Since this happened such software has begun to creep back into Windows.  Windows 8 is without doubt the worst offender ever with a new Metro version of Internet Explorer embedded into the new Start Screen as well as the desktop version present also.  It is the first version of Windows to include anti-virus software and now we learn that the ARM-version of Windows 8 will also include desktop versions of Microsoft’s next office suite, codenamed “Office 15″ in the form of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote.  So what’s happening here and could Microsoft face more anti-trust action in the coming years?

To look at this we have to look at the competition.  When Microsoft were going through their anti-trust actions there really wasn’t any.  At first they just had two desktop operating systems to compete against, OS X and GNU/Linux.  With this they had a monopoly, but one that they’d worked hard for and earned.  With the software things were a different issue where there were a great many web browsers, media players and more.

I began to wonder what might happen with further anti-trust actions when Microsoft announced that, for the first time, they would be bundling anti-virus software with Windows.  ”Windows Defender” isn’t like the existing Windows Defender that first appeared with XP, it’s a re-badged version of Microsoft’s free Security Essentials product.  So far no other anti-virus vendor has kicked up a fuss, though that may still happen.

We had further news though this week that Windows 8 on ARM processors will also include bundled versions of the company’s next generation Office suite in the form of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote.  Surely then this would cause a real storm and trigger another anti-trust investigation right away?  Actually I don’t think it will, and it’s likely that Microsoft may never face another anti-trust investigation again.

There are several reasons for this.  The first is that in the last few years all manner of popular and effective competition has sprung up in the operating system space, in the form of iOS, WebOS, QNX, Chrome OS and most notably Android.  Each and every one of these operating systems (with the notable exception of ChromeOS which is entirely cloud-based) come pre-installed with a bespoke web browser, media player and more and all but iOS come with a pre-loaded Office productivity suite.  This then is surely what will have triggered Microsoft’s decision to bundle a version of Office with Windows 8 tablets.

It’s a savvy move too.  They will undoubtedly be cut-down versions, similar to the Office web apps, and will be used to try and up-sell people to the full version of Office on their PCs in the same way that Office Starter, which is commonly shipped free of charge with new PCs does already.

It is very easy now then for Microsoft’s lawyers to argue that bundling Office 15 with Windows 8 tablets isn’t anti-competitive at all, especially as they don’t do it with the desktop version of the OS.  They’re just copying what other tablet operating system makers have been doing for some time now.  With the anti-virus argument it might be a harder argument to make, and it is possible we will see some of the smaller or even major anti-virus vendors complaining to the US authorities or to the EU.  It’s much more likely though that they’ll simply dismiss Windows Defender as being “rubbish” (which it isn’t I should add if you’re considering it) and trying to convince people to buy their own suites anyway.

So what do you think the legal future is for Microsoft given everything they’re bundling with Windows 8?  Why not tell us in the comments below?

“WOA (Windows on ARM) includes desktop versions of the new Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. These new Office applications, codenamed ‘Office 15,’ have been significantly architected for both touch and minimized power/resource consumption, while also being fully-featured for consumers and providing complete document compatibility. WOA supports the Windows desktop experience including File Explorer, Internet Explorer 10 for the desktop, and most other intrinsic Windows desktop features—which have been significantly architected for both touch and minimized power/resource consumption.”

Now before I begin I want to talk about some of the things that happened in the last century, namely the birth of the consumer versions of Windows.  This began with Windows 95 which was bold in much the same way as Windows 8 is now because it broke the clearly defined user interface paradigm and went with a new way of working with our desktops.  It turned out that this new way was hugely successful, but this freedom to innovate with Windows came at a cost.  The consumer and business editions of Windows had begun and they stayed on this track until the launch of Windows XP in 2001.

By the end of the 20th century things were not going well for consumer editions of Windows.  The operating system had become a stability nightmare while its business counterpart was doing fine, and clearly the Windows NT kernel, the core of the operating system, was much more stable and secure than anything the consumer team could come up with.  Thus at this point the teams were merged and Windows became a single product for both consumers and businesses alike.  Even this had its problems however with Windows XP, the first outing, being criticised as being too “consumer friendly” and not business-like at all.  The arguments passed however and XP became, and still is, hugely popular on the workplace desktop.

Now the kernel discussion has moved to other platforms with Windows Server and Windows 7 already sharing the same core and rumours abounding that the next major update of the Windows Phone operating system will follow suit and adopt what’s been called MinWin.  This makes complete sense.  If Microsoft have only one kernel across all their products it makes it easier to update, makes cross-device compatibility simpler and much more besides.  This is what Apple has been doing for several years already when they based the first version of iOS on their desktop OS X operating system.

Now however Windows 8 is changing the game, and the problem is tablet computing.  Microsoft are so far behind in the tablet market that if they don’t do something radical, right now, they’ll lose it forever and at that point their market share will inevitably dwindle to the point where they become the next IBM and have to find something else to do.

Windows 8 is giving everybody the new Metro tablet interface as the default Windows 8 UI.  Sure, business users will be able to switch it off and revert to the desktop but that’s not the point.  The point is yesterday’s announcement about Windows 8 running on ARM-powered processors.  Here Microsoft have now stated that the desktop will exist on ARM and that the platform will come pre-loaded with versions of the next editions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote.  Surely this is great news?  Anybody who wants a Windows tablet that they can use for serious work will now be able to.  The desktop is being modified to work much more effectively with touch and all is going to go brilliantly.

If you detected a hint of sarcasm running through that last paragraph then you’d be right.  I am deeply concerned about the inclusion of the Windows desktop in the ARM version of the operating system.  While its easy to argue that this paves the way for hardware manufacturers to create low-power ARM-based laptops and ultrabooks, the simple fact remains, and Microsoft have confirmed this, that no existing x86 or x64 apps will run on the ARM version of Windows.  The existence of desktop versions of these Office programs won’t even give hardware makers the option to hide the desktop on their devices.

This means, for starters that the most common question asked by people with ARM-powered Windows 8 devices will be “Why won’t my software install on this computer?”  But the ramifications run much deeper than this.  It means, for instance, that Microsoft have pretty much given up, in the short term anyway, of creating any meaningful versions of their Office apps for Metro.  Adobe has shown with Photoshop Touch how powerful touch apps can be, and a Metro implementation of the Ribbon UI, which is already very finger-friendly, could be extremely effective.

But no.  Microsoft have stated “desktop versions” instead, despite the fact that past Windows explorer these people will have nothing else that ever will, or ever can run on their desktop.  The term, ‘frustrating’ will probably come up a lot from these people.

Meanwhile, business users and IT Pros are bemoaning having Metro foisted on them when they’d much rather get used to that at home but still keep the traditional desktop at work.  This doesn’t sound unreasonable on the face of it.  What Microsoft are doing here though is taking Windows 95 too far.  They’re forcing an unwanted consumer interface onto business users, while now at the same time plugging a pointless and useless business interface into consumer devices!

I could have coped with the former but the latter just makes no sense to me.  Thus I believe the time has come to split Windows once again into consumer and business versions, managed by different teams.  It’s a good time to do it too.  The Windows kernel is very well managed and there’s no reason in the world why both versions couldn’t just be features and skins on top of MinWin, much in the way Windows 7 and Windows 8 are already.  We need a clear separation and demarkation between what is a consumer product and what is a business product.

I can understand installing Metro onto some business machines because there are a great many times when a Metro app will work great in the workplace, I’ve seen them demonstrated personally, and for everything else there’s the desktop.  Putting a desktop that won’t run existing Windows programs though, and for which the major software companies are unlikely to ever recode their applications due to the small size of the market they’d be selling into just doesn’t make any sense.  So now Windows has to be split.  There has never, in my view, been a better case for doing it and frankly there’s never been a more appropriate time.

This looks like a reasonable time to launch the beta given that Microsoft previously said it would release it at the end of February.  For those on the official testing programme or who subscribe to their software via the MDSN website, with Windows 7 these groups received the beta around one week to ten days before so if this is repeated this could mean that they get delivery of the beta any time from the 17th of this month, which is what I was expecting personally.

The Consumer Preview will include many features not seen in the previous Developer Preview release, which Microsoft gave out publicly in September last year.  This is because many of those features either had not been written yet or were not finished.  One of the things that is set to change considerably is the new Metro interface, and several leaks in the last couple of weeks have shown that in some ways Microsoft has changed it significantly.

The Developer Preview has received some criticisms from business users and IT Pros, primarily because of Metro, but it remains to be seen how many of those criticisms are answered satisfactorily by the Consumer Preview.  Business users should not be concerned about the name “Consumer Preview” either as this is basically code for, “We’ve got developers excited [hopefully] but now we need to spur those developers on and make sure they’ve not forgotten about us by getting millions of members of the public excited as well.”

New features that have been demonstrated but not yet used by the public, including the new “Windows App Store” will open at the same time.  The final release of the operating system is expected later in the year around October.

I’m writing this as an outsider looking in.  I’ve no real idea why Microsoft have chosen to keep quiet on so many things, such as having Windows 8 default to the desktop as the main user interface which seems to be the biggest and most common question.  I do have some insight into the company, the products and the people behind Windows 8 however, so hopefully I might be able to shed some light as to the reasons why, and what the historical perspective of this is.

Before Windows 7 the Windows betas were a mess.  The official testing community, of which I have been a member for years, usually got access to builds of a new operating system during the alpha stage.  This was pretty pointless as if Microsoft wanted you to find bugs you would probably find one within five minutes of installing the thing that would prevent you from using it completely.  In fact Microsoft have said that the majority of bugs reported by testers over the years were things the company already knew about.  One of the problems associated with such an open development process was that features that never made it to the final product, either because they never worked reliably, or because the company simply ran out of development time, did on occasion cause some distress for testers and bad publicity for Microsoft.  A couple of great examples are the relational file system WinFS and a new Guest Mode that would roll back user settings and files when someone new finished using your PC.  Both were slated for release in Windows Vista and neither worked properly.  WinFS, under a new name, is only making a comeback now, and only in Windows Server 8.

It was after this that the former head of Microsoft’s Office division, Steven Sinofsky, took charge of Windows development.  Sinofsky was already a very secretive man and much of the secrecy now revolves around him, his personality and his desire to make certain that the only information that makes it out into the public domain is the correct information.

Thus Microsoft launched the Building Windows 8 blog where Sinofsky and his team have been trickling out information steadily since shortly before the Developer Preview of Windows 8 was released.  We can be certain that if Microsoft didn’t need to get developers writing Metro apps we certainly wouldn’t have seen Windows 8 then at all, and it wouldn’t be appearing for the first time until now.  This is because Sinofsky and the Windows development team hate releasing anything that’s neither finished nor ready.

Alas this was what they had to do with the Developer Preview and, as such, it’s had a lot of very bad, and probably equally unfair, press.  What Microsoft didn’t do was adjust their marketing strategy at the same time and, as such, the communication about the operating system has focused almost entirely on what’s new, what’s cool, where huge improvements have been made, but that it has not actually been answering many of the questions people have been asking.

This could be because at the time the answers to those questions simply didn’t exist.  Don’t forget that Windows 8 still had an awful lot of development to get through after the DP was signed off at the beginning of last August.  That’s a long time ago now.  It could equally be though that it wasn’t the discussion Microsoft wanted to have.  For example, telling IT Pros that they could simply switch to the desktop as their default UI could very well have undermined all the work they have been doing getting the world, and software developers, excited about Metro.  After all, if Metro was something that could just be switched off, why would people worry about it and you’d very quickly find it being relegated to a minor sub-feature in Windows like Media Centre.

I may be wrong with my assumptions and assertions here, but it’s certainly true that nobody within Microsoft is coming up with the answers.  This might change in the coming weeks or it might not.  One thing is for certain though, the wider world is simply not going to stop asking.

I don’t want you to think though that I will be spouting Microsoft’s official PR line, the company is perfectly capable of doing that on their own and they don’t need me to help them.  What I want to bring to the discussion though are the thoughts from someone who has spent some time with the OS, knows perhaps a bit more about what’s coming than I generally let on  ;)  and understands the different aspects of the OS in some depth.

Many of Martin’s concerns centre around the new dual-interface between the desktop and the Metro UI.  This is a legitimate question about why we either need or should have a dual-interface in an operating system.  I feel that Windows 8 is a transitional OS between the way we’ve been doing things now for around 30 years and the way we’ll be doing them in the future.  Anybody who has spent any time working with a tablet will intuitively use Metro and won’t even think about the fact that they’ve only got one (or two) apps open at a time.  We’ve just gotten used to it.

Martin is quite right though that people often have other things running in the background such as messenger apps, multiple browser tabs and so on.  If you look at the way some tablet operating systems handle these you can get some idea of the direction that we’re going in with Windows 8.  Don’t assume for a moment though that Metro in Windows 8, as seen in the Developer Preview or as expanded in the Consumer Preview (beta) will be anything like Metro when Windows 9 arrives, or even Metro when Windows 8 Service Pack 1 is delivered.  As a UI it’s still a concept, even though it’s roots can be traced back almost a decade ot Windows Media Centre, and as such much is set to change and evolve in the next three years.

So how this multi-application space works in Metro with Windows 8 will be determined by how people and companies write their apps.  We will see a great many different ways of doing things as many imaginative people bring their own ideas and concepts to the Metro UI, and it will be interesting to see where these take us and what Microsoft officially adopt.

Ultimately then we will lose the desktop.  The fact that we’ve been using it for the last thirty years doesn’t mean there isn’t a better way of working.  Metro may not be it, but we have to start somewhere.  I’m not sure how much I’ll use Metro myself but despite having a very uncluttered desktop, the prospect of having an interactive one that is telling me, all in one place, what my latest email is, who’s mentioning me on Twitter, what the forecast is for tomorrow, what my next appointment is, the current currency rate between the £ and the US$ and more is very appealing.

Regards using the desktop, Microsoft have said that, even if it’s just in group policy, you will be able to set the desktop as your default UI.  This will be important for people for whom all their software requires it.  While we’ve seen some very imaginative tablet apps appear such as Adobe Photoshop Touch, it will be several years before top quality professional-grade apps appear for Metro.

Martin also raised concerns about using Metro and the new Windows-orb’less desktop with a mouse and keyboard.  While Microsoft have not announced anything yet, they have said that everything you can do with touch you will be able to do with the mouse and keyboard.  Personally I’m looking forward to seeing what new mouse gestures they offer.  Also don’t forget that very soon we will have monitors and laptops with Kinect sensors in them as well.

Martin is quite right though that as things stand the dual-interface, and how you switch between them and control them, can be confusing.  It’s partly for this reason that one of my new books “Windows 8: Out of the Box” has been commissioned where it probably wouldn’t have been for Windows 7.  On this we’ll just have to see what Microsoft offer us to increase usability and to minimise the learning curve.

So what about the Start Menu?  Microsoft wrote a very long blog post detailing why they were making the changes they were back in October.  I am of the opinion however that the Start Menu should have been dropped when the Windows 7 taskbar was introduced.  These essentially offered us two completely different ways to find and launch programs.  All Microsoft need to do is find a way to control (or bucket) all the extra programs (uninstallers / utilities etc.) that appear in the Start Menu and all new programs should be pinned to the taskbar by default.  For my part, I won’t be sad to see the Start Menu go.

To reassure you Martin there is a great deal more coming for desktop users and IT Pros, but that none of it was finished in time for the Developer Preview.  When the Consumer Preview is released in a couple of weeks we will all see what these features are but Microsoft have promised several hundred small and large features in total still to come.

Let’s be honest that Windows 8, as I said earlier is a transitional OS, much in the way early builds of Apple’s OS X were when the company was moving people off old PowerPC software.  It is probably going to be painful for some, but if there really is a new way of working ahead of us that can genuinely help productivity, usability and most importantly accessibility with computers, then I believe we should embrace it.  For a while though it will have to co-exist with the traditional desktop and there can never be a truly integrated way to do that.

Changes have been introduced, but only in select browsers at this point of time. Google Chrome for instance uses sandboxing technology and automatic updates to keep users secure. The global updater that other web browsers use on the other hand is not nearly as thorough when it comes to downloading and applying updates as soon as they get released.

Adobe today has released a new Flash preview version for the Windows operating system that contains a new feature for the Firefox web browser.

Flash Player Protected Mode aims to limit the impact of Flash based attacks in Firefox on Windows systems. The new Flash Player feature is compatible with Firefox 4.0+ on Windows Vista or higher. Only a 32-bit version of the Flash Player release is available for download.

The security mode is automatically enabled when users view Flash Player files in the Firefox web browser. Flash contents are executed in a restricted environment that prevents attacks from reaching the operating system or other applications. It is basically a sandbox comparable with Google Chrome’s sandboxing technology, Protected Mode in Adobe Reader, and Protected View in Office 2010.

Firefox users running the new version will notice that two processes are started whenever Flash contents are accessed in the web browser with Protected Mode enabled.

Adobe notes that these are the “broker and sandbox” processes which only run if Protected Mode is enabled. These are child processes of the plugin-container.exe process if enabled in the browser. Plugin-Container adds crash protection to the browser.

The Flash Player Protected Mode version for the Firefox browser has known issues. On 64-bit Windows systems for instance, a right-click on Flash contents causes Firefox to hang. Here is the list of known issues.

• Flash Access support is not enabled in this build.
• Secure Sockets are not working in this build. (3101130)
  Open and Save dialogs can hang in Windowless Mode (3096944)
• Camera streams fail to play back when encoded with the H.264/AVC codecs (3096918)
• On 64-bit Windows, Right-Clicking Flash Content cases Firefox to hang (3096953)
• Custom context menus and clipboard copy does not work (3096977)
• Local Security Dialogs are not displayed (3096714)
  When printing to “Microsoft XPS Document Writer”, the “Save File As” dialog is always minimized (3096958)
  Some Stage3D content may cause Adobe Flash Player to exit silently (#3049089)
• Closing a SecureSocket connection may block Adobe Flash Player execution and result in timeout (#3045631)
• Camera fails to play back when camera stream is being encoded with H264/AVC codec (#3049298)
• IME may not be active in Windows Vista at times between browser sessions (#3055127)
• In SandBox Stand-Alone Player, some menu items in the Microsoft IME language bar do not respond to mouse clicks (2947549)
• Some Windows function keys such as F5 may prevent the Japanese IME candidate box to pop up (#3055096

Adventurous Firefox users find the Flash Player Incubator preview release over at Adobe Labs.

A final release version of the new Flash plugin version moves the Firefox browser security wise closer to Google Chrome.

It is a given at this point that full support for both Office 365, Microsoft’s SkyDrive cloud storage service and the next generation Windows Server 8 will be included.  This will include new features that will be coming for Windows Server this year that we may not yet know about.  It will also possibly mean that there is multi-platform support for things like Windows Phone, Windows 8 Metro and tablets.  This is something Microsoft have always been very good at… or have they?

While it’s easy to argue that services such as Office 365 are groundbreaking, and this is why it has been so incredibly popular since launching, and that the Office Web Apps and their integration with SkyDrive is extremely innovative and very welcome for a great many people, the web has sadly continued to move on and Microsoft Office simply hasn’t moved with the times.

One example of this is the rumoured reluctance of the Office development team to create a version of the suite for Windows 8′s new Metro interface.  To a certain extent this rumour, if true, is understandable as Microsoft Office is an incredibly complex piece of software and also the price of tablet and expected price of Metro apps is but a small fraction of the overall cost of Office.  However not only have web apps such as Google Docs and Office Live proven that the majority of people only need basic tools, but software such as Adobe’s Photoshop Touch for Android tablets has proven hos easy and simple it can be to create truly immersive and powerful touch-friendly apps.

Despite my Microsoft ‘lock-in’ for most things I also use other operating systems and software.  For the last six months I have been using an HP Touchpad tablet every day for light web browsing, email and work.  This weekend I will be taking delivery of a Blackberry Playbook and I will evaluate it and decide which of the two will become my day-to-day sofa lounging computer.  The problem with these devices, and also with the iPad, iPhone, Android tablets and Android Smartphones, Linux and to a limited extent also the iMac is the lack of iniquity in the world’s most ubiquitous integrated Office and collaboration suite.

Microsoft may be currently in the process of releasing limited apps for these platforms such as their communications platform Lync and the note-taking app OneNote, but the vast majority of Office users, if not the vast majority of computer users, use Word, Excel and PowerPoint.  These are the applications they need on their devices and I very much doubt you will ever find a regular Office user who will admit that working on and editing a document in the Office web apps, inside a browser is a friendly and accessible experience!

It’s odd to look now at how, I was going to say fragmented but that’s the wrong word, how broad the computer and operating system market is.  When Microsoft started producing Office and when it became truly popular, taking over from software such as WordPerfect and Lotus 123 we had only the PC and the Mac.  If you wanted to work on the move you had to synchronise your files with your PC and they could only be stored on your PC.

Now, more and more of us are storing our documents in the cloud, and you only have to look at the success of services such as Mozy, Google Docs and Office 365 to see that this is an unstoppable roller-coaster.  This is something that Office 15 and Microsoft need to address, not just launching a new version of the suite for the PC, but simultaneously launching it for every other operating system available.

For instance they’ll see what emails you receive and subscribe to, what videos you watch, what things you search for, what sorts of documents you work on and what the content of those documents is, what you blog about, what you take photographs of and where, what newspapers and blogs you read, what you buy online, what parts of the world you’re interested in (and where you live), who you chat to and what you like to buy.

All of this information, when put together, helps advertisers paint an incredibly detailed picture of you and with about a billion users worldwide, that information is incredibly valuable.

Now Microsoft have hit back with newspaper adverts in the US saying that this isn’t what want at all and that you should ‘obviously’ use their products and services instead.

In the advert they say…

Google is in the process of making some unpopular changes to some of their most popular products. Those changes, cloaked in language like “transparency”, “simplicity” and “consistency” are really about one thing: making it easier for Google to connect the dots between everything you search, send, say or stream while using one of their services.

But, the way they are doing it is making it harder for you to maintain control of your personal information. Why are they so interested in doing this that they would risk this kind of backlash? One logical reason: Every data point they collect and connect to you increases how valuable you are to an advertiser.

So is this fair enough, sour grapes or the pot calling the kettle black?  In fairness it is all of the above as there are elements of all of these in the advert.  Google make almost all of their revenue from advertising and the better and more attractive they can make their own advertising, and the data they collect on their users, the more companies they will attract and the more money they can charge for the (your) personal information.

Many people simply don’t want to be tracked and Microsoft point out that you can do this in the latest version of Internet Explorer.  What they don’t mention is that you can also do it the latest version of Google’s Chrome browser as well and that many of the advertising and data-mining tactics used by Google are also used by Microsoft.

Consumers will have to decide for themselves how they feel about the approach Microsoft are taking here, though many will just see it as a company taking advantage of an open goal for a publicity stunt.  The fact remains though that the US Congress is so concerned about the new changes Google is introducing that they are holding an closed door hearing to discuss what the changes mean.

So what do you think about Google’s new privacy policy?  Have you even heard about it and what do you think of Microsoft’s response?  Why not tell us in the comments below.

While it is possible to read the messages on Twitter about a trending topic, it is not guaranteed that you will see any links in the messages that you are reading.

That’s where the web service ShowMeTrend comes into play. The service links the top 10 Twitter trends of a particular day to Google News articles about that particular topic.

The trending topics get updated regularly, and it appears as if the links from Google News are pulled more or less whenever they appear there. All news articles are linking directly to the site they have been published on. It is furthermore possible to open Google News’ listing of all related news, or to go back and forward one news entry on the ShowMeTrend website.

Selections can be made at the top to switch from the day’s worldwide trends to country specific and date/time specific trends. About ten countries can be selected, from Germany and the United States to the Netherlands, UK or Brazil. The service’s back catalog of Twitter trends begins in October 2011, which is an indicator that it is a relatively new service. Users can not only select the date but also the time of a day to get a listing of trending topics.

One of the issues that the developers need to fix is the lack of links for some topics. Some trends show a white listing and not a single news item. One of the options here would be to either improve the search algorithm or to use additional news sources besides Google News.

ShowMeTrend is an interesting service for researchers, marketing agencies and individual users. Have you tried the service? If so, what is your take on it?

Let’s look first at the missing IT Pro features in the Developer Preview and what this release was actually for.  Microsoft are going after the tablet market aggressively, frankly they have no choice to do this now or to wave goodbye to it forever.  This is why Windows 8′s new Start Screen and Metro apps have been engineered the way they have.  Nobody can blame them for this either.  As we all now know from smartphones and tablets, any platform will live or die on the quality and quantity of the apps available for it.  Let’s just look at what happened to HP’s TouchPad, with the same now beginning to happen to the RIM Playbook.

For this reason it is essential that Windows 8 have a critical mass of Metro apps available in the new Windows store on the day that Windows 8 goes on sale.  The only way to do this is to start early, and the only way to get developers writing for the new interface and platform is to give them a copy to play with.  It was far from essential therefore that anything other than Metro was actually working for the giveaway date at their BUILD developer conference last September.

This doesn’t mean that Windows 8 will be bereft of IT Pro features, it just means that Microsoft’s focus in the run up to September was finishing Metro and making sure it was stable.  Microsoft have told me privately that plenty of new features for IT Pros simply weren’t finished by then.  They are coming and will all be finished for the beta.  In fact that build of Windows 8 will already have been signed off by now and will be going into escrow this week.

Microsoft have a huge mountain to climb in the tablet market and they’ve got to create a buzz with the beta.  Some people at the company have admitted to me privately that the company made a mistake in releasing the Developer Preview publicly instead of just through developer channels.  People downloaded it, expecting it to be a finished product and it simply wasn’t.  This has resulted in the new OS getting large volumes of negative publicity and people damning the finished product when they’ve actually seen less than half of it.

So why Consumer Preview then if IT Pros hated the Developer Preview?  Microsoft need to get consumers worldwide downloading, installing and using the Windows 8 beta in their multi-millions.  They need people talking on blogs and forums and in the press about how much they love it to spur on developers in writing apps for the platform.  Microsoft haven’t released any figures yet about how quickly Metro apps are being written, but this could mean it’s off to a slow start potentially.  Generating excitement and press coverage then is huge.  This doesn’t mean that the IT Pro features won’t be there, just that Microsoft have got to get Metro off to a flying start from being three or four years behind the market leaders.

The company will also want to completely differentiate the latest release from the Developer Preview by indicating that they were both completely different builds and intended for completely different audiences.  Simply calling it the beta next month wouldn’t do this and many people might assume that it will just include a few tweaks and bells on top of what was seen in September.  Thus this differentiation is absolutely necessary.  Especially given Microsoft’s private admission that a public release was an error last time.

The other reason to call it a Consumer Preview is that, for a while at least, all the media attention will be on the new Metro interface.  Microsoft know this and will try to use this coverage to spurr on app developers.  In short it’s actually quiite a clever move calling it this.   It doesn’t mean, as I’ve already said, that it won’t include the ability to switch off the new Start Screen, or won’t include Hyper-V, new multi-monitor tools and much more besides.  It is, frankly, just a name and IT Pros need not be concerned any longer.

They’re not wrong either as all of your software and hardware needs to be properly tested, which usually involves picking one or two choice non-critical departments and migrating them immediately to see what if any incompatibilities and problems occur.  Once this testing process is finished, normally after a couple of months, the deployment plan for sometimes hundreds of thousands of workers can begin and, as any IT Systems Administrator will tell you, that is a massive planning job.  It’s difficult in small companies as well because the same process needs to be observed to minimise any downtime that might result from problems arising in the deployment process.

Windows XP is already out of mainstream support which means there are no more service packs or upgrades available.  Extended support ends in April 2014.  After this time there will be no more bug fixes, no more patches and no more security updates.  You can be certain then that when this happens virus and malware writers will target the platform like never before.

The question arises then if Microsoft should continue support if so many people find XP as comfortable as an old shoe, and much more compatible with their older software than Windows 7?  Microsoft have already extended the support life cycle for Windows XP and it’s very unlikely that it would ever be extended again.  In fact I’d simply say that it will never happen.

So where does this leave businesses and home users who need to upgrade?  My advice is simply not to wait any longer.  This problem isn’t going away and unlike the millennium bug of twelve years ago, is a very real threat to businesses everywhere.  It’s not just their own systems too that can be compromised but all of the sensitive data they contain, much of which is about the general public.

Microsoft have many deployment tools that can help ease the burden of a migration and third-parties offer free virtualization environments that can help you keep older software running for a while longer.  If you have bespoke software that you need to use however that will not run, or not run properly under Windows 7 this needs to be addressed urgently.  The problems associated with XP software and Internet Explorer applications have been highlighted for years now.  Everybody knew the end of life was coming and too many businesses seem to be simply ignoring it because XP has always been here, and they expect that it always will.  They simply aren’t looking at the bigger picture of security, data protection, hacking and the associated fines that accompany these, some of which can be extremely hefty indeed.

But what will these companies do?  Will they wait until Microsoft report there’s just 600 days left?  500 days?  300 days even?  After all, can a company physically manage the process in under a year?  It’s good that Microsoft are actively highlighting the problem, but bad that many people are taking it as a marketing exercise to try and sell more copies of Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 and Office 2010.  It really isn’t that at all.  It’s a serious issue, it’s not going away and it needs to be dealt with quickly.

A new post by Microsoft employee Dharmesh Mehta on the Inside Windows Live blog highlights core reasons why users might want to switch from Gmail to Hotmail, before explaining the actual steps that migrates their email account to the Hotmail email service.

• Hotmail & Facebook work well together. You can update your Facebook status, chat with Facebook friends, view their updates, and comment right from your Hotmail inbox. You can’t do this from Gmail.
• You can easily share lots of photos and large attachments. Hotmail lets you share hundreds of photos or other files in one message using the integrated online storage from SkyDrive. You can’t do this in Gmail.
• Hotmail works great with Office. Using the Office Web Apps, Hotmail lets you view and edit Office docs for free right in your inbox. Gmail doesn’t work well with Office.
• Hotmail lets you get a handle on graymail. With customizable categories and scheduled sweeps, you can quickly clean up things like newsletters, social updates, and daily deals so you only see the mail that really matters to you. Gmail doesn’t have Sweep.

These features alone won’t convince many users to move their email account to Hotmail. Combined with Google’s announcement however they could be enough to get some users to move their accounts.

It needs to be noted though that Gmail offers features that Hotmail does not offer. This includes IMAP support or two step authentication, both of which are not supported by Hotmail.

The guide to switch from Gmail to Hotmail lists three steps.

• Create a Hotmail account. If you don’t already have one, you need to create a Hotmail account. The best way to do this is to get a new email address either @hotmail.com or @live.com. Or, if you already have an email address you want to keep using, you can keep using it and sign up here. You don’t have to use our domain.
• Import your old messages from Gmail. You’ll probably want to keep your old email and contacts so we’ve made it simple to bring them in. TrueSwitch is an easy tool which will import your email and contacts and forward any new email to Hotmail for 90 days. Go to the TrueSwitch site and follow the steps there. When you sign back in to Hotmail, you’ll notice that it’s beginning to import your emails (this could take a few hours if you have a lot of emails to bring over).
• Connect your Gmail account. This step is optional, but if you want to make sure you receive future messages from Gmail, you can have Hotmail automatically get all new emails that are sent to your old Gmail account. These are the steps to connect your accounts:
  a. In your inbox, click Options and then More options.

  b. Click Sending/receiving email from other accounts.

  c. Click Add an email account.

  d. Provide your Gmail account details.

Step 2 and 3 address core issues that users who move mail accounts want resolved before they even start thinking about it. Access to all previous mail messages and the forwarding of messages that are send to the old account are covered in those two steps.

Are you considering moving your Gmail account to another provider?

The popular download portal Download.com for instance has also started to bundle adware with the majority of downloads they provide site users with.

Today when I was downloading the latest Adobe Shockwave Player from Adobe’s website I noticed that both the slim online installer and full installer were now offering to install a third party application as well.

Near the end of the installation you are taken to a screen that will install Norton Security Scan on the system if you do not opt-out of it.

Norton Security Scan is a free program that checks computers for potential threats. It will download the latest definition updates to the system when an online connection is available. The program detects but does not resolve the issues though. It in fact very similar to scareware in this regard, which alerts the user of serious problems on the PC to sell a product.

You can only scan the system after launch. Initiating a scan will first check for updates. You will also be notified if security and web protection is installed on the system. Only tracking cookies were detected on the system, which did not keep the program from displaying a big Fix Now button on the left side of the screen. When you press it you are taken directly to a web page where you can purchase one of Norton’s security programs.

Removal of Norton Security Scan is straightforward though. Just click on Start Menu > Control Panel > Uninstall a Program and select it for uninstallation. You need to restart the PC to complete the installation.

Looking for free alternatives that you can make use of right away? Try AVG Anti-Virus Free or Avira Free Antivirus, but keep in mind that they too may be bundling their programs with toolbars.

Pretty Facebook Chat is a Google Chrome extension that lets you customize your Facebook Chat experience further. You will notice the red dot that the extension adds next to Facebook’s Chat menu on the lower right corner of the page. This is used to turn the extension on or off. Once you start a chat with someone on Facebook, you will notice the modified user interface right away.

The first thing that becomes obvious right away is that the chat window is no longer attached to the page. You can drag and drop the chat around on the page to move it to a position that you find more comfortable. You can however only move it around in the Chrome window, and not to a location outside of it.

You may also notice that the chat window is larger than the standard window on Facebook, and that its author has added interface customizations to it, like shadows or little animations.

Another thing that you will notice is the emoticons button that has been added to the window. You can click on it to display a large list of emoticons and images that you can add to the chat with a click. This even includes a list of miniature profile pictures that can be added to individual messages.

Here is a video that demonstrates the capabilities of the extension.

Facebook users who use the Chrome browser to connect to the site may want to take a look at the extension to spice up their chat experience on the site. The extension is available for direct installation at the official Chrome Web Store.

Depending on the terms you search for, you may end up with results from YouTube, Google News, Google+, Google Images or other products that Google has hard coded into the search results. That’s fine if those results are relevant to the search term. More often than not though, they are not.

Engineers from Facebook, Twitter and other social networking companies have now released a Don’t Be Evil bookmarklet and browser extension to make Google’s search results more impartial and relevant at the same time.

Once you have dragged the bookmarklet to your bookmark bar or bookmarks folder you can run it whenever you have performed a Google search.

Below are two screenshots. The first is a copy of a standard search for AT&T on Google, the second how the page looks like once you have run the bookmarklet.

The bookmarklet has replaced the Google+ listing with the more relevant Twitter account listing. We need to look at how relevancy is computed to make sure that it does not just favor other social networking sites over Google. According to the developers, their tool checks Google Search for the term to select the first social networking listing in the standard results as the most relevant term. Standard result means a page that Google has not hardcoded into the search results.

The bookmarklet will also analyze people and pages results on the right side with relevant results

and the suggestions when you start typing a name into the search form.

It is interesting to note that the bookmarklet enables the feature for the session, and not only for the current page that you are on. Results are automatically adjusted if you use Google Search functionality on the same page again.

Is this making the search results on Google more relevant? The answer should be yes if you look at a pool of users. When it comes down to the individual user, it depends solely on that user’s preference. Some users do not want to see social signals in the results at all, others may be using Google+ exclusively or a mixture of services. Users should not turn this into a Google vs Facebook vs Twitter vs Whatever fight. Instead, they should look at what they want their search results to be and voice that opinion loud and clear.

How they do that? By switching to another search engine for instance if they feel that Google Search has deteriorated in the past year. If users flock to other search engines, then Google may be willing to reanalyze their latest strategies and may return to impartial search results.

The developers have created a browser extension for Google Chrome that automates the process. You can download it only directly from the Focus on the user website.

Here is a video demonstration of the bookmarklet.

Keep in mind that while not officially released by Facebook or Twitter, it still has their stamp all over it. I suggest you read Giga Om’s comment on this.

What’s your take on this? Voice your opinion in the comments.

As an author who self-published my first book through Lulu I find this very interesting as it’s fantastic when a new publishing medium comes along to encourage budding authors everywhere.

However Wineman’s close inspection of the terms shows that Apple might have their own ideas on what is considered literary genius and how you might want to use their service.  Of particular interest is this paragraph…

Apple will not be responsible for any costs, expenses, damages, losses (including without limitation lost business opportunities or lost profits) or other liabilities you may incur as a result of your use of this Apple Software, including without limitation the fact that your Work may not be selected for distribution by Apple.

Which means that despite how great people might think your works are, they could be simply rejected by Apple for their own commercial reasons.  Now obviously this clause is intended to weed out offensive or illegal material, however it doesn’t say that.  What it does say is that Apple will decide whether your work is suitable for them.  The fact that they say that they cannot be held responsible for any costs, ie your time and hard work, incurred in writing a book using their tools is another kick.

It’s in the distribution section though that my friend and colleague Ed Bott, a veteran author, has taken special note of one particular clause.

B. Distribution of your Work. As a condition of this License and provided you are in compliance with its terms, your Work may be distributed as follows:

• (i) if your Work is provided for free (at no charge), you may distribute the Work by any available means;
• (ii) if your Work is provided for a fee (including as part of any subscription-based product or service), you may only distribute the Work through Apple and such distribution is subject to the following limitations and conditions: (a) you will be required to enter into a separate written agreement with Apple (or an Apple affiliate or subsidiary) before any commercial distribution of your Work may take place; and (b) Apple may determine for any reason and in its sole discretion not to select your Work for distribution.

This is the lock-in, the clause that states if you choose to use the iBook store to distribute your work you cannot sell it anywhere else.  Personally, as an author, I wouldn’t want to sign a lock in with any one provider, especially an untested one no matter how successful the Apple stores are at the moment.  When people want to buy books I’d want to be on Amazon and this is clearly where Apple are aiming their guns.

Now if you’re about to submit an angry comment about how anti-Apple I am, hold fire!  I think that Apple’s decision to help and encourage authors is a very welcome one.  Don’t forget I’m an author myself and have self-published a book.  This isn’t an easy process and anything that Apple can do to make the process easier will be very welcome.

Nobody ever reads terms and conditions though and these clauses could be considered both unfair and anti-competitive.  I would imagine that Apple will probably have to back down and it won’t be the first time that a company’s legal department got over-enthusiastic and misunderstood the market a product was aimed at.  I’m not going to say this was deliberate because any executive with a modicum of common sense would know it would never be allowed.

The fact remains that it is currently there and it’s not gone yet.  We will have to wait and see what, if anything, Apple say about this.  But if you want to also sell your works on Amazon, and don’t want to seek Apple’s “separate written agreement”, then you might want to steer clear for now.

But the technology market is different, and in the last three years we’ve seen it take on a whole new dimension where Windows is no longer the obvious operating system choice, and where comparisons are increasingly being made with IBM.  On tablets, a market that Microsoft invented back around 2003 they’re going to have a real fight on their hands, and in computing generally it’s no longer clear what devices and form factors we’ll be using in even five or ten years time.  What is obvious however is that the traditional desktop PC is well and truly on its way out.  Lastly new operating systems such as iOS, Android and WebOS have blown away the notion that people will resist a learning curve on new devices.  So what would the world be like if Microsoft stopped making Windows desktop and server products?

First of all it’s not very likely, Microsoft would probably drop Windows products last of all with their expensive research and development centres and other products such as Xbox falling by the wayside first, so there’s no need to worry in the short term.  Windows 8 is a big gamble though and if it fails then Microsoft will either have to backtrack with Windows 9, pull an immensely impressive rabbit out of their hat or face the consequences of poor decision-making.

There has already been talk that Google would like to bring Android to the desktop.  HP said the same of WebOS, which they are still developing or at least maintaining, and could put extra resources back into quickly.  Ubuntu Linux is now at least as friendly as Windows XP was, only the lack of big name software for the platform is holding it back now and Apple’s OS X is becoming more like iOS with every release.  So it’s already clear that there’s plenty of choice.

We might also expect an open-source upstart operating system to appear too and it might even be a reinvigorated WebOS.  Companies such as the Mozilla Foundation might see an opportunity as their Firefox browser begins to fade in popularity, and this is just one of several places where a new operating system might emerge.

In the business space, some of the GNU/Linux companies including Red Hat, might jump in with versions that will run Windows programs on the desktop.  This isn’t new and has already been done with operating systems such as Lindows (later renamed Linspire).  This product still exists today and could prove popular with businesses if Windows 8 and Windows 9 fail to deliver the working experience that they need.

Again it’s very unlikely that Microsoft will cease development of Windows in the next twenty years at least.  If they’d have done it even five years ago there would have been almost no alternatives to choose from.  Should they do it now though businesses and consumers would probably just shrug their shoulders and quietly move on to the next big thing.

Much of this depends on how well it sells and what the general uptake is, especially in the tablet market.  Windows 8 is a big tablet gamble as by the time it comes to market the competition will already have had a three year head start, that’s simply enormous and not to be under-estimated.  There are also issues and hurdles about running desktop apps on ARM hardware (which is frankly the only way we’ll have Windows tablets with great battery life for some years yet) and if people can’t run all their favourite desktop apps, or if it is too complex and difficult to use them, will they even bother with Windows tablets at all?  After all, this apparent bonus over the competition, along with the ability to use any USB device may not exist on ARM and as such, Windows 8 won’t be any better than iOS or Android overall.

I’m beginning to wonder then if it might be in Internet TVs that Windows 8 is set to make its biggest impact.  Microsoft have said nothing about Internet TVs past announcing plans to bring Windows Media Centre to set top boxes and then going very quiet on the subject.  Think about it though, when Windows Media Centre gets its Metro makeover, not only will it continue to be a great 10 foot interface for your TV, but that newly designed start screen will also make a great thing to use from a TV.

But, I hear you cry, how would you control it and wouldn’t the lack of touch, mouse of type on a TV present a barrier?  Here I believe Microsoft will have things covered.  At CES this last week we have seen some smart televisions being controlled by tablets.  We also know that small keyboards for 10 foot TV use are commonplace, I have one for my own Media Centre which is the hub of my own living room.  Now though we also have Kinect for the PC, a way to interact with our televisions that’s not just revolutionary but that we’re also used to using and that will genuinely fit the Metro paradigm.

While Kinect might not be the most useful way to type a web address on your TV, for general navigation it’s perfectly good and nobody complained about a complex qwerty remote control for Google TV did they.  Kinect is going to revolutionise how we use computers, I have no doubt about this, but it will also help Windows 8 make sense to more people and put Windows 8 to use in more arenas than are currently planned.

Alas, as I mentioned earlier, Microsoft have said nothing about Windows TV and it’s a shame as the new operating system would fit in this entertainment space perfectly.  This doesn’t mean to say they’re not either thinking about it or actively planning it.  They do have a habit of turning up late to the party though and this is something that causes me worry.

I will be buying a Kinect for my PC (I have Windows 8 books to write after all, and will need one early on) but I will also now be buying a second for my TV in the living room.  Here I’ve been using Windows Media Centre since 2003 as my main way to watch TV and video.  In all that time I’ve bemoaned the lack of a proper 10 foot email and web client.  Windows 8 could well be it and so I’m going to give it a try.  It’s with people using Windows 8 and their hardware, new and old, that innovation takes place.  It’s how it all started with Kinect, and it might just be the start of a huge uptake for the next version of Windows.

Facebook has just announced that the company will soon enable a feature on the social networking site that allows users to listen to music together on the site. Friends currently listening to music will have a music icon next to their online status in the Facebook sidebar.

Just hover with your mouse over the username and click on the listen with button to listen to the same music your friend is listening to.

The music will automatically be synchronized so that you start listening to the music at the same position that your friend is currently at.

Alexander Roche’s blog post at the official Facebook blog even hinted at the possibility that it will be possible to listening to music in groups, with one friend playing the DJ while everyone is listening to the music.

Information about the current session can be displayed in chat, with the possibility that other users join in to make it a group listening experience and chat session.

Music is powered by third party applications that users need to first enable on their accounts before they can listen with others to the same music.

Facebook notes that only “the people you’ve shared your listening activity with can see when you’re listening with a friend”. General privacy related settings for the application can be set under App Settings which for instance allows you limit music information to just yourself or a close group of friends.

The new feature is currently being rolled out. Official information indicate that it will take a few weeks before every Facebook user can make use of the new feature. This only affects Facebook users who have a music app installed or will install one on the site.

What’s your take on the new feature?

Fundamentally the “Send to Kindle” software adds a “Send to Kindle” option to the Windows context menu in Explorer when you right-click on one or multiple files (I know, that’s what I thought too!)  At its most basic this is just what it does.  There are few other features however that make it a little more useful than a way to get files and eBooks onto your device a second or two more quickly than normal.

One of these is that the Kindle doesn’t need to be physically connected to your PC when you do it.  The files will be synchronised with your Kindle Cloud and downloaded the next time the Kindle is on with WiFi activated.  This means that if you don’t have your Kindle handy when you realise there’s a useful file you’d like on it, this isn’t a barrier.

The other way it is useful is with a “Print to Kindle” option that will allow you to send pretty much anything and everything to your Kindle through the Windows print manager.  This latter feature will be genuinely useful for many people though, oddly, Amazon don’t make a fuss of either this or the wireless sync and you have do some digging on their website to find them out.

By default the Send to plug-in supports .DOC, .DOCX, .TXT, .RTF, .JPEG, .JPG, GIF, .PNG, .BMP and .PDF files though the printing option will extend this considerably.  Printed documents are sent as PDF files.

You can download the Send to Kindle software from the Amazon website for Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 and the Kindle apps for the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch are also supported.  Amazon say that support for other devices and for the Mac will be coming soon.