The next version of Mozilla Firefox, codenamed Gran Paradiso, but better known as Firefox 3 is now entering the final phase of testing with the release of the Beta 1 software It’s still a bit early for everyday use but developers and geeks are welcome to give it a test run, and help Mozilla iron out any remaining bugs. It has lots of interesting new features, including Information about the site you are visiting just click on the site’s ‘Favicon’ (the little icon that appears on the address bar, it has beefed up malware protection, better all round security, integration with anti-virus software (it alerts your AV program if it detects anything suspicious in a download), and there’s a ‘resume’ download feature if your connection is interrupted for any reason. Password management has been simplified, the useful Find toolbar now opens automatically and early reports suggest that it is faster and more stable than its predecessors and barring any last minute disasters the finished version is on course for release early next year.

anti virus software, developers, final phase, finished version, Firefox, Internet, mozilla,…

News of the next version of Windows, due out in 2010 and previously known as BlackCombe, then Vienna and now Windows 7 has been fairly thin on the ground since we last mentioned it back in July but a few more tantalising tid-bits have come our way recently.

As expected it marks a significant change in direction for Microsoft with the emphasis on small, and compact and it has already been dubbed ‘MinWin’. According to one report the Windows 7 core or ‘kernel’, does away with all the fangly bits we associate with Vista and XP, (more…)

associate, bones, developers, disc space, kernel, microsoft, operating system, tid bits, Windows, windows 7

Nope, it’s not a new email address — it’s a new blog. The team responsible for incorporating speech technology into Windows Vista, among other products, has a new blog called Speech @ Microsoft. Their blog started just this month and inaugural posts Read More……(read more)

Nope, it’s not a new email address — it’s a new blog.  The team responsible for incorporating speech technology into Windows Vista, among other products, has a new blog called Speech @ Microsoft.  Their blog started just this month and inaugural posts cover such topics as using speech APIs (COM or .NET) in applications and which languages are supported by Windows Speech Recognition and TTS (text-to-speech) in Windows Vista.  If you’re interested in Windows Vista’s speech recognition capabilities (you did know that it’s present in all editions of Windows Vista, didn’t you?), then keep this blog on your radar.

When we talk about application compatibility for our large customers, it goes beyond making sure the latest game or end user application works. Our enterprise customers sometimes have hundreds of thousands of PCs to manage. That means a lot of different Read More……(read more)

When we talk about application compatibility for our large customers, it goes beyond making sure the latest game or end user application works. Our enterprise customers sometimes have hundreds of thousands of PCs to manage. That means a lot of different applications, from many different companies, some custom and some customized. To help these customers we created a suite of enterprise tools called the Application Compatibility Toolkit (see my earlier post), and also worked with partners to create a service called the Application Compatibility Factory (see here).  

One thing you may not know is that we also have a team of specially trained consultants who work with customers on some of these very large deployments. We try to make sure all our customers can take advantage of the team’s knowledge, so we send them to events like TechEd or IT Forum and they contribute significantly to the content you find on TechNet and MSDN. Unfortunately it’s not always possible for customers to have one-on-one interaction with this team. That’s why we are pretty excited that one of the consultants, Caio Chaves Garcez, recently recorded the full 2 day training the team usually presents to these large customers. The

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