Microsoft releases beta of mashup tool
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Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced the public beta availability of Popfly, the company&#39;s mashup creation tool for non-technical users introduced in alpha form in May.During Ballmer&#39;s appearance on Thursday at the&#160;Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, a Microsoft staffer gave a demo of Popfly in which he showed how the tool can be used to create applications for sites like Facebook&#39;s social network and Microsoft&#39;s Windows Live Spaces without the need to write code.Popfly is built on Silverlight, a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering video and interactive applications. Silverlight is Microsoft&#39;s answer to Adobe&#39;s ubiquitous Flash technology.While acknowledging that Adobe has done &quot;a good job in rich media&quot; with Flash, Ballmer nonetheless said there are plenty of opportunities for Microsoft to innovate as Web applications &quot;continue to get richer and richer.&quot;Speaking at the same event on Wednesday,&#160;Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen downplayed Silverlight&#39;s threat to Flash, saying Flash has been around for 10 years, is widely adopted and has a broad ecosystem.Ballmer, who answered questions from conference chair John Battelle and from attendees, said that the clamor over Web-hosted office productivity applications like Google Apps and suites from Zimbra and Zoho as major threats to Microsoft Office is misguided.In the communication and collaboration software space, Microsoft is focused on making its applications accessible in whatever way customers require, and that the issue isn&#39;t a black-and-white opposition between packaged and hosted software.He acknowledged that Microsoft pays attention &quot;to what the other guy is doing&quot; and is receptive to implementing good ideas in its products.As the interest in hosted applications rises, critics have said Microsoft has been slow in responding with a hosted alternative to Microsoft Office, and that it risks missing an opportunity that others are eagerly pursuing.Asked if he was getting impatient with Microsoft&#39;s search and online advertising efforts, where the company lags far behind leader Google, Ballmer said he&#39;s confident his company will continue to improve in the coming years as it focuses on several key areas.For example, Microsoft will continue improving its search engines, because they are key for generating online ad revenues. It will also continue to strengthen its consumer communication services, like webmail and instant messaging.Key as well is having a strong ad platform, which is why&#160;Microsoft spent $6 billion on aQuantive, and a strong ad syndication business, he said. Ad syndication will go through a major transformation in the next five years as the focus shifts from matching ads based on a Web page&#39;s content to based on users&#39; online behavior, he said.Ballmer declined to comment when asked about rumors&#160;Microsoft is buying a stake in Facebook, but he said&#160;the companies&#39; existing online ad partnership&#160;is going very well.He dismissed questions about the consistent speculation that&#160;Microsoft might buy the embattled Yahoo, saying Microsoft is confident in its strategy to at some point generate 25 percent of its revenue from online advertising. &quot;We believe in our independent path. We like what we&#39;re doing,&quot; Ballmer said.Microsoft also released at the event a beta version of the Windows Live Photo Gallery photo management tool that adds publishing support for Yahoo&#39;s Flickr photo-sharing site. As of Thursday, the Microsoft product has a &quot;publish on Flickr&quot; option in addition to its ability to post photos directly to the Windows Live Spaces blogging and social network. The Windows Live Photo Gallery is available on the Windows Live beta page .Microsoft further announced new features for its Live Search for Mobile search engine and launched Live Search 411, a toll-free directory assistance service accessible by calling (800) CALL-411 (800-225-5411).Additionally, Microsoft provided an update on the adoption of&#160;Silverlight, whose 1.0 version was released a month ago. The number of partners in the Microsoft Silverlight Partner Initiative has grown to more than 50 organizations, and more than 40 customers have delivered Silverlight applications.Microsoft also said that Silverlight 1.0 is now available in 10 languages, including simplified and traditional Chinese, French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Japanese.
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Microsoft's beta version of its Windows AntiSpyware application is available for download.
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WITH GOOGLE nipping at its heels, Microsoft has just released a beta edition of its new MSN Desktop Search application. Like Google&#39;s very similar product, Desktop Search builds an index of documents and e
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Microsoft late Tuesday released the first beta of its new Web design tool that will compete with the likes of Adobe Dreamweaver. The program is part of Microsoft's forthcoming Expression lineup, which also includes a graphical design tool and an interface designer.
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OpenAjax Alliance has put forth an aggressive roadmap that recognizes the growing trend toward mashups.
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Company aims to ease server management headaches with PHP tool set. Also on tap: updated tools for Web developers.
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Microsoft has released a beta of the new free e-mail program, along with new Messenger and Writer betas.
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The tools, part of an upcoming Visual Studio update, is focused on making it easier to create customized Web applications.
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During an early morning session on Thursday, Microsoft program manager Chung Webster introduced developers to some of the basic concepts of building Silverlight-capable Web applications, including the creation of customizable video controls.  The tools Webster used were the Beta 1 edition of Visual Studio 2008, the current beta of Expression Blend 2, and the Silverlight Alpha 1.1 version which uses Web services and C#.
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Corel has released a free public beta of WordPerfect Lightning, a word processor that blends a desktop-based application with online features.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft this week released a beta version of Visual Studio 2005 Tools for the 2007 Microsoft Office System, enabling developers to leverage new features in the upcoming Office package. The official name of the beta release is the Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office Second Edition Beta; the product is being referred to as a second edition because the existing edition works with Office 2003. Previously code-named "Cypress," the beta serves as an add-in for Visual Studio available for free to all Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition and Visual Studio Tools for Office 2005 users. The Cypress beta is being unveiled in coordination with a refresh of the beta for the 2007 Office System. "VSTO 2005 SE (Visual Studio Tools for Office 2005 Second Edition) gives developers the power to take advantage of the 2007 Office System as a development platform and create scalable Office-based solutions," said KD Hallman, general manager, Visual Studio Tools for the Microsoft Office System, in her blog. Developers using the beta get add-in support for building Office applications that leverage Outlook, Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Visio and InfoPath as well as support for 2007 Office System features. Inclusion of PowerPoint and Visio is new in this release. A developer, for example, could build an application that leverages database information to create a chart in Visio, said Jaye Roxe, group product manager for Visual Studio. Other features in the beta release include runtime support for the Ribbon UI, custom task panes and InfoPath regions. The Ribbon UI in 2007 Office System replaces the current system of layered menus, toolbars, and task panes with a simpler system of interfaces, according to Microsoft. The interfaces are optimized for efficiency and discoverability. The general release of Visual Studio 2005 Tools for the 2007 Office System is expected to coincide with the release of the 2007 Office System itself at the end of this year.
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Microsoft is refreshing the beta release of its Visual Studio 2005 developer tool platform to feature the full range of technologies planned for the companyâs Team System application life cycle management system, Microsoft representatives acknowledged on Friday.
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Microsoft Wednesday released the latest versions of its performance and monitoring tool, which forms a cornerstone in its plan to create a management platform for Windows.
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A small Oregon-based company on Wednesday released a set of integrated add-on tools for Microsoft&#39;s Outlook e-mail client.
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Over on the Zend Developer Zone today, Akash Mehta has written up  a review of a book from Packt Publishing, "PHP Web 2.0 Mashups" (by Shu-Wai Chow):    As it's title suggests, PHP Web 2.0 Mashup Projects is a demonstration of the various techniques available for developing mashups in PHP. Through a highly practical format, Shu-Wai takes the reader through a series of projects utilising different web services and APIs, while carefully exposing the reader to a wide variety of technologies and data formats.   With careful selection and shaping of language, the book is an extremely effective introduction to the world of mashup development with PHP.    Akash talks about the contents of the book (the different projects it covers) and how the book provides a version useful resource to those just getting into the mashup world - a reference guide to some of the popular data transfer methods/formats out there.
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InfoWorld - With an upgrade to its Nexaweb Enterprise Web 2.0 Suite being released Monday, Nexaweb will focus on visual capabilities for building mashups.
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(InfoWorld) - The OpenAjax Alliance, formed to boost interoperability in the AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) realm, has put forth an aggressive roadmap that recognizes the growing trend toward mashups. Speaking at the AJAXWorld conference in Santa Clara on Monday, Jon Ferraiolo, OpenAjax operations manager and an IBM Web architect, detailed the upcoming release of the OpenAjax Hub 1.0 and the follow-up 1.1 release. Other projects including the OpenAjax Registry and IDE accommodations for AJAX also were noted by Ferraiolo. With the hub, the alliance aims to iron out interoperability issues between AJAX toolkits. "Sometimes, they actually prevent each other from working. They step on each other," Ferraiolo said. Developers can use the hub to integrate multiple toolkits within the same Web page while toolkit developers can use it to allow toolkits to talk to other toolkits. While the 1.0 hub is useful in mashup scenarios where all components come from a trusted source, version 1.1 adds a security layer for untrusted components to protect from any components that might be malicious. The 1.0 version of the hub, to include AJAX library registration and a publish-and-subscribe engine, is due by the end of this year. Version 1.1 is planned for approval next year, although a full implementation is slated to be ready by the end of 2007. "One of the key features [in version 1.1] is secure mashups," said Ferraiolo. "It's very much a security-focused enhancement providing a secure mashup framework," he said. IBM-contributed technology called SMash, for Secure Mashups, is being included in version 1.1. It provides for secure handling of third-party mashup components. Also in the security arena, the alliance has formed an AJAX Security Task Force Version 1.1 also is slated to include publishing and subscribing across frames as well as publish-and-subscribe between clients and servers. Also featured is support for the Comet programming technique to push data from the server to client. Server push is desirable particularly in mashups and portals, according to the alliance. The hub was called "absolutely essential" by attendee and author Dave Mosby. "It provides mechanisms for us to bridge between different components so that they can begin to talk to each other," Mosby said.Â  In other develpments at the alliance, the planned OpenAjax Registry will provide an AJAX toolkit and JavaScript global object registration authority to prevent JavaScript object collision within complex AJAX applications. The registry is to be managed by the OpenAjax Interoperability Working Group. Population of the registry begins this fall. OpenAjax is holding an event this week called OpenAjax InteropFest, in which companies like Microsoft are testing their AJAX toolkits for conformance with OpenAjax. Microsoft, with its Microsoft AJAX Library, has passed the conformance test, according to Microsoft.Â  The alliance also has launched a task force for mobile AJAX with a white paper planned on how to be successful with the concept. Also, the alliance will explore APIs for access to mobile device services. Device APIs would be exposed to JavaScript on these devices. A mobile AJAX workshop is planned for this Friday. "Mobile devices are getting AJAX," said Ferraiolo. An AJAX management task force, meanwhile, is being launched to make sure AJAX applications perform on a consistent basis. Another task force to be formed will focus on searchability to optimize the ability for search engines to find AJAX applications. Another OpenAjax effort is its IDE working group, which will attempt to accommodate multiple AJAX toolkits and IDEs. The alliance is trying to develop a standard XML file that describes JavaScript functions and other APIs, widgets and their properties. This project is intended to assist developers with user interface components such as widget pallets. Code compilation and type-checking on JavaScript functions also would be part of the effort. Proposals from Microsoft, Adobe Systems, and Aptana have been submitted for consideration by the IDE working group. OpenAjax Alliance features members like IBM and Microsoft.