With so much of your entertainment digitized, did you notice there was a war over your DVD collection?

Once upon a time when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, the battle was VHS vs. Betamax. Beta was better quality; VHS won.

Recently, a similar fight was had between the next version of DVD. Would it be HD DVD or Blu-ray. Microsoft was backing HD DVD, so you just know that the megacorporation won, right?

Eh, not so much.

Blu-ray has unequivocally won the high-definition video format war, and Microsoft has been surprisingly sanguine. They’ve canceled production of its HD DVD drive for the Xbox 360 and announced that they will support the Blu-ray format going forward.

Out with a whimper, and a tip of the hat.

“I think the world moves on,” said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer at the Mix ‘08 conference in Las Vegas.

And so it does.

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Microsoft has made Internet Explorer 8 available to developers at http://www.microsoft.com/ie/ie8.

If you are an IE user, this means an upgrade is on its way.

The new version will have some cool features. One will be the ability to save work being done on a web site down to your personal computer when an Internet connection goes down.

Another lets you highlight a street address on any web page and, with one click,  see a map of that location. You’ll also be able to highlight product names and click to see if they are available for sale on eBay.

Perhaps the most anticipated feature of this new browser is what it doesn’t do: demand an upgrade of web site designs. Unlike IE7, the new release sees the most standards-compliant version by default when loading a site. Web designers everywhere will be happy to learn that they need not redesign all their codes.

It’s not an altruistic move or even one meant to assuage developers. After the IE7 release, European Union nations launched an antitrust investigation into Microsoft and how Microsoft ensures rival Web browsers are not fully compatible with Internet Explorer.

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If I’ve said it once I have said it a million times…nothing is better on a Monday morning than waking up and finding in my feed reader a post from someone that is in love with the MoGo Mouse.  Lucky for you and I, today was one of those days!

That’s right my faithful friends, I just so happened to find a post over on John Robbins’ Blog!  John was one of the rad individuals selected as a Microsoft Valuable Professional and as such was awarded a MoGo Mouse BT in his little care package!  That said, he had some pretty darn good things to say about our little product that could.  Here’s a little quote from his post:

“I just needed a mouse for a short time, I popped out the MoGo Mouse. After a painless pairing with my Lenovo X60 Tablet, I got to work. After ten minutes of real use I realized that the MoGo Mouse is far more comfortable than I could have ever imagined. In fact, I haven’t pulled out my Microsoft mouse since.”

First off, congrats on the MVP award, second off, thank you for your kind words.  We couldn’t be happier you enjoy the product and know it will serve you well in the months to come!

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The “Into Tomorrow” webisode with Jack has gone live!

Check it out:

CES 2008 ITTV Update - Part 2 - video powered by MetacafeAlso?

Congratulations again to the 2008 Microsoft Valuable Professionals. They received a MoGo mouse as part of their ‘Congratulations! Swag!’ and that’s leading to a whole new world of converts!

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I just found this vid from Microsoft’s liveblogging of the Consumer Electronics Show last January in Las Vegas. The MoGo Mouse made a HUGE splash there.

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From the response we’ve had from Microsoft Vista users, it’s clear that there’s a lot of PC readers here. To that audience, we’d like to make sure you’re aware of a ‘Critical’ security update released by Microsoft yesterday.

As part of their regularly scheduled software update, they bundled 6 patched. 3 of them are rated ‘Critical’ by Microsoft - meaning you really should make sure they are installed on your system where applicable.

Of the 3, the one getting most of the noise is an Excel patch that targets a vulnerability in the company’s spreadsheet program that could let hackers break into a PC if its user opened a tainted spreadsheet.

It’s important you contact your System Administrator if you are in a supported situation or follow the instructions if you’re solo to make sure you’re protected by this patch.

Also packaged in this bundle:

• Microsoft also addressed holes in its .NET Framework, the library of computer code that is part of Windows Vista and versions of Windows XP, Windows 2000 and Windows Server 2003.
• Microsoft addressed a security vulnerability in Windows 2000 Server and Windows Server 2003.

While you’re at the site, remember you can sign up to have these periodic updates automatically pushed to your system - which is the easiest and smartest approach.

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Obvious Statement #147: Your web-based apps stop working when your drop your Internet connection.

But… what if it didn’t have to be that way?

Last week as the worldwide Google Developer Day 2007 kicked off, Google officially announced what had been its worst-kept secret - Google Gears is here.

Google Gears is an extension that allows developers to enhance their web-based applications (like Google Reader, see beta here) so they work even without web access.

Simplistically? It’s open-source multi-platform JavaScript Application Programming Interface (API) that lets Web applications work offline by creating a local cache on your hard drive .

Yes, before you say it, the desktop traditionally is Microsoft territory.

But Google Gears is more than another David-wannabe with a slingshot and a sharp rock. Already, Gears has a lot of support behind it: Adobe Software, Mozilla Corp., and Opera Software all made statements of support.

No one is arguing that traditional desktop applications have their place. The code does not yet exist to make a product like Adobe’s Creative Suite, especially the industry-standard Photoshop, effective as a web-based app.

But for the standard corporate user, managing desktop applications can be a hassle. Even if you are using a product - like Lotus Notes - that lets you work offline or online, you still have to synch and organize as you move between laptop and desktop, or during hardware upgrades. “I think the growth of the Internet has really reflected the difficulties people have running desktop software,” Chris DiBona, open source programs manager at Google told InformationWeek.

What does Google Gears mean right now? Not much beyond a way to make it easier to bring today’s industry news with you onto the airplane.

But looking at the horizon, expect an evolution. Google has word processing and spreadsheet applications that will soon be available to you for both online collaboration and as an offline tool.

Now that developers have their hands on the code, we’ll stay on top of the products and innovations as they are released.

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