Internet Explorer 8

Microsoft has stepped up the battle to win back users with the latest release of its Internet Explorer browser.

The US software giant says IE 8 is faster, easier to use and more secure than its competitors.

“We have made IE 8 the best browser for the way people really do use the web,” said Microsoft’s Amy Barzdukas.

“Microsoft needs to say these things because it continues to lose market share to Firefox, Chrome and Safari,” said Gartner analyst Neil MacDonald.

Recent figures have shown that Microsoft’s dominance in this space has been chipped away by competitors.

At the end of last year, data from Net Applications showed the software giant’s market share dropped below 70% for the first time in eight years to 68%.

Meanwhile Mozilla broke the 20% barrier for the first time in its history with 21% of users using its browser Firefox.

Focus

The beta version of IE 8 was released last March and today the company has put out its first release candidate for the public. This is the last stage for the browser before it is finalised, although very few changes are expected.

Ms Barzdukas told the BBC: “What we are seeing for many consumers in particular is that their computing experience is a browsing experience.

Web publishers and online advertisers have in the past expressed concern over this feature because it could “frustrate the business model”.

“InPrivate Browsing” is also being touted as a major improvement which allows a user to start a browsing session during which the history of sites viewed will not be recorded.

Some bloggers have nicknamed the feature “porn mode” because it keeps online activity a secret and prevents those with access to a PC from seeing where other users of the same PC have been.

Online privacy advocates like the Centre for Democracy and Technology have called the features “a great step forward in terms of giving users more control”.

Defectors

So will this be enough to persuade defectors to return to the IE fold?

“Microsoft does have the advantage of its browser being shipped with its operating system so people that want to shift have to do a lot of work to shift,” said Mr MacDonald, a vice-president of analyst firm Gartner

“It’s an area the European Union is looking at and I will let the lawyers figure that out but I don’t think this will bring back the defectors. However it shows that competition in the browser space is good for innovation and good for the industry,” said Mr MacDonald.

The EU last week accused Microsoft of harming competition by bundling its IE browser with its Windows operating system.The Redmond-based company has said it is examining the preliminary finding and has not ruled out requesting a formal hearing.

Greg Sterling of Search Engine Land said if the product delivers, users will stick with it and others may well return.

“If this is a truly significant improvement, it will gain users’ loyalty and lure others back.

“At the end of the day if it has the functionality and features people want, they will respond to it. For those who have an emotional stake in this, and who like the idea of the underdog like Firefox, it’s unlikely to sway them,” said Mr Sterling.

Microsoft’s Ms Barzdukas refused to get drawn into the numbers game but said she is positive IE 8 will hold its own against competitors.

“We have long advocated providing choice to customers and respect people’s ability to choose.

“You can accuse me of bias, but I believe with IE 8 we will deliver the browser people will want to choose,” said Ms Barzdukas.

“The role of the browser has become more and more important. Our focus is on delivering the best experience possible and one that is faster, easier and more secure.”

To that end IE 8 offers performance upgrades to speed up page loading, new navigation features and tab isolation so that if you hit a bad site only that tab closes and not the whole browser.

WebSlices will give users a way to keep updated about a particular item on a web page like stock prices, the weather or an eBay auction.

Accelerators let users access Web services like maps or translations in a small window without having to leave the page.

“We believe with IE 8 much of the performance discussion is off the table,” said Ms Barzdukas.

Security

Microsoft is making much of its security enhancements, which Ms Barzdukas said makes IE 8 “hands down the most secure browser on the market.”

These include “InPrivate Filtering” which means users can see and block when a third-party content provider might be tracking their activities on the Web in an effort to target advertisements.

I recently discussed the five reasons why Windows Vista failed, and although Microsoft may continue to defend Vista as Steve Ballmer did at the Gartner Symposium on October 16, make no mistake that the company has already moved past Vista — psychologically and strategically.

Ballmer and company know that Vista has been rejected by businesses and that it has dreadful reputation among the general public. They know they screwed up. And Microsoft is nothing if not responsive to customers and public opinion. In fact, I’ve argued before that the company is actually hyper-responsive and that’s why they’ve crammed way too many features and way too much code into both Windows and Microsoft Office.

So how can Microsoft recover from the Vista debacle and breath life back into Windows? If nothing else, here are five things the company needs to do to start.

5. Speed it up significantly

One of the worst qualities of Windows Vista is that it is almost always slower than its predecessor Windows XP when running on the same hardware. And most of that performance drag is not simply due to the fancy graphics. Even if you turn off the Aero interface, Vista is still usually slower.

The problem is that the underlying Windows code is way too bloated — over 50 million lines of code in Vista — and even today’s ultra-fast multi-core processors can’t overcome that. The Windows development team has to find a way to streamline Windows 7 so that it’s faster and more stable than both XP and Vista, whether it’s running on netbooks and nettops with the Atom processor and only 1 GB of RAM or tomorrow’s 8-core machines with 10 GB of RAM.

That’s an extremely difficult task, but no one said this was going to be simple or easy. One way to start is by turning Windows into just the core OS and further modulizing it by making a lot of the other software such as the Media Center, Tablet PC, and Admin Tools available as downloadable add-ons.

4. Avoid compatibility problems

In the process of streamlining Windows 7, the developers can’t sacrifice software compatibility. One of the things that has killed Vista is that Microsoft spent so much effort trying making it more secure with User Access Control (UAC) that it broke a lot of software in the process.

You can argue that a lot of the stuff that broke in Windows Vista was poorly programmed to begin with and deserved to break so that it could be rewritten more securely. The problem is that not much of the software has been rewritten and the UAC approach has not worked because users get so many dialog boxes that they just blindly click OK until all of them go away. A better approach is needed — one that balances security and compatibility.

The other compatibility issue that Windows 7 has to juggle is the 32-bit vs. 64-bit split. While most modern processors are 64-bit, most of the software and device drivers are still written in 32-bit code. I’ve seen a number of PCs with 64-bit CPUs that have 32-bit Windows installed simply because it has better compatibility. I’ve also seen and heard about a number of business systems that have 64-bit Windows Vista installed, but are running into significant software and/or driver incompatibility problems.

Microsoft, Intel, and AMD need to lead the charge to get software vendors on-board with 64-bit before Windows 7 is officially released.

3. Undercut OS X on price

Mac sales have been growing much faster than the overall PC market and Mac OS X has continued to nibble away at Windows’ massive market share over the past two years. However, Apple showed the same chink in its armor that has long plagued it when it recently announced its new line of laptops and the cheapest one was priced at $999. The message being sent is that Apple wants to be a premium computer brand with high margins and has very little interest in selling low-margin, high-volume machines.

Over the next two to three years the lion’s share of the growth in computer sales is very likely going to be in the sub-$500 netbook and nettop market. These machines are essentially just glorified Web browsers in a diminuitive hardware package. The OS doesn’t matter much. As a result, Linux is a major threat to become the OS powering a lot of these machines, because of its minimal price.

However, with Apple relegating itself to the high end of the market and most users still not very comfortable with Linux, Microsoft has the opportunity to swoop in and deliver a Windows 7 that is fast and cheap and can run very well on these little machines, while also scaling all the way up to the fastest workstations. A lot of users and businesses would probably gravitate toward the idea of a common OS experience (and one that most users already know) in Windows, especially if the price is comparable between Linux and Windows machines.

The key here is making Windows very inexpensive and very scalable while preparing to sell it in larger volumes than ever before on the cheap machines that are going to flood the market over the next couple years.

2. Sell only one version

There were primarily two editions of Windows XP: Home and Professional. With Windows Vista, that doubled to four primary editions: Home Basic, Home Premium, Business, and Ultimate. It’s time to simplify and go back to just one version of Windows with one price.

This is a case of Microsoft just getting out of the way and letting Windows be Windows. Having just one edition of the client OS will make Windows 7 easier to understand, easier to purchase, and easier to support (for both Microsoft and IT departments).

Of course, the one version of Windows 7 needs to be cheaper than Mac OS X ($99), easier to use than Linux, and easier to set up and get started than any of the recent versions of Windows.

1.  Make it the last shrink-wrapped OS

The old way of building and packaging operating systems in shrink-wrapped boxes that are released every few years is just not fast enough or nimble enough to meet the demands to today’s Internet-driven computing environment. It’s also counterproductive for an OS maker because you end up competing against yourself the way XP and Vista are now competing against each other.

There’s only one Windows, and it has merely evolved over time. That’s the message Microsoft needs to drive home by making Windows 7 the last shrink-wrapped version of the OS. From here on out, Microsoft should simply make Windows a constantly evolving platform with new features and functionality enhancements added several times a year through Windows Update.

The business model would be to turn this into a subscription product, albeit a very inexpensive one. As long as you have a current Windows subscription then you can continue to download new features, patches, and updates. If your subscription lapses then Windows still works but you can no longer download the new stuff, or any add-ons, and you can only download highly critical security patches.

For enterprises that are currently using Software Assurance, they are already buying Windows as part of a subscription so there would be no change in the business model for them.  For consumers and small businesses who aren’t part of Software Assurance and typically buy Windows from OEMs such as Dell, Toshiba,  and Hewlett-Packard, the Windows license that comes with their PC could last for three years and then it’s up to the buyer to pay something like $30-$40/year to renew. For those who want to build their own system, a full version of the OS could cost something like $50-$75 for the first year.

Bottom line

Windows 7 needs to be fast, inexpensive, and widely compatible. Microsoft also needs to change the development and business models to make Windows one continually evolving OS.

Let’s face it, the OS is not as flashy as it once was. It’s also not nearly as relevant as it was a decade ago. The Web browser is gradually usurping its position as the most important application platform, as has long been predicted.

Because of that, Windows is at a crossroads where it could begin losing large chunks of market share to competitors that are better prepared to operate in this new reality, or it can greatly simplify its OS while turning into more of a background utility that makes good money off of a low-margin, high-volume business.

If it can pull that off and clearly communicate to businesses and consumers that Windows 7 is the start of a new approach to Windows then Windows 7 could be a watershed release. If Microsoft simply releases a mild revision to Vista and maintains the same development and business models, then Windows could become more vulnerable to its competitors than it’s been in almost two decades.

This brings Qik to a much broader platform, and also helps cement Qik’s lead in terms of device support well ahead of competitors Kyte and Flixwagon, neither of which support Blackberry. However, Qik will have another competitor on the Blackberry platform: today’s news comes hot on the heels (and may have been prompted by) the launch of Next2Friends, the first streaming video application that supported Blackberries.

Two weeks ago Qik also launched alpha support for the J2ME platform, which is found on a wide variety of phones.

Unfortunately there’s still no word on when Qik will finally makes its way to the iPhone (it runs well under jailbroken phones, but isn’t yet available through the app store). At this point this isn’t because of technical difficulties (Qik has a version working for distribution through the iPhone’s ad-hoc beta service) – it’s a question of whether Apple will allow the app on its store. There haven’t yet been any applications that support video using the iPhone’s built-in camera, but it’s unclear if Apple has a broad ban on such apps or if it simply hasn’t come across any video applications that passed muster.

First of all some specs about it. It’s a quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE mobile phone, that features 3G/3.6 HSDPA, has a 2.36-inch QVGA display (320 x 320), a 3.2 megapixel camera, up to 8GB Micro SD cards, BT, GPS, WiFi and of course a QWERTY keyboard.

PROs

• the design : is one of the most attractive smart phones or email phones to date, with a certain finesse the metal casing really attracts
• email : it’s a business oriented mobile phone that allows you to access your personal email on Gmail or Yahoo, and connects to the internet almost everywhere you go via HSDPA (3.5G) or Wi-Fi
• Wi-Fi scanner : very useful when trying to find a hotspot to log on
• browser : all pages are displayed in full, supports Flash and YouTube videos and streams audio
• it runs on the S60 operating system that allows you to download and install all sorts of applications including Google Maps
• GPS : used with the sat-nav feature from G Maps you can accurately track your location and get directions
• battery : it last long enough with only one charge, an ideal candidate for those who stress test their mobile phones. also if you don’t use Wi-Fi or HSDPA you can turn these off, and that will also increase battery life

CONs

• a very disappointing camera

Though the camera is bad, I really think it deserves a 10, because it does what a mobile phone should do these days. Kudos for the Nokia E71. It’s a great phone.

Other than a perfect camera phone, it packs a 3.2-inch display (400 x 240) with 256k colors, a TouchWiz interface from the i900 Omnia, 2100 MHz HSDPA, Bluetooth 2.0, USB 2.0, built-in GPS, a built-in memory of 200MB, Micro SD slot (up to 8GB), 1000 mAh Li-ion battery and unexplainable … it misses WiFi. It does, however, play divx, xvid, h.263, h.264, wmv, mp4, mp3, aac, wma si amr files. Talking about audio and video playback, it has a stunning feature. It tries to mimic a 5.1 surround device.

Samsung Pixon M8800 is expected in stores at the end of October, start of November, and the price should be somewhere near $800. I think it’s going to be a top seller, right from the begining.

The CEO of Sprint has proclaimed that Google’s Android OS is not good enough just yet, Dan Hesse spoke in Washington to The National Press Club and informed them that Android is not “good enough to put the Sprint brand on it” yet.

Hesse did say that Sprint would sell an Android powered phone “at some time in the future”. This is a very interesting statement for Hesse to make considering that Sprint has been having problems marketing its brand over the last few years, and the Android OS may be the biggest thing to hit cell phones in years.

Hit the read link below for the full story or leave your thoughts on Sprint and Android in the comments.

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin has scheduled a November 4 vote by the commission on his plan to allow unlicensed use of parts of the spectrum called “white spaces.” These unused pockets of the spectrum will become available when U.S. broadcasters are required to move completely to digital television next year.

Google, Motorola Inc and Microsoft Corp are among the companies that want the unused spectrum for a new generation of wireless devices.

Rep. John Dingell, chairman of the House of Representatives House Energy and Commerce Committee, sent a list of questions to Martin, including whether an FCC engineering report was peer reviewed, and how the agency would deal with interference from broadcast signals if it occurs.

“Why did the Commission decline to adopt a licensed approach to some of all of this spectrum?” Dingell, a Michigan Democrat, wrote, reflecting the concerns of the broadcasters and other opponents of the plan.

Executives from News Corp. Walt Disney’s ABC, CBS Corp and General Electric’s NBC signed a letter protesting the proposal earlier this week.

Dingell asked for responses from Martin by next Friday, four days ahead of the FCC’s scheduled vote.

Big sports leagues, such as Major League Baseball and NASCAR, said in a regulatory filing that the current proposal is a “huge leap backward” in sports broadcasting, threatening to disrupt events because of possible interference issues.

Martin’s plan is backed by several consumer groups, which say it will help expand cheaper broader to high-cost areas like rural communities.

Google G1 mobile phone

The first smartphone powered by Google’s open source Android operating system – the G1 – was in one sense a big success even before it went on sale this week through Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile USA mobile unit. According to some reports, 1.5m T-Mobile G1 handsets were preordered by buyers eager to get hold of a device and an operating system that promise to deliver another boost to the consumer smartphone market. It goes on sale in the UK shortly.

I have been testing the G1, made by Taiwan-based HTC, for several weeks. A number of shortcomings aside, it is a true rival to Apple’s iPhone and other smartphone devices aimed at the consumer market.

The G1’s most noticeable feature is its design. It may lack the immediate, simple aesthetic appeal of the iPhone, but it does pack both a big 3.2 inch touch screen and a full mini Qwerty keyboard that slides out of one side: and it all fits into a case that is only slightly thicker than Apple’s device.

The G1’s physicalkeyboard will particularly appeal to users who write and send a lot of mobile e-mail, text messages or instant messages and who, like me, find the virtual keyboard built into the iPhone difficult to use.

The other unusual design feature is that it is angled at one end to move the microphone a little closer to the users’s mouth during voice calls. It also positions the BlackBerry-style trackerball conveniently under the right thumb when you rotate the handset to the “landscape” position to use the keyboard and browse the internet.

Aside from the trackerball, there are five buttons below the screen. The familiar green and red start/stop call buttons, along with its good sound quality, make the G1 an appealing handset for ordinary voice calls. There is a home screen button, a return button to take you back one step, and a menu button that brings up a set of context-sensitive “soft” keys at the bottom of the touch screen.

Navigating the G1 and its features is easy but not quite as intuitive as the iPhone.

In spite of its sophisticated technology credentials, the G1 is clearly aimed at the broad mass market rather than technology aficionados or corporate users. It is not designed to synchronise with corporate e-mail systems and does not permit users to save or edit Microsoft Office documents.

W hen new G1 owners power up the handset, they create or sign into a Google account and then the phone is automatically sychronised with Google’s web-based Gmail, calendar and contact information. Users can also set the phone up to download and send e-mail from other non-Gmail personal e-mail accounts. Gmail users can read Microsoft Word and Excel attachments, but cannot edit or save them.

Appropriately for a device that Google believes will help bring the mobile internet to the mass market, the G1’s web browser is both fast and excellent – it is in fact based on the same technology as the Safari browser built into the iPhone and Google’s recently launched Chrome web browser.

In my tests, web pages loaded quickly and I could zoom easily by tapping a screen based icon.

The G1’s home screen features four icons providing access to basic applications – a dialler, contacts list, the web browser and Google Maps. The latter takes full advantage of the G1’s built-in GPS satellite navigation technology and supports one of my favourite features – Google Maps street view that changes as you turn around, like a compass needle.

From the home screen, users can open a full screen of application icons that provide access to all the included applications such as alarm clock, camera, e-mail, IM and music.

Surprisingly, the big gap in the G1’s features is support for music and other multimedia content where it is easily outclassed by the iPhone and the latest BlackBerrys. The G1 comes with an integrated music player and 3Mp (megapixel) camera, but does not allow users to take video clips.

More crucially, there is no way to sychronise your music with your PC; instead, you must load unprotected AAC, MP3, or WMA files on to a memory card or drag and drop music files on to the G1 while it is connected via a USB cable to a PC. However, users can download music directly from the Amazon music store using the G1’s WiFi networking capabilities.

The lack of a standard headphone mini-jack is also annoying – users have to plug an adapter into the G1’s proprietary USB port. On the plus side, the G1 has a removable rechargeable battery and, in my tests at least, was quite frugal – an overnight charge was enough to run it all the next day. Talk time is around five hours.

Overall, the G1 is an impressive first generation of a new type of smartphone, with many strengths offsetting a few weaknesses. It is well made and remarkably stable – my test unit has not crashed at all – even though it is actually a combination of a new mobile phone operating system (Android) developed by the Google-led Open Handset Alliance, new hardware built by HTC and, at least in the US, a new 3G mobile network being rolled out by T-Mobile USA.

It is also likely that many of the niggles I have identified will be addressed by software updates and by third-party applications offered through Goog-le’s online store, the Android Market. Like Apple’s App Store, the Android Market will offer free and low cost software packages – about 50 at launch – and is in my view the most exciting development.

More smartphones: next week Paul Taylor looks at the latest BlackBerrys – the Bold and the Pearl Flip

After Microsoft released an out-of-band update for a critical Windows vulnerability that allows hackers to execute a malicious Internet worm on users’ computers, security experts are strongly recommending that users apply patches immediately. Specifically, the remote execution vulnerability allows hackers to write worm code—malicious self-propagating code that doesn’t require any user interaction—by crafting a special RPC request. A successful attack would enable the hacker to take complete control of a victim’s computer, and ultimately steal sensitive financial information from their victims. In addition, once a user’s system is affected, the malicious code has the ability to rapidly self-propagate and infect every other unpatched computer in the network.

The flaw, which affects almost every Windows operating system, is rated “critical” for many of the earlier versions of Windows, including Windows 2000, XP and Server 2003. However, the bug was given the less severe rating of “important” for Windows Vista and Server 2008.

Security experts maintain that the exploit code has actively been used in the wild, with exploits stemming from hackers who have already reverse-engineered the patch.

“The frightening thing to me is just how quickly the bad guys were able to turn out an exploit,” said Paul Henry, security and forensic analyst at Lumension Security, Scottsdale, Ariz. “I really think that speaks volumes about the necessity to deploy your patches very quickly, and very widely.”

Henry said that researchers detected malicious code designed to grab user credentials before encrypting them and sending them to a New Jersey-based server. Henry said that the malware has so far affected at least 3,600 users, but said that the number would likely increase significantly over the weekend.

Meanwhile, an advisory by San Diego-based Websense also alerted users that hackers have unleashed attacks by installing the Trojan Gimmiv. The alert noted that only 25 percent to 36 percent of antivirus vendors could detect the malicious exploit code.

In a blog posting, Microsoft security researcher Michael Howard contended that that the bug, which stems from a stack-based buffer overflow vulnerability, was difficult to detect due to its complexity.

“I’ll be blunt; our fuzz tests did not catch this and they should have. So we are going back to our fuzzing algorithms and libraries to update them accordingly,” he wrote. “In my opinion, hand reviewing this code and successfully finding this bug would require a great deal of skill and luck.”

Howard said that in the last year he had noticed that many Windows bugs, like the recently detected Internet worm, fell into the category of “onesey-twosies”—that is, complex derivatives of existing vulnerabilities.

“First the good news; I think perhaps we have removed a good number of the low-hanging security vulnerabilities from many of our products, especially the newer code,” he said. “The bad news is we’ll continue to have vulnerabilities because you cannot train a developer to hunt for unique bugs, and creating tools to find such bugs is also hard to do without incurring an incredible volume of false positives.”

Henry added that the severity of the flaw, emphasized by the out-of-band patch, underscores the need for enterprises to consider automated patch management technologies.

“The big gotcha is, unless you have automated methodology enterprise wide, you could be caught up in this because you’re not going to have enough time to patch your systems.”