Tim Anderson’s ITWriting

Visual Studio 2010 RC arrives with go-live license

By tim, on February 9th, 2010 Follow tim on Twitter

Microsoft has made the Release Candidate of Visual Studio 2010 available for download to MSDN subscribers. From tomorrow (10th February) the same release will be available to everyone. There is a go-live license so you can use this in production if you wish, though if the full release comes in April as planned, it hardly

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Palm Ares: an online IDE for WebOS development

By tim, on February 8th, 2010 Follow tim on Twitter

I spent a few minutes trying out Ares, Palm’s web-based IDE for WebOS, the OS used in the Palm Pre smartphone.

Ares is in public beta and I’m not going to pretend I found it smooth going. No doubt it will be fine after a little patient learning. It is amazing, with drag-and-drop visual interface builder,

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Will your laptop run Windows 7?

By tim, on February 6th, 2010 Follow tim on Twitter

I’ve recently upgraded two HP laptops to 32-bit Windows 7. In both cases I did a wipe and clean install. The laptops were of similar vintage, around two years old, a Compaq 6710b and a Compaq 6720s. However, if you search for drivers on HP’s site, you will find a full set of Windows 7

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Adobe Flash getting faster on the Mac

By tim, on February 4th, 2010 Follow tim on Twitter

According to Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch:

Flash Player on Windows has historically been faster than the Mac, and it is for the most part the same code running in Flash for each operating system. We have and continue to invest significant effort to make Mac OS optimizations to close this gap, and Apple has been helpful

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What’s new in Visual Studio 2010 – more than you may realise

By tim, on February 2nd, 2010 Follow tim on Twitter

I’m beginning to think Microsoft has under-sold Visual Studio 2010. Of course it is a huge product, as I observed back in October, especially since it includes a major new release of the .NET Framework as well as updated tools, but I thought I had discovered most of the significant new features. Still, when I

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Adobe Flash vs Apple iPad: RIA in the balance

By tim, on February 1st, 2010 Follow tim on Twitter

Adobe evangelist Lee Brimelow has posted some images of well-known sites that break if Adobe Flash is not enabled. His point: if Apple’s iPad does not support Flash, none of these sites will work correctly.

While true in the short term, I do not think this is an effective line of argument.

Let’s presume that you

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Amazon gives in to Macmillan thanks to power of Apple

By tim, on February 1st, 2010 Follow tim on Twitter

In a posting on its forum, Amazon has declared defeat in its disagreement with Macmillan over ebook terms – one most likely influenced by Apple which is offering better terms to publishers for its forthcoming iPad:

Macmillan, one of the "big six" publishers, has clearly communicated to us that, regardless of our viewpoint, they are committed

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Apple’s proxy war with Amazon over ebook pricing and market

By tim, on January 31st, 2010 Follow tim on Twitter

Amazon has apparently withdrawn all Macmillan titles from sale (print and electronic) because of an argument with the publisher over the terms of sale. Macmillan CEO John Sargent says:

This past Thursday I met with Amazon in Seattle. I gave them our proposal for new terms of sale for ebooks under the agency model which will

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