First off, Download Squad has found out that Windows 7 can now burn ISO images to a CD/DVD disk. While we are reluctant to get rid of Nero, Ashampoo and the other burning tools we have – this would be an easier way for people to get Ubuntu and switch. While the interface is basic, it would be easier for those who are not into technology to get started burning ISO files.

Secondly, Microsoft has added a feature to make your desktop into a slideshow, meaning that you can switch your family snaps on your background every 10 seconds. This neat feature is like the Dreamscene feature on Windows Vista Ultimate, but just remove all the heavy processor use and the nightmare to get a video up on your background. Also an interesting feature is that you can do a similar thing with feeds, meaning that if you get an RSS feed that is mainly has images – you can make that as a slideshow.

Lastly, lets talk about what has been removed from Windows 7. Windows Mail (or Outlook Express, if you haven’t switched to Vista), Windows Photo Gallery and Windows Movie Maker have all been removed from the operating system. While all three will be released under the “Windows Live” branding, it could be Microsoft’s answer to solve many of the anti-trust issues. And while Mac and Linux bundle similar applications, Microsoft is mainly the target.

But you will be happy to know that Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player will still be bundled with Windows 7, meaning that Microsoft will still have those anti-trust lawsuits – from the European Union.

AppleInsider is reporting that Microsoft is now placing a recording booth of its massive “I’m A PC” advertising campaign outside an Apple Store in Birmingham, England. Its source also notes that a trio of staff from Microsoft will be turning people away from the Mac for the next three days. This is part of a wider campaign to clean up its image after being tarnished at the hands of Apple’s “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” ads.

Microsoft also has a website launched so you can upload your own videos to demonstrate that you are a PC as well. This way, they could use your face to help campaign for Vista. Now, I’m wondering if someone should say “I’m a PC, and I own a Mac”. That would be funny as.

Showcased in PDC 2008, Microsoft announced several things about the successor of Windows Vista – Windows 7. And while Microsoft has said that it will not change the architecture of 7 as it is based on Vista; it has made several user interface changes – including to the classic task bar and start menu. Among the changes, we will also see a new UI for Paint, and the Windows Sidebar will be ditched in favour of desktop gadgets, similar to that found in Yahoo Widgets.

The Taskbar Changes

In Vista and previous versions before that, it was used to show what applications you have open. Windows 7, however, takes a step in the Mac’s direction by merging both the Quick Launch bar and showing open applications in one bar. Also, it will ditch showing the names of applications, but will still show you the icon, because apparently – no application icons are the same.

Also, similar to that of the dock found in Mac OS X, you can drag and drop applications onto the task bar. Also smart is that you can go directly to the tab in Internet Explorer 8 from the taskbar – and the hovering thumbnail from vista will have still appear, but you will have more control over it.

Jump Lists?

A new feature in 7 is called “Jump Lists”. These menus are accessible in the Start Menu and the new taskbar and gives you a list of most-recent items or frequent tasks that you perform; meaning one click on Word will take you to a list of your recently viewed documents, or clicking on IE will take you to your browsing history.

This feature could be a potential time-saver, as it does not require you to open the application up and, for the case of Internet Explorer 8, to go through your history to find the site that you were looking at a day ago, before you closed the application – unless it’s not listed up in the menu. I might actually enjoy this new feature when it I get my grubby little hands on Windows 7.

Goodbye Sidebar, Hello Widgets - and other UI changes

The Windows Sidebar, appearing in Vista, has been axed and been replaced with widgets, but it looks like that they will be using a similar architecture in building these gadgets. Also, Windows Search gets a huge revamp, allowing you search your documents, email subjects, contacts, song titles and even settings in Control Panel. It will also bring the items that you like at the top of the results.

The User Account Control has been scaled back, after users and developers got frustrated over the annoyance of the prompts. Now, it will allow you to determine your own preferences using a slider, so you can determine if you want to see less messages or more – but you will get prompt on important messages, like your firewall has been disabled.

Paint, like mentioned before around the web, also got a UI change. It is now using the “Ribbon” navigational system that is found in Microsoft’s Office 2007 and 2008 for Mac (in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Access). As well, another change is that you will be able to insert shapes, similar to those in Microsoft Office, and that you have a row of colours that you can add your own to.

A brand new feature included in Windows 7 is called Library. Basically this acts like “Cover Flow” in a Mac; but what makes it a bit different is that you can add objects from other drives to be part of the library. This is great if you want to have everything in one place, like all the images for a camp, though they are in different parts of your computer.

Device Stage

Windows 7 now has a single window that will interact with your gadgets. If you plug in your camera or MP3 player, you will be able to get the details about it – like its battery capacity, available storage space and the date of its last sync. Also it will offer several actions you can do, including syncing it, managing photos or music on it, etc. It’s more likely to be used with Windows Mobile phones, and not the iPhone and iPods.

The development of these online versions will be developed with the next version of Office, Office 14 (why they skipped Office 13 is beyond me). As well, a beta version is expected to go online next year.

The new move to online applications comes after facing serious competition from Google; with its Google Docs product - which is able to create documents, spreadsheets and presentations online. All of the products are free.

Also, some new features will introduced, including support to record media on Blu-Ray, Bluetooth 2.1, and a brand new application called Windows Connect Now, which would simply Wi-Fi configuration. As well, there will be an update to Windows Search – which promises to be faster and have improved relevancy in searches.

But with the updates, Microsoft is encouraging that you do not wait for SP2 if you plan to upgrade to Windows Vista in the future.

“The reality is that Windows Vista SP1 is a great platform that is both available on new Windows PCs and available as a free download for systems that are running the “gold” release of Windows Vista.  While we will recommend SP2 when it ships, your best bet today is Windows Vista SP1,” Mike Nash wrote in the blog post.

The open source projects includes Drupal, WordPress, osCommerce, PHPBB, DotNetNuke and Graffiti, with more being added soon after being evaluated by Microsoft. However, while certain applications need PHP and MySQL, like WordPress, Microsoft has not added that, but chosen to give you links on how to install it.

The software doesn’t actually have the project’s source files, but will merely just retrieve it from the source repository and install it for you via this installer.

The software is only available for Windows Vista SP1 and Windows Server 2008 users.

Steve Ballmer, confirmed today that the Zune software will be coming to the Windows Mobile Platform.
“the Zune software will also be ported to and be more important not just with the hardware but on the PC, on Windows Mobile devices, etc.”

This was confirmed in an interview with CIO Magazine

As well, it will contribute tests, bug fixes and patches to the open-source project, and will extend its product support to jQuery later in the year.

Source: CNET News.com

Among the features that are widely rumoured to be in the next version include advanced gesture recognition and speech input, with the help of its Tellme unit. As well, Internet Explorer for Mobile is expected to be improved, allowing it to display rich Web pages – including those containing Flash or Ajax content.

After three ads, Microsoft has ditched its commercials that featured Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld, but will refocus its efforts to ‘redefine’ the popular “I’m a PC” line on the current Apple ads for their Mac computers.

According to the New York Times, one of the commercials will begin with a company engineer who resembles John Hodgman, the famous comedian who portrays that PC character in the Apple ads.

The theme is said to be “Windows. Life without walls.”

Source & Image : New York Times

This will contradict what Microsoft previously said that Windows 7 would not arrive until early 2010.

As well, rumours are also saying that the Professional Developers Conference in October will see the first public beta of Windows 7, during an announcement by Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie’s keynote speech.

Windows 7 will reuse the Windows Vista Kernal, using the same driver framework - meaning that users should have no problems switching from Vista to Windows 7.

Video is below:

Click here to view it

After ‘fearing’ that it would get lost among the other product announcements yesterday, Microsoft has now said that it will introduce the new SideWinder X8 mouse. The new mouse will feature the same ‘BlueTrack’ technology in the new mice that it released yesterday, but it will be in a more gamer-friendly package.

As well, it includes a play and charge system that allows you to play while your batteries recharge, switchable DPI settings, interchangeable feet to suit your “glide preferences”, seven programmable buttons, and a macro record button - but that’s just a few of the features of the mouse.

However, you will need to wait even longer to get one. This mouse is coming out in February next year (2009) for US$100.

In an obvious copy-cat move by Microsoft, its Hardware unit is set to unveil a new product lineup on September 9 in Seattle after teasing the rest of the world with an animation with the tagline "Say Goodbye to Laser" today. And while we don’t know what it is, it might be some new mouse technology - replacing the laser mouses, which use internal lasers to determine the position of the mice.

Anyone wants to guess what is this ‘new’ mouse technology is?

Source: Seattle PI (via Engadget)

Brazil, India, South Africa and Venezuela launched appeals to the decision, but failed to get the support of two thirds of the members of the ISO, who represent their technical boards.

OOXML is the latest file formats that Office 2007 use, along with Office for Mac 2008. It can be read on Office 2003/2004 for Mac - with a patch to the application.

Source: The Register

To make it easier for those who are not up to date with WPF, it was a brand new feature introduced to .NET developers in the latest version of the code (version 3). WPF allows developers to create a better user interface than what we would usually see - and an example of a program using WPF would be Yahoo! Messenger for Vista.

In short, Windows Live Messenger will now have transparency effects - but as well, Messenger Stuff is also saying that the design has not changed much but with the WPF effects integrated with the program.

Thanks to Microsoft’s new survey focused on the popular concept that inspired games like Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, it contains all of the instant messaging network traffic from MSN/Windows Live in June 2006, or roughly half of the world’s IM traffic at that time.

So, for example, I could be speaking to a person who is friends with James, but has links with Stewart and has met Kenny. That is an awkward scenario, but it could happen. Tell us your own six/seven degrees of separation, it would be kind of fun to see if this is actually true.

That value, $15 billion, was the value when Microsoft bought a 1.6 percent stake on Facebook for $240m, but its common stock is worth $3.75 billion. ConnectU argued that the deal was bogus since they lied about its value when Microsoft went and bought a stake in the social network.

In other words, ConnectU apparently nabbed Facebook’s internal valuation - meaning there is a mole in the company. But the NY Times is saying that Microsoft bought preferred stock and not common stock - meaning that they have more rights as shareholders.

So now, we don’t know the value - but we do know two things: It is below what Microsoft evaluated it and it is too high what ConnectU claims.

The paper is also reporting that Microsoft has met with Carl Icahn, the board member that’s leading the way to replace the current board, and urged him to continue the proxy fight in an attempt to motivate the board at Yahoo.

Who thinks that this is now completely stupid and wants this ended now? I know I do…