In-the-Clouds-with-SOA-XML-and-the-Open-Web

When Windows has a real rival, Microsoft has real problems. As Blodget notes, there are caveats: The unofficial Office monopoly should give Microsoft breathing room for a few more years. But even that could be threatened as Google's more-affordable Web applications improve. This storm has been gathering for years. In 2005, we wrote a piece at News.com about Google's longterm threat to Microsoft. The impetus was a major management shuffle at MSN, but we had fun pulling out some old Microsoft memos about now-defunct Netscape in the early days of the World Wide Web. My favorite was a note written in 1995 by Microsoft engineer Ben Slivka describing a "nightmare" scenario for his company. "The Web...exists today as a collection of technologies that deliver some interesting solutions today, and will grow rapidly in the coming years into a full-fledged platform (underlined for emphasis in the original memo) that will rival--and even surpass--Microsoft's Windows," Slivka wrote. Microsoft didn't pay too much attention to the warning. Ten years later, another internal memo put a name to that nightmare--Google. Now Blodget has advanced that nightmare scenario a few more steps with his analysis.

As these technologies mature, a new kind of browser is likely to emerge, one that combines the current Web experience with new capabilities based on emerging tools. The key to that evolution will be to integrate today's cutting-edge features with tomorrow's Web standards -- a process that Adobe and Google are both actively pursuing.

Adobe is similarly involved in the standardization process -- in particular, extending ECMAScript, the standard on which JavaScript is based,

Despite differences in approach between AIR and Gears, Adobe and Google actually share a common vision. Both companies aim to extend the current Web browsing experience with new features that allow developers to deliver RIAs more easily. And, because Web developers, too, have diverse goals and methods, the traditional browser is unlikely to disappear as an application-delivery platform, even as desktop-based Web apps proliferate.

A new version of xfy Basic Edition, containing new generation xfy technology, is out!xfy Basic Edition 1.6 uses the same core technology with the one used with xfy Enterprise Basis 2.1. Along with the supprt of Java SE 6, xfy Basic Edition 1.6 has gained a lot of improved features compared to the previous version. Experience the latest xfy technology!

Brewin define the composition of Project Hydrazine as "...a network environment, a data center and other infrastructure components such as Sun's JavaFX rich Internet application technology, Sun's GlassFish application server, the Sun enterprise service bus, the Sun directory server, MySQL, 'cheap storage' and Sun hardware." In addition, two repositories will be part of the package. These will enable the storage of services that run on the cloud and of metadata to be used and reused in creating applications. Furthermore, Sun will include Project Insight, an analytics capability, that will enable developers to monitor the users of their projects and to monetize them, according to Brewin.

Taft sees Project Hydrazine as pitting Sun against Microsoft's Live Mesh strategy, another cloud computing and sync mechanism solution, as well as in the areas of developer and design tools space and in the concept of developer-designer workflow. Brewin sees the JavaFX Transformer technology as having a significant role in this area. Java FX Script will do for the Sun solution what XAML does for Microsoft's product.

Brewin added that Project Hydrazine would also support such clouds as Google App Engine, Amazon EC2 and services from such vendors as eBay and PayPal. Sun plans to deliver an early access release of its JavaFX SDK (software development kit) in July, Taft concludes.

The W3C today publicly announced that they are restarting an HTML specification effort.

In the meantime, apparently anyone can actually join the W3C effort. The instructions to join the group are as follows:

Let’s just now hope that Microsoft won’t try to play games anymore. Besides their rather poor track record at delivering on the ongoing chain of announcements about becoming open and caring about interoperability (as opposed to intraoperability), there are other reasons one might want to take today’s announcement with caution. One trick they could try and pull for instance would be to put just enough support for ODF to claim that they support it but not enough for people to really use it systematically. They could then tell customers who complain something isn’t working that it’s because ODF isn’t powerful enough, and if they want the full power of Office they need to use OOXML.

Google's search business will pass Microsoft's Windows business by early next year (at the latest). Good thing Microsoft has another huge, wildly profitable monopoly: Office. Add that to the calculation, and Microsoft can breathe easy for a few more years: GOOGLE SEARCH vs MICROSOFT WINDOWS + OFFICEQuarterly Revenue Q3 2006-Q1 2008 Of course, Google's visible in that Microsoft rearview mirror, too--especially now that it offers a product that is directly competitive with Office. And then there's the most depressing comparison (from Microsoft's perspective). After 13 years of heavy investment, frequent doubling down, and--until recently--a browser monopoly, here's how Microsoft's online business is doing relative to Google's search business. Remember: Google was founded four years after Microsoft launched its online business, and Microsoft's search business is just a tiny piece of Microsoft Online.

The "Windows monopoly+Office monopoly=Microsoft" story was absolutely true 10 years ago, but less so now. 1. It looks as if the "Office" revenue figures are coming from MSFT's reported revenues in the Business segment. That's not all Office. Based on what they've said at the last few Financial Analyst Meetings, Exchange is approaching $2B/year, SharePoint is about $1B/year, and Dynamics (formerly Microsoft Business Solutions) is more than $1B per year. I also know that Project has been a $1B/year business for a long time (believe it or not), and products such as Comms Server and Visio contribute around $500m/year. Margins on all these products are lower than on Office, but most (not Comms Server) are profitable. 2. In addition to all the non-Office products that compose its Business segment as mentioned above, the Server and Tools business (Windows Server, SQL Server) is profitable (30% margins) and growing revenues average of 15% for the last six years. Not monopoly, but a good business. Look at all these stats together, and seems like they should get out of search and advertising and sell off (or scale back to maintenance mode) most of the consumer online sites, focusing instead on hosted business apps--they're already doing it with Exchange and SharePoint, why not Office? If somebody's going to canniblize their "real" business, it might as well be them.

Today's Web sites are another matter, however. Gone are the static pages and limited graphics of 15 years ago. In their place are lush, highly interactive experiences, as visually rich as any desktop application. The Web has become the preferred platform for enterprise application delivery, to say nothing of online entertainment and social software. In response, new kinds of online experiences have begun to emerge, challenging old notions of what it means to browse the Web.

CellNode M100 is a unique WiFi device which enables providers to securely deploy wireless mesh networks. Every CellNode features two radio transceivers that support the 802.11a/g/b standards. The first radio usually serves local wireless subscribers (downlink) at 2.4Ghz, while the second radio is used to connect to the infrastructure backbone (uplink) at 5Ghz.

HTML Formatting Instructions - Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) By default, when you save your document as an HTML file, AbiWord places all formatting instructions into one block at the beginning.  These formatting instructions use the Cascading Style Sheet language, and are in the <style> tag in the <head> of your document.  From here it is easy to move the styles as a whole (copy and paste) into a new document which can then be externally linked or integrated with your web-site's style sheet.