Archive for: October 16, 2007

Microsoft Office Communication Server 2007 (OCS) finally saw the light of day this morning, bringing with it Microsoft's vision for fully unified messaging (see Mark Hachman's news story). I saw an original beta of this deal last November followed by an updated beta this past spring. Seen it, played with it, danced the testing dance with it.

From that experience, I've got to say this is an enterprise play, not an SMB platform. At all.

Don't get me wrong. It works. It's also slick, and it's cool and it'll definitely change the way workers communicate. It's just not for smaller businesses--and by smaller I'm thinking less than 500. Minimum. Several reasons for this.

First off, you need a decent server farm to make this work. For the real world, OCS will need at least two servers -- one for itself and one for the SQL Server database that needs to run behind it. For businesses with multiple offices around the country or the globe, those OCS server instances will need to multiply. You may also need to run more than one locally once you're dependent on OCS--that way, they can run in tandem mode for enterprise reliability.

But that's just OCS. To integrate OCS into a network, you'll need to be running Active Directory in full DNS mode. You'll also need Exchange 2007 (Exchange 2003 doesn't cut it)--and that might require multiple instances depending on geography and user load as well. Finally, you may need additional servers, like Speech Server, to enable more advanced options like full voice translation, or SharePoint 2007 to integrate OCS with SharePoint teams, document libraries and workflows.

And once you've got all ...

Microsoft continues to roll out improvements to its Live Suite. Yesterday, the company made several improvements to Live Search and VirtualEarth services.

"Microsoft is building on several years of innovation in imagery and 3D visualization," said corporate vice president of the Search and Advertising Platform Group at Microsoft, Satya Nadella. "Adding some of the most significant innovations to driving directions in the last several years, and expanding how our current 185 million customers can experience the improvements to the core of Live Search to include access from a wider variety of clients, platforms, and devices."

The enhancements to VirtualEarth follow an increase of the app's U.S. surface area by 400,000 square miles, back in January. Thanks to the new updates, 80 percent of the US and 50 percent of Europe's population are now covered by the service. Enhancements to VirtualEarth also include enhanced geocoding.

On the mobile end, Microsoft upped the ante with Live Search for Windows Mobile with Voice Input. Users with the new Live Search for Windows Mobile 5.0 and 6.0 can now use voice search to find gas prices, and business operating hours.

The company also announced the Live Search service for Blackberry users.

The folks at TechHit were tired of not being able to keep up with their friends' Twitter posts at the office--without looking like they weren't working. So they came up with OutTwit. It's a plug-in for Microsoft Outlook that allows you to receive Twitter status updates and posts from your friends, and make your own Twitter posts from Outlook.

With so many free apps to help you stay on top of your Twitter posts and the posts and updates that your friends make, you might wonder why someone would want to use plain old boring Outlook to manage their Twitter messages and status.

Part of the answer is obvious: People at work who don't want to look like they're goofing off but still want to keep in touch with their friends can use an app like this. The other part of the answer isn't so obvious. A number of people have Microsoft Outlook at the center of their digital lives, and want to get as much use out of it as possible. Outlook has remarkably robust task management and calendaring tools, and if your business or office uses Exchange for e-mail and calendaring, you probably have Outlook open all of the time.

With OutTwit, you can update your own Twitter status and post new messages directly from Outlook, and you can receive your friends' updates in an Inbox folder as actual Outlook messages. This allows you to filter by friends and message types, and you can configure how often Outlook will look to Twitter for new updates instead of receiving them as they come in. OutTwit works on Windows 2000, XP, or ...

Kyle's a big fan of software blog, Uncov. I find them pretty amusing, myself, but it's not really my first destination, when looking for the latest piece of software news--that title generally belongs to Download Squad, eHub, or Lifehacker.

It was at his insistence that we include them in our Top 100 Undiscovered Web Sites story. Again, they're not my top software blog, but they're certainly in the running for the funniest--not that there's a hell of a lot of competition in the funny software blog field.

Anyway, we knew we could count on them to take our Top Web Sites logo to new heights, as evidenced above. It's days like this that all of our hard work finally seems worthwhile. Awesome.

The responses for the Our Favorite Blogs story have just started trickling in. There are going to be a few winners in there, as well. I can feel it.

Now that Apple has dropped the price of (some) non-DRMed songs to 99 cents, what does the future hold?

The problem is that the foundation of Apple's iTMS economy, once unassailable, now seems to be crumbling. Apple's DRMed tracks not only are the same price of as some of its non-DRM tracks, but are encoded at a lower bitrate. And, of course, there's Amazon's MP3 service, which has emerged as an unexpected but powerful competitor. Left alone, it seems quite clear that Amazon is going to force the market price for all non-DRMed music to be 99 cents or below.

Assuming a.) that Apple doesn't decide to forgo DRM altogether (at this point, an unlikely scenario) and b.) that it is being encouraged by the labels to make its DRMed tracked more appealing than its non-DRMed tracks, it would seem that Apple has three possible maneuvers: bump up the bitrate on its DRMed tracks (to 320 Kbits/s, perhaps), negotiate exclusive releases with the labels, and start thinking about package deals.

As I stated above, the assumption here is that the price of a non-DRMed track is now 99 cents, and that a given track will be priced as such in a short time. There are three variables in a digital piece of music: its bitrate, its price, and whether DRM is turned on or off. The only way for DRM to go is "off," while prices are almost inevitably heading down. I don't know whether there will be re-encoding issues, but bitrate seems to be an easy knob for Apple to turn.

However, music distribution companies are used to striking exclusive ...

Programming our own news is nothing terribly new in the Web world; the Diggs, Reddits, and Del.icio.uses of the world (er, Net) allow us to aggregate the stories we like in one place and share them with other readers. But, unlike those social-bookmarkers, Current.com's homepage is vetted by its producers, who take into account what's popular on the site, what the day's hot topics are--take this afternoon's homepage featuring Apple's Leopard OS, for example--and viewer ratings.

Let's call the scheme a YouTube-Digg-MySpace-GoogleNews über-site hybrid. (Albeit one that will be held to a level of quality control by Current producers--but only time will tell how that one goes.)

In order create what its producers call a "hyperactive" dual-screen media experience (coupling your computer with Al Gore's Emmy-award-winning cable network Current TV), Current.com's content is impressively user-driven, allowing users to add, produce, rate, create, and discuss content that gets produced for either TV or Web. The "hyperactivity" of Current.com is evident in the sheer number of ways the site gives you to start or join a discussion. If you watch a video or read a story that sparks your interest or you have a strong opinion about, you can leave a text response, hyperlink to a related story on another site, upload photos or graphics, or post a video response with a one-click recording session on your Webcam.

Current TV producers also solicit responses and stories from viewers through Current.com while they're working on new segments (mini-documentaries called "pods"), to open up the production and development process of both TV and online content to the viewing community. Take "What's ...

PowerDVD is the latest evolution of the world acclaimed DVD software program that offers maximum video and audio playback entertainment on the PC It comes complete with numerous customizable video audio controls that can deliver the highest quality viewing and listening experience PowerDVD incorporates support for high definition audio and video true 8 channel home theater audio playback virtual surround sound as well as complete controls and extra features for DVD enthusiasts

ArsTechnica reported yesterday that Apple was planning to announce a price drop on its non-DRM tunes today. While we haven't seen the announcement just yet, a quick check of the iTunes Plus page in the iTunes store showed that many though not all iTunesPlus tracks are indeed reduced to from $1.29 to 99 cents. iTunes Plus offerings should be increasing very soon, as well. CNET has a quote from Tom Neumayr,senior manager for iPod, Apple TV & iTunes, regarding the new lower iTunes Plus pricing: "We're adding over two million tracks from key independent labels in addition to EMI's digital catalog and look forward to even more labels and artists making their music available on iTunes Plus."

Considering that AmazonMP3 has been undercutting iTunes's per-track prices, the price drop makes sense. What would make even more sense would be for Apple to drop the price of all tracks, and remove DRM while they're at it... A girl can dream.

Kaspersky provides you with traditional anti virus protection based on the latest protection technologies You can work communicate surf the internet and play online games on your computer safely and easily Product Highlights Three protection technologies against new and unknown threats Hourly automated database updates Preliminary behavior analysis On going behavior analysis Protection from viruses Trojans and worms Protection from spyware and adware Real time scanning for email Internet traffic and files Protection from viruses when using ICQ and other IM clients Protection from all types of keyloggers

Lite Codec Pack is a collection of codecs DirectShow filters and tools Codecs and DirectShow filters are needed for encoding and decoding playing audio and video formats The K Lite Codec Pack is designed as a user friendly solution for playing all your movie files With the K Lite Codec Pack you should be able to play all the popular audio and video formats and even some rare formats
The K Lite Codec Pack always very up to date with the newest and or best versions of the components The installation is fully customizable meaning that you are able install exactly those components that you really want Uninstallation removes all files and registry entries created by the pack It is extremely easy to make a fully customized unattended installation It tries to avoid potential problems with existing codecs and even fixes some problems The pack is able to detect broken codecs and filters on your system and remove them for you It is a very complete package containing everything you need to play your movies Suitable for both novice and expert users The K Lite Codec Pack works on Windows 2000 XP 2003 XP64 Vista
nbsp Changes in K Lite Mega Codec Pack 3 5 0 2007 10 15
Updated ffdshow to revision 1534
Updated DivX to version 6 7 0
Updated AC3ACM to version 1 4
Removed AC3Filter ACM
Added madFLAC version 1 4
Removed FLAC plugin for DC Bass Source
Updated Gabest AVI splitter to version 1 0 0 9
Updated GraphEdit to build 061102
Gabest AVI splitter is now enabled by default instead of the standard Microsoft splitter
The pack is now able to play amv files
Reorganized some components in ...

Apple announced today that it would be launching OS X Server Leopard on Friday, October 26th, in conjunction with the release of Mac OS X Leopard, the same day.

"Leopard Server is the best release of Mac OS X Server yet," said Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, Phillip Schiller, echoing CEO, Steve Job's sentiments upon the release of OS X Leopard.

Leopard Server features what Apple is calling, "effortless setup, management and monitoring of systems on the network," thanks to a slew of new features that give users the ability to configure server apps and network settings like IP addresses, DNS configurations, user accounts, in a few clicks.

Leopard Server features what Apple is calling, "effortless setup, management and monitoring of systems on the network," thanks to a slew of new features that give users the ability to configure server apps and network settings like IP addresses, DNS configurations, user accounts, in a few clicks.

Podcast Producer lets users record, upload, and convert audio into a downloadable podcast optimized for hi-def TVs, iPods, Apple TVs, and cellphones.

Wiki Server introduces collaborative Web page creation, utilizing 20 templates and edit histories for wikis. iCal Server, meanwhile, is an open, standard-based calendar app that works with programs which support the CalDAV standard, making for easy sharing of calendars.

Leopard Server is also compliant with UNIX.

The app will be available for a suggested price of $499 for a 10-client edition and $999 for unlimited clients.

In the midst of Apple announcing its upcoming $129 Leopard OS, Canonical Ltd. announced today version 7.10 (aka Gutsy) of the free Ubuntu Desktop, Ubuntu Server, Kubuntu, and Edubuntu editions, which will be released on October 18, 2007.

The latest version of the Ubuntu Desktop edition will include the following new features: Hardware management improvements - improved plug-and-play configuration for printers, as well as automatic firmware installation for Broadcom cards Improved support for display systems Windows compatibility - Users with a dual partition can read from and write to files that are on located in a Windows partition (including NTFS) Enhanced user interface - Simple 3D screen effects and graphics Desktop search - the ability to search your entire desktop, whether for files, folders, chat logs or photos Firefox plugins - automatic installation of popular Firefox plugins

As many AppScout and Gearlog readers know, I've been running Ubuntu at home for almost two months. Surprisingly, my boyfriend and I are quite happy with the free OS. We've learned a lot of useful information, new programs, and the Compiz Fusion effects make the desktop look awesome. My boyfriend heavily uses Adobe software, so after the Gusty upgrades, that was the only thing we really missed. The big thing is that we don't miss being scared to surf the net or downloading files, and our antivirus popping up every two seconds while using Windows.

The screenshot above is from our Dell Inspiron 530 loaded with Ubuntu version 7.04.

...