Windows XP in AJAX

An article from CNN, which as expected does not descend to technicalities, explains why Web-based applications put Windows and Microsoft Office under realistic threat.

NEW YORK (AP) — A quiet revolution is transforming life on the Internet: New, agile software now lets people quickly check flight options, see stock prices fluctuate and better manage their online photos and e-mail.

Such tools make computing less of a chore because they sit on distant Web servers and run over standard browsers. Users thus don’t have to worry about installing software or moving data when they switch computers.

And that could bode ill for Microsoft Corp. and its flagship Office suite, which packs together word processing, spreadsheets and other applications.

The threat comes in large part from Ajax, a set of Web development tools that speeds up Web applications by summoning snippets of data as needed instead of pulling entire Web pages over and over.

RIC Scmidt, who is the CEO of Google, speaks out in defence of Google Print. Goole Print is the controversial initiative to scan literature, infringing copyrights in the process. The intended service, titled Google Print, is to provide surfers with instant and comprehensive coverage of books from the shelf.

Imagine sitting at your computer and, in less than a second, searching the full text of every book ever written. Imagine an historian being able to instantly find every book that mentions the Battle of Algiers. Imagine a high school student in Bangladesh discovering an out-of-print author held only in a library in Ann Arbor. Imagine one giant electronic card catalog that makes all the world’s books discoverable with just a few keystrokes by anyone, anywhere, anytime.

Several networks have covered this story including CNN

LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) — Evidently “Star Trek” actor James “Scotty” Doohan took the catchphrase “beam me up” very seriously — his cremated remains will be launched into space in accord with his last wishes.

Related item: Internet Teleport

Bill Gates arrested in his younger days (photo in public domain)

As previously discussed, the admirable state of Massachusetts is able to recognise problems with closed applications and proprietary formats. It is now confirmed that Massachusetts will carry on and dispose of Office in a staged migration to OpenDocument, culminating in 2007.

With Microsoft’s OpenOffice XML the loser to OpenDocument in Massachusetts, the war of desktop formats is likely to spread to other governmental bodies, says one participant in the deliberations who sees the decision as a tipping point.

“In many ways it becomes circular,” said Doug Heintzman of IBM in an interview Friday. “It emboldens other entities. We are on the cusp of a big change.”

Immense perseverance at Microsoft did not help avoid this key loss of the Massachusetts ‘flagship’. Awakened interest in Linux recently emerged among African governments as well. Only last week, South Africa wished to ditch proprietary and get rid of hundreds of millions (USD) worth of licences. All the same, it is still worth reading the open letter from the KDE team to Microsoft.

Is this the beginning of the end for Office proprietary?

A BusinessWeek article relating to political blogs is rather difficult to ignore.

It appears as though a controversial move by the US government could make it more difficult for blogs to voice political tendencies. If censorship was ever forced, would that permit the existence of political comments, which may be contained within these blogs? We have already come to witness a lawsuit against a Webmaster due to contributory comments that were contained in his site. This should definitely make us all raise a brow.

Amid the explosion of political activity on the Internet, a federal court has instructed the six-member Federal Election Commission to draw up regulations that would extend the nation’s campaign finance and spending limits to the Web.

Connect with Google, search with Google, E-mail with Google. Google machine and operating system yet to come?

OOGLE are high up in the headlines again as rumours have become a reality. It is said that “Big G” is yet to offer Wi-Fi and Virtual Private Networking (VPN) to America, starting with the San Francisco bay area.

Google already allow visitors to download necessary software from their site and the FAQ explains a little further. There appears to be somewhat of a ‘hit-and-run game’, whereby Google bring their download sub-site to life, but quickly make it unavailable again, re-directing to their main search page. I suspect this may only appear this way because I access Google from outside the United States. They intend to cover the States in the future as a full-scale ISP according to some rumours, which can finally be confirmed.

I still remember the days when Google boasted being a powerful search engine, later to become a fully-blown information management and centralisation body (e.g. Google Groups, Google Directories). Maps and E-mail have greatly extended its scope, yet now, as Internet services are unveiled, there appear to be no apparent limits.

What will be next to come: Google boxes and Google O/S near you?

ULTIPLE sources I have come across are citing the same article from Reuters (first John Dvorak, now Slashdot). The facts are truly unbelievable. If it had not come from Reuters, I would not have quoted it. Judge for yourself:

An Australian man built up a 40,000-volt charge of static electricity in his clothes as he walked, leaving a trail of scorched carpet and molten plastic and forcing firefighters to evacuate a building.

…

“We tested his clothes with a static electricity field meter and measured a current of 40,000 volts, which is one step shy of spontaneous combustion, where his clothes would have self-ignited,” Barton said.