Ray Ozzie opened the Microsoft PDC '08 this morning with a keynote speech. In it he announced Windows Azure, Microsoft's "Windows in the cloud". It is a new service based operating environment. He described it as a massive highly scalable service platform. What is being released today is just a fraction of what it will become. It will be Microsoft's highest scalable system enabling people and companies to create services on the Web.
Google just released an iPhone version (iTunes link) of its popular Google Earth desktop mapping application. We have seen a wide range of interesting iPhone applications lately, but few have been as impressive as Google Earth on the iPhone. Google has taken the basics of the Google Earth interface and brought them to the iPhone. The app feels highly responsive and effectively mimics the desktop application on the iPhone.
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Amazon's Windowshop.com is a new site introduced late last week which allows you to virtually browse through the best-selling Amazon.com products in various categories. You can scroll through the content and zoom in and out on product previews in a style that very much reminds of how the Cooliris browser plugin works. With Windowshop.com, you can virtually "window shop" the latest and greatest in Amazon.com books, music, videos, and games.
Qik, the service that turns mobile phones into handheld streaming video cameras, is pushing to make mobile streaming video accessible to the masses - no matter what handset they're carrying.
Earlier this month, Qik announced that it had added support for consumer-focused phones - generally falling outside the "smart phone" category - like the Nokia and Sony handsets. Now, Qik is making its way on to the handset that most business users carry: the BlackBerry. Well, some of them, at least.
Last month we witnessed Myspace launch its long awaited Myspace Music service. Users of Myspace can now assemble playlists from a vast collection of music from four major labels and one independent distributor. Users can also stream these songs for free or purchase them free of DRM restrictions thanks to the AmazonMP3 service integration. Myspace Music isn't the perfect streaming music service, and there are talks of Facebook following suit. We'd like your help in predicting the following: Will Facebook integrate streaming music into its site by the end of this year? If so, via which service/partner will it do so?
Google Talk is an instant messaging client by Google with a small but devoted following of users. Just about anyone within the social media and tech realm could tell you great things about Google Talk and a lot of popular services support the use of Google Talk as a Jabber client. If you've been looking for a way to connect with more Google Talk users, especially those in your area, then head to GTalk Profile.
Hey, none of McCain's other messages seem to be closing the gap. They might as well try this one.
Besides, the new iGoogle interface seems to be an issue that really motivates potential voters.
And it's not like there aren't worse reasons to vote against someone.
Earlier this month we asked if Facebook was becoming more like MySpace. We noted that there were new apps cropping up that were making Facebook look a lot more like MySpace. MySpace has started to open up alpha testing for its Profile 2.0 service. We caught a sneak peek and it seems that now MySpace is now taking a few visual cues from Facebook.
The iPhone is one of the few phones that can offer its owners a lot of flexibility and features. With the App Store, iPhone owners have numerous applications at their disposal to get just about any job done. However, developers that can't get their apps into the App Store usually release their apps to those that have jailbroken their iPhones through repositories available via Cydia and Installer. Thanks to Cydia, another breed of iPhone apps are about to hit the scene. One in particular could change the way some consumers use their iPhones today.
