Windows 8 has been heralded as the biggest change to the PC OS since the 95 flavor (which celebrates a 17th anniversary this year). There are a vast number of changes ushered in by the Metro-style interface you may yet to fall in love with on a Windows Phone
What was once a Start Menu is now a full-screen view of tiles that you can scroll through on a horizon line. You can also pin applications, shortcuts, documents, webpages and any number of other things to in any way you like. The lack of windowing simplifies development of the many full-screen apps to come, but users new muscle memory nay become Alt+tabbing. A slew of gestures make up for the scarcity of visual indicators but each one has a mousey alternative.
Microsoft’s version of iCloud is a handy desktop resource since you can push files of nearly any type up to your cloud account, even marking them as public for sharing. This is a sharp contrast to Apple ‘s Mountain Lion which tightly controls which apps will be doing the sharing — and the receiving.
New IE10, the Metro-styled Internet Explorer 10 presents “every pixel of the page” for viewing. No chrome, no UI. It resembles a tablet browser.
Microsoft attributes the “one million downloads” figure to its Building Windows Twitter account. It’s a Consumer Preview. Not a beta.Windows 8 is here! Download the Preview for yourself at http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/download.
And what a week it was!
Google: Google has firmly planted its new, singular “Privacy” flag into the virtual terrain that covers all of its properties –Search, Social, Mail, YouTube Video, Music, Maps, Local, and so many more — in the interest of what Googlers say is “simplification,” and they may be right. But what every industry observer would also tell you is that the new privacy policy is a boon to Google’s core business model. The Googleplex earns over 90% of its corporate revenue from one thing: advertising. The ability to serve, cross-serve, double-serve, triple-serve and otherwise deliver advertising across the entirety of Google properties is the ultimate “win” for investors. Is it a “win-win” for consumers? That is a question that will be hotly debated in Congress, by the EU, and in the court of public opinion going forward. But for now, Google has staked its claim!
Facebook: At last weeks first-of-its-kind Facebook Marketing Conference at New York’s Museum of Natural History, Facebook made modern history by launching two new pacesetting products: “Premium” and “Offers.” Forget subtlety, Facebook Premium is designed to be more invasive and provide more visibility to those companies who are not satisfied with relegated banner ads that appear on the right column of the social network. From today, marketers can buy a chance to advertise within the news feeds on mobile devices, as well as occupy the logout page.
One rather aggressive feature is the ability to read ads in the news feed of your contacts. In fact, Premium has been designed specifically with the Timeline in mind. The Timeline now allows you to display advertising at large, so that your message cannot escape a user’s gaze nor even be overlooked by the unsuspecting user. The aim of the Timeline is to monetize attention and multiply opportunities for the millions of page views the social network generates every day.
When the Timeline becomes mandatory at the end of this month, brands can quickly organize Facebook pages for campaigns. Pages will also be customized for users to see the brand on the wall and how their buddies are committed to the brand.
For instance, an essential new feature is the Insights Page of the new visitor information that allows brands to optimize their updates. This feature measures how interest is registering by looking at Facebook users’ interactions with messages from a seven-day measurement period.
Facebook also announced its new Offers feature, through which companies and brands can share discounts or promotions that allow members to take advantage of low purchase prices. Offers are displayed either on the users news feed, or as sponsored stories. Users can redeem offers via e-mail or on their mobile device. Reach Generator: Yet another new product is the Reach Generator, which allows a brand to make sure that everything they publish is on the homepage. Reach Generator lets you pay cash to guarantee that your Posts get to at least 75 percent of your fans each month.
Zynga: The world’s largest social gaming company, Zynga is stepping out from behind Facebook’s towering shadow and creating its own online platform to be housed not at Facebook, but at Zynga.com. The move has big implications for the entire social-gaming industry, and it has been long-awaited by observers who felt Zynga was overly dependent on Facebook. Facebook currently gets 12 percent of its revenue from Zynga, and Zynga gets more than 90 percent of its revenue from Facebook.
Zynga.com will be live in early March and “behave” just like a game console owner does. Zynga will be publishing its own games as a “first party” on the platform. But it will also recruit promising companies to create their own games to run on the platform as third parties.
“We built Zynga.com to give out players more ways to connect with each other and play great social games whether built by Zynga or other talented developers,” said Mark Pincus, founder and CEO, Zynga. “Together with our platform partners, we look forward to bringing more play to the world on our platform.”
Apple: The Cupertino juggernaut has summoned the press to a major media announcement on tap for next Wednesday. What has been confirmed, at a minimum, is the launch of the 3rd generation of the iPad, rumored to be a doubled, high-definition “retina display at twice the current screen resolution providing even sharper type and greater readability.
A few short days ago the company announced its newest Operating System, dubbed Mountain Lion, and its intention to conform to an annual OS update schedule that will advance the OS at a faster clip. Apple’s legal maneuverings make one thing very clear. It does not intend to lose the early mover advantage it has achieved in the market, nor content to let rivals catch up. [24×7]
