Facebook Lifestyle Apps for media, movies, cooking and more

All eyes are on  Facebook today as the social network holds its 4th F8 conference. We’ve already seen some massive changes this past week including a new subscribe model similar to Twitter, smarter friend lists, new status updates and Google+ style photo layouts. Also, where’s the poke button?

Today, Facebook announced its new profile design called Timeline: “The story of your life, to log your digital autobiography completely on Facebook. To add functionality to your Timeline, Facebook introduced Lifestyle Apps to its now Open Graph.

Facebook’s Open Graph includes everything to do with media, movies, music, TV, news, books. Lifestyle apps help you keep track of the minutiae in your daily life- runs, bike rides, concerts, general happiness, TV shows watched, fashion picks, anything you want. Facebook has made it possible to build a new class of apps and to rethink a lot of industries at the same time.

Let’s say you’re using Nike+ in your Timeline to track your runs or Foodspotting to track your meals. The apps will keep track of everything you do and your friends can participate too. Imagine after a year being able to look back at your entire annual food intake. Imagine after 5 years, being able to see your entire workout history. Imagine after 10 years, being able to look back at all of the concerts you attended, and browse through photos and videos. Then imagine being able to share this with your children and your children’s children. Zuckerberg says that Lifestyle apps are tying together dozens of industries from– Airbnb to Ticketmaster– all with the goal of expressing who you are and being able to discover new things with your friends.

Take look on FB  Apps...

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Facebook New Timeline Feature

Facebook today announced a revamped profile called the Timeline at its annual F8 conference. The new Timeline takes the place of your profile and provides a real time stream of everything you’ve done, all the way back to your ‘birth’.

“This is the heart of the Facebook experience, completely rethought from the ground up. We’re calling it ‘Timeline,” said Zuckerberg, “Timeline is the story of your life: all your stories, all your apps and a new way to express who you are.”

The timeline is a realtime stream that shows you all of the events, images and posts that are important to you, while hiding the items that it feels are not important. A sort of ‘automatic autobiography’.

The Timeline lays out everything that you’ve shared from apps and maps to photos and status messages. There is also a large, wide new header that allows you to show off an image that you choose as a welcome mat of sorts for visitors to your profile. Your avatar is also still present.

Zuckerberg also says that you have complete control over what is on the Timeline, where it displays and who can see it. There is a heavy emphasis on privacy with this new version of the profile.

If you missed an important event in your Timeline, you can go back and insert it at the appropriate point.

Many of the new apps that work with Timeline are available today, but Timeline itself won’t be rolling out for a few weeks.

There are a massive amount of changes coming to Facebook today so stay tuned. I’ll be try covering them extensively.

Take A look on Timeline Video....

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Google confirms Honeycomb will be last tablet OS

Google has spilled more details over the forthcoming Ice Cream Sandwich OS as it prepares for to unify all its devices.

We knew that the next generation of the Android operating system was going to be the platform that came to both phones and tablets, and now Google is telling developers the steps they'll need to take in order to keep their apps running in the future.

The blog also confirms that Honeycomb is the last OS to be tablet-only, with all future versions of Android running on both phones and tablets as Google looks to end the fragmentation issue of multiple versions of its operating system existing in the wild.

Bigger, smaller and in-between

Obviously a big issue for current applications is that those developed for Honeycomb are meant to be viewed on a big screen, and therefore won't work too well on phones with a lower resolution.

As Scott Main, lead tech writer for Google's Android Developers Blog, says: "If you've developed a tablet app on Honeycomb, it's important that your app do one of two things: prevent installation on smaller screens or (preferably) support smaller screens with the same APK."

Ice Cream Sandwich is set to launch in the next month or so, with phones powered by the new OS landing not too long after that - exciting times for all you mobile operating system fans

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Windows 8 Dev Tablets Already on eBay

              

Last Tuesday during Microsoft's BUILD conference, the company handed out 5,000 Samsung tablets packed with a preview version of Windows 8. Developers cheered at Microsoft’s surprising sweep of generosity, but many seemingly repaid the favor by selling their expensive gifts on eBay at over-bloated prices.

Case in point: this eBay listing shows the Samsung Windows 8 BUILD developer tablet for a current bid of $2,700 USD. But it's not just a tablet: this bid is for a bundle consisting of the Windows 8 tablet, a dock with USB, HDMI and Ethernet ports, a Bluetooth keyboard, a touch pen, a unique carrying case, and a pre-paid 12-month 2 GB/month AT&T data contract (SIM card not activated).

As for the Samsung tablet, it's similar to the just-announced Samsung Series 7 slate but includes new and improved components including an ambient light sensor, a gyroscope, a Bluetooth LE chip, a Trusted Platform module and NXP's Near Field Communications chip (NFC). The tablet also offers a 2nd-generation Intel Core i5 CPU, 4 GB of DDR3 memory, a 64 GB SSD, a Samsung Super PLS 1366 x 768 11.6-inch display, a microSD card slot and more.

"This auction is a brand new, limited edition tablet PC which was given at the Microsoft Build Windows conference in Anaheim on 9/13/2011," reads the auction description. "It is running a pre-release developer preview version of Windows 8 and is a powerful development machine for that upcoming platform."

Other Windows 8 BUILD tablets appearing on eBay aren't quite so expensive, ranging from $1,525 USD to $2,275 USD

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Microsoft Still Launching Xbox TV This Year

                

Last week during Microsoft's financial analyst meeting, company CEO Steve Ballmer said that the upcoming Xbox TV platform will launch this holiday season. He indicated its release while previewing the service in front of a captive audience, but refrained from offering specifics like the actual release date, content partners, pricing and the available content at launch.

Instead, Ballmer told the audience that Microsoft would be working alongside "dozens of hundreds of additional video content providers." And in addition to video on-demand, the new platform will also provide live TV spanning news, sports, and numerous popular channels. The service will be similar what Microsoft has already done overseas with Sky TV in the United Kingdom, Canal Plus in France, and FoxTel in Australia. 

But the key factor in making Xbox TV succeed where other attempts have failed will be Kinect, Microsoft’s motion-sensing device. "Having all of that content is right on, it's fantastic, but it brings a new challenge with it," Ballmer said. "Certainly we all know the frustrations of using guides and menus and controllers, and we think a better way to do all of this is simply to bring Bing and voice to Xbox. You say it, Xbox finds it." 

CNN reports that a Microsoft employee demonstrated Xbox TV using Kinect by shouting "Xbox, Bing 'The Office.'" The TV immediately pulled up all available seasons of NBC's hit comedy TV show for on-demand viewing. The employee then announced an additional voice search that was supposed to allow users to navigate to a particular season or episode. That particular command failed.

"It's a good thing that's shipping for Christmas," Ballmer mused.

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What's new in the Windows Dev Center

 These additions to the Windows Dev Center have been part of a "bring up" that creates a more integrated experience that matches the look and feel of Metro style apps.  We've also added some rather cool functionality to the center through some new controls, most notably the new rating and feedback control and the video control.

New Rating and Feedback control

The new rating and feedback control appears at the bottom of every reference page that is surfaced through the Windows Dev Center.  The control looks like this:

When you click the control, you get more options for specifying what the feedback that you're giving pertains to as shown in the following screenshot:

I'll bet you're wondering what happens when you fill out the form and click submit :)  Well, the feedback gets stored into a database and the writer receives the feedback directly. With the aggregated feedback, the writer can update the topic to address your concerns and the documentation gets better!

We're really excited about this new control because it will help us to create better documentation when you see something that's wrong. 

New Video Control

The new video control is based on HTML5 and lets us embed videos within the documentation. We prioritized producing good code and accurate documentation for BUILD but in the future you'll hopefully see the control used in our docs.  The following screenshot shows how it might look in docs once we have produced and embedded video:

Microsoft is working on getting some videos together for the new documentation and hopefully we will see them embedded within the developer documentation in the coming weeks!

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Windows 8 Server

The heart of Windows 8 Server is the Server Manager Dashboard, which runs on a standard desktop and gives you a Metro-like way of working with one or many servers

Microsoft is giving Windows 8 Server a new Server Manager, with a very Metro-like look and feel, that incorporates lessons learned from the System Center management tools. Server Manager is now a dashboard that lets you see information from all the servers you manage, quickly colour-coding the views to show you where action is required, with information displayed in role-based tiles. You can use filtering tools in the dashboard to quickly reduce noise (for example temporarily removing alerts from a server that may be down for hardware or software maintenance). The Server Manager lets you quickly add additional servers, using Active Directory or by IP address, automatically updating the server numbers and roles on the dashboard. You can view information using single server views, or aggregate several servers and see all the relevant events in a single view.

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500,000 Downloads of Windows 8

Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, took the stage during the second keynote at BUILD in Anaheim, California. He made the announcement that there has already been over 500,000 downloads of the Windows 8 developer preview.

Windows 8 developer preview only launched late last night, and has already begun spreading to developers, enthusiasts and general users who are desperate to get their hands on the latest operating system from Microsoft. The new operating system brings a fresh new interface, a bunch of new features, greater performance for desktops and a brand new interface for tablet users called Metro.

The Metro interface will give tablet users a larger interface for touch screens, with a tile based operating system, similar to Windows Phone 7. Microsoft has spent the greater part of the last year to really speed up development of Windows 8 and it definitely shows off that the company is still innovating and still manages to keep Windows enthusiasts at the edge of their seats.

You can get your hands on Windows 8 Developer Preview here http://dev.windows.com . Users should note that this is a developer preview only and isn't meant to be used as a primary desktop.

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Windows 8 : Visual Studio 11 Express

Visual Studio Express helps you develop Metro style apps

Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2011 Express is a free, lightweight version of the powerful Visual Studio integrated development environment (IDE). Visual Studio Express is packaged with Expression Blend, a visual design tool that helps you work with HTML5 and XAML. Expression Blend also gives you access to Windows controls and an integrated tool to profile user interfaces. To help you write games in DirectX and HLSL, Visual Studio Express has a new graphics authoring and debugging IDE. If you write device drivers, Visual Studio Express now integrates a full set of tools and interfaces to help you write, build, compile, sign, test, debug, and verify drivers, along with tools to port your existing driver files to new Visual Studio Express project and solution files.

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Windows 8 : Multiple Moniters

Multiple monitors now work as one big workspace

Using multiple monitors is more flexible than ever before. New options allow you to display the Start screen on one monitor and the desktop on the other. Display different desktop backgrounds on each monitor or stretch your image across both. There are also options to have duplicate or unique task bars on each monitor.

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Windows 8 : Task Manager

Task Manager

The new Task Manager is your easy-to-use, all-in-one dashboard for monitoring and controlling your PC so you always know what’s going on with it. The information is presented in color-coded tiles to help draw your eye to items that are using the bulk of a resource. You can keep track of your system efficiently and in real-time, taking advantage of summary graphs and detailed information on processes, applications, and history. You can see the services associated with each process on one screen.

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Windows 8 : Internet Explorer 10

Internet Explorer 10

Metro style Internet Explorer 10 provides a fast and fluid touch-first browsing experience that’s all about your sites, making them feel increasingly more app-like. With faster performance, leading security protection, more hardware acceleration, and site-ready HTML5 support, IE10 continues to allow developers to build a richer and more beautiful web.

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Windows 8 : Picture Gallery

Pick the files you want to send or share from one place

Apps can communicate with each other in Windows 8. So, if you want to send pictures in email, and they’re in different places like Facebook, Flickr, or on your hard drive, you can easily pick and send the ones you want. Windows 8 provides a single view.

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Windows 8 : The Touch Keyboard

The Touch Keyboard

Windows 8 has two touch keyboards for ultimate mobility and flexibility. An improved, full-sized touch keyboard with larger buttons and a unique thumb keyboard make it easy to use your computer on the go. Whether you’re walking around or sitting down, it’s more comfortable and natural to type using your thumbs when the keyboard is split.

The touch keyboard in Windows 8 includes several features to speed up your typing and make it more accurate. Improved keyboard technology is designed to minimize inaccurate key strokes while automatically correcting mistyped words without slowing you down. To make typing more efficient, Windows suggests words on screen as you type, allowing you to choose the suggested word with a single tap.

The keyboard adapts to different languages. On touch-based computers, the layout of the keyboard automatically adjusts to the language you choose for Windows. Your input and language settings automatically apply to the whole computer rather than to just specific programs.

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New Windows 8 Start Screen

Apps and content at a glance on the Start screen

 

 

The new Start screen gives you a fast way to interact with all of your apps and content. The tiles are alive with information, showing you what’s going on at any time. Information that you care about — the weather, your friends’ status updates, the top movie in your Netflix queue, your next calendar appointment — is all there at a glance. You can personalize your Start screen with shortcuts to your favorite things, like websites, a playlist, or photo albums. You decide where you want things on the screen and how you want them grouped. You can optimize for efficiency by adding speed bumps between groups of apps so that you don’t have to swipe back and forth when you’re panning through your Start screen.

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Windows 8: New Explorer Interface

Microsoft is planning to extend a variation of its ribbon interface from Office 2007 to the explorer window in its upcoming Windows 8 OS, which is being planned for a 2012 launch.  However, this planned interface has come under instant criticism from bloggers and others. 

Recently, Microsoft published a blog post on MSDN that explained the reasons for the planned change in the UI and how the ribbon interface would make sure that the most commonly used commands would be visible under one tab i.e. the "Home" tab. So, as a result, commands like "Copy", "Paste", "File Properties" and "Delete" would be given more real estate and be more visible as can be seen below: 
 

The most potent criticism that can be directed at the new interface, which has also been rightly pointed out by blogger Laurie Voss, is that the remaining constituents of the "Home" tab seem to be commands that show minimal (if any) usage patterns. Besides, they also occupy as much real estate in the "Home" tab as the most commonly used commands. 

Also, the reason Microsoft has opted to give the ribbon interface more real estate is that users don't seem to use the menu bar but instead rely on hotkeys or context (right-click) menus and Microsoft wants to provide a new interface that users would like to use. Now, I don't think that you really need to be a so-called "power user" to get comfortable with hotkeys and context menus in Windows Explorer so the only people who could probably want to use the new tabbed interface are people not familiar with Windows or not happy with using hotkeys and context menus, which seems like a small population.

Microsoft has responded to the criticisms in another blog post by saying that although the new interface was not minimalistic, they didn't want to approach minimalism at the cost of reducing functionality.

The pre-release version of Windows 8 for developers will be released at Microsoft's BUILD conference which starts from today and will end on the 16th of September.

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Aliyun Mobile Operating System From Alibaba (New Mobile OS)

Alibaba the Chinese e-commerce giant release Android and iOS rival:

Alibaba is a strange beast, as anyone who has looked into packaging and trade internationally will have released.

As a website it works as a kind of hub for manufacturers, suppliers, exporters, buyers, and providers of all sorts of s services to come together and pitch for business with would be traders globally.

Very powerful and very popular.

So how and why have Alibaba, a traditional e-commerce type business decided that a new mobile operating system based on cloud technology would be a good way to move forward?

Alibaba already have a mobile OS:

Firstly they have already got a Chinese version of the Aliyun OS working that has been trialled since July.

This version of the OS has currently only been available via one Chinese device manufacturer called TianYu, Dr Wang Jian the Chief architect of the project has stated that they are now..

“discussing with at least three global [hardware] vendors”

The time-scale for releasing the OS and accompanying smartphones and tablets to the global market seems to remain slightly unclear but very much the grand plan for Alicloud and Alibaba.

Wang Jian went on to say that an iPad rival will appear “in two month’s time.”..though there is no mention of the manufacturer or if this will be available outside of China initially.

The reason they have gone into this field is quite clear. After creating the Alicloud division a few years ago, the company has seen that more and more time is spent by users on smartphone and tablet devices connected to the Internet, as an internet based company now is the perfect time to devise a means of capitalising on their exiting traffic, size and power, with inherent ties with Chinese and global manufacturers and geographic base within an ever more powerful China.

Technical details of the Aliyun OS and Alicloud:

Currently the “Aliyun OS.” works on the K-Touch Cloud-Smart Phone W700 and is the only device that is offered currently.

Wang Jian, president of Alibaba Cloud Computing states that:

“Mobile users want a more open and convenient mobile OS, one that allows them to truly enjoy all that the Internet has to offer right in the palm of their hand, and the cloud OS, with its use of cloud-based applications, will provide that,”

Aliyun Operating System Mobile developers helped also:

He then goes on to say that you cannot separate ‘mobile’ from ‘cloud’:

“One cannot succeed without the other. The mobile internet right now is just a structure. We now think we want to make the internet mobilized. Introducing cloud apps to mobile devices not only brings a whole new user experience, but also greater ease for third-party mobile software developers who will be able to use Internet technology such as HTML5 and JavaScript to reduce the complexity in the app development process.”

With the Alicloud feature being at the heart of the Aliyun OS, users will require less need to download applications and it should ensure that data is safer and easier to transfer to other applications that are hosted on their cloud servers.

This could be something that Amazon, Apple and Google will look further into. Amazon already have their own very successful cloud based Amazon servers (EC2) and their new foray into a Amazon kindle tablet like device. 

Aliyun users will be offered a 100GB of storage on their Alicloud servers and probably offer additional space if that is needed.

In design terms this should help reduce the overall size and processor power needed and could help to ensure that smartphones and tablets use less power and last longer once charged.

Wang went on to say recently that:

“Eventually all our services will be delivered on mobile. People will spend less time in front of their computer screens and more time in front of their smartphones.” 

Recent reports suggest that the Aliyun OS is Linux based, dashing reports earlier that it was a tweaked version of the Android OS. All I can say to the Aliyun team is that I hope it is as clear of patent infringements as possible when related to Apple and Google, as the challenge of exporting a Chinese OS to Western Europe and the US will not be met without a filthy legal battle ensuing if a mere hint of a legal challenge is deemed possible.

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Android Jelly Bean to bring game changing features

There has been a lot of criticism that the Android platform is fragmented with lots of different versions running on even the same model of handset. The next release Ice Cream Sandwich was recently revealed by Eric Schmidt to becoming as early as next month. But the company is already working on the next version of the software, which is allegedly going to be called Android Jelly Bean and is thought to bring game changing features.

Redmond Pie is reporting Google will continue the trend for naming different versions of its Android operating systems after sweets that begun in 2008. Currently there isn’t much known about the features of the Jelly Bean version, but the source has been assuring that it will bring “Game Changing Stuff”. This could mean a variety of things and hopefully will be more than just another different layout.

At present there is no version number for Jelly Bean yet, which is also the case for the next version Ice Cream Sandwich. There isn’t that much known about that version yet except it has been designed for smartphones and tablet devices. Currently we have Gingerbread that was designed with smartphones in mind, and Honeycomb that was for tablet devices. Ice Cream Sandwich is set to change all that and work for both types of device.

Google hasn’t revealed much about the next version of Android officially but there has been some leaked screenshots. These hint at a refined and improved interface that will see some of Honeycomb brought to the smartphone.

It remains to be seen what Jelly Bean will bring though but there are still some Android handsets waiting to receive Gingerbread. Hopefully with Ice Cream Sandwich and then Jelly Bean recent devices will be updated quicker and be less fragmented. The operating system has come a long way since it was first released towards the end of 2008, and is a genuine rival to the iPhone’s iOS.

Are you on Android and what do you think of it?

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Delivering Fast boot times in Windows 8

This new fast startup mode will yield benefits on almost all systems, whether they have a spinning HDD or a solid state drive (SSD), but for newer systems with fast SSDs it is downright amazing. Check out the video below to see for yourself:

One thing you’ll notice in the video was how fast the POST handoff to Windows occurred. Systems that are built using Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) are more likely to achieve very fast pre-boot times when compared to those with traditional BIOS. This isn’t because UEFI is inherently faster, but because UEFI writers starting from scratch are more able to optimize their implementation rather than building upon a BIOS implementation that may be many years old. The good news is that most system and motherboard manufacturers have begun to implement UEFI, so these kinds of fast startup times will be more prevalent for new systems.

Of course, there are times where you may want to perform a complete shutdown – for example, if you’re opening the system to add or change some hardware. We have an option in the UI to revert back to the Windows 7 shutdown/cold boot behavior, or since that’s likely a fairly infrequent thing, you can use the new /full switch on shutdown.exe. From a cmd prompt, run: shutdown /s /full / t 0  to invoke an immediate full shutdown. Also, choosing Restart from the UI will do a full shutdown, followed by a cold boot.

Boot work is mostly owned by our Kernel Platform Group, but a number of teams came together in Windows 8 to make changes across the OS to support this new mode, plus other exciting boot changes that we’ll talk about very soon. We’re really enjoying the boot performance of Windows 8 in our internal use, and are looking forward to you being able to try it for yourselves so you can let us know what you think.

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Hotmail's one-click filters

Now utilize Hotmail's one-click filters to get to your most important email more quickly!

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Hotmail's sweep feature

Learn how to use Hotmail's sweep feature to quickly organize your inbox. It's simple.

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New Windows Phone 7 Connector for Mac adds Mango support

You might think it's a bit odd that Microsoft would offer up software that would allow Windows Phone 7-based smartphones to sync up to a Mac. But that's exactly what the Windows Phone 7 Connector is designed to do. This week, Microsoft released the 2.0 version of the software via Apple's iTunes store. The update not only works with smartphones with the current version of Windows Phone 7, but also for the upcoming 7.5 version, otherwise known as the Mango update. The software also works with the Zune HD media player.

The Windows Phone 7 Connector lets users transfer media files from the Mac to the WP7 smartphone, and also allows for any photos and videos made with the smartphone to be transferred over to the Mac. The new features in the 2.0 version include adding support for the Windows Phone Marketplace and transfers of ringtones, although some features can only be used with devices running the Mango update. There's also been some improvements for the software's video conversion process, the addition of drag and drop importing of files via Browse Device, over 13 more languages added and more.

The fact that Microsoft has released a new Windows Phone 7 Connector for the Mac at this time likely means that the Mango update itself is getting close to going live. it could also mean that the launches of the first Windows Phone 7.5 based smartphones are not too far in the future. In fact we could see some official announcements concerning new Windows Phone 7 smartphones later this week.

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Official Windows 8 blog talks about getting public feedback

Microsoft's official Windows 8 blog site, the company has discussed a number of topics related to the development of its next PC operating system. Those topics included Windows 8's new Metro user interface, its support for ISO disc images and VHD files and the new "ribbon" UI for its Explorer file system, among others. In the latest post on the blog, Microsoft's Steven Sinofsky goes in a different direction. This time he writes about how Microsoft is handling feedback from the general public concerning what has been revealed so far about Windows 8.

Sinofsky writes, "We knew talking about Windows 8 would be different than talking about Windows 7. Whereas Windows 7 was about returning to roots, Windows 8 is about maintaining those roots while moving forward in a big and new way. Moving in a new direction always brings engineering challenges as well as challenges in just talking about what we’ve done." The company has already received lots of comments from people about the operating system's new user interface. Sinofsky writes that discussing the new UI by just looking at static images "misses the point". He adds, "Very much like zooming in too far with a microscope, the big picture is lost. It also surfaces the least actionable sorts of feedback to wade through of the “love it” / “hate it” variety. Even with short videos we have not found the right way to put context around the overall experience. Given enough focus, light, and magnification, anything can become important and the subject of a big debate. We certainly contributed to that."

The types of responses that Sinofsky has received from the public concerning Windows 8 has, as one might expect, varied widely. He says, "I’ve certainly received my share of extremely warm messages telling me to ignore 'those trolls and fanboys' and 'what you’re saying resonates.' Those are nice to read in the face of an equal number of messages telling me how poor a job we’re doing. We also receive a great many very specific questions and suggestions." He concludes this blog post by saying, "I just want to reiterate that we are actively participating. Believe me, this blog is the “talk of the town” here in Redmond. :-) We look forward to the continued exchanges – the good feedback, the critique, and the constructive comments. It helps us deliver to you all a product that meets our stated goal of Windows, reimagined."

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