News (54)

With JavaFX, Sun seeks new coders, new revenue

With a back-to-the-future technology called JavaFX, Sun hopes to attract a new class of developer while building a much-needed new revenue source. Read more »

Silverlight ready to Moonlight on Linux

Microsoft and Novell said Tuesday they are nearly ready with a beta version of Moonlight - a Firefox add-on that allows Silverlight content to play on Linux PCs. Read more »

Ballmer tells Oz: get with the broadband

Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer yesterday tip-toed around Australia's broadband debate but said that if the country was to engage in cloud computing business that telcos and the government needed to 'get on with' delivering high speed broadband — at a fair price. Read more »

Developers want Ballmer to show money

Australian developers have asked Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer what the company will do to address a Microsoft coding landscape that hasn't offered financial rewards like those available to iPhone and Facebook developers. Read more »

Third Chrome beta another notch faster

Google began updating Chrome users with the new beta version, and performance tests show the company has ratcheted the browser's speed up another notch Read more »

Firefox and Chrome speed up

With new beta versions out for Firefox and Google Chrome, it's time to see how things have changed when it comes to testing the speed of JavaScript, the programming language that powers many cutting-edge Web applications such as Gmail and Google Docs. The answer: both browsers made big strides, but Firefox still beats Chrome on one widely-used performance test. Read more »

Microsoft ready for Silverlight's second act

Microsoft on Monday announced that it is ready with a final version of Silverlight 2. Read more »

Silverlight 2.0 due today

Microsoft has scheduled a conference call today in the US to announce, among other things, that it has completed version 2.0 of Silverlight, its rival to Adobe's Flash. Read more »

Windows Mobile 7 delayed

Microsoft has informed some of its partners that it has had to delay Windows Mobile 7, a much anticipated update to its handset operating system. Read more »

Chrome's jittered JavaScript kills Silverlight?

The biggest rival for Microsoft's next-generation Silverlight Web technology will be JavaScript, not Adobe's ubiquitous Flash, according to experts speaking at Microsoft's Tech.Ed conference in Sydney this morning. Read more »

Features (20)

Microsoft details plans for Visual Studio and .NET

In the wake of the recent PDC and TechEd developer events, Microsoft has decided to put some of its key executives out on the road to explain the innovations that Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0 have in store. Read more »

Deciphering the term "rich Internet application"

Web 2.0 has become a cliched term when it comes to describing websites. A new term has popped up to cover online applications: RIA, or rich Internet application. Does it mean the same thing as Web 2.0? Read more »

Olympics are a boon for Silverlight

Here's the way things work at Microsoft. After correcting shortcomings in the first and second editions of its software, version 3.0 of a Microsoft product usually silences the company's worst critics, allowing management to get on with business of crushing rivals. But I'll be first to acknowledge that Silverlight breaks with that pattern. Read more »

Flash, HTML, AJAX: Which will win the Web app war?

The days when Web pages were static collections of text and graphics are long past. But as the Web matures, there's a fierce competition over which technology will propel it into a medium for rich, interactive applications. Read more »

Why traditionalists should take Web developers seriously

There used to be a sharp distinction between application developers and Web developers. This made sense when technologies such as Perl/CGI, classic ASP, standard JSP, and PHP ruled the Web development roost. But this distinction is becoming less relevant. Read more »

Five ways Microsoft could change after Gates

Bill Gates has left the building and the question on many people's lips is: will Microsoft change as a result? What influence will Steve Ballmer have and how will the company's strategy alter without Gates? Read more »

Uncloaking 'invisible' Flash Web content

Adobe announced yesterday that it was providing optimised Adobe Flash Player technology to Google and Yahoo to help them better index dynamic Web content and RIAs that include SWFs. It sounds exciting, but what exactly does it mean for Web searchers, Web masters, and Flash creators? CNET News.com asked Adobe, Google, and Yahoo and got some answers. Read more »

HTML 5: A change in course... straight for the iceberg

The W3C recently released a working draft specification for HTML 5. In its current iteration, this is the worst specification I have ever read. Read more »

Building Microsoft code inside the tornado

Q&A -- Vice president S 'Soma' Somasegar shares his views on how interoperability and open source will help Microsoft. Read more »

Silverlight 2.0 offers paradigm shift from predecessor

A quick overview of what you'll find in the latest version of Silverlight. Read more »

Video (12)

Baseball drops Silverlight for Flash

ZDNet Senior Editor Sam Diaz talks about the recent announcement by US Major League Baseball to drop Microsoft's Silverlight service for Adobe's Flash player. Diaz says it's a setback for Microsoft but he doesn't believe the loss of business will have long lasting effects. Read more »

NICTA's clarinet playing robot

NICTA and UNSW have collaborated to create a clarinet playing robot designed to demonstrate the versatility of embedded systems. The robot won the ARTEMIS orchestra competition in Athens. Video courtesy of NICTA. Read more »

Adobe: Silverlight is years behind Flash

Mike Downey, principal evangelist at Adobe, talks about RIAs and how good competition validates Adobe's move into the area. Downey then speaks on Silverlight and says that it is "years behind where the Flash Player is today". Read more »

Explaining Google's BigTable

Google uses a proprietary, high performance and scalable database called BigTable. Brett Slatkin, senior software engineer at Google, explains BigTable and how it get the best out of it with AppEngine. Read more »

Helping in the Moonlight

Michael Kordahi and Shane Morris discuss the status of the Moonlight project, an effort to bring Silverlight to Linux. Read more »

What's coming in Silverlight 2.0

Shane Morris and Michael Kordahi discuss the features that they are looking forward to in the next version of Silverlight Read more »

What is Popfly

  Read more »

Is Microsoft learning from its Web standards mistakes?

Microsoft has learned some very serious lessons when it comes to complying with Web standards after taking heavy criticism from the industry and, more importantly, a beating in the browser market share. Read more »

Developers break the designer egg: Microsoft

Developers and designers are in a constant battle when working together on an application or Web site project; a presentation at Microsoft's ReMIX conference in Melbourne last month described the issues perfectly -- with an egg. Read more »

Sucks or Scores

  Read more »

Blog (22)

Crying, mooning and leaving

Staff [blogs:syslog] -- In this week's roundup we see that continuous whining can get results, Linux users get 64-bit Flash and Moonlight previews, the latest in the Yahoo/Microsoft relationship and Senator Conroy ducks and weave in Senate Question Time. Read more »

Will Microsoft build native Mac and Linux tools?

Brendon Chase [blogs:codemonkeybusiness] -- If the future is in Microsoft's online services why isn't the company building native tools for Mac and Linux developers? Read more »

Sun's JavaFX RIA platform MIA?

Brendon Chase [blogs:codemonkeybusiness] -- Adobe and Microsoft have taken the early lead in the RIA market but Sun is still waiting to get out of the starting blocks with JavaFX. Is Sun too late to the party? Read more »

Azure: A matter of trust

Brendon Chase [blogs:codemonkeybusiness] -- Ray Ozzie hit the nail on the head when he said Azure's success will hinge on trust. Who outside (and inside) the core circle of ISV trust Microsoft? Read more »

Windows Azure: New windows, same tools

Chris Duckett [blogs:betaliving] -- Microsoft was at pains to stress that it will be creating an environment that developers feel familiar towards for Windows Azure development. Read more »

Flash vs. Silverlight

Staff [blogs:syslog] -- In this week's Roundup we take a look at the latest versions of Flash and Silverlight, Windows 7 and what's new in the world of open source. Read more »

Flash seeking the open road?

Staff [blogs:syslog] -- Tristan Nitot appeared to have the gift of precognisance when he said that Adobe may open source Flash if Silverlight gained enough traction Read more »

Conference season open for Web developers

Brendon Chase [blogs:codemonkeybusiness] -- Are Adobe Air, Microsoft Silverlight, Google Gears, AJAX, and the semantic Web some of your favourite things? Now's the right time to put in that training request because May and June are full of great local Web developer conferences. Read more »

Introducing IE8: The Ocho

Staff [blogs:syslog] -- Over in Las Vegas the MIX conference is underway and that means only one thing: Microsoft announcements and plenty of them. Read more »

Salesforce's new AIR toolkit

Staff [blogs:syslog] -- Following the announcement that Salesforce will provide a free toolkit for Adobe Flex and AIR development on its Force.com platform, I spoke to the company’s Doug Farber, the Vice President of Operations, Asia Pacific about its functionality and other issues surrounding the toolkit. Read more »

Others (1)

Gallery: Jamming it with Web 2.0

"So what is WebJam?" the girl at the bar serving my mate and I a beer asked. She's thinking that maybe there's something to do with music happening tonight, but it's nothing like that. Read more »

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