The war of browser between Microsoft and Mozilla is never going to end….
When Mozilla came out with Firefox 2, Microsoft could be heard of coming out with IE 7. Now, when firefox goes for an upgrade, so goes Internet Explorer.
Mozilla on Wednesday released the second beta version of Firefox 3.0 that promises enhanced security features and performance capabilities. “We encourage testers to download and install the Beta 2 release to test it against the Web sites they normally visit, and provide feedback about any incompatibilities,” Mozilla said in a statement. “It is intended for testing purposes only.”
Beta 2 also includes revamped personalization tools, improved text and graphics rendering, support for offline browsing and Web-based protocol handlers, and full-page zooming, Mozilla said.
While on the other hand, IE8 has passed the “Acid2 Browser Test” from the Web Standards Project, which shows whether a browser renders a Web site in a certain way. If the browser renders the site correctly, it means the browser supports certain accepted Web standards.
Microsoft plans to release the first Beta version in the first half of 2008. Microsoft said the final release of IE8 depends upon feedback received from the beta process. With this statement, why I feel that the final version can be expected latest by 2009,
Microsoft now starts thinking for Indians also. They have introduced a new e-mail domain “live.in” for Indians. Microsoft has introduced this service globally with country specific suffixes.
Now these new domains will be default domain address when users sign up for Windows Live or individual services like Windows Live Hotmail or Windows Live Messenger.
“The new Live.in domain will give customers the chance to get a new name with a domain address more clearly associated with the new suite of Windows Live services,†commented Samir Saraiya, Product Head, Windows Live Services.
One benefit from this new service is that users now have a whole lot of opportunity to make an e-mail id of the name they want. I still remember, how tough is it to think of an e-mail id.
Anyway, users using this live.in will surely have that 5GB mail space that Live Mail offers and other services include access to:-
# Windows Live Messenger
# Windows Live Spaces
# Windows Live Mail
# Windows Live SkyDrive Beta
# Windows Live Photo Gallery
# Windows Live Writer
# Windows Live Family Safety
# Windows Live Calendar Beta
# Xbox Live
# Live Search
But, I won’t get a new e-mail id just for the cause of a new domain ;).
[Pst... while writing this, I made a new id for myself, by my own name ;), as it was unavailable on other mail services 
]
But one problem in Hotmail (i.e. Live Mail) is that, they don’t allow you POP Access or IMAP access to free mail accounts :(. And I couldn’t even forward my new email-id, to my old id and got this message-
You’re only able to forward mail to a custom domain or an e-mail address that ends in hotmail.com, msn.com, or live.com. Please try again.
This is what I didn’t like.
Microsoft has declared that they have till now sold over 88 million copies of Windows Vista, their latest operating system. Also claimed by Microsoft is that in addition to these 88 million, 42 million PCs now have Vista licenses via volume licensing contracts signed by corporate users.
Microsoft also claims of having a number of customer migrations, which shows that users are ready to switch to Vista, though most surveys have shown that people are taking cautious approach.
Also noteworthy here is that Microsoft announces this just at time when market experts have suggested that customers are avoiding the Vista operating system due to several performance and hardware compatibility related issues. To me, it seems to be some kind of market strategy.
Interestingly, reports are also claiming that some companies might just skip migrating to Vista in a move to wait for their next operating system release, which will hopefully be more reliable.
In my opinion, it would be best to wait for sometime till the service packs for Vista come up, making it better and also till then the software and hardware compatibility issues will be solved. Also, I am not going to change my opinion, unless Microsoft pays me.. at least a free version of Vista ;))
And here’s a tip for Microsoft -> Make Vista cheaper to around Rs 500. I guarantee that I would buy it and so would millions and millions of people, who don’t want to spend a price larger than the cost of their PC’s hardware on the Operating System.
Microsoft Live Station is yet another copy-cat concept from MS after zune, virtual earth and Silver light! This time they are targeting on Joost, a revolutionary online television service.
The service is not exacty a copy of Joost, but with differences in the core technology used for delivering content to end users. Live Station is based on a P2P network architecture to transfer live TV program and silverlight is used as the video backend.
Read the rest of this entry…
Atlast Microsoft released the long awaited IE7 Final version, late in this wednesday. It’s a really improved version when compared to the totally crappy Internet Explorer 6. Thousands of flaws and bug sin IE6 were fixed in this new version 7. The core page dispay mod changed to Tabbed Browsing feature. It also includes an RSS aggrgator.
But Secunia, the security firm based on Copenhagen, Denmark, shook the world witht the first vulnerability report for IE7. It’s released within 24 hours of teh release of the IE7 Fianl. The vulnerability is caused due to an error in the handling of redirections for URLs with the “mhtml:” URI handler. This can be exploited to access documents served from another web site. The Flaw is marked less critical.
Microsoft today responded to this issue & confimed it. But according to the press release the flaw is not related to IE but in the outlook express component. The patch is on the way.. 