Monthly Miscellaneous Technology Round-Up
With December running, the I.T. world is always buzzing about the upcoming year rumored announcements and novelties. One of the most expected 2010 launch is actually already running the streets of San Francisco, California if we believe the app maker Pandav’s information in MacRumors. The next generation of iPhones, to be supposedly unveiled in June 2010, appears to be beta testing in the SF Bay Area. If you associate to this the Adobe Max 09 rumor that the 2010 release of the device could finally support Flash, iPhone and the Cupertino’s firm are keeping the buzz on-going.
Beta testing and beta version also running at fast pace for Firefox 3.6 (the fourth beta already), for Thunderbird 3.0 RC2, for Microsoft Silverlight 4 (only few month after the early release of Silverlight 3.) Microsoft is definitely focusing on its RIA tool as it seemed trailing Adobe on this business (cf Gartner’s “Marketscope” March 09.) The 4th release is aimed to finally allow Silverlight to access users’ peripherics (printers, mic, cameras,…) which was a functionality long acquired in Flash/Flex.
During its traditional yearly Professional Developers Conference, Microsoft has also presented Internet Explorer 9 which catches up in graphical and JAVA rendering, yet still getting only a grade of 32 out of 100 in the Acid 3 test. The official release date of IE9 has not been set. On the other end, October 31st, 2010, has been set for Office 2010. As this date will end the open-to-the-public testing period imagined by Microsoft to convince the customers. Office 2010 beta is already downloadable and all features accessible until then. The only unknown about the application: its price, which has not be released yet, Microsoft having nevertheless set to free the price of Office Web Apps available through Windows Live.
Meanwhile Google abundantly enriches most I.T. forums with its various strategic decisions between Chrome OS and the phasing out of Google Gears. The totally internet-oriented operating system of Google (Chrome OS) left many skeptical during its presentation few weeks back, but already Dell is announcing its Mini 10v line allows customers to prefer Chrome OS. This only proves the maturity of the “netbooks” market.
It is however without official announcement that the developers’ community is finding out that Google is phasing out Gears to the benefit of HTML 5. Through the beta version of Chrome for Mac, and revealed in InfoQ, the news is summarized by a Google spokesperson in the Los Angeles Times: “We are excited that much of the technology in Gears, including offline support and geolocation APIs, are being incorporated into the HTML5 spec as an open standard supported across browsers, and see that as the logical next step for developers looking to include these features in their websites.”
Finally, part of the Mountain View firm’s effort to make the web faster, Google has launched yesterday its own DNS resolver called Google Public DNS. The company’s blog touts its resolver as allowing a sped up browsing experience, an improved security level and the insurance to “get the results you expect with absolutely no redirection.”
A world of promises!
Tags: adobe flex, Adobe MAX, Chrome OS, Gartner, Gartner Marketscope, Google, Google Gears, Google Public DNS, HTML 5, IE9, iPhone, Key2Flex, Office 2010, PDC, Silverlight
December 4th, 2009 at 5:10 pm
On the Google Gears issue, you can also read FLEX RIA’s blog at http://www.flex888.com/1410/is-google-gears-going-away.html
March 9th, 2010 at 5:10 pm
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