Why Microsoft should launch Windows Azure?

While Windows Vista’s Beta version was released in 2006, Microsoft’s expectations were a bit high due to inclusion of many better features like the 3-D desktop, new versions of Windows media player and other applications by the same company. However, the impact of vista on the market at first failed to continue while the service pack 1 was released in 2008 because people began to demand more out of it. Performance-wise, I think windows XP is better than Vista and I bet this could be the opinion of most of the customers around the world. It could be only because of this reason that microprocessor giant Intel requested Microsoft to continue sale of XP till 2010 so that they could increase their market.

 

            Though there are many better features in Vista like the 3-D desktop, Windows media player 11, better search (it  finds out the files that the user is looking for by auto-completion of the queries) for files, faster CD burner and the like, the configuration demands put forward by Vista seemed too sophisticated. In spite of the huge propaganda about reliability of Vista, BPO companies of PC manufacturers like DELL received calls from every nook and corner of the world, complaining about one major problem they encountered – “Operating system not found”- in the new laptops they just bought. Several complaints like this ceased the progress of Microsoft and it began facing crisis in the market as never before.

 

 A 2GB RAM platform (or 1GB dual core) and at least a good graphics drivers like NVIDIA only could make gaming in Vista give an “average” look. Frankly speaking, gaming and other graphical applications developed by the user could run with better speed in XP than in Vista. Moreover, with an average PC configuration, customers find XP to run faster than the 2GB RAM supported systems with Vista included.

 

            It is high time that the software giant realized from its folly and made moves to get better support from people world-wide. It might be the realization of this fact which urged Steve Ballmer to give a hint about their next venture formerly addressed “Windows Cloud” at the Microsoft Student Technology day on October 1, 2008. . On Tuesday, 27 October 2008, Ray Ozzie, chief developer of Microsoft declared that their next product code-named Windows Azure is being developed. It is a cloud-computing enabled system with features including geo replication, network management model, and a SOA model. The new Operating system is expected to hit the market by 2010 and a Beta version of the same may be released by the end of 2009.

 

Home-made Operating system for Indians

It has been over two decades since personal computers found their place in the Indian markets. All the time, the system and application softwares used by us had not been Indian softwares anyway. But now, a "desi" operating system is going to hit the Indian market. 

BOSS (Bharat Operating System Solutions) is the new venture of C-DAC Chennai. The new GNU/Linux is an opensource software ( as linux always had been before. The desktop version 3.0 is said to support 18 indian languages. Moreover, it has other good features like 3-D desktop, bluetooth compatibility, a PDF reader and other application softwares in all Indain languages.

If you want to give it a try, you can download it at:

http://www.bosslinux.in/

You may also get a free DVD copy if you order the OS at any of the CDAC-BOSS support centres in Kolkata, Mumbai,Thiruvananthapuram, Pune, Hydrabad, Mumbai, Delhi etc. Contact address is given at the website.

who is the best? Google or Cuil?

                                                                              figure 1
                                                                           figure 2

Well, its a bit hard to answer this question. In fact, the comparison itself may seem a little bit awkward if you know that one of the cofounders of cuil was also once popular as the google search engine architect? Yes, that's true. Cuil was found by the most respected husband-wife duo of the Stanford University professor Tom Costello and the former google search  engine architect Anna Patterson.

 Launched on July 28, cuil is now coined as the latest, largest and swiftest search engine the world has ever witnessed. It was described by software developers world-wide as the " super stealth search project". Cuil is built with a database of over billion pages, that is , about thrice the volume of google index. While I made some searches in the site, I found that there were some features worth notice in the site which could outdo google search engine.

 While google depends on autocomplete of the search words by looking at the searches made earlier, cuil finds out the possible words that the user may be looking for. The figure 1 shows the pull down menu that appeared while I tried a search on robot. The figure 2 shows the search results. As you see, the way the results are put onto the web seems to be far better enhanced, with appropriate tab for each category of search results. Also, there is a separate column " Explore by category" which shows similar search results that the current user may be interested in. 

But the drawback of Cuil is that it is nothing more than a search engine. Several other services offered by google such as the gmail, google earth, blog search, news, etc tend to make users stick onto google search while not trying out Cuil. But it is not the right time to judge Cuil. There may be add ons later. Even google took almost a decade to shape into as you see it today. Let's wait and watch!