Microsoft compares Amazon cloud to ‘horseless carriage’
In the early days of the automobile, says Microsoft corporate strategy man Rolf Harms, cars were built like horse-drawn carriages. Some manufacturers even equipped their cars with whip holders. Others attached a faux horse head. Harms calls it "horseless carriage syndrome", and he sees it as the ideal metaphor for today's cloud computing biz.
Yes, he's mixing metaphors. But bear with him. At least for a while. "When you think about a new paradigm, it's very hard to do so without putting it in the context of the existing mindset," Harms said on Tuesday afternoon at the annual Cloud Connect conference in Santa Clara, California. In the beginning, the world misunderstood the automobile, failing to realize what it was truly capable of. And now, he says, many have failed to grasp the true potential of cloud computing, pointing to Oracle boss Larry Ellison as a prime example. Read more...
Angry Birds developer bags 42 million-dollar investment
Rovio, the Finnish software company that unleashed the Angry Birds game on millions of mobile phone users, said Thursday it had raised a 42-million-dollar (30.4-million-euro) investment.
"We will strengthen the position of Rovio and continue building our franchises in gaming, merchandising and broadcast media," Mikael Hed, the chief executive and co-founder of Rovio said in a statement. Read more...
Which is the more popular web browser?
Late yesterday, I asked "Which web browser do you use?" -- not really planning a follow-up post. But given Betanews reader response, the informal -- and purely anecdotal -- poll warrants something more. Drum roll, please. And the most popular browser -- Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari or something else -- is: none of them. Betanews readers generally use more than one, which supports what I explained yesterday: NetApplications' monthly browser stats refer to usage share, not the stated market share.
That said, you generally prefer the newest browser(s) when available, and some of you generally use one lots more than others. Very few respondents cited need to use Internet Explorer for corporate compatibility reasons, suggesting Microsoft's efforts to move enterprises away from ActiveX has largely succeeded. In fact, only one respondent mentioned ActiveX at all, which further supports my supposition. Read more...
Google lets you ‘block all’ search results from specific sites
Top search engine Google on Thursday introduced an experimental feature which continues its mission to chip away at undesirable search results and information from "content farms": the ability to block all results from a particular URL.
Now, when search results are returned, there is a button next to each link labeled "Block all [URLNAME] results." When clicked, that site is sent to a block list, which can be managed in the user's Google account. Read more...
Firefox 4 nearly ready, but IE9 may be faster
The Mozilla Foundation has announced the release of Firefox 4 RC1, earlier this week. This is a feature-complete release, and could even morph into a final release with no further changes, particularly if Mozilla is keen to steal some thunder from the imminent arrival of Internet Explorer 9, which Microsoft has just confirmed will be available from Monday.
Firefox 4 will, like its rivals, be much lighter in weight than the current version (3.6), which will ensure better performance. Like Chrome and IE9, the user interface has been redesigned to maximise screen real-estate for viewing web pages. It will be available for Windows, Mac and Linux. Read more...