On the PC, your MobileMe experience will be determined by the applications and services you currently use, and whether you intend to move to Apple’s service entirely, leaving your old solutions behind. That is, most potential MobileMe users will come to the service with some electronic baggage. They most likely already have an email account somewhere, such as Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, or whatever. That account most certainly has some collection of contacts associated with it. A much smaller percentage of these users also has an electronic calendar of some kind, probably Google Calendar or something similar. They access these services via Web interfaces or native Windows applications.

Full Article – http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/mobileme_02.asp

The Windows 7 End user license agreement is in development.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/eula.aspx

Microsoft has recently made two quiet, small, but important updates to its online calendaring effort, Windows Live Calendar. These changes include an update to its Web-based Live Calendar, which is typically accessed via the Hotmail Web site, and a new beta version of the Outlook Connector software, which allows you to access Windows Live Hotmail, Contacts, and, now, Calendar via Microsoft’s popular Outlook application.

Full Article – http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/wl_cal_beta2.asp

On July 24th, Microsoft held their annual Financial Analyst Meeting (FAM), an event where many of Microsoft’s top executives come together to talk about the company’s progress and achievements. At this year’s meeting, Microsoft Chief Software Architect, Ray Ozzie hinted at Microsoft’s cloud initiatives, a part of their Software + Services (S+S) strategy. While Ozzie did not reveal either codenames or ship dates during his speech, there is still some information we can piece together to help determine what Microsoft’s cloud will look like.

Full Article – http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/peering_into_microsofts_cloud.php

On July 24th, Microsoft held their annual Financial Analyst Meeting (FAM), an event where many of Microsoft’s top executives come together to talk about the company’s progress and achievements. At this year’s meeting, Microsoft Chief Software Architect, Ray Ozzie hinted at Microsoft’s cloud initiatives, a part of their Software + Services (S+S) strategy. While Ozzie did not reveal either codenames or ship dates during his speech, there is still some information we can piece together to help determine what Microsoft’s cloud will look like.

Full Article – http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/peering_into_microsofts_cloud.php

Today at the OSCON open source software convention, the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) got an unexpected new sponsor: Microsoft. The Redmond software giant, which will contribute $100,000 annually to the ASF, joins Google and Yahoo as a platinum sponsor of Apache development.

The ASF is a nonprofit group that exerts loose organizational guidance role over a sprawling ecosystem of autonomously managed software projects, including the Apache web server and a host of libraries, frameworks, toolkits, and programs. The culture of the ASF is built upon what they call the “Apache Way,” a philosophy of consensus-based collaborative stewardship and volunteerism.

Full Article – http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080725-microsoft-to-sponsor-of-the-apache-software-foundation.html

Windows Search 4.0 will begin automatic updates using Windows Update within the next week or so to Windows Vista, but will be an optional update for Windows XP users.

The new version will update the indexes, Search will release most of the requested resources and slow down the indexing process as soon as it detects mouse or keyboard activity, or when another application requires computer resources.

Details of the update are posted on TechNet at Reminder – Windows Search 4 coming to WU soon…

Windows Home Server Power Pack 1 will be automatically downloaded to Windows Home Servers through Windows Update if Automatic Updates is enabled on your home server or you choose “Update Now…” from the Settings tab of your Windows Home Server Console. If you want to install Power Pack 1 before it is available on Windows Update, you can download this update package and then manually apply it.

Download – http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=1A6AEF46-DB57-401F-814F-6EFA26E7A1E8&displaylang=en

Unlike certain technology reporters from, say, major national newspapers, I’ll actually deliver meaningful reviews of the Apple iPhone 3G, iPhone Software 2.0, and MobileMe service after actually using them for reasonable amounts of time and interacting with them via Windows, the operating system that’s used by most of Apple’s customers. That day, alas, has not yet arrived, and in one case–the iPhone 3G–I don’t even have the actual product to review, yet. That said, I’ve already spent some time with the iPhone 3G, and significant amounts of time with the other two products. So I’d like to offer my first look overviews of each, with an eye towards helping Windows users decide whether they should embrace or ignore these trend-setting products. In the coming weeks, I will flesh out these initial views into more thorough reviews. And as was the case last year with my multi-part review of the original iPhone, I think what you’ll find here is something that’s a lot more accurate and relevant than the hype-tastic baloney spewed by Apple’s highly-placed fans.

Full Article – http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/apple2008_firstlooks.asp

Hello Windows Essential Business Server Beta participants,
We are pleased to announce the availability of the RC1 release of Windows Essential Business Server.
We look forward to your participation in the Windows Essential Business Server connect program and are really excited to receive your feedback on this release. The team is looking for confirmation we have it right. This is your last opportunity to provide feedback on this product before it is released. Your feedback can and will directly impact the final version of this exciting new product!
The preparation and planning wizards are now required to be run before installing the product and you’ll see that this is reflecting in a new disc ordering that begins with the Prerequisite Planning Tools CD. These tools are designed to help catch issues that could cause interruptions during installation, especially in scenarios where Windows Essential Business Server is being installed into an existing infrastructure. As a reminder, RC1 is not for production use but we do encourage you to run Preparation and Planning wizards in a live environment in order to provide useful feedback to us. Se wizards only reports on potential issues found and direct you towards documentation you can follow to correct the issues found.
The following items are Included in the download package on MS Connect:
Prerequisite Planning Tools (Disc1)
Management Server (Disc2)
Security Server (Disc3)
Messaging Server (Disc4)
What you should do next:
. Download the files here http://connect.microsoft.com/centro/Downloads/DownloadDetails.aspx?DownloadID=13068
. Get Product Keys. If you participated in any of the prior releases you can reuse your existing keys provided you use the same hardware. Otherwise you will need to get three product keys, one per server type, from the product keys section on the MS Connect site so you can install the Windows® Essential Business Server software.
. Install the product and let us know what you think.
. Physical Media: You may request media for this release here.(http://connect.microsoft.com/centro/Survey/Survey.aspx?SurveyID=6546)
Reminder: All the information on how to submit feedback, participate in newsgroups, get product & CAL keys etc. are on http://connect.microsoft.com/ebs08. If you have any other questions regarding this beta please email us at [email protected].
Thanks,
The Windows Essential Business Server Product Team

The July Community Technical Preview (CTP) of Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 2008 is now available for download. This is the 2nd CTP and like the first this one has a lot of new features and improvements. In addition to the list below you can see some of the features in the Welcome Letter and a complete list in the Whats New? document.

1. New samples and tutorials: This CTP has many new samples and tutorials including:

1. DSS Node Discovery using UPnP: A new UPnP sample illustrates how to use UPnP for discovering DSS nodes across a UPnP network.

2. Transport Extensibility: PipeTransport and PipeTransportHost are two new tutorials on how to write your own transport and load it in your custom host. In addition you will also find the UdpTransport and UdpTransport as additional transport samples.

3. LINQ: Service Tutorial 12 shows how to subscribe to the Directory Service using a LINQ Filter and how to receive filtered notifications.

4. Silverlight: The XBox Controller Viewer sample shows support for use of interactive Silverlight-based UI

5. Embedded Simulation Environment: The sample EmbeddedSim sample shows how to embed the Visual Simulation Environment in a custom Windows Forms user interface.

6. Simulated Pursuit Camera: The PursuitCamera sample shows how to implement a camera entity that follows behind a target and avoids obstacles.

7. Simulated 4×4-drive: The SimulatedFourByFourDrive sample shows how to implement an entity that behaves like a 4×4 off-road car.

2. Global Assembly Cache: Core CCR and DSS assemblies are put into the Global Assembly Cache. means that they are a shared resource for all installations on a single machine.

3. Simulation on 64-bit machines: Simulation now runs on 64-bit systems using the Microsoft Windows-32-on-Windows-64 (WOW64) subsystem. To use simulation on 64-bit machines, make sure you use dsshost32.exe which forces the WOW64 mode.

4. Visual Studio Project Wizards: The Visual Studio Project Wizards have been rewritten to make it much simpler to create new service projects directly from Visual Studio 2005 and 2008. Project wizards are provided for VB.Net and C# targeting .NET Framework.

5. Much Faster DSS Proxy Generation: The DssProxy tool has been completely rewritten to simplify the generation of service proxy assemblies and to make it much faster to compile services. In addition, the tool chain for writing services for .NET Compact Framework has been simplified to no longer need a companion service project targeting the desktop version of .NET Framework. This makes development for .NET Compact Framework much easier.

6. DSS Log Analyzer: The DSS Log Analyzer is a preview of a powerful new debugging and monitoring tool that can visualize and analyze message exchanges between services sent within a DSS node or across nodes. In addition to showing the actual messages that have been sent it also provides message correlations, time lines, and illustrates how multiple message interactions are causally linked over time.

7. Embedded Visual Simulation Environment: In addition to having a stand-alone UI, the Visual Simulation Environment can now be embedded in other applications. This enables other applications to show the Visual Simulation Environment as part of their application.

Please help us making this release better by trying it out and send your comments, suggestions, and bug reports to our MSDN forums.

After a great tip from one of our readers in our first Mesh tutorial, it appears as though the Live Mesh mobile portal has now also been opened up to the public. Available at http://m.mesh.com, the website provides access to the basic functionality of Live Mesh through the browser, albeit without the ability to automatically synchronise folders that comes with a native client application. Its a start however, so here’s our quick walkthrough.

Full Article – http://www.liveside.net/blogs/main/archive/2008/07/17/microsoft-opens-up-live-mesh-for-basic-mobile-access.aspx

It’s official! We’re releasing an update to the desktop products MapPoint 2009 (Desktop Business Intelligence Mapping and Analysis Tool) and Streets & Trips 2009 (Desktop Consumer Trip Planning). Contrary to the release of MapPoint 2006, there are quite a few more features and a whole new interface. MapPoint 2009 will be available September 1, 2008. Streets & Trips will be available in early October at your favorite retailer. For those who don’t know, Streets & Trips has a subset of MapPoint functionality, but if you just want offline trip planning software S&T is the way to go. And, for the Aussies, no, there is still no Australian version – just North America and Europe. I know, I know.

Full Article – http://blogs.msdn.com/virtualearth/archive/2008/07/14/mappoint-2009-streets-trips-2009.aspx

It’s official! We’re releasing an update to the desktop products MapPoint 2009 (Desktop Business Intelligence Mapping and Analysis Tool) and Streets & Trips 2009 (Desktop Consumer Trip Planning). Contrary to the release of MapPoint 2006, there are quite a few more features and a whole new interface. MapPoint 2009 will be available September 1, 2008. Streets & Trips will be available in early October at your favorite retailer. For those who don’t know, Streets & Trips has a subset of MapPoint functionality, but if you just want offline trip planning software S&T is the way to go. And, for the Aussies, no, there is still no Australian version – just North America and Europe. I know, I know.

Full Article – http://blogs.msdn.com/virtualearth/archive/2008/07/14/mappoint-2009-streets-trips-2009.aspx

Verdict: The iPhone 3G is an evolution rather than a new species, beyond adding 3G and GPS support, it is the original phone in a new skin.

The first thing that will strike you with the iPhone 3G is that it is looks very similar to the original. It comes in the same 8GB and 16GB configurations as the previous 2G model and has the same two megapixel camera.

The software is also the familiar iPhone interface and all the same applications. There are some additional features debuting in the new release, which focus on business users looking to use the iPhone in place of a BlackBerry.

Full Article – http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/211809/apple-iphone-3g.html