Will be the right time for Google's take on social web?



The Google+ Project - Learn more

The Official Google Blog - Introducing the Google+ project: Real-life sharing, rethought for the web

Something seems done really well, like the Circles metaphora to categorize people in different groups - something that Facebook just don't do (right).

Rolled out quietly this morning. It's even better for searching big topics, such as "opera," "wormholes," or "climate change." It's essentially a range of Google products on one page.

http://www.wdyl.com

Hi DCs,

today i stumbled upon this very interesting article (and the informationw was new to me as well). So i'd thought i'll share for those that aren't up-to-date windows gurus (as i am not too).

In short:

First it is a nice (and even for lamers like me very understandable) wrap up of the history of
WinAPI, .NET and development under windows.

Secondly it gives some insight about the reasons under the hood for all the rumour around Windows-Development in the last decade and some internals how and why MS did what they did.

Thirdly it gives some interesting news from "slipped out" code snippets and informations from MS about the new APIs in Windows 8 named DirectUI and WinRT that should bring the UI Design under Windows to a "modern way of layout" using vector based approach (formerly WPF - Windows Presentation Foundation). It also brings all the rumour that Windows 8 will ONLY use HTML5 and Javascript as the main developer platform to an end.

Early this month, Microsoft dropped something of a bombshell on Windows developers: the new Windows 8 touch-friendly immersive style would use a developer platform not based on .NET, which Microsoft has been championing for the past decade. Instead, it would use HTML5 and JavaScript. Since then, the company has refrained from making any further comment on the issue. In particular, the question that has many Windows developers particularly concerned—how can I make use of my existing skills and experience when developing these new applications?—remains unanswered; the company plans to reveal nothing until its BUILD conference in September.

But the situation probably won't be as grim as many developers fear. Early milestone builds of Windows 8 have leaked onto the Internet, and considerable effort has been put into figuring out how they work. Though officially tight-lipped, snippets of information have escaped Redmond's walls. So far, it appears that Windows 8 development doesn't just look not bad—there are signs that it will actually resolve many long-standing annoyances with writing Windows software. If Microsoft can pull off everything it's hoping to achieve with the platform, Windows 8 will be as important and radical a release as Windows Longhorn was going to be.

Windows 8 will ship with a pair of runtimes; a new .NET runtime (currently version stamped 4.5), and a native code C++ runtime (technically, COM, or a derivative thereof), named WinRT. There will be a new native user interface library, DirectUI, that builds on top of the native Direct2D and DirectWrite APIs that were introduced with Windows 7. A new version of Silverlight, apparently codenamed Jupiter, will run on top of DirectUI. WinRT and DirectUI will both be directly accessible from .NET through built-in wrappers.

WinRT provides a clean and modern API for many of the things that Win32 does presently. It will be, in many ways, a new, modern Win32. The API is designed to be easy to use from "modern" C++ (in contrast to the 25 year old, heavily C-biased design of Win32); it will also map cleanly onto .NET concepts. In Windows 8, it's unlikely that WinRT will cover everything Win32 can do—Win32 is just so expansive that modernizing it is an enormous undertaking—but I'm told that this is the ultimate, long-term objective. And WinRT is becoming more and more extensive with each new build that leaks from Redmond.

In long terms:

Read yourself at: http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2011/06/windows-8-for-software-developers-the-longhorn-dream-reborn.ars

Hope the (a bit lengthy) article is as interesting to read for you as it was for me.

Greetings
JoTo

PS:
A funny remark i read in a comment about this article in a mailing list was:
"I never believed that HTML5 and JS will be the ONLY developer platform for Windows 8. I don't think the next version of Microsoft-Office will be written in Javascript!"

That's right!  It's not too soon to begin revving your engines in preparation for the N.A.N.Y. 2012 Event!  In recognition of this, let me first pay due homage to Perry Mowbray, who has done a fantastic job bringing everything together cohesively (and immensely enjoyably) in past N.A.N.Y. events.  My hat's off to you, Perry.

Perry will be assuming a less demanding role in this year's contest, due to other obligations, and I have stepped up to help out, so let me welcome all who plan to enter the event, and encourage you to be working hard on those apps (if you aren't already).  Perry, Mouser and I will be working together, but I will assume lead responsibility for coordinating the event (yes, I'm aware that I'm a bit crazy).

Please begin thinking about the role you'd like to play in this year's event, and be thinking about your contributions to upcoming threads in this section, where we'll be discussing Ideas for Entries, allowing Early App Submissions, in order to take advantage of a longer period of feedback/testing, and much, much more.

I am very STOKED about this year's event.  In the next few days, expect to see a thread or two begin to appear, as mentioned above.

-Kyrathaba

Here's a very useful roundup at freewaregenius today:

PDF Virtual printers are a convenient way to create PDF files. These programs can save any kind of printable document as a PDF; all you need to do is to select ‘print’ from your favorite program, then select the virtual PDF printer and get a PDF file.

There are many excellent free virtual printers. We have tested 15 of these and selected 10 of them to evaluate and compare. These (in alphabetic order) are: Bullzip PDF Printer, Doro PDF Writer, PDF Printer (PdfSvg), PDF reDirect, PDF24 Creator, PDFCreator, Perfect PDF 7 Master, Primo PDF, Print2PDF Free and qvPDF.

http://www.freewareg...rinter-a-comparison/

When I switched from MacOSX to Windows some years ago (long story), one of the features I most missed in Windows was the ability to display the Finder (the Mac's file manager, like Windows Explorer) by "Column View".

Anyone who has ever used a Mac with OSX will agree, I think, how handy column view is. The way column view works in the Finder is like this:

within a single window, each folder can be displayed as a column with all the contents of that folder displayed. Clicking on any folder within that column opens immediately a parallel column to the right and so on. Also, if the column's root folder is itself a buried subfolder, immediately beginning at the left, all the parent folders will each be displayed in columns all the way back to a root column, which is the equivalent of WE's tree. When one clicks on a file in a column, the finder can be configured to open a preview column which will display information about that file. Items can be dragged and dropped between columns and the columns can be made to auto-open to a set width or to the width of the filenames within. Obviously, this works like columnar 'breadcrumbs', where every column corresponds to a part of the breadcrumb trail. It was/(is?) even possible by using the option button and mouse to drag selected columns to preferred widths, all different if so wished, and have the Finder remember those settings each time that folder was opened or navigated to in column view.

This was one of the best - of very few, admittedly - of the good features of the Mac Finder that I remember, certainly the most useful, and I have often wondered if a similar arrangement could be ported to the Windows Explorer, say as an extension.

See here for some shots of column view demonstrated (about half-way down tha page):

http://switchtoamac....er-window-views.html

Brian