Clazh » Software http://www.clazh.com Technology & Design Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:06:16 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 en hourly 1 Microsoft We Screwed Up Windows Mobile, iPhone Competitor Silverlight Mobile 2010 http://www.clazh.com/microsoft-screwed-up-windows-mobile-iphone-silverlight-mobile/ http://www.clazh.com/microsoft-screwed-up-windows-mobile-iphone-silverlight-mobile/#comments Thu, 12 Nov 2009 09:51:44 +0000 Arpit Jacob http://www.clazh.com/?p=407 I just returned from the round table discussion Microsoft MVPs and MVP Alumni had with S. Somasegar the Senior Vice President of the Developer Division at Microsoft, at the Sheraton Hotel in Chennai. I was the first person to land there and the only one dressed up casually in a T-Shirt and Jeans not surprising since most of the MVPs had regular jobs or worked as developers for companies.

S. Somasegar the Senior Vice President of the Developer Division at MicrosoftS. Somasegar VP at Microsoft

Its very rare to see an executive of such high level come down to meet with developers and mix and mingle with them. Its people like Somasegar who connect and engage with the community that increases the appeal Microsoft has as a Company and separates them from Apple or Google. A down to earth person he candidly answers all the questions that were fired at him.

He began by explaining Microsoft’s Vision and how they always plan and develop things which would be relevant 5 years down the line, the next version of .NET 4, Visual Studio 2010, new features introduced the completely redesigned UI based on WPF for the IDE. Most of the discussion centered around .NET and the developer tools. But Missing from the whole talk was Windows Mobile. While I been a .NET developer for 3 years before I quit to become a freelancer, I was more interested in what Microsoft was doing with Silverlight and its Mobile Platform, and how they were looking to compete with the iPhone OS and Android Platform.

Yes We Screwed up with Windows Mobile

I pointed out Windows Mobile and the lack of innovation and stagnation with regards to features, User Experience, Design and interface his answer was extremely candid and frank. “Yes we screwed up Windows Mobile, and let it stagnant. In fact you are being very polite in pointing this out.” He went to say how the initial vision of Windows Mobile had been long term and well planned but along the way the lost the game.

Microsoft Secret Plans For Windows Mobile, Silverlight for Mobile

While he was very mum and secretive about what Microsoft had planned for Windows Mobile, he did let out that a few things about what Microsoft was doing for the mobile platform, they had revamped the whole Windows mobile team and rebooted the process similar to what they had done with Windows Longhorn. I see it more like a comparison of what happened with Windows Vista Vs Windows 7.

Some of the Key Points he made were.

  1. Rebooted Windows mobile Strategy.
  2. Brand New Windows Mobile Team
  3. Microsoft is laying its bet on SilverLight
  4. Silverlight for mobile will be the competitor for iPhone and Andriod.
  5. Silverlight for Mobile will be announced at MIX 2010

Things Microsoft got wrong

  • They are too late in the game.
  • They are taking too long to come out with a competing product and keeping with the trends.
  • Billions spent on R&D hard to believe nothing concrete on the Mobile front has come out yet
  • Clear Disconnect between Microsoft Design team and products. Do they even have a Design R&D team?

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  1. The SilverLight Poster and more on Silverlight and Microsoft
  2. Microsoft Launches Killer RIA Say Goodbye to Flash
  3. Microsoft and Facebook Announce Partnership
  4. Microsoft I Want A Zune Phone
  5. Prism and XUL Could Have Been A Silverlight And Adobe AIR Killer

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2009. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: Microsoft, Software, Technology Tags: , , , ,

]]> http://www.clazh.com/microsoft-screwed-up-windows-mobile-iphone-silverlight-mobile/feed/ 2 Flock 1.0 Released http://www.clazh.com/flock-10-released/ http://www.clazh.com/flock-10-released/#comments Mon, 05 Nov 2007 06:14:28 +0000 Arpit Jacob http://www.clazh.com/flock-10-released/ Flock 1.0 has been officially released. For those of you who don’t know what Flock is, it is basically a Firefox based web browser. However, it has some amazing features that Firefox don’t have. Much of what makes Flock so special is it’s social networking tools. Some of the features of Flock are:

  • Instantly publish blog posts
  • Connect with your friends across multiple networks
  • Easily share your photos, videos and favourite links
  • Create your own world so you are also informed
  • Inbuilt RSS feed reader
  • Instantly find media form Youtube, Flickr, Photobucket and Facebook
  • Grab your favourite photos, text and links
  • Instantly upload photos Flickr, Photobucket, Piczo and Facebook

Flock 1

To download Flock, click HERE

Post published by Michael, find more about me HERE

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  4. ScribeFire 1.4.1 Released
  5. The Best Free Blogging Tools for Power Bloggers

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2007. | Permalink | 13 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: Open Source, Software Tags: , , ,

]]> http://www.clazh.com/flock-10-released/feed/ 13 Gee, And I thought Microsoft Was dead? http://www.clazh.com/gee-and-i-thought-microsoft-was-dead/ http://www.clazh.com/gee-and-i-thought-microsoft-was-dead/#comments Fri, 02 Nov 2007 15:49:44 +0000 Arpit Jacob http://www.clazh.com/gee-and-i-thought-microsoft-was-dead/ If you don’t know what I am referring to then take a look at this article from Paul Graham that claimed Microsoft was Dead and caused a major ruckus in the BlogSphere a while back, with most blogger agreeing blindly. Right after which we had Surface, Vista, Silverlight, .NET 3.0 3.5, WPF, ZUNE and the list goes on and all within a span of 1 year.

lets start with this quote from radiowalker

it’s a metaphor. Microsoft is not going out of business anytime soon, but it is ceasing to matter in terms of the future of software.

I suggest you read this excellent article from Joe Wilcox Titled The Great Double Standard I have posted a few selected quotes.

This week, a number of tech journalists gave glowing reviews of Leopard. They received the software on Mac Book Pro laptops provided by Apple. Nowhere have I seen anyone gripe about conflicts of interest. But when Microsoft’s PR agency sent bloggers preloaded Vista notebooks ahead of the operating system’s launch, there were ridiculous accusations of attempted bribery. The accusations made it difficult for those receiving the Vista units to say anything positive about the operating system.

The blogosphere will praise Leopard as the next best thing ever and use it as more proof why Vista sucks (It doesn’t). Meanwhile, there will be little good said about Microsoft’s colossal 2008 fiscal first quarter results. Those people acknowledging the earnings results will blame Microsoft for trying to kill Linux and babies in Africa as reasons for its success. The perception: When Microsoft competes, it cheats.

Between Google, Apple and Microsoft who would you choose? I wouldn’t choose any of them because they are businesses and that what they will remain till the end.

Thanks to Joe Stagner for the link to the Microsoft Watch article.

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  1. Microsoft I Want A Zune Phone
  2. Why Is Microsoft So Coy About Service Pack 1 For Vista?
  3. Microsoft We Screwed Up Windows Mobile, iPhone Competitor Silverlight Mobile 2010
  4. Breaking News Microsoft Announces Release Of Microsoft Surface.
  5. Microsoft Launches Killer RIA Say Goodbye to Flash

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Catergories: Microsoft Tags: ,

]]> http://www.clazh.com/gee-and-i-thought-microsoft-was-dead/feed/ 7 Wicked Cool Documentation Manual Inside Habari http://www.clazh.com/wicked-cool-documentation-manual-inside-habari/ http://www.clazh.com/wicked-cool-documentation-manual-inside-habari/#comments Sun, 05 Aug 2007 12:05:11 +0000 Arpit Jacob http://www.clazh.com/wicked-cool-documentation-manual-inside-habari/ I just downloaded Habari Developer Preview 2. For people who don’t know what Habari is, it’s a new Blogging Platform being developed by some Ex-WordPress developers who felt the need to create something more innovative and cutting edge than WordPress. I been keeping a watch over this project since it has number of really cool people working on it and one designer whose work I admire Khaled (same guy who gave us the shuttle project, which is being slowly implemented in WordPress). So far I haven’t seen anything significant that makes me go WOW since more of work has been done on the core, I found the installation Process faster and Simpler than WordPress. But one thing that made me go wow was the Documentation Manual Inside Habari. The documentation is far from complete but it works great. They have decided to use tiddlywiki.

TiddlyWiki is a complete wiki in a single HTML file. It contains the entire text of the wiki, and all the JavaScript, CSS and HTML goodness to be able to display it, and let you edit it or search it. Without needing a server.

Checkout the demo here. http://www.tiddlywiki.com/ We need to have something like this for WordPress too I am tired of hunting around in the Codex. Plus its blazing fast.

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  5. Sponsored Themes beating the dead horse.

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2007. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: Blogging, Wordpress Tags: ,

]]> http://www.clazh.com/wicked-cool-documentation-manual-inside-habari/feed/ 4 CS3: Best way to be creative? http://www.clazh.com/cs3-best-way-to-be-creative/ http://www.clazh.com/cs3-best-way-to-be-creative/#comments Wed, 25 Jul 2007 11:59:36 +0000 Arpit Jacob http://www.clazh.com/cs3-best-way-to-be-creative/ I’m Nathan Chapman, Guest Blogging on Clazh from Pixl Design.

Adobe’s Creative Suite is one of the best productivity products of, perhaps, all time. And yet, does it really serve to be the perfect product for everyone?

Adobe Logo
With Adobe’s not-too-recent acquisition of Macromedia, the next release of a Creative Suite would be sure to include Dreamweaver, Flash and Fireworks. CS3 sure did, but at a cost: over AU$2,000 (US$1,500) and that’s just for Dreamweaver, Illustrator and Photoshop! For both Macromedia and Adobe’s Products, you would fork out AU$4,445 (US$1,399). There just has to be a better way!

Luckily, there is. There are several open-source and shareware/freeware options out there.

Photoshop

  • The Gimp is a open-source “photo manipulation program”. With excellent flexibility, loads of plugins and a interface that looks suspiciously similar to the real thing, The Gimp is an excellent alternative to Photoshop.
  • Paint.NET, which utilises the Microsoft .NET Framework to create a stable, lightweight app with nearly every major function the home user could want, from a Lasso tool to Gaussian blur. The interface is completely familiar, with the added benefit of translucent panels that make it easy to see what’s going on when the windows get cluttered. Paint.NET doesn’t yet support RAW format, however, which certainly limits its range.

Illustrator

  • The only major free competitor for this vector image editing program is Inkscape, again open-source, which is very responsive and extensible. Easily a very good, well written program. Sure, it looks a bit different, but when it comes down to it, Inkscape’s interface is still very easy to use.

Adobe Acrobat

  • Adobe’s Own free version of Acrobat. Mind you, it’s laggy and is for viewing pdf files only.
  • Foxit Reader is the pdf viewer that I personally use, and is very compatiable with different forms of pdf files. It also has basic editing tools, and may, in the future, come with a built-in OCR software.

Dreamweaver

  • Nvu is an excellent, intuitive program that I was using at one point. The interface is very clean, and Nvu can (like Dreamweaver) edit in WYSIWYG or code view. The produced code is very clean and user-firendly, validates and uses CSS.
  • RapidWeaver, (Mac only) is very similar to Apple’s own iWeb software in both its looks and designs. The code produced is valid, although not as nice-looking as Dreamweaver or Nvu.

    • Edit

  • Notepad ++ is an extraordinarily useful replacement for Note pad. However, its main feature (for me) is that it supports automatic code highlighting, enabling it to be a replacement for Dreamweaver’s Code View. Open-source, useable and light-weight, Notepad ++ is perfect for coders (it supports many languages, Python, HTML, CSS, C, C+ etc etc).

Summing Up

Here are the best alternative that I would use to replace the Creative Suite. However, with these programs, you don’t get the “combined” interface that CS3 has, and there are not (due to licensing restrictions) alternatives for every product.

Me? I use CS3 (a legal copy; remember, pirates are losers) and because I could afford it, I prefer it to these Alternatives.

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  4. FireFox 3.0 And Opera Have Inbuilt Support For Video, SVG Is Pretty Cool

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2007. | Permalink | 8 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: Design, Open Source, Software Tags: , , , ,

]]> http://www.clazh.com/cs3-best-way-to-be-creative/feed/ 8 Why Virtualization Is The Future http://www.clazh.com/why-virtualization-is-the-future/ http://www.clazh.com/why-virtualization-is-the-future/#comments Tue, 10 Jul 2007 10:05:16 +0000 Arpit Jacob http://www.clazh.com/why-virtualization-is-the-future/ Intel and other chip makers are moving towards multi-core architectures which means you can run each OS on a single core. In the coming years most people won’t be satisfied with running a single OS, they would like to have the best of both worlds. As a web designer I need to check my website on different web browsers and platforms, virtualization gives me an easy way to deal with this. Another use of virtualization is that people can use the a virtual OS to surf and use the Internet or install and test out new softwares without worrying about cluttering and infecting their computers with spyware or viruses . Intel Capital took a $218.5 million stake in virtualization company VMWare. It will interesting to see what comes out of this. I run both Ubuntu and a trial version on Vista on Vmware, wish I could run MACOSX too (you can run a MACOSX on vmware but its illegal, google for OSX86 to find out more) Though thankfully Apple released Safari for windows recently. I guess by the time leopard is out Safari too will be out of beta for windows.

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Catergories: General, Software, Technology Tags: ,

]]> http://www.clazh.com/why-virtualization-is-the-future/feed/ 0 Flock 0.9 Has been Released http://www.clazh.com/flock-09-has-been-released/ http://www.clazh.com/flock-09-has-been-released/#comments Tue, 10 Jul 2007 09:49:35 +0000 Arpit Jacob http://www.clazh.com/flock-09-has-been-released/ Flock has come out of beta and they just released version 0.9. It looks pretty neat. Blog editor still sucks (it spits out nasty html code) you can see whats new here http://www.flock.com/welcome and what’s new here http://www.flock.com/compare

Here is a brief list of new things in Flock.

  • MyWorld: a dynamic home base for all your favorite sites, feeds, and media streams
  • Flock’s Media MiniBar provides fast access to both photos and videos on Flickr, Photobucket, Youtube, and Truveo.
  • The new Accounts & Services sidebar offers easier configuration and enhanced discovery and activation logic
  • Improved Favorites with folders and support for Ma.gnolia and del.icio.us
  • Blogging: Improved UI, integrated Clipboard, support for all major Blog services including Blogger, Wordpress, Typepad and Livejournal
  • Security improvements
  • In-line spell check
  • Overall Theme upgrade

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  5. Wordpress 2.2 Has Been Released

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2007. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: Design, General, Internet, Open Source Tags: ,

]]> http://www.clazh.com/flock-09-has-been-released/feed/ 4 Google Docs And SpreadSheets Redesigned http://www.clazh.com/google-docs-and-spreadsheets-redesigned/ http://www.clazh.com/google-docs-and-spreadsheets-redesigned/#comments Wed, 27 Jun 2007 17:29:50 +0000 Arpit Jacob http://www.clazh.com/google-docs-and-spreadsheets-redesigned/ Google Redesigned their online Docs And SpreadSheets Applications it looks really neat and organized.

Here’s what’s new:

  • Looking pretty – The entire document list has been given a complete visual overhaul – new icons, more content, and better organizational controls. We know users spend a lot of time here and we aim to make it feel more like home.
  • Getting organized – Almost from the day we launched people have been clamoring for folders. They’re here! Even cooler, our new folders continue to work like the tags they’ve replaced – your old tags are automatically converted to folders and documents can live in more than one folder at a time. Organizing your documents is as easy as dragging and dropping a document to a folder. We’ve also included special controls for seeing only those documents created by you or shared with a particular person.
  • Search that thinks ahead – If you’ve ever tried Google Suggest, you know how cool it is when a search engine offer suggestions as you type. Google Docs & Spreadsheets now works the same way – we offer dynamically filtered results from your document list as you type, saving you time and getting you to your documents more quickly.

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© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2007. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: Design, General, Google, Technology Tags: ,

]]> http://www.clazh.com/google-docs-and-spreadsheets-redesigned/feed/ 5 Download Bryce 5.5 for free http://www.clazh.com/download-bryce-55-for-free/ http://www.clazh.com/download-bryce-55-for-free/#comments Sat, 16 Jun 2007 16:55:48 +0000 Arpit Jacob http://www.clazh.com/download-bryce-55-for-free/ The guys at daz3d are giving  Bryce 5.5 for free, without any licensing or restrictions. Quick download it before the offer ends. If you have any friends who are interested in 3d modeling, let them know. They have released both Windows and Apple versions. Grab it from Download.com

Source: Download Squad

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Catergories: Software Tags: , ,

]]> http://www.clazh.com/download-bryce-55-for-free/feed/ 1 Google Announces "Gears" Offline Support For Web Applications http://www.clazh.com/google-announces-gears-offline-support-web-applications/ http://www.clazh.com/google-announces-gears-offline-support-web-applications/#comments Thu, 31 May 2007 06:08:25 +0000 Arpit Jacob http://www.clazh.com/google-announces-gears-offline-support-web-applications/ Robert Scoble has the scoop. Google Developers day is in progress and on the first day Google has released a new technology called “Gears“ to enable offline support for web based applications. This is not a new technology it has been showcased before, it mostly based on JavaScript and Flash, now that Google has officially released a toolkit we can hope to see a wide spread adoption of offline support for other web applications.

What is Google Gears

Google Gears (BETA) is an open source browser extension that enables web applications to provide offline functionality using following JavaScript APIs:

Store and serve application resources locally

Store data locally in a fully-searchable relational database

Run asynchronous JavaScript to improve application responsiveness

Gears works on Macs, Windows, Linux on IE, Firefox. Opera support isn’t finished yet and Safari support will be coming “later.”

They have also released a new version of Google Reader Today which has offline support enabled. You’ll need to install the Gears Extension for your browser to see it in action.

If you are a developer head over to the developers page to see some demos and documentation.

Google has also released a A new Mashup editor that is aimed at developers familiar with HTML and JavaScript. The Google Mashup Editor offers a simpler way to deploy AJAX user interface components atop existing feeds and Google Web Services. This is currently a limited beta, so you’ll have to sign up and wait for it.

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  4. Microsoft’s Secret Run Office 2007 in any Browser And Kill Google Docs, Zoho
  5. Google The Hypocrite

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Catergories: General, Google, Technology Tags: , ,

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