Tim Anderson's ITWriting http://www.itwriting.com/blog Tech writing blog Tue, 09 Feb 2010 09:02:11 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Visual Studio 2010 RC arrives with go-live license 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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]]> http://www.itwriting.com/blog/2217-visual-studio-2010-rc-arrives-with-go-live-license.html Palm Ares: an online IDE for WebOS development 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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]]> http://www.itwriting.com/blog/2215-palm-ares-an-online-ide-for-webos-development.html Pros and cons of Adobe’s LiveCycle services in the cloud Adobe has fully released LiveCycle Managed Services, offering a hosted platform for LiveCycle applications. The software is configured and managed by Adobe, but runs on Amazon’s EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) virtual servers.

LiveCycle is a suite of applications which I think of as two things combined. On the one hand, it forms a server platform for

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]]> http://www.itwriting.com/blog/2212-pros-and-cons-of-adobes-livecycle-services-in-the-cloud.html Will your laptop run Windows 7? 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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]]> http://www.itwriting.com/blog/2211-will-your-laptop-run-windows-7.html Google storage 10 times cheaper than Azure – but not as cheap as Skydrive According to Jerry Huang of Gladinet, whose Cloud Desktop exposes a variety of cloud storage services as mapped drives in Windows Explorer, Google storage is “about 10 times cheaper” than Windows Azure. Since Amazon S3 has similar prices to Azure, I imagine Google undercuts that by some margin as well.

Gladinet compares Google and Azure using

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]]> http://www.itwriting.com/blog/2208-google-storage-10-times-cheaper-than-azure-but-not-as-cheap-as-skydrive.html Adobe Flash getting faster on the Mac 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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]]> http://www.itwriting.com/blog/2204-adobe-flash-getting-faster-on-the-mac.html What’s new in Visual Studio 2010 – more than you may realise 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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]]> http://www.itwriting.com/blog/2202-whats-new-in-visual-studio-1010-more-than-you-may-realise.html Adobe Flash vs Apple iPad: RIA in the balance 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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]]> http://www.itwriting.com/blog/2197-adobe-flash-vs-apple-ipad-ria-in-the-balance.html Amazon gives in to Macmillan thanks to power of Apple 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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]]> http://www.itwriting.com/blog/2196-amazon-gives-in-to-macmillan-thanks-to-power-of-apple.html Apple’s proxy war with Amazon over ebook pricing and market 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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]]> http://www.itwriting.com/blog/2190-apples-proxy-war-with-amazon-over-ebook-pricing-and-market.html