Now that the actual development of Windows 7 is finished, Microsoft seems to begin with Windows 8 according to different sources on the Internet. The new operating system will include innovative new features like cluster support, a “revolutionized file access in offices” and is called a “cutting-edge project”.

The rumors that Microsoft begins developing the Windows 8 before Windows 7 has been released is based on a job description on the Microsoft website saying:

“Are you a talented SDE/T Lead looking for the next technical challenge on a key operating system component? Are you passionate about distributed systems, networking, file systems and want to be the leader of a cutting edge project? Are you looking for a team with abundant opportunities to grow? If so, we have the position for you!

DFSR is Microsoft’s premier file replication engine and is an integral part of our branch office strategy and File Server role. It can scale to thousands of servers and replicate hundreds of terabytes of data. We have shipped the technology that powers file sharing in Windows Live Messenger, Windows Meeting Spaces (Vista) and Branch Office replication in Windows Server 2008 which has strong customer deployment. DFSR technology saves MS-IT and our customers more than 80% WAN bandwidth by using advanced On-The-Wire differential compression.

For the upcoming version of Windows, new critical features are being worked on including cluster support and support for one way replication. The core engine is also being reworked to provide dramatic performance improvements. We will also soon be starting major improvements for Windows 8 where we will be including innovative features which will revolutionize file access in branch offices.”

Since Steve Ballmer announced shorter periods of developing their operating systems after the long time we had to wait for Vista, it makes sense that Microsoft starts that early with the development. On the other hand, it may turn out that it’s just a typing mistake in the job description. Until this moment, Microsoft didn’t confirm the speculation.

Just a few weeks ago Futuremark, a company known for creating benchmark programs for Windows computers (3DMark and PCMark), released a new benchmark called “Peacekeeper“. Peacekeeper tests various browser functions such as JavaScript arrays, DOM functionality, rendering and other things often used by today’s modern websites like YouTube, Facebook and GMail.

Why would you need a browser benchmark? The better a browser performs on your system, the faster websites are shown and can interactively been used. This is especially needed when browsing Web 2.0 websites, and on low-end PCs such as netbooks the difference can really be a barrier. I experienced this using my favourite browser Firefox 3.0 on my Asus Eee PC 900: When typing and address into the address bar, the “intelligent search” feature needs so much computing power that the whole browser is stuck. Also using GMail or Facebook doesn’t make fun when you have to wait for a second before you can click, scroll, type, etc… That’s why I switched to Google Chrome. Jukka Mäkinen, Head of PC Products and Services at Futuremark, said:

“People have more choice now in how they experience the internet than ever before. But they may not realize that performance between browsers can vary dramatically, especially on lower-end PCs. With Peacekeeper, it’s simple to compare different browsers and see which one offers the best performance on your PC.”

Benchmark your browser now using Peacekeeper!

I compared all the major browsers on my computer (Pentium 4 3.2GHz with Hyper-Threading, onboard S3 graphics) and got quite interesting results:

[poll id="6"]

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Do you know TinyURL? It is a service that allows you to create a short URL from a long one, when somebody accesses the short one, it will redirect him to the original website.

Well, okay, that may be quite useful, e.g. for Twitter where your message size is restricted to 140 characters. Still, there are times when making things convenient for people just won’t do. In those cases, you need to make the URL bigger, whether for a light jab in the ribs, or a test of how dedicated someone is to checking out your link, even if it means re-pasting truncated email text by hand. If someone complains about having to copy and paste such a huge URL, you really can’t expect them to be the kind of team player who logs the necessary hours for the next big thing, right?

In this case FreakingHugeURL will do the job for you.

This freaking website made the nice, short URL of my blog to a monster with 1475 characters!

On April 1st, YouTube decided to flip their complete website including videos, text and icons and to name it the “new layout for better watching experience”.

A click on “tips for viewing the new layout” revealed that

“modern computer monitors give a higher quality picture when flipped upside down—kind of like how it’s best to rotate your mattress every six months. You might find that YouTube videos look better this way.”

They also offer other helpful tips like turning your head to the side or moving to Australia.

Anyway, if you want to see the flipped design still after the April joke was over, you can just add “&flip=1″ as parameter to your video URL, meaning:

Original Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuRiW6iGgu4

Flipped Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuRiW6iGgu4&flip=1

Now you will be able to see the whole website upside down! Have fun turning your head!

FriendMap is my first Facebook Application. It creates a zoomable world map for all your friends. Now you can see who lives where, who moved currently and how big the distance between you and a friend actually is!

The application features complete profile integration with boxes, tabs and feed stories and fully supports the Facebook user interface with invitations, notifications and so on. Thus it feels as if it were part of Facebook and not an external application.

Go to the FriendMap Facebook Application

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In the last time, E-Book readers are coming up. In the beginning, they were heavy, had bad displays and were really expensive. But by now, the developers managed to create some products really looking worth to buy. Currently, there are two major readers: the Amazon Kindle and the Sony PRS-505.

With Kindle, Amazon wants to overtake the E-Book reader market. It features an 15cm display with 800×600 pixels and has the size of a normal book. The user can download E-Books directly from the Amazon shop using a free mobile connection, so you’ve got basically all available books with you at every time. Up to 200 books should fit into the internal memory which can be extended with an SD memory card.
The battery should last for one week, since it only needs power to turn pages (once the new page is loaded, the display keeps the image without needing any power). In addition, the user can add comments to lines of the E-Book. Price: 280€ (360 US$)

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Geode is a new plugin made by Mozilla labs for Firefox to determine your exact geographical location. You may download it here. On the welcome website, it says:

“Geode provides a rudimentary implementation of geolocation for the current version of Firefox uses a single hard-coded location provider to enable Wifi-based positioning conforming to the W3C Geolocation specification so that developers can begin experimenting with enabling location-aware experiences today.”

Since there are many upcoming web services using geotagging, Mozilla serves Firefox users with the first experimental browser plugin for geolocation determination.

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The T-Mobile G1 phone, also known as the “Google phone”, will be released soon. It is the HTC Dream phone, running Google’s new mobile phone operating system “Android“. Google founded the Open Handset Alliance in 2007 with other big companies like HTC, Samsung, Nvidia and T-Mobile, in order to develop an open source platform and applications for mobile devices. Android is an open-source project, based on the Linux kernel, which can easily be extend it with open source applications.

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Google’s new browser Chrome: innovative, fast, safe, the perfect all-round browser. But is it really as great as it sounds? It has got many new features, including the new V8 JavaScript engine, dynamic tabs, crash control, incognito mode, and so on.

But many people criticize the new “box for everything”, as Google calls its adress bar. As you type, it suggests websites from your history or favorites, but also websites which match your search criteria. This is realized by sending whatever you type to Google, including a unique browser ID. Using this browser ID, Google can track your internet activity all the time. There are ways to disable this tracking, but who really knows about this trick?

Now there is a German Company who used gaps in Google’s BSD license to create a full version of Chrome without any personal data transmitted to Google using the open source code of Chromium (the code on which Chrome is based) and reverse-engineering of the original Chrome browser.
The result is called “SRWare Iron”. You might try it anyway, here’s the link:

German: http://www.srware.net/software_srware_iron_download.php

English: http://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron_download.php

Hey guys,

Just yesterday I started a new site with the best receipes for milkshakes and cocktails. I write it only in German, but the Google Translation isn’t that bad actually. I hope you like it and enjoy the drinks!

Original (German) site: http://www.multimolti.com/rezepte/

English Google Translation: Link