilla's security metrics project end the patch-counting nonsense? Dancho Danchev: Storm Worm's Independence Day campaign Ryan Naraine: On deck from MS: Four 'important' patches but nothing for IE Apple caught neglecting iPhone security Nate McFeters: Say it ain't so AVG, say it ain't so: AVG LinkScanner = Badware? Airport security part 4: Attack of the body scanners! Ed Bott: Nothing stealthy about this Windows Update update Opera patches serious code exection flaw Getaway...

An IT productivity horror story

Paul Murphy — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 00:15:46 PDT

This is a story based on extrapolation from hear say where all the questions are unanswered: is a user rebellion against excessive automation coming? is there an economic (national accounts) consequence to this? how about a business cost?

Linux for housewives. XP for geeks.

Robin Harris — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 22:52:37 PDT

The computer proletariat is rising up - and computing will never be the same. Tiny, sub-$500 "netbooks" like the Asus Eee are the hottest thing going in notebooks today. And some surprising things are happening. Like housewives on Linux. Asus is forecasting worldwide shipments of 10 million 7 to 10 inch screen netbooks this year! And a billion in 2018. Appliance computing In an article in the Asian business publication Tech-on reporter Tomohiro Otsuki writes: Retailers and contract manufacturers in Taiwan say that novice PC users there, like students and housewives, tend to buy the Linux version of the Eee PC701, while geeks go for Windows XP. Does that sound backwards? Yet a quick look at Amazon shows that Asus...

Far out! Another power management option for my Mac

Heather Clancy — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 19:13:34 PDT

The marketing and communications types over at developer Faronics of San Ramon, Calif., very gently informed me a few weeks ago that they have a very well established power management utility for the Macintosh platform. I had despaired of the few choices for the Mac a few months back when I wrote a blog about BigFix , a patch manager gone power manager. "What about Faronics?" they asked. Indeed, Faronics is on version 2.0 of the PowerSave software product line, which now supports Mac OS X Leopard 10.5. The Power Save Mac 2.0 software includes intelligent shutdown functions; the ability to schedule when a system should be awake, asleep or in standby; the ability to customize what "inactivity" means for...

Students and the browser war

Zack Whittaker — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 17:14:04 PDT

Note: I just want to quickly apologise for the lack of posts recently; moved into a new house and broadband won't be set up for a while, so had to resort to dial-up which is proving troublesome. I'll do my best, considering this is essentially my income, as lack of posts means I can't pay the rent. For the last decade or so, there has been an ongoing war between Netscape (now gone), Microsoft and Mozilla, over which browser is the best and who uses it. Microsoft brought out Internet Explorer which killed Netscape Navigator, which led Microsoft to be the world leader for web browsing even up until now. Mozilla came around a few years ago, moulded from the...

Giant rubber snakes to capture wave power?

Roland Piquepaille — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 09:27:52 PDT

UK researchers have developed a prototype of a future giant rubber tube which could catch energy from sea waves. The device, dubbed Anaconda, uses 'long sea waves to excite bulge waves which travel along the wall of a submersed rubber tube. These are then converted into flows of water passing through a turbine to generate electricity.' So far, the experiments have been done with tubes with diameters of 0.25 and 0.5 meters. But if the experiments are successful, future full-scale Anaconda devices would be 200 meters long and 7 meters in diameter, and deployed in water depths of between 40 and 100 meters. An Anaconda would deliver an output power of 1MW (enough to power 2,000 houses). These devices would...

Texas Instruments pulls power management efforts under new division

Heather Clancy — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 19:02:36 PDT

Quick update on Texas Instruments (TI), which looks at power management from the guts of the chip level. Here's the blog I wrote last week describing some of those efforts. I wasn't all that surprised to hear that the company has pulled all its power management and energy efficiency design projects under one umbrella organization, called the Power Management strategic business unit.The division, which is part of TI's analog strategy, will be led by Senior Vice President Steve Anderson, who has about 19 years of experience in power supply design. Anderson joined TI in 1999 when the company bought Power Trends, which made power modules. Here's more on how TI contributes to the power management equation, right at the integrated...