In his Comdex keynote address Sunday night, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates unveiled a new suite of online financial services that the company is preparing to test early next year. Code-named MSN Money Professional, the online offering is another salvo in Microsoft's growing arsenal of .Net services. Advent Software is the first company to embrace the new service, which will be available to about 6,500 clients. Microsoft plans to begin testing MSN Money Professional next year.
"With this service, we're extending the benefits of the .Net platform to the financial services industry, connecting advisers and clients in a more personalized and unified way," said Bob Muglia, group vice president of the Microsoft .Net Services Group, in a statement. "'MSN Money Professional' exemplifies our commitment to provide technologies that embrace the accessibility and flexibility of the Web to help businesses meet the needs of their customers."
Speaking AT the opening of Comdex Fall 2001, Gates provided a concrete example with the Tablet PC, which uses a touch screen and a forthcoming version of Windows XP. The device, unveiled as a concept last year, was shown in prototype form Sunday with examples from Compaq Computer, NEC, Toshiba, Intel and others.One of the devices resembled an Etch A Sketch, while another looked more like a notebook PC with a screen that could be rotated to sit on top of the keyboard. Others were almost small enough to be considered handhelds. Microsoft also announced the name of the software that powers the Tablet PC: Microsoft Windows XP Tablet Edition. Gates said the company hopes the devices will be commercially available in 2002.
AMD will drive its Hammer family of 64-bit processors into the mobile market in the second half of 2003, a year or so after it makes its debut in servers, the company revealed at its analysts confab yesterday. The chip maker extended its mobile roadmap into 2003 at the conference, and slides from the presentation - which you can view here - schedule Mobile Hammer's arrival during the second half of 2003. The model numbers, derived from AMD's new 'more than megahertz' nomenclature will be 3800 and 3600. These parts will draw 35W and 25W, respectively.
Dell is prepping the follow up for its thin-and-light Latitude L400 notebook with the C400 - designed to set "the new standard in Dell ultraportable design", according to unpublished company bumf. The launch date is pencilled for 27 November, The Register understands.
There's no point calling up Dell yet - tech support staff haven't been fully briefed on the machine yet - but here's the gen, as our sources tell us.
The US government has activated ASCI White, the world's fastest supercomputer. This IBM machine costs $110m and simulates the effects of nuclear detonations. Shouldn't taxpayers be concerned: surely it's cheaper to blow up the occasional Pacific atoll? What with global warming, and rising sea levels, they're all doomed, anyhow.
Located in a classified area at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, ASCI White weighs 106 tons and covers an area more than half the size of a football pitch. The monster machine is said to be faster than the combined speed of the next three most powerful supercomputers.
Thanks to Neowin for a link
A new opportunity for the software industry, Microsoft .NET My Services (formerly code-named "HailStorm") is a family of XML Web services that builds upon the proven Microsoft .NET Passport and Microsoft .NET Alerts services. This new application paradigm helps businesses deepen customer relationships and improve operational efficiency.
For many years now, the primary focus of many solution developers has been Web sites and Web-based applications. One of the primary reasons for this focus has been the easy deployment model that a browser-based application provides. This benefit, however, does not come without a cost. These applications are limited to the capabilities that are provided by the Web browser, and developers are also limited by the fact that there are often minor differences between the functionality of one browser over another.
In today's episode we will be talking with Mark Boulter and Jamie Cool, who will share with us a new application deployment model that is built into the .NET Framework. This new model allows developers to develop Win32 Smart Client applications which not only have full access to the rich API of Windows, but also can be deployed using the simple and straightforward mechanisms that we are already familiar with for Web pages and Web applications.
AMD's drive for desktop dominance will see the company ship what it will undoubtedly claim is the equivalent of a 3.4GHz Intel processor, when it ships its first desktop 0.13 micron Hammer chip in the fourth quarter of next year.
That chip will be numbered 3400 in accordance with AMD's new nomenclature, the company told analysts at its latest financial conference last night. The Hammer 3400 will be followed by the Hammer 4000 during the first half of 2003 and the 4400 in the latter part the year, when the Hammer family is shrunk using as 0.09 micron (though some AMD documentation says "0.10 micron") production process. Hammer will debut at 0.13 micron.
So you thought MS was only going to be allowing XP access to the new Windows Update site, well think again. As of Nov 9th MS has fired up the new Windows Update beta site (registration required - sorry...) for 2000/ME/98 users allowing them the same kind of access to updates and driver files XP users currently have. This new layout is terrific and really makes getting files for all of MS's OS's much easier and much better than the current Windows Update Site. Plus, you do not need to have I.E. 6.0 installed to get to the site our source is using 5.5 SP2 and it seems to work fine however getting it to work was a bit of a challenge. It seems our source had to manually remove some files from his PC and then add a REG entry provided by MS in order for it to work but after taking a look at the new layout it looks to me like all his effort paid off.
U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly has laid out the next steps for the Microsoft antitrust trial, scheduling a hearing early next year. As expected, Kollar-Kotelly set a March 4 hearing to address continued litigation by several states. Those states refused to join a settlement reached this week between the software giant and the Justice Department, a statement some competitors and consumer groups criticized for placing relatively mild restrictions on Microsoft. Kollar-Kotelly ordered that the proposed final settlement be filed with the court no later than Nov. 15, accompanied by an analysis of the anticipated effects of the agreement. The government is required to publish summaries of the settlement and of its competitive study in three major newspapers by the end of November. A 60-day period of public comment will begin after the proposed settlement is published in the Federal Register later this month.