Most of the attention to the recent Google/Yahoo partnership has focused on the two companies’ search advertising plans, but the deal has implications for instant messaging, too. “In addition,” reads the companies’ press release, “Yahoo and Google agreed to enable interoperability between their respective instant messaging services, bringing easier and broader communication to users.”
So far, exactly what that means is anyone’s guess. But the IM market could certainly benefit from a little more interoperability. Despite the fact that IM use is on the rise among home users and businesses alike, each separate IM network remains a walled garden, independent of all the others. Getting them to work together — similar to how e-mail works — would benefit everyone.

Full Article – http://reseller.co.nz/reseller.nsf/opin/772AC4F2E6040AE3CC25746A001432C2

Mark your calendar, wrap a ribbon around your finger or write a little sticky yellow note. Download Day will start on June 17, 2008.

Mark your calendar, wrap a ribbon around your finger or write a little sticky yellow note. Download Day will start on June 17, 2008.

An overview of Windows Home Server Power Pack has been published on the WinSuperSite.

Link – http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/whs_pp1_rc_screens.asp

While Apple’s long-expected iPhone 3G (see my preview) garnered most of the attention earlier this week in the aftermath of the company’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) 2008 keynote address on Monday, an ancillary product announcement is potentially as significant. That announcement concerns a new, or at least upgraded enough to be considered new, online service called MobileMe. Shipping next month for iPhone, Windows, and Mac users, MobileMe is important because it represents Apple’s first serious cloud computing endeavor. And because it seeks to elegantly bridge the gap between iPhones and Windows-based PCs (or, for a smaller audience, between iPhones and Macs), MobileMe could prove to be a popular option for iPhone users looking for something more sophisticated than the iTunes-based syncing capabilities that Apple introduced last year.

Full Article – http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/mobileme_preview.asp

Yesterday at Tech Ed IT Pro 2008 in Orlando we announced some of the enhancements we’re making in Internet Explorer 8 to help IT Professionals deploy and manage IE8 within their organization. We wanted to share those with the IT Pros on our blog.

Over the last year we’ve surveyed over 2000 IT Professionals to understand their concerns and priorities for deploying and managing desktops and software within their organization. We learned that IT Pros have a lot of things to worry about – more than 30 different concerns came up. However, some topics arose considerably more frequently than others. Here are the top ones:

• Deployment and implementation of new technology
• Managing updates and upgrades
• Application compatibility
• Security of data, network and systems

Full Article – http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2008/06/11/what-s-coming-in-internet-explorer-8-for-it-professionals.aspx

Yesterday at Tech Ed IT Pro 2008 in Orlando we announced some of the enhancements we’re making in Internet Explorer 8 to help IT Professionals deploy and manage IE8 within their organization. We wanted to share those with the IT Pros on our blog.

Over the last year we’ve surveyed over 2000 IT Professionals to understand their concerns and priorities for deploying and managing desktops and software within their organization. We learned that IT Pros have a lot of things to worry about – more than 30 different concerns came up. However, some topics arose considerably more frequently than others. Here are the top ones:

• Deployment and implementation of new technology
• Managing updates and upgrades
• Application compatibility
• Security of data, network and systems

Full Article – http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2008/06/11/what-s-coming-in-internet-explorer-8-for-it-professionals.aspx

Microsoft seems like the most unlikely company to ship products that really support Enterprise 2.0. After all, the company is the poster child for packaged software.

But everything the company is saying here in Orlando at TechEd 2008 is consistent with the idea that IT has to support the linchpins of complex, agile, multivariate organizations. And Microsoft is giving IT professionals the tools to support mobile information workers, social networking, cloud computing and virtualized environments.

Full Article – http://blogs.eweek.com/epiphanies/content/enterprise_20/previewing_windows_server_2008_r2_1.html

At the request of its SharePoint and Office product development teams, Microsoft ‘s Office Labs operation has created and is testing a prototype of an internal social network that can provide employees with feeds and updates about their colleagues.

Chris Pratley, general manager of Office Labs , is slated to disclose details of the prototype — called TownSquare — Thursday at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston. He spoke to Computerworld about the project, which was launched in January and has already been used by about 8,000 Microsoft employees.

With a layout that is strikingly similar to Facebook.com’s (in which Microsoft invested $240 million in October 2007), TownSquare is fueled by enterprise news feeds that use Web services to query SharePoint for public information, such as promotions and company anniversaries, about an employee.

Full Article – http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/06/11/Microsoft_testing_prototype_of_Facebooklike_social_network_1.html?source=rss&url=http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/06/11/Microsoft_testing_prototype_of_Facebooklike_social_network_1.html

At Apple’s annual WWDC event, held today, Steve Jobs announced a new software+services product: MobileMe. Offering to synchronise emails, contact, and calendar data, the new service seems just like Windows Live. Except cooler (check out the screenshots) and also coming in at a fairly hefty $99 a year.

Firstly Apple announced a whole range of web-based applications to complement the existing desktop applications. There’s an email application in the browser, which from the screenshot looks very clean. Hotmail team take note. Contacts also synchronise between devices, similar to Windows Live for Windows Mobile if you are running that.

Full Article – http://www.liveside.net/blogs/main/archive/2008/06/09/apple-announces-windows-live-rival-we-re-jealous.aspx

At Apple’s annual WWDC event, held today, Steve Jobs announced a new software+services product: MobileMe. Offering to synchronise emails, contact, and calendar data, the new service seems just like Windows Live. Except cooler (check out the screenshots) and also coming in at a fairly hefty $99 a year.

Firstly Apple announced a whole range of web-based applications to complement the existing desktop applications. There’s an email application in the browser, which from the screenshot looks very clean. Hotmail team take note. Contacts also synchronise between devices, similar to Windows Live for Windows Mobile if you are running that.

Full Article – http://www.liveside.net/blogs/main/archive/2008/06/09/apple-announces-windows-live-rival-we-re-jealous.aspx

On Monday, June 9, 2008, Apple hosted its annual developer show, the Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC), in San Francisco. As with the March 2008 event at which the company announced its iPhone 2.0 software platform, the WWDC keynote featured Apple CEO Steve Jobs as well as two underlings, Scott Forstall, the senior vice president of iPhone software, and Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of product marketing. While the March event focused solely on the features of the iPhone 2.0 software platform, which will run both on original generation iPhones as well as second-gen (and awkwardly named) iPhone 3G devices, this week’s event was split between three topics: iPhone 2.0 software for developers, iPhone 3G, and MobileMe, Apple’s replacement for the .Mac online service.

Full Article – http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/iphone3g_preview.asp

With electricity prices continuing to skyrocket and processors getting ever hungrier for power, it was only a matter of time beforeMicrosoft (NSDQ: MSFT) chimed in with claims that its latest software can cut energy bills. A Microsoft white paper released this week asserts that Windows Server 2008 can cut power consumption by 10% compared with Windows Server 2003 out of the box, and much more if running virtualized.

Microsoft compared power consumption between two installations on the same server with two dual-core processors and 4 GB of RAM, one running Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise x64 Edition with SP2 plus hot fixes, and the other running Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition, with a hard drive formatting in between.

The company found that Windows Server 2003 used as much as 10% more power despite only being able to deliver 80% of the maximum throughput as its successor. Microsoft attributes these improvements partially to power management features that Windows Server 2008 has enabled by default, like the automatic adjustment of processor performance based on workload.

Full Article – http://www.informationweek.com/news/windows/operatingsystems/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=208403193

Over the last two years virtualization.info has been constant in repeating that support is the most challenging issue in any virtualization project.

Some companies are working hard to make their support policy more virtualization-friendly, while others are not even near the minimal level of commitment that the customers are demanding.

Today Microsoft makes a further step to simplify the process with the launch of a Server Virtualization Validation Program (SVVP).

Full Article – http://www.virtualization.info/2008/06/microsoft-launches-server.html

The second chapter of Apple’s iPhone era is almost ready to begin, and it’s already clear that things will be a little different this time around.

Few people who pay even scant attention to the technology industry could claim to be shocked by the introduction of a faster iPhone earlier on Monday by Apple CEO Steve Jobs. Apple has sold 6 million iPhones since June 2007, Jobs said, and will likely sell a few more once the new model arrives on July 11 with a faster networking chip, GPS capabilities, and a software upgrade that’s an IT manager’s dream for a mobile device.

From a features point of view, the new model delivers on what iPhone customers want and need. Yes, you still can’t do mobile messaging, and I still don’t think you can do cut-and-paste, which is just bizarre. But Apple has added just about everything else people have asked for or complained about in iPhone 1.0: faster networks, secure access to corporate e-mail, precise location-based services, and third-party applications.

Full Article – http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-9964230-37.html