Just yesterday Microsoft announced that the Bing search engine for Australia will lose its “beta” tag. Even though that the search engine is still crippled today they added the video background feature. You will need to be using a HTML5 browser to see the video as this feature uses the “Video” tag.
For more information about the video background for Bing go to http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/Features/2011/sep11/09-23Bing.mspx or check out the video below.
Last week Microsoft revealed the Windows 8 UI at the D9 conference that showed off a “Touch First” UI. Since then a lot of people have been saying that having a “Touch First” UI is going to be good for tablets but what about Desktop or normal laptops that are not touch devices.
I then remember the video that Microsoft showed a few months of their new Microsoft Touch Mouse and remember there were some striking similarities between the two videos.
In this video Previewing Windows 8 you are shown how to task switch “you just take you thumb.. from the side and just swipe it in”.
In this video about the Microsoft Touch Mouse the commentator says “One can use a thumb to move back and forwards in a web page or a browser”.
As you can see even though one is switching images/documents and the other is switching apps teh action itself is very similar.
Again the Microsoft Touch Mouse video shows how “One can snap them side by side for easy comparison.”
And here the Windows 8 vide they “with one simple gesture you can snap one app next to another app."
Again the similarities are quite striking between the actions…
Another similarity i noticed between the two videos was the use of touch trails…
Image below shows two touch points shown on screen with the Microsoft Touch Mouse Video.
This is a similar touch line shown on in the Windows 8 Video.
What is clear is if Microsoft is going to be pushing a “Touch First” UI then they need to touch enable as many existing non-touch computers as possible with the Microsoft Touch Mouse or other similar mice.
It will also be interesting to see if Microsoft sells a “Windows 8 with Microsoft Touch Mouse” SKU similar to how they sold Office 2000 Premium with IntelliMouse Pro so they enable a touch experience for as many people as possible…
Microsoft have just released to the public beta of a new version of Microsoft Security Essentials. This new versions looks relatively unchanged from the previous version with only a few added features.
Windows Firewall Integration – While the product itself does not include a firewall it now prompts you to turn on the firewall on during install.
Enhance protection from web-based threat – This feature does real time scanning of your web traffic into your computer to ensure that there are no malicious scripts being downloaded.
New and improved protections engine – The scanned engine has now enhanced detection and cleaner and better performance. Microsoft Security Essentials is already a really fast performing AV product only make it better.
See the new “Enable network protection against exploits of known vulnerabilities” real-time scanning option.
You can download it right now from https://connect.microsoft.com/securityessentials
Microsoft have just released the latest version of the ACT Toolkit which allows corporations to scan their production computers for application that may have compatibility issues when running Windows 7. The new version now allows users to rate the compatibility of application for 32bit and 64bit application separately. With the x64 version of Windows 7 now the dominant (see here and here) operating system version this tools is going to be really useful for enterprise looking to make the 64 bit jump.
You may also notice that this update has also dropped the “RC” tag from Windows 7 reports section that was previously in version 5.5 which you could previously only do via a SQL command.
This version also resolves an issue with the DLL file called “logger.dll” that is used for the User Account Control (UAC) evaluator. The problem was that other programs like Sophos Anti-Virus also use the same name for their DLL’s and thus caused an error “The procedure entry point LoggerStart could not be located in the dynamic link library logger.dll” error message (see below). They have renamed this DLL on the Agent to “ACTEventLogger.dll” instead so the conflict has now been resolved.
This version also comes with the demo Stock Viewer application (see below) that has so often been used by Microsoft demonstrate how to use SHIM’s to remediate problem apps. This is a nice addition as you can practice you SHIM creating skills on this program first before attempting to fix more challenging production application.
You can get Microsoft ACT v5.6 now from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=24da89e9-b581-47b0-b45e-492dd6da2971
If you don’t already have a SQL server to use for ACT you may also want to download and install SQL Server 2008 R2 as well from http://www.microsoft.com/express/Database/
