Web Talk

If you are a space watcher, if you like spending nights with your nose up while watching the Moon and the stars then you have to try this amazing software called Microsoft WorldWide Telescope. WWT is a web based software which will take you into the space thanks to its amazing technology and its hundreds of pictures coming from the best ground and space-based telescopes in the world including the famous Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), and the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS). This freeware software takes also advantage of a lot of narrated guided tours by astronomers and educators coming from the most famous observatories and planetariums. With Microsoft WorldWide Telescope you will be able to watch documentaries about the Milky Way Galaxy, the past of our galaxy, how stars were born, the explosion of a Supernova from a thousand years ago, the distribution and illumination of primordial hydrogen cloud structures and much more. All this with the help of powerful tools which, in any moment, will let you: zoom-in, zoom-out, pause the documentary, have multiple wavelengths of the sky, have aerial views of planets and their precise positions in the sky from any location on Earth etc. WWT is a wonderful free application using the powerful technology provided by Microsoft and called Microsoft® high performance Visual Experience Engine™ which condensates thousands of gigabytes of images, information, and stories from multiple sources over the Internet. If you want to know more or if you want to download it, visit the official Microsoft website Worldwidetelescope.org

Windows Search 4.0 can be considered an upgrade of the well-known Windows Desktop Search 2.6 (WDS). With it you can search whatever you want on your computer namely: documents, files, photos, videos etc with a couple of clicks. Windows Search 4.0 is a very useful program because it integrates itself in the whole Windows Operative System and its software. As a matter of fact it is used by Microsoft Office, Outlook 2007, Microsoft Office, OneNote 2007 to search for documents and files. But let’s see together its important features:

• Improved and better features.
• Query response time about 33% faster than search queries in Windows Vista RTM.
• Remote Index Discovery for PC-to-PC search to work on every supported version of Windows. This makes finding information on other PCs running Windows Search 4.0 quick and less resource-consuming. Now Windows Search can find information shared on a remote PC by accessing an index on that PC, and you will open files only when relevant to your search.
• Rollback Recovery where your search index will roll back to the last known good state.
• Improved performance when indexing Exchange in online mode, sending fewer packets and making less RPC calls, with significantly less load on the Exchange server too during the process.
• Support EFS - Windows Search 4.0 will index encrypted files, and user can search for them in the sane UI and through the same user experience as seen with regular, unencrypted files.

For more infos click here.

Windows Search 4.0 Preview supports all Windows Vista versions, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 2 (SP2) or later, all 64-bit Windows XP, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Home Server. If you wish to know more, directly from Microsoft Windows Vista team blog, click here. If you want to download it, click here.

So, after the good news about the first price cut for N810, Microsoft has decided to give us another present by making pulic the next release of its Microsoft Silverlight. Reading from the press release: ” Nokia’s software strategy is based on cross-platform development environments, enabling the creation of rich applications across the Nokia device range. Nokia aims to support market leading and content rich internet application environments and to embrace and encourage open innovation. By working with Microsoft, we are creating terrific opportunities and additional choices for the development community, S60 licensees and the industry as a whole.” But, what is Microsoft Silverlight? Here is the reply directly from Microsoft: ” Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering next-generation media experiences and rich interactive applications. Silverlight is already powering thousands of applications around the world and organizations including Entertainment Tonight, the NBA and NBC Universal to deliver superior Web-based experiences to their customers. The arrangement with Nokia will substantially extend the reach of Silverlight by making the platform available for hundreds of millions of devices, including S60 on Symbian smartphones from a range of manufacturers, as well as Nokia Series 40 devices and Nokia Internet tablets.” If you want to know more click here.

According to Inquirer’s “trusted sources” the next Microsoft Windows that, as you know will be named Windows 7, will see the birth of DirectX 11. This new DirectX version will serve the purpose to keep the new operative system requirements down. It seems a very reasonable choice, if you ask me. As I wrote in a guide of mine Windows Vista is the first operative system that requires certain specific features from a PC. Basically a PC has to adapt to the operative system, when instead it should be the other way around! No word from Microsoft that, as usually, keep its mouth”wide shut”…