Live Looking Livelier
Late last week, Redmond
continued
its Live PR push, announcing or at least pre-announcing a heap of new consumer
products and services.
Microsoft plans to enhance its Windows Live services with new Redmond-crafted
tools along with items built by partners such as LinkedIn and Flickr. Microsoft
also continues to pump out developer tools for the cloud and Web services --
so many, in fact, that it's actually hard to keep track. And I keep track for
a living!
Microsoft really needs to distill this all into one cohesive, understandable
strategy -- a tough thing for a company of programmers to do sometimes.
Parallels Gains More Mac Power
Parallels, formerly SWsoft, just enhanced
its hypervisor for Macs that lets these Cupertino beauties run Windows and
Linux.
Parallels Desktop 4.0 supports a staggering 45 different guest OSes, works
with DirectX 9.0, and has backup built right in.
Parallels is a feisty and interesting company, with two lines of server virtualization
tools and some cool desktop action, as well. I profiled it a while back here.
Sun Loses 6,000 Watts of Employee Power
Sun Microsystems, one of the few tech companies with true spunk, is pink-slipping
some 6,000 workers. That's almost the entire population of the small Massachusetts
town I live in.
Sun has been going through a difficult transition. Ten years ago it was like
Apple; almost all of its technology -- SunRay, SPARC and Solaris -- were entirely
its own. It's transitioning to a dual strategy, hanging on to its unique technology
while embracing other technologies (hint: like Windows!).
The Sun layoffs are a pre-emptive strike. It expects business to slump and
customers to delay buys, and wants to get ahead of the problem. Every smart
business person I know is doing the same. What about you? How are you preparing
for what could be an economic tsunami? Give us advice we can use at [email protected].
Mailbag: Patch Count Wrong?
For this month's Patch Tuesday, John got way more than the two
patches Microsoft announced:
It is curious that the patches that Microsoft sends to the home users
seldom matches the number you give. This week I got eight updates to my home
computer. No, these were all new. I use my computer daily, and on patch Tuesday,
M$ sends me updates that install when I shut down for the day. This week it
was EIGHT. That is a lot more than the TWO you warned me about. Do you have
any idea why the count is different?
-John
Have an answer for John? How about a comment on anything else covered today?
Send 'em all to [email protected].
About the Author
Doug Barney is editor in chief of Redmond magazine and the VP, editorial director of Redmond Media Group.