I posted on Google Maps, so I might as well post on MSN’s new service called Virtual Earth. I’m not saying this because I’m a Google fanboy nor a MS hater, but because it’s a fact: Virtual Earth sucks bigtime. Why? Lots of reasons: It goes slow as hell, sometimes it just stops loading new imagery, leaving you a nice black window, the imagery IS in fact in black and white, no colors like in Google Maps, and it uses dated imagery: the same landstat pictures that have been available for years. How we know? Well for example take the Apple HQ in Cupertino, CA: MSN’s version...

Today the (public) Windows Vista bèta program started, together with IE7. PCWorld has a nice article about it that gives you a quick update on what the main improvements are (or should/will be) and some screenshots. One of the most interesting facts in the article was this: IE7 has this incredible NEW asskicking feature called ‘tabbed browsing’, and that’s not it: there’s also an RSS feed discovery button (located on the menu bar between the history and printer buttons, see screenshot)! I mean, from where do they get all those cool ideas?! Enough with the sarcasm,...

  REDMOND – the new operating system of the American computer giant Microsoft is called ‘ Windows Vista ‘. Microsoft confirmed that today on a briefing of sales and marketing employees in Redmond, America. The name had been circulating for quite some time on the Internet, but so far the new OS had only been known under the codename ‘ Longhorn ‘. Microsoft wants to bring Windows Vista on the market by the end of 2006, five years after Windows XP was launched. I waited to post the new name here until it was officially confirmed, because at first I didn’t...

Slashdot: “The current issue of the Times Educational Supplement is running an article in which they cite a report by the British Educational Communications and Technology Association telling primary and secondary schools in the UK to dump Microsoft Operating systems and products in order to save millions. In a report to be published next week, obtained by The TES, Becta will highlight schools which have turned to free software instead of the market leader’s products. Becta does not name Microsoft in its analysis. But almost all schools use some of the company’s products. Their...

March 9, 2005, San Francisco, Calif.—Today at the annual Game Developers Conference (GDC), Microsoft® announced the first details about its next-generation Xbox® video game system. Hardware, software, and services are being fused to power enhanced gaming and entertainment experiences. You can now view the footage of the GDC with some previews of the next XBox on xbox.com… It looks pretty nice I mean, look at these pics: it even (or should I say finally?) has a media player! Watch the Next XBox Video here View the official report here

While internet news sources today have reported that Microsoft is readying to launch its next generation Xbox hardware in America and Europe in the fourth quarter of this year, Eurogamer has learnt that the specific timing for the machine’s roll-out is late October or early November, and merely weeks after the US launch. The exact date is yet to be solidified. Speaking under conditions of strict anonymity, senior American and British development, publishing and retail sources have confirmed the launch window in the past weeks. It is also now widely known among British sources that Microsoft...

Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) said Tuesday that it plans to acquire Sybari Software Inc., which makes programs designed to protect business computer networks from viruses, worms and other threats. Terms of the deal, the latest in a series of security-related purchases by Microsoft, were not disclosed. Sybari is privately held but filed papers last year for an initial public stock offering. Redmond-based Microsoft is gearing up to release a set of antivirus software products that will compete with offerings from companies such as Symantec Corp. (SYMC) and McAfee Inc. (MFE) The Sybari acquisition will...