Posts tagged there’s
Windows on ARM: Yes, There’s a Desktop; No, It’s Not Compatible
Feb 9th
While Apple’s preferred method for introducing customers to new products is with a gala stage event, Microsoft’s method has become the doling out of information in carefully timed lumps through corporate blog posts. Today, a rather hefty lump (almost the size of one of my analysis articles) was doled out by Microsoft’s Windows Division President Steven Sinofsky, shedding considerable new light on how Windows 8 will work on systems with ARM-based processors.
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ARM is not a processor, like Intel or AMD; rather, it’s a selection of technologies that a manufacturer licenses from an extensive ARM portfolio, that are condensed into a very small system – usually a system-on-a-chip (SoC). In Sinofsky’s blog post today, as well as in an accompanying video – a shot of which is shown above – Microsoft showed three examples of ARM-based devices from (left to right, above) Nvidia, Qualcomm, and Texas Instruments, which don’t use CPUs the way we know them, but behave enough like a PC to run Windows 8. Or at least, a new form of Windows 8 that resembles the Windows we use today only partly.
“Using WOA [Windows on ARM] ‘out of the box’ will feel just like using Windows 8 on x86/64,” writes Sinofsky. “You will sign in the same way. You will start and launch apps the same way. You will use the new Windows Store the same way. You will have access to the intrinsic capabilities of Windows, from the new Start screen and Metro style apps and Internet Explorer, to peripherals, and if you wish, the Windows desktop with tools like Windows File Explorer and desktop Internet Explorer. It will have the same fast and fluid experience. In other words, we’ve designed WOA to look and feel just like you would expect. WOA enables creativity in PC design that, in combination with newly architected features of the OS, will bring to customers new, no-compromise experiences.”
Another World
Yet while Sinofsky made it very clear – in an abundance of words – that Microsoft will not be compromising on what it has not compromised on, today’s blog post does also reveal that those parts of WOA that don’t work “the same way” will work a different way. Most different of all will be the Desktop, which is the part of Windows 7 that used to go by the name “Windows.” As we noted when the Windows 8 Developer Preview was rolled out last September, the Desktop has become just one of two “worlds” where Windows 8 applications will run. The other is a completely new class of “Metro-style” apps, based on a new runtime called WinRT that is not downwardly-compatible. It’s not made for Windows 7, and it’s not compatible with Windows Phone 7.
But at least with Windows 8 on PCs running Intel and AMD architectures (x86/x64), most Windows apps since version 3.0 will run on the Desktop. This will not be the case on Windows for ARM for an obvious and unavoidable reason: Applications compiled to run on these processors are not code-compatible with ARM-based platforms. And managed apps made for the .NET Framework – which as late as Spring 2011 was still being touted as the platform of Windows’ future – will not run on WOA because the .NET Framework is not code-compatible with ARM, at least not at this time. Sinofsky did not state these facts outright, though he gave plenty of information for an eight-year-old to make the correct deduction.
“WOA does not support running, emulating, or porting existing x86/64 desktop apps,” the blog post reads. “Code that uses only system or OS services from WinRT can be used within an app and distributed through the Windows Store for both WOA and x86/64.” It also states that if a developer wishes to target WOA as a platform, all he really needs to do is write a Metro-style app using WinRT and regular OS services.
Another Office
So what is the Desktop for in WOA? Why is it there if it can’t run a great majority of the Windows apps we’ve come to know? Sinofsky states that the WOA Desktop will run built-in versions of Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and OneNote from the new “Office 15″ (probably Office 2013). It will also run a desktop version of Internet Explorer 10 (as indicated by a blue “e” icon on the taskbar in the screenshot), as well as the Windows Explorer file manager.
The division president characterizes this degree of resemblance as “supporting the Windows Desktop experience,” adding that applications which can run on the WOA Desktop have been significantly re-architected to support ARM features such as low power consumption and multitouch. At one point, Sinofsky said, the question of how to approach the role of the Desktop for ARM architectures seems ever so faintly like a certain scene from Hamlet:
“To us, giving up something useful that has little cost to customers was a compromise that we didn’t want to see in the evolution of PCs. The presence of different models is part of every platform. Whether it is to support a transition to a future programming model (such as including a virtualization or emulation solution if feasible), to support different programming models on one platform (native and web-based applications when both are popular), or to support different ways of working (command shell or GUI for different scenarios), the presence of multiple models represents a flexible solution that provides a true no-compromise experience on any platform.”
Which must give us pause, Sinofsky might have added.
Another Form Factor
In a statement to ReadWriteWeb this afternoon, IDC program director for applications development software, Al Hilwa, calls WOA “separate but equal… a different OS on its own schedule, but Microsoft is doing its best to deliver it at the same time.”
Hilwa believes that the first WOA-based tablets will be released some time following the first Windows 8-based tablets with Intel and AMD processors, which means this class won’t be ready for back-to-school until 2013. In the meantime, he points out that AMD and Intel are feverishly working to improve the power consumption and efficiency of their CPUs.
Assuming PC manufacturers – especially including those who produce Intel’s Ultrabook form factor – beat ARM producers to market with competitive street prices, and that their Windows 8 PCs run all the existing software (there’s no reason to think they won’t), then they could retain a distinct advantage. Today, Microsoft’s spokesperson told RWW that the work being done by competitors to produce AMD- and Intel-based PCs represents “an equally strong commitment, new designs, and improved architecture for Windows on this hardware. Microsoft could not be more excited or supportive of the new products from Intel and AMD that will be part of Windows 8 across a full spectrum of PC form factors.”
Nevertheless, besides the myriad, perhaps countless, ways in which Windows for ARM is completely different from Windows, it’s just the same as the product you haven’t come to know yet because it hasn’t been released. Because many consumers choose Windows because they need to run Office, Microsoft is making sure that four key Office apps are distributed with WOA. They will use different code bases, but because they’re pre-installed, that fact won’t matter. What will matter is whether consumers feel they’re running Windows while they’re using the applications that are the very reason they use Windows.
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Believe It Or Not, There’s An Upside To Diminished Online Privacy
Feb 6th
Sunday’s New York Times was a Luddite’s dream. Tthe paper’s Sunday Review section had three lengthy opinion pieces dedicated to “Life Under Digital Dominance” (their words, not mine), including Evgeny Morozov’s lengthy treatise that social media will kill originality because we’re all too afraid to publicly “like” something on Facebook that our friends don’t like, a plea to adopt European-style rules to keep data private and a particularly threatening piece by Lori Andrews promising sudden cuts in our personal credit lines and troubles obtaining insurance because Facebook is using us.
All three authors make good points, and they are points worth considering for anyone invested in a digital life. But they also brought to mind Reason magazine’s June 2004 cover story – a remarkably poignant preview of the world we now live in. It was also a reminder that a lot of us are okay with the amount of information we choose to share online, and many of us even benefit from giving marketers, friends and co-workers a more complete picture of who we are.
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The 2004 Reason issue was delivered to subscribers in a magazine that had an satellite photo of each subscriber’s home on the cover, which Reason was able to obtain through public data and print with then state-of-the-art technology. As Nick Gillespie wrote in that issue’s Editor’s Note, the issue was dedicated to “describing how many of the popular and convenient transactions we take for granted are the result of readily accessible information that lays you bare to the prying eyes of others.
“Living in a database nation raises innumerable privacy concerns. But it also makes life easier and more prosperous,” he said. “We may have kissed privacy goodbye — and good riddance, too.”
Some of the points raised in the Reason article seem dated nearly eight years later. But the basic premise from the Libertarian journal of political and economic thought remains essentially the same, whether we’re talking about data collected by supermarket loyalty programs in 2004 or Facebook in 2012: “It’s easy to complain about a subjective loss of privacy. It’s more difficult to appreciate how information swapping accelerates economic activity. Like many other aspects of modern society, benefits are dispersed, amounting to a penny saved here or a dollar discounted there. But those sums add up quickly,” Declan McCullagh wrote in the 2004 cover story.
When Is The Last Time You Actually Read A Privacy Policy?
Businesses gathering information on customers and potential customers, as well as employees and potential employees, is nothing new. Mediterranean merchants relied on a social network in the 11th century to track dishonest merchants selling their goods in foreign ports, and, more recently, in 1766, Adam Smith “stressed the importance of a positive reputation, which necessarily means that others have access to information about your past actions and therefore feel they can predict your future behavior.”
What we fear now is not the fact that companies collect the data, but that they collect so much more of it with much greater ease. And we’re also rightfully concerned about who has access to all that data. Most of us have made peace with the idea of SafeWay knowing we prefer chocolate chip over pistachio ice cream, and appreciate the coupons we get for our favorite flavor. But what happens when that data is sold to our health insurer, who ups our premium after deciding we’re at risk for hypertension because of our ice cream consumption?
This is why it becomes important to read those privacy agreements most of us ignore. Frequent check-ins at your favorite pizza place on a restaurant review site may earn you a badge and a number one rating on the site, but is that virtual prize worth it if the site turns that data over to your health insurer? It doesn’t matter if you only go to the pizza place because you like their garden salad (with low-fat dressing on the side), and your insurer won’t necessarily know you run 20 miles a week unless you’re also checking in at the gym on a regular basis.
Striking A Balance Between Privacy And Innovation
None of the Times’ writers outright suggest legislation as a remedy for diminshing privacy, although Somini Sengupta’s look at privacy laws in Europe comes close to advocating such a position, noting that every European country, as well as Canada, Australia and many Latin American countries have laws governing the use of online data. At the very least, there’s an anti-business and, by extension, anti-innovation, tone in his news analysis.
“Europe has come to the conclusion that none of the companies can be trusted,” Simon Davies, the director of the London-based nonprofit Privacy International, told Sengupta. “The European Commission is responding to public demand. There is a growing mood of despondency about the privacy issue.”
Sengupta’s article does not, however, mention that in the United States the civil court system has dealt with egregious privacy law violations not addressed by existing legislation. Likewise, Andrews’s op-ed notes that 93% of us, according to polls, think that Internet companies should always ask for permission before using personal information, without noting that those polls never present the privacy question against the backdrop of more privacy may very well mean higher costs and less innovation.
As a Libertarian journal, Reason predictably took the stance that protecting privacy is largely a matter of personal responsibility. But it’s a message that bears repeating now. It’s a safe bet that the people most concerned with privacy – the domestic abuse victims and the Syrian dissidents mentioned by privacy advocate Rebecca MacKinnon mentions in Sengupta’s article – have taken steps to protect their personal information. And if they haven’t, whose fault is it?
“If you have a democratic society, the point is not to say whatever is good for the majority is all we need,” MacKinnon said.
But turning her argument around, does that mean whatever is needed for the minority is good for the rest of us?
Photo courtesy of ShutterStock.
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Hate SOPA and want to join the Jan. 18 blackout? There’s a WordPress plugin … – ZDNet (blog)
Jan 14th
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Hate SOPA and want to join the Jan. 18 blackout? There's a WordPress plugin …
ZDNet (blog) And for those of you looking for something more extensible and SEO-friendly, you might want to check out the “SOPA Blackout Plugin“. Its offerings look even tastier than the aforementioned plugin: This plugin allows you to set SOPA blackout dates for … |
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Need Some Favo.rs? There’s A Social Network For That
Dec 7th
These days there really is a social network for everything. Formspring.me is centered around asking questions and receiving answers. Quora is focused on exchanging knowledge. Favo.rs is a new social network that hopes to build online community around a single concept: founders and professionals can gather here and offer each other help. It’s so simple that it just might work. Serial entrepreneur Adam Rodnitzky co-founded the site, which launched today.
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Favo.rs looks a lot like LinkedIn and Facebook. There’s a central news feed, a home navigation button in the upper left-hand corner of the screen, a centrally located search bar and notifications. Users gain a reputation through earning points. Favo.rs brings in a gamification element with four status levels (rookies, participant, advocate and benefactor) that users can achieve if they help one another enough.
Don’t people already use Facebook or Twitter for these types of questions? Yes, they do, but because of the huge quantity of information on both of those sites, it’s easy for stuff to get lost. Plus, while Facebook is focused mostly on friends, family members and work friends (you don’t necessarily want to be Facebook friends with your boss, for example) and Twitter is more about interests, Favo.rs bills itself as a space entirely dedicated to asking favors from other professionals. It aims to both build and facilitate professional relationships right on the site. That’s not to say Facebook friends and Twitter followers can’t help. Favo.rs gives users the option to broadcast their favors to Facebook and Twitter in order to cast a wider net. In fact, Favo.rs also works as a Facebook app.
Transparency will encourage users to share more. Each user has a profile that includes who helped, who the user helped, who is following the user and who the user follows. Theoretically, the relationship starts off on the right foot, with a favor, and is easy to build from there.
Will Favo.rs fulfill that tiny ease-of-introductions niche need that LinkedIn lacks?
Favo.rs, however, is a network for professionals, thus making it seem more like LinkedIn. While it is easier to “meet” people on Favo.rs, it’s hard to say right now because the community is still relatively small. The “introduction” mechanisms that Favo.rs provides does make the approaching new contacts feel much simpler than on LinkedIn, where it’s difficult to connect with someone you don’t know.
The site currently has about 1,200 users who have asked about 450 questions over the site’s six-month-long private beta.
Favo.rs is an interesting idea, but will it actually take off? If it does, it will need to make clear why professionals would want to use it in addition to LinkedIn and Twitter.
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Getting Arrested? Now There’s An App For That
Nov 9th
So Occupy Wall Street has inspired some action – the creation of the “I’m Getting Arrested” app for Android.
“Alert your lawyer, loved ones, etc … that you are being arrested with a click. I’m Getting Arrested enables anyone, with one click, t…
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Analysts: There’s No Spectrum Shortage
Sep 27th
The then-newly installed chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Julius Genachowski, said in October 2009, “We are fast entering a world where mass-market mobile devices consume thousands of megabytes each month. So we must ask: What happens when every mobile user has an iPhone, a Palm Pre, a BlackBerry Tour or whatever the next device is? What happens when we quadruple the number of subscribers with mobile broadband on their laptops or netbooks? The short answer: We will need a lot more spectrum.”
Yesterday, a systematic and mathematical analysis of U.S. spectrum allocation blatantly called Genachowski’s statement to the 2009 CTIA Wireless conference flat wrong.
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Jason Bazinet and Michael Rollins of Citi Investment Research & Analysis concluded that only about 35.7% of spectrum set aside for wireless communications, is being used for that purpose. What’s causing the spectrum problems, Bazinet and Rollins believe, is not how much spectrum is being consumed but where it falls on the map, and who owns it.
“We do not believe the U.S. faces a spectrum shortage,” write the Citi analysts. “However, unless incumbent carriers accelerate their 4G migration plans, or acquire more underutilized spectrum, upstart networks – like Clearwire, LightSquared and Dish – could have a material speed advantage over incumbent carriers provided that they can clear meaningful hurdles for funding and distribution.”
A big chunk of the nation’s wireless frequency spectrum, they argue, is presently held by companies that have no plans, immediate or otherwise, to monetize it. They tally that 538 MHz of wireless spectrum has been allocated to U.S. firms, though some 192 MHz is actually in use. And according to their calculation, at least 90% of that amount is used for 2G, 3G, and 3.5G communications. Those older protocols are yielding transmission speeds of less than 1 megabit per second (Mbps) during peak usage hours.
[Source: Citi Investment Research & Analysis]
The chart above depicts spectrum usage by the major carriers and holding companies as of 2010; the dotted lines represent the excess amount that’s allocated but not yet put to use. Note the huge space allocated to Sprint/Clearwire that’s still “untamed frontier.”
Citi’s calculations estimate that if carriers put all 538 MHz to use for 4G LTE transmission, those speeds could climb to 5 Mbps during peak hours, with only 10% simultaneous usage overlap between carriers.
[Source: Citi Investment Research & Analysis]
Statistics used by the Citi analysts show the average data throughput for a 3G cell site to be 36 Mbps. A migration to HSPA+ technology (considered “3.5 G”) boosts that speed to 63 Mbps. Full conversion to 4G LTE skyrockets throughput to 258 Mbps, and Rollins and Bazinet admit that number could be even higher if the promises of LTE-Advanced come to fruition by 2013.
So what’s the holdup? The Sprint/Clearwire partnership has the biggest share, with phone carriers AT&T and Verizon Wireless making do with less. 4G technology requires larger contiguous blocks (20 MHz) than earlier generations. So Verizon and AT&T have room maybe for two LTE carriers before they find themselves having to borrow space from their 3G and 3.5G allotments – a process which ends up making services in that older space slower.
[Source: Citi Investment Research & Analysis]
While only a small percentage of wireless services use 4G today, Citi believes 4G could constitute as much as 57% of wireless traffic by 2015. A juggling process that anyone who’s ever optimized a hard disk drive may appreciate, which would include the FCC expediting auctions in the existing space, would enable carriers to utilize as much as 280 MHz of allocated space (still only 52%) without the need to annex additional spectrum space.
“One hundred percent conversion of 538 MHz allows carriers to offer 5 Mbps with 10% simultaneous usage during peak busy-hour. This speed allows for very robust mobile use and limited home use,” the Citi analysts conclude. “Too much spectrum is controlled by companies that are not planning on rolling out services or face business and financial challenges. And, larger carriers cannot readily convert a substantial portion of their spectrum to 4G services, because most existing spectrum provides 2G – 3.5G services to current users.”
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Social Media: There’s a Monthly Print Magazine for That
Aug 17th
At one point, a print magazine about the online world was inevitable. (Remember Yahoo Internet Life?) But now, with the proliferation of smart phones, tablets and magazine apps like Flipboard, not so much. So the launch of The Social Media Monthly is a bit of a surprise. Even more so its distribution.
The first issue of the magazine is out today. Publisher Cool Blue Company announced its availability at the Barnes and Noble bookstore chain in the U.S., as well as distribution in Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark.
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Hopefully, the print version is more elegant and effective than the magazine’s online presence. Stumbling around the Geocities-inspired web site I made the signal error of clicking “Check In.” My browser crashed and my computer froze. So, there’s that.
The publication is also available as a “standalone flash digital e-zine” and an iTunes app.
The debut issue’s cover was designed by Yiying Lu, known for her design of Twitter’s fail whale.
Robert Fine, the founder of Cool Blue, says advance orders of the second issue are up 20% over the launch issue. Single issues are on sale for $4.99 for a print copy and $2.99 for the digital version. A year’s subscription runs $29.99 and comes with digital access. There is no information on how many copies of the first issue have sold.
It seems that, after a long period of expansion, with many products offered for free, we have now entered a period of contraction. Earlier today we wrote about the movement away from free online television content and maybe this magazine’s approach is an expression of that same trend.
The articles in the first issue do not seem particularly compelling to me. (See graphic below.) But you may feel differently. Let us know in the comments.
More generally, I personally I love the printed page. But I’m unsure of its utility when it comes to the topic of social media. What do you think? Is there a reason for a print magazine on an essentially paperless topic?
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There’s a little bit of Google in most of us – Memeburn
Jun 6th
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There's a little bit of Google in most of us
Memeburn Google is a source of income through SEO. Google is in some way or another part of our lives. Google has brought order to the internet, and has allowed us to find things much faster and easier. The fact is that people use search engines for information … |
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Google Gives Everyone $10 to Try New Google Wallet…but There’s a Catch
May 27th
Google’s NFC-enabled mobile wallet was announced this morning in partnership with mobile operator Sprint, issuing bank Citi and payment network MasterCard. But did you know that you don’t have to be a Citi card holder to try the service? As it turns out, Google is also offering a free “virtual” card which you can load up with funds from any account. And to get you enthused about testing this new mobile payments technology, Google is giving everyone $10 for free to get started.
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Hey! Free Money!
According to the Google Wallet website, the Google Prepaid Card is a virtual credit card which you can fund with any of your existing credit card accounts. The funding source doesn’t have to be Citi, nor does it have to be a MasterCard. Instead, you’ll simply activate the preloaded prepaid card within the Wallet application to begin to use it. Because the Google Prepaid Card is virtual, you won’t receive a plastic card in the mail, explains Google.
And here’s the best part: Google will give you $10 for free just for activating its PrePaid Card. That means free money to spend at Google’s partners’ shops, a list that includes Peet’s Coffee, Subway, Walgreens, Toys R Us, American Eagle Outfitters, Foot Locker, Bloomingdale’s, The Container Store, Einstein Bros. Bagels, Jamba Juice, Guess, Macy’s, Walgreens and more. Plus, Google Wallet works at any MasterCard Paypass-enabled merchant, like CVS, Sports Authority, Jack in the Box, Sunoco and The Coca Cola Company (select vending machines).
Is There a Catch? Depends on How Creepy You Think Google is…
In all seriousness, if you’re wondering why Google is pushing Google Wallet so hard that it’s willing to hand out free cash, you have to understand Google’s core business. No, not search, silly! Advertising.
With a mobile payments system like Google Wallet, the company can track transactions all the way through from the first time a user clicks on an ad in Google’s search results to the time of checkout at the point-of-sale. It will also open up whole new forms of advertising, like geo-targeted ads based on your current location, offers that appear when you search for a local business through Google’s Yelp-like Google Places service, offers that appear when you search just for a business category (e.g., “lunch,” “drug store”), Groupon-like group-buying deals, offers that appear on store loyalty cards loaded into the Wallet service, offers available on physical signage, in-store displays, posters, NFC-enabled tags and more.
Google wants to tie all parts of the buying process together starting with the initial research (for larger purchases, perhaps) or the on-the-go queries performed on your mobile phone all the way to the end result – the merchant that gets your money. And it wants to keep track of your shopping habits and trends, so it can serve you even better ads. More targeted, highly personalized ads that are more likely to appeal to you, and you alone.
How very Minority Report.
In a way, this is type of narrowed down targeting isn’t all that different from what Facebook provides advertisers today – a way to direct a message to carefully selected and filtered members of the online population. For example, a Facebook advertiser could direct ads to all unmarried women aged 25-35 who live within 20 miles of New York. Google, on the other hand, will know you not only through your Google profile and use of its numerous other services, it will also know you in a way that may have even more appeal to some advertisers: where you spend, how much, how often, where you are now and what you’re trying to find. Sounds like a winning formula, and maybe a little creepy.
But that’s Google for you. As Chairman Eric Schmidt once said while CEO, “Google policy is to get right to the creepy line and not cross it.”
Did it succeed?
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