FusionMods

This is a great article that touches on a number of recent events.

To start things off, Microsofts ad campaign appears to be working. Menioning an independant study, things are looking for for them. I hate to say it, but I think this ad campaign was completly provoked byMac. The funny part is, it probably would have worked except as soon as Bill Gates Stepped down, microsoft started fighting back.

Now about and beyond the ad campaign, it looks like microsoft will be opening up some of their own stores, and conveniently placing them right next to a few apple stores as well. lol, I think this will be comparable to a fast food war. I think this is pretty great though, because when companies comete, we win.

Do I know how to call them or what? In the Microsoft vs Google game I made mention to the fact that it’s likely we’ll be seeing google netbooks powered by ARM processors. And today I see this article popping out, “ARM Cortex + Google Chrome = Your Next Netbook?“. Looks like I was right

So whats this all mean?

Well google will be starting a big larger of a battle than against just microsoft. It’ll be waging ware on software developers and a few hardware developers. All home and work computers run off the same CPU Model as Intel. They may not have an Intel processor, but odds are, they do.

Now the software developers won’t be too big of an issue since ARM has been around for a while, but they’re still pretty late to hit the mainstream game, and all that software you love for your desktop/laptop will need to be redeveloper to run with an ARM processor.

Whats the difference between ARM and Intel? Well ARM has never had the power to process things like windows. Intel has never had the battery life that ARM has. It’s sort of like comparing a ranger to an F-350 (King Ranch Edition of Course). For a netbook, ARM might be an ideal choice, but I think there is still a lot to come from all of this.

This is something the tech community has been buzzing about and it is pretty big news. While it may not be the mega clash that soo many people are making it out to be, it is still definitely news worthy.

Whats causing the buzz? Each company is trying to squeeze into the others territory. Suprisingly a lot of people are attacking microsoft for the first move, but while most people mention googles online apps, don’t seem to mention that it was created well over a year ago, offering applications such as word processing, desktop publishing, and spreadsheets. add heirchical database managment, and you have the office suite (no need to mention the outlook alternative right?).

The most recent announcements are google is planning to launch an OS, and microsoft who’s found some real success with it’s search engine Bing! will be launching free online apps along with Office 2010. Unfortunately, I don’t expect google to provide real competition to microsoft with their new OS, I could be wrong, but I’m not expecting anything as powerful as windows.

Google only recently entered the OS game with android, the cell phone OS. While this was a great day towards opening up cell phones, they’re low end, and I wouldn’t be suprised if google launches a netbook OS, that runs on ARM processors. The other issue that I think will hold them back will be software compatability. I don’t care if google invents the cure for cancer in an OS. If i can’t run any software i need to do my job, then why would I use it? There is already windows, linux, and macs to program for, in these economic times, google may not only have to reinvent the wheel, they may have to reinvent the axel, the frame, the motor, and so on, because it’s going to be difficult and timly to get new developers on board with their platform.

Microsoft may actually have it a lot easier to enter googles field. The beautifual thing about websites are they are universal. Any computer, and any platform (more or less) can run them. Microsoft is no stranger to web programming either. With the initial presence of VB.net, asp.net, and even their database software, they already have all the necessary tools to work with.

But really no matter how you’re looking at it, you’re seeming something that happens every day. Competition. No matter how this goes, it should be good for us, the end users in the long run.

I read this article today and thought I’d share some thoughts on it…

http://ecogeek.org/efficiency/2839-yahoo-data-center-will-be-powered-by-niagara-falls

It’s actually really suprising when you start looking into it, but tech companies are doing some big stuff to go green. Google I’ve read has spent more on going green than the  US governemnt (sorry, couldn’t find  a more recent article).

But whats so interesting about this latest article about Yahoo is the fact that it is Yahoo making this move. Yahoo got into the search game way back in the day. I’d say they’re one of the originals, or atleast close to it. The thing that seperated them from google, was when Yahoo (much like many other search engines of the time) started to transition from being a search engine to a search portal. It crowded it’s site with junk all over the place. Obviously people didn’t love this, and google became a top level search player.

Over the years Yahoo has made a slow decline and has even talked about allowing google and microsoft to buy them out (which would have been interesting since microsoft and google have somehow become bitter rivals). But the deal with google fell through over anti-trust talks, and when microsoft stepped up to the plate, Yahoo wanted too much money, and even after offering to lower the price, microsoft had already moved on.

So now we’re left with a company that just doesn’t have the market share that anyone would want. Now I mean they are still a top level site, but by no means are they the premiere search engine they used to be. Even with microsoft looking to get into the online search business, yahoo will likely continue to see even more improvements.

But this talk of going green, which would unquestionably be a big investment, it makes me think Yahoo must still have a few tricks up their sleeve. I know I’ll be keeping my eye on them to see what they announce next.

I’d love to hear what you guys think on this one.

Well there’s been a lot of news lately, but it’s extremely wide spread with the categories it falls into.

IBM preps to purchase Sun Microsystems.
What is it? – To many this is probably hardly worth a blip in the back page of a paper, but to anyone who uses the web, it’s worth knowing. PHP and MySQL are two of the larest open source pieces of software you’ll find on the web. This blog, mtalks, forum,and find-it-monroe, and an extremely large variety of other sites are built around it.
Whats this Mean? – MySQL is an open source database that had recently been purchased by Sun Micro Systems. Sun while always having excellent hardware and software has always lacked in the competitive market, being bought by IBM will likely be great for them. But the bard part is, now there might be a chance that MySQL will no longer be open source. This will have dramatic effects as the largest competitor to MySQL is ORACLE (as well as SQL SERVER, but lets save that for another discussion another time), which is a largly commercial product. If you pull the database out from under the web, you’ll be left with some pretty lame sites >.<

MPAA President to be Replaced
Appearantly their progress isn’t as nice as they’d like it to be. I don’t think you’ll see too many people feeling sad for this one.

MediaDefender is just about out of business for good
This just seemed fitting to be the next headline. I believe they’ve filed for bankruptcy already. The little known company to most people who don’t live on the web exists for the sole purpose of tracking down people sharing media and gathering your info so you can be sued by the MPAA/RIAA. After their huge hack from last year, their stock dropped almost instantly. They’ve also faced other challenges. Their evidence was often questionable as best. In Michigan it was decided they would need a private investigators lisence for them to operate.

Myspace and Microsoft team up
Looks like yahoo might be out of the microsoft loop after this. After hearing about the many times microsoft talked about buying out Yahoo, and yahoo held out for more $$$, it looks like yahoo might have lost its chance. Microsoft is partnering with parts of myspace. This now has microsoft partnered with myspace and facebook. Google is also currently involved with facebook, but as their contracts come closer to an end, this might give Microsoft the leg up it’s been looking for to get into the internet world.

Android might be coming to a desktop near you
Googles mobile OS is currently being researched for netbooks. I’m sure linux users are unhappy about this. Personally I’ll be suprised if this ever really happens though, everything I’ve heard so far is that andriod is pretty buggy (but what new OS isn’t I suppose?).

And to wrap it up… A great article from CantStrafeRight from FusionMods.net

The DeamTablet is a portable Dreamcast build into a 15″ lcd tablet like system. It not only runs on batteries but also contains the holy grail of Dreamcast modding, an ejecting GD-ROM drive(First time I’ve ever seen one work)

Out of all the Dreamcast mods I’ve seen so far this is easily my favourite.

This mod was created by the Benheck forum member WERD

You can find a worklog on WERD’s blog:

http://modsbywerd.blogspot.com/

Follow this up in the Forum

I thought it’d be good to post some of the biggest headlines from all over.

If you haven’t head of the Microsoft surface, you’re probably not as nerdy as I am. This thing is going to change the way people work. It’s scheduled to come out some time in 2011, but if you really can’t wait that long, and have some real cash laying around that you don’t mind blowing, the LMC 76 Yatch, will be as far as I’ve seen, the first place to pick up your own Microsoft surface.

Microsoft Surface Link: http://www.microsoft.com/SURFACE/index.html
LMC 76 Link: http://blogs.msdn.com/hchoing/archive/2009/02/17/microsoft-surface-in-a-yacht.aspx

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Keeping up with the microsoft news, there’s a nice little rumor floating around that windows 7 will be hitting stores this fall instead of 2011.

Full Story: http://www.electronista.com/articles/09/02/25/compal.on.win.7.in.sept/

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And lastly, to keep you up to date with ThePirateBay and their trial… It’s Day 9. It’s seems like the case is getting into more of a discussion of how damaging piracy really is instead of how likely ThePirateBay is directly responsible for any of it. The best line from todays updates would have to have been the claim that every song pirated, would have been a sale.
So even though these places are hitting some of their biggest marks ever on sales, they should be significantly higher, haha. My advice to them is to show all this “loss” to the government to get their own bailout

Full Story: http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-trial-day-9-bittorrent-is-not-evil-090226/