Friday, December 24, 2010

Microsoft coming back to ARM

ARM, the processor manufacturer that powers 90% of the mobile phones, digital media and music players, hand-held game consoles, calculators and computer peripherals such as hard drives and routers is a super-power these days and Microsoft realizes this more than ever. That’s the reason why there is talk that Microsoft is going back to release a OS for the ARM processors.

Back in the old days of Windows NT 4.0, Microsoft has a release of Windows that ran on the ARM architecture, but due to pressure from Intel and the growing market of IBM-compatible PCs Microsoft stopped release OS running on ARM. Thus, Microsoft only released Windows for x86 architecture (…and sometimes for Itanium). Microsoft has had WindowsCE running on ARM, but it is not the Windows that is popularized. The latest buzz means that Windows 8, the next version of Windows will be able to run on ARM processors

The reason why this news is interesting is because Windows Mobile 7 was just released and is a different architecture than the desktop Windows. If this means anything, then it shows Microsoft’s idea that a common platform can be moved across different sizes of devices, similar to what Apple has been doing with the iPhoneOS, iPadOS, iPod Touch and OSX. The idea is that the OS can be stripped off services and run on smaller devices. Today as more and more devices became part of our lives, we want to have similar experiences on all these devices… probably through different interfaces, but want the way data is looked at through a common way. Especially as developers, it is frustrating that the same applications cannot be ported easily across processors and platforms. The web is definitely the future of data, but rich client applications are important for the experience and the browser is still not everything that the devices/PCs can do.

Hoping that we can move towards converging platforms… especially easy ways to port client applications across platforms

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

China bans wikileaks cablegate pages

The wikileaks release of the US cables is indeed the biggest newsmaker in world politics at the moment. Their leaks have shown the two-faced nature of diplomats, that we probably all knew, but never knew for certain. Nonetheless it is a major leak that could as some believe also result in World War III Smile with tongue out

The US government is clearly in a fix with the release of the cables and is trying to save face wherever it can by contacting its embassies around the world. Also Obama has said that the US government will exercise legal actions against wikileaks and its founder and run an embargo on this “irresponsible” and uncontrollable media.

But on the other side of the globe, China is clever enough to control the media. The Great fireWall of China just blocked the wikileaks cablegate pages and none from inside of China is able to view those pages on the internet. Now, if only the US learnt its lesson and started to whip naughty journalists and crazy activists, the world would have been a better… and safer place!! Smile with tongue out