Data Cube Systems

Google Wave

Google Wave is the one item on this list whose reading on the SQUEE-o-meter is off the charts. The ambitious new messaging platform sets out to reinvent email for the modern web. Google Wave rolls email, wikis, instant messaging, blog-style commenting, revision history and version control, collaborative document-editing, and a whole lot of Ajax magic into a single app that just might someday subsume email and other fragmented messaging and collaboration products.

Thanks to the new HTML 5 standard support in modern browsers, Wave offers live as-your-recipient-types updating to messages and documents in your browser, wave revision playback, live collaboration on a single wave (as in, you can watch the cursors of your co-workers typing away on your screen while you work), and smart contextual spellcheck that knows you meant “Iceland is an island” when you type “Icland is an icland.” If you haven’t already watched the hour-plus video demonstration of Google Wave (and don’t want to invest the time), check out the highlight reel.

Like Gmail and Google Maps did, Wave will set the bar for web applications even higher, and change our expectations about what’s possible in the browser on our desktop and on the handset. Since it’s not yet in the wild, it’s hard to say what Wave uptake and use will be like; likely early adopters will lead the way but that at first it will feel strange and almost too-powerful.

Google Wave is in an early, invite-only Preview now, but will be available to the public “later this year.” Like Firefox, Chrome, and Android, Wave is open source and extensible. The Wave server you will use is also not necessarily hosted by Google—you or your organization could install a copy on your own server.

Windows 7

Windows is making a much-needed comeback from the flop that was Vista, and it’s called Windows 7. Sure it’s cool to knock Microsoft for past sins, and we’re not saying that Windows 7 is the end-all and be-all of all operating systems—but it’s a marked improvement, and it’s ready for the future.

Windows 7 adds visual features to your desktop that you need now as well as lays the groundwork for a tomorrow filled with multi-touch devices and tiny netbooks. Win7 is faster and smaller, able to run on a less powerful netbooks, and ready for your new touchscreen monitor or tablet. (We haven’t tried Win7’s multi-touch capabilities and for the record, some say that it’s only half-baked so far. The road to the future is a long one.) Current widescreen and dual monitor users will love Windows 7’s taskbar and Aero Peek features for multi-tasking, previewing, and managing several windows.

Windows 7 will be available in stores on October 22nd, but unlike any other item on this list, the release candidate is available as a free download right now for anyone to install and try out, no invites required.

Snow Leopard

While it won’t offer the same “ooh shiny!” visual makeover that Windows 7 does, Apple is also battening down the hatches and getting Mac OS X future-ready. The next version of the operating system, 10.6, is a cheap $29, and is revamped, enhanced, and retuned. Snow Leopard takes up half the disk space of its predecessor, starts up and shuts down faster, and includes totally re-written default applications with 64-bit computing support which means your Mac can more efficiently address and use more memory.

Snow Leopard’s also making tracks into the corporation with Microsoft Exchange support and taking a page from the iPhone book with location awareness. And not to be left behind by Windows 7’s new taskbar and Aero Peek, Snow Leopard adds Exposé to the Mac Dock to make managing and clearing away windows on your desktop as easy as possible. While Snow Leopard is light on the user-facing features, here’s what you will notice when you upgrade this fall.

iPhone 3GS and the All-Out Smartphone War

Is it irritating (and hard on the wallet) that every single year there’s a newer, better smartphone on the market to lust after? Yes, ma’am. Is stiff competition between companies to manufacture the tiny and powerful computer we walk around with in our pockets awesome? Yessiree. Apple still leads the smartphone pack with the iPhone (and the new iPhone 3GS unveiled this week), but the Palm Pre and HTC’s line of Android phones are also in the game, and that means better phones for all of us.

When you step back and think about all the devices a good smartphone can be to us: phones, email terminals, GPS devices, e-book readers, iPods, cameras, video capture and editing devices, and pretty much anything else an app can make them, it blows the mind. Like Snow Leopard, the iPhone 3GS is light on the features (save the better camera and compass) but heavy on the speed and performance increases. Expect this war to rage on, and spawn even more devices. (Mac tablet, anyone?)

What does it all mean?

The major trends across all these products is creating a faster and slicker cloud and local desktop experience. (New browsers like Chrome and Safari 4 also capitalize on the “faster leaner meaner” sell as well.) Evolved standards (like HTML 5), more powerful hardware support (64-bit architectures) as well as portable devices like netbooks and touchscreens are all signposts along the way. Location-awareness continues to show itself on desktops and smartphones, and extensibility (whether it’s a smartphone app store or open-source extension) all means we’re in for a super-fun ride in the next couple of years.

Microsoft Corp. issued a record-breaking number of software security updates today, shipping patches that plug at least 31 different security flaws in its Windows operating systems and other software.

More than half of the security holes Microsoft plugged with June’s patch batch earned a “critical,” severity rating, meaning Redmond believes attackers could exploit the flaws to break into vulnerable systems without any help from the victims. What’s more, Microsoft is warning that it expects to see publicly available reliable exploit code for most of the vulnerabilities it has issued patches for today.

According to Symantec Corp., this is the largest number of vulnerabilities Microsoft has ever addressed in a single patch release (the previous record was set in Dec. 2008, when Microsoft issued 28 security updates in one go).

Probably the most important of today’s updates is a critical patch that addresses at least eight security holes in various versions of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer Web browser, including IE8. In fact, one of the flaws patched in IE8 was first demonstrated at a hacking competition in Canada in March. Microsoft says that particular flaw does not affect the Windows 7 release candidate (RC), but does affect Windows 7 Beta. The IE 8 updates for the Windows 7 Beta are available here.

“These weaknesses actually appear to be quite simple to exploit and we have observed malicious code being offered in malware toolkits that have taken advantage of very similar vulnerabilities,” said Ben Greenbaum, senior research manager for Symantec Security Response, of the IE flaws.

Another update patches two security holes in Microsoft’s Internet Information Services (IIS) Web server software. Andrew Storms, director of security operations for vulnerability management company nCircle, notes that instructions explaining how to exploit one of those IIS flaws already is available online.

“Anyone running IIS that isn’t using the available mitigation steps should jump on this one right away because there are exploits in the wild, and an exploited server can allow attackers to gain unauthorized access to protected resources on your Web site,” Storms said.

Microsoft also released an update that plugs at least seven holes in Microsoft Office Excel. These vulnerabilities are most serious on Office 2000 installations, but those users can’t get these updates from Windows Update.

Last month, Microsoft shipped a single patch to plug some 16 security holes in various versions of its Powerpoint software. The company said at the time that it was still working on fixing those flaws in the Powerpoint versions in Office for Mac and Microsoft Works. Today, Microsoft addressed those Mac and Works vulnerabilities in a separate Powerpoint patch rollup.

Microsoft Windows XP was released on Thursday, October 25, 2001. Eight years later, on Thursday, October 22, 2009 - Microsoft will release Windows 7 to the world in all the available versions.

Microsoft’s own partners are gearing up their line-ups for the release of Windows 7, and this will be the probably the last day when ATI and nVidia can launch their DirectX 11-powered graphics chips into e-tail and retail. Who is late for this train, doesn’t have a good writing on the wall. However, the release date on October 22 doesn’t mean that enthusiasts and power users won’t have at least a month of experience playing with the new operating system.

If we take a look at Microsoft pages in the book, the company usually releases an RTM version [Release-To-Manufacturing] anywhere between 45 and 60 days before to retail release, meaning we could be playing with the finished version of Windows 7 as early as August. This is nothing unexpected, just the natural course of action which will spice up the late summer. Back in 2001, I received the Windows XP Professional RTM CD for my birthday [August 30, 1979 for those interested] - it was standard white label CD with printed black-and-white cover, packed in a classic OEM CD slip with Microsoft-like CD key label.

Long story short, we can expect RTM hitting us anywhere between weeks beginning on August 24, ending with the week starting on September 7.

At the time of writing, we have no confirmation about the pricing of Windows 7, but we can say with a “certain dose of certainty” that Microsoft won’t do jack for users who paid massive 400 greenbacks for purchasing their copies of Windows Vista Ultimate. Given that Microsoft fall flat on their faces with the alleged future features of Vista Ultimate, we cannot recommend even considering Windows 7 Ultimate unless all the “future features” are implemented from day one. Windows 7 is make-or-break operating system release for Microsoft, since any uncertainty or flaw will be an automatic door opening for Android, Mac OSX Snow Leopard and the like.