otaku244 writes “Since 1998, Microsoft TechNet has been a the mainstay for all system developers attached to the Microsoft Platform given the ease of access to almost every product the company has produced. Unfortunately, the days of a cheap, unlimited Microsoft development stack are coming to an end.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Microsoft To Shut Down TechNet Subscription Service
An anonymous reader writes “Netflix today announced that it has finally taken the first step towards ditching Silverlight for HTML5, largely thanks to Microsoft, no less. The company has been working closely with the Internet Explorer team to implement its proposed ‘Premium Video Extensions’ in IE11 on Windows 8.1, meaning if you install the operating system preview released today, you can watch Netflix content using HTML5 right now. Back in April, Netflix revealed its plans to use HTML5 video in any browser that implements its proposed ‘Premium Video Extensions.’ These extensions allow playback of premium video (read: with DRM protection) directly in the browser without the need to install plugins such as Silverlight or Flash.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Netflix Ditches Silverlight With HTML5 Support In IE11
wiredmikey writes “Security response personnel at HP are ‘actively working on a fix’ for a potentially dangerous backdoor in older versions of its StoreOnce backup product line. The company’s confirmation of what it describes as a ‘potential security issue’ follows the public disclosure that malicious hackers can use SSH access to perform full remote compromise of HP’s StoreOnce backup systems. The SHA1 hash for the password was also published, putting pressure on HP to get a fix ready for affected customers. SecurityWeek has confirmed that it is relatively trivial to brute-force the hash to obtain the seven-character password. The HP StoreOnce product, previously known as HP D2D, provides disk backup and recovery to small- to midsize businesses, large enterprises, remote offices and cloud service providers.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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HP Confirms Backdoor In StoreOnce Backup Products
New submitter Eugriped3z writes with an article in the New York Times that “indicates that manufacturing defect rates for solar panels manufactured in China vary widely, anywhere from 5-22%. Secrecy in the terms of settlements negotiated by attorneys representing multi-million dollar installations perpetuate the problem by masking the identity of unscrupulous or incompetent actors. Meanwhile, Reuters reports that unit labor costs in Mexico are now lower than in China.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Google just announced a new interface for you Gmail based around customizable tabs. The goal? To you help manage your goliath of an inbox. It looks pretty incredible. Read more…
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Gmail’s Getting a Neat Freak Overhaul for Web and Mobile
The web becomes more and more capable each day, finding ways to replace what you do on your desktop. In the very near future you’ll talk to your web apps, enjoy complex animation without the drain of Flash, and maybe even plug in your guitar. These features and more already exist, and they’re coming to the broad internet this year. Read more…
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The Awesome New Technology That You’ll See on the Web This Year
According to Bernhard Seefeld, product management director at Google Maps, “this is the most significant overhaul of Maps since it launched in 2005.” We sat down with both Seefeld as well as Jonah Jones — lead designer of Google Maps — following a marathon keynote to kick off Google I/O . Their slice of the event centered around the desktop refresh of Google Maps , but there’s actually a lot more to be excited about than what was announced today. Essentially, the preview that I/O attendees were granted access to is the first instance of Maps for desktop using vectors instead of tiles. In lay terms, that’s a far sexier rendering engine, and users of the mobile Maps products will already be familiar with how it feels. Seefeld affirmed that the new desktop Maps is slightly quicker to load, but you’ll want a WebGL-supporting browser to take advantage of the bells and whistles. (In our tests, the Maps experience was far superior in Chrome compared to Firefox.) We toyed around with the new layout for a bit, and overall, it looks and feels better. Refreshing, you could say. The search box is now entirely more useful, popping up intelligent cards beneath places you search for. You’ll have glanceable access to operating hours, surrounding traffic and recommended places — that’s not new, it’s just surfaced in a more sensible way now. There’s also dedicated shortcuts to directions and starring. Visually, it looks a lot nicer, the zooms are a little cleaner, and the search box is a tad more useful. Street View is accessed via the search box now, and there’s a toggle on the right side that overlays Google Earth data and (impressively) shows it from varying degrees of tilt. The magic really begins after you sign in with your Google account. If you’ve starred or rated a restaurant using Google Maps or Google+, for example, it’ll automatically populate recommended eateries that your friends have rated highly. If, of course, your friends are using Google+. Gallery: Redesigned Google Maps for Desktop hands-on at Google I/O 2013 Filed under: GPS , Software , Google Comments Source: Google Maps preview
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Redesigned Google Maps hands-on: vector-based, more personal and coming soon to mobile
An anonymous reader writes “Mozilla on Tuesday officially launched Firefox 21 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Improvements include the addition of multiple social providers on the desktop as well as open source fonts on Android. In the changelog, the company included an interesting point that’s worth elaborating on: ‘Preliminary implementation of Firefox Health Report.’ Mozilla has revealed that FHR so far logs ‘basic health information’ about Firefox: time to start up, total running time, and number of crashes. Mozilla says the initial report is pretty simple but will grow ‘in the coming months.’ You can get it now from Mozilla.” Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Firefox 21 Arrives
At Adobe’s annual MAX conference today, the company announced a major overhaul of the ten-year-old Creative Suite, which will now be known as Creative Cloud. From now on, you won’t buy CS6 or CS7—you’ll buy a $50 per month subscription to CC (happily, the first year will only cost $30 for anyone with a CS3 or later serial number). Read more…
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Say Goodbye to Creative Suite: Adobe CS Is Now Creative Cloud
For a long time now, our smartphones have been getting more and more, well, smart. They do more things. You probably haven’t beaten your phone at chess in years. And the race to cram increasingly granular, eventually useless, features into them has defined the past few years of phone making. Except the next big waypoint won’t be some technological marvel like week-long battery life . It’s something much simpler: Plain old chat. Read more…
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The Next Killer Feature in Smartphones