The Softwaremedia Tribune

The SoftwareMedia Tribune
The SoftwareMedia Tribune gives you all the latest software news, releases, innovations, tips, tricks and more. Keep up with the latest Software News and get exclusive discounts for SoftwareMedia.com in you inbox once a month!

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Briefly…

• Bill Gates announces prototype technology that will allow home and office walls to become computers.
• Rumors fly about Microsoft’s interest in acquiring Yell Group, owner of U.S. company Yellow Book.
• Adobe Flash Player 10, code named “Astro”, went into beta this month.
• With the Microsoft-Yahoo deal supposedly closed, Google is now in partnership talks with Yahoo.
  
• After a few setbacks, Windows Home Server Power Pack will soon enter public beta.

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Three new beta versions are available for free download this month from Adobe: Dreamweaver, Fireworks and Soundbooth. These three betas demonstrate the direction Adobe is taking with features and technologies to simplify and streamline workflow across all media. Specifically, users of the next Adobe Creative Suite may be able to mix and mash up the applications with online content and third-party tools. Bringing tools from CS to the desktop or the Web could lead to new ways of exploring Adobe’s software. A mashup, for example, allows users to do things like mash up Google Maps to display anything from apartment listings to UFO sightings. Developers will be able to write one set of code to create widgets that can be used throughout Adobe’s CS programs. Widely reported rumors that Creative Suite 4 will be released in October have been slammed by Adobe, saying the rumors are “just made up”.

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Microsoft has announced plans to support new file formats for Office with Service Pack 2, including Open Document Format (ODF), Portable Document Format (PDF), and XML Paper Specification (XPS). In the past, Microsoft has created add-ons for users to be able to convert these files. But with these formats becoming more popular, it has gone one step further to build support directly into Office. With this announcement, the European Commission said that it will investigate the affect the move will have on consumer choice. “The Commission will investigate whether the announced support of Open Document Format in Office leads to better interoperability and allows consumers to process and exchange their documents with the software product of their choice,” the commission said in a statement reported by Dow Jones. Office 2007 Service Pack 2 is not expected until sometime in the first half of next year.

In an attempt to keep its consumer security software from bogging down computers, Symantec is looking in a different direction. Currently, its security software embeds itself into a PC operating system to scan for behavior that indicates malware. However, in the upcoming release of Norton 360 for example, Symantec will incorporate a new statistical approach to detecting malware. Instead of directly linking to the OS, it will search for patterns. This method is theoretically less likely to bog down a system. On a broader scale, Symantec is trying to make its next generation of products faster and less of a drag on PCs in general. Its new goal for installation time is less than one minute, a number that currently ranges from 8-10 minutes. Another goal is reducing the size of programs by four times.

Microsoft broke its silence today about Windows 7, but essentially said that it will not speak publicly about the OS. The Redmond company said it has little to say about the next edition of Windows, for now. “With Windows 7, we’re trying to more carefully plan how we share information with our customers and partners,” said Chris Flores, Windows Client director. This is a new approach compared to past releases, in particular Windows Vista. Many think this is a good approach, saying it is better to know less than have bad information floating about. “Talk about Windows Vista got us all excited, and people invested time and money in anticipation of features being there [in the final operating system] that weren’t there,” said analyst Michael Cherry. Microsoft has stated that Windows 7 can be expected in early 2010, about 3 years after Windows Vista became available.