Netbeans IDE expands its abilities on Ruby too. So far, you can find a lot of information concerning Ruby’s workability at Wiki’s Recent Changes page. For those, who wants to give it a shoot, I’d say it’s worth of trying. Daily changes in the Project Ruby can be found on the official Sun blog of Tor Norbye.
On the 29th of June, Apple Inc. finally releases its phone, but you can already find some simulators for checking how your web apps will run on iPhone.
Marketcircle project offers iPhoney (so far for Macs) web simulator which you can find on SourceForge portal.
Maybe it’s just midnight and over-working, but these interfaces are too alike to be true!
The polemics on the topic of Microsoft’s death reached its more less structured level even though in many different portals like Slashdot, Techmeme etc. this subject has been discussed in any possible way, but let’s get a bit detailed about it.
Paul Graham in his article says that:
When did Microsoft die, and of what? I know they seemed dangerous as late as 2001, because I wrote an essay then about how they were less dangerous than they seemed.I’d guess they were dead by 2005.
So, how dead is Microsoft? Giving his opinion, Duncan Riley wrote an article in 901am blog:
Micorsoft is alive and mostly well. Has it clearly failed in a range of endevours? absolutely, Microsoft’s internet strategy sucks and most people will take that for a given. Zune? do most people even know what a Zune is? probably not. Was the Vista development program a shambles? yes.
Main reasons, Paul mentioned in the post were:
So lets check it out step-by-step.
Microsoft didn’t pose itself as leading web company, and the rise of Google killed not only Microsoft with its msn.com search engine, Google became the leading search engine on the Web, and it was one of the first companies pushing the idea of Web applications and promoting Ajax. Definitely, Web 2.0 bubble moved desktop apps development in the shade, giving more opportunities for the developers to launch their start-up companies. At some point, it’s easier to create a web application with less OS or hardware dependencies. Everything is based on the Web standards and your own Broadband. Since I’ve mentioned Ajax here, the XMLHttpRequests was originally implemented by Microsoft, but only now they got involved in Ajax community.
Apple. What’s about Mac computers? Or all the services Apple Inc. produces. Yesterday, Apple Store declared that they’ve sold the 100 millionth iPod. Of course, it’s an impressive number for this market, where iPod dominates without no doubts, and the Zune mp3 player couldn’t equally compete with Apple’s product. For sure, it’s hard to produce devices which do more less the same things and differ at few dozen dollars and the company label at the back. The simplicity of the device was the key of success for iPod.
Talking about OS X killing Windows – you must be kidding me! According to the stats, it’s hard to say that Mac really made Microsoft worrying about OS domination on the market:
It would be more correct to say, that other Operating Systems got more attention because of overestimated expectations for Windows Vista and the increase of antitrust policy in the EU about Microsoft. Other operating systems just increased their market share, like .Nix based Os, BSD based OS X, at the same way not counting the number of PC’s which has two or more OS installed.
It’s really hard to believe that strategic management of Microsoft couldn’t expect the growth of Internet Broadband. But, I assume that focusing on the OS development they’ve underestimated it, and lost the Web Browser market with IE 6.x, which they’re trying to get back with the Internet Explorer 7. Web is all about standards and compatibility, which Microsoft couldn’t admit with IE 6. Always coming up with alternative solutions like ASP versus Perl/PHP, or ISS vs. Apache servers, they were continuously cleaving the Web, while they could have got more income on implementing some support services for existing Web development solutions in my opinion.
Going back to the main question of Microsoft’s death, you can see that they aren’t so true. Microsoft has a huge financial potential and ability of winning back lost positions at the market, but it will be harder year after year.
According to the latest news, an old primitive online service Minitel decided to use Linux OS for its system. The OS will be optimized for Minitel’s needs:
“The choice of open source was both for price and motivation,” Charrier said. “We pay no licensing fee for the software, and engineers feel motivated to work on a new kind of project that helps the open-source community.”
Great achievement for Linux market, which took another niche in slightly different sector of computer services.
“We wanted to create something as simple and cheap as the Minitel to reach technophobes and people without much money,” said Frédéric Charrier, manager of the Easy Neuf project, which started its first national advertising campaign last week. “For a slightly higher subscription, customers get a simplified computer with all services they might need.”
Two pictures: pope John Paul II, and Lenin’s funeral.Is it a coincidence that these two persons will be kept so people can visit them? Saints, dictators – people got crazy!
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