General Gaming Article

General Gaming Article

Rumor: Windows 8 Beta Launching in September, With An April 2012 RTM

Posted: 10 Jul 2011 06:00 PM PDT

Windows 8Steven Sinofsky and his team are guarding the release date of Redmond's next OS pretty carefully these days, but despite the all the clues that point to a 2012 launch we haven't had much to go on until now. According to ZDnet's Mary Jo Foley, Microsoft should be ready to launch Windows 8 by no later than summer 2012, with an official beta being seeded to developers at the September build conference. 

Foley's trusted source within Microsoft also claims to know for a fact that this will be the one and only beta release, with an RC version coming soon after in January if no major bugs are discovered. Microsoft has already openly admitted that they are somewhat less interested in feedback this time around, so a shorter beta period makes sense if the rumored timeline holds true.

I suppose we'll have to wait and see, but is less than 3 years too soon for a new version of Windows?  

Netflix Slams ISP Bandwidth Caps In The Wall Street Journal

Posted: 10 Jul 2011 12:17 PM PDT

SpartaNetflix's subscriber base for instant streaming seems to be growing by leaps and bounds, however, the rise of increasingly stingy bandwidth caps threaten to send it all crashing down. Netflix has introduced new methods of adjusting the video quality as a method of working around the problem, but the otherwise powerless company has finally decided to take it's fight with ISP's to the mass media. In an incredibly eloquent opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal, Netflix's general counsel David Hyman tells us what he thinks of bandwidth caps, and why we shouldn't put up with it.

According to Hyman, "Bandwidth caps with fees piled on top are a lousy way to manage traffic." He goes on to accuse ISP's of creating the false impression among consumers that "bandwidth is a scarce resource and that imposing caps and overage fees will relieve pressure on high-speed networks." Many high profile ISP's have very publically come out against bandwidth caps as a method of controlling infrastructure costs, and almost all network experts seem to agree that the cost of delivering 1GB of data is around one cent, and falling at a rapid pace. "Wireline bandwidth is an almost unlimited resource due to advances in Internet architecture. Adding more capacity is easy."

Hyman argues that at most, ISP's should focus on finding ways to control usage during peak hours, since delivering bits outside of this short period costs next to nothing. 

 

Opera Joins Chrome and Firefox On The Rapid Release Bandwagon

Posted: 10 Jul 2011 11:06 AM PDT

OperaChrome has brought plenty of amazing new innovations to the table since its introduction less than three years ago, but one feature of Google's flagship browser caught all the established players off guard, their ability to iterate at an unbelievable pace. Some simply accuse them of being too liberal with version numbers, but either way you look at it in less than 30 months Google has gone from a beta release, all the way to version 12, with no signs of slowing down anytime soon.

You can call it clever marketing if you like, but one thing seems clear; this type of version numbering seems to resonate with consumers. To keep a fickle generation of web users engaged with a brand, browser makers need to be seen as innovating as quickly as Google, or risk being left in the dust. Firefox famously re-enforced this concept by jumping from version 4 to 5 in a matter of months, and Opera is getting ready to join the party with today's alpha release of Opera 12, less than two weeks after the debut of version 11.5. 

Opera 12, codenamed "Wahoo" (yes after the fish), is designed to run alongside version 11.5, so users who wish to give the alpha version a try can feel free to do so, without ditching the most recent stable release. Currently the Opera 12 alpha is little more than a series of bug fixes and performance improvements, but we expect to see more as the weeks roll on. 

With Opera joining Firefox in the race to keep up with Chrome, do you think Redmond will finally cave to the pressure and step up the release rate for Internet Explorer? Business have clearly weighed in against the idea of rapid releases for compatibility reasons, so perhaps Microsoft will choose to sacrifice a bit of ground in the consumer space, especially if it means maintaining their foothold in the corporate world. 

Let us know what you think in the comments below.

Google Claims Orkut Will Co-Exist With Google+

Posted: 10 Jul 2011 09:43 AM PDT

OrkutWith Google + sucking up all the social networking mojo these days, it's easy to forget about good ole Orkut, Google's first attempt to bring over-sharing to the masses. With so much positive energy leading up to the final release, naturally everyone was wondering would become of Orkut's tens of millions of existing users, most of who reside in either India or Brazil. Turns out Google does have a plan, and the front page reads steady as she goes.

According to a Google spokeswomen, "Orkut and Google+ are different products, and will both exist. Over time, we'll determine what makes the most sense in terms of integrating these products". While it's not surprising Google wouldn't want to risk losing the millions of users it has already built up, it is surprising that they view Orkut and Google + as different products. Either way what this tells us is that Orkut users can go about their lives normally, and trust in Google to find some way to preserve their data in the future if they choose to migrate over to Google +.

It's a great to see Google doing the right thing here by allowing Orkut's users to transition over at their leisure, rather than pulling another Wave where users were given a matter of months to find alternate arrangements. 
Posted by Shri Krishna

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