Microsoft’s Silverlight 3 Launches Early

Microsoft’s competitor to Adobe Flash, Silverlight, has officially rolled out the new version, Silverlight 3, today. Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform, and cross-device plug-in for delivering media experiences and interactive applications for the Web. The first version was launched in 2007 and the second version was launched in September of 2008. In April, Microsoft reported 300 million downloads of Silverlight between September 2007 and April 2009, with an estimated 300,000 developers and engineers working off the Silverlight platform.

SIiverlight 3 launched a day earlier today on Microsoft’s servers, surprising the blogosphere. The new version has improved streaming capabilities, called Smooth Streaming. Here’s what Microsoft said about the new streaming function:

If the Internet bandwidth and video rendering capability on your playback device are sufficiently high, you’ll experience high-definition video playback of the sample content. You will also be able to simulate end user experiences under varying conditions by simulating drops and recoveries in bandwidth. If your actual bandwidth is below 3 Mbps, or your playback device is video-challenged, then you will experience the adaptive nature of Smooth Streaming without needing to simulate a bandwidth cap.

Microsoft is also extending Silverlight’s technologies beyond the browser by allowing developers to design and create apps that can run on the desktop. Microsoft will be announcing further details about Silverlight at its official launch of Silverlight 3 and Expression Studio 3 tomorrow morning. We’ll have all the details. And Microsoft will also be demoing some of the real-time capabilities of Silverlight 3 at TechCrunch’s Real-Time Stream CrunchUp tomorrow.

Is social media backlinks really worth?

Social networking profiles

One of the fastest ways to build backlinks is to register on social media sites with high PageRank: Facebook, Xing, LinkedIn, MySpace, Ecademy, Twitter etc. These sites allow you to set up a user profile with information about you and your company, including a link to your website. The only catch is that not all of these sites’ links are ‘do-follow’ – which means your site will not always receive the ‘link juice’.

Links in Twitter posts

If you place a link to a web page in your Twitter post, keep in mind that all of Twitter’s outbound links are ‘no-follow’. Google and Yahoo do not pass the Trust or PageRank power through the ‘no-follow’ links. Thus Twittering has limited value for your site.

However, such links do have some value. In May 2009, we witnessed the launch of the Topsy site, a technology that transforms Twitter links into a searchable database. Topsy makes it possible for users to search for information (relevancy is determined based on the number of re-tweets). So, any Twitter link now has a chance to be found and followed by Topsy visitors. Remember, increased traffic is the main goal!

Social bookmarks forever?

Is it possible to get permanent links from social bookmarks? Well, yes and no. Most social bookmarking sites will retain your bookmark until it’s popular. But as your bookmark loses popularity over time, it will be moved into the archives. Ideally, a permanent link should stay on the same page with approximately the same PR forever, but in reality, most social bookmarking websites remove links after some time.

Nevertheless, social bookmarking sites are valuable for other reasons. If you have a quality article that becomes popular on social bookmarking sites, people will link to that article in their blogs, and post ‘do-follow’ links on forums.

You can search the Web for the keywords ‘do-follow social bookmarking sites’ to find the latest lists. Networkers have also created services like socialposter.com or socialmarker.com for automatic submission to bookmarking sites.

The truth about blog comments

Blog commenting is probably the most popular – and in many cases, most irritating (because of spammers) – technique of getting permanent links.

The Google PageRank algorithm implies that the more outbound links there are on a page, the less authority or power this page can pass to each of those links. That’s because the page’s PR is distributed evenly between the outbound links. If a webmaster wants to add an outbound link, but doesn’t want Google to follow that link or for PR power to be passed on to the linked page, then that webmaster has to add the ‘nofollow’ attribute to the link. Many bloggers do so to prevent their PR from flowing to the pages cited by commenters. However, this practice is no longer encouraged by Google.

A few weeks ago Matt Cutts blogged about a change in the PR algorithm concerning Google’s approach to passing PageRank through the links with the ‘nofollow’ attribute. Although no PageRank and anchor texts are passed through such links, they are also counted when sharing the outgoing ‘link juice’. The only difference is that it’s neither passed to the linked site nor kept on the page. This means Google disapproves of the practice of using the rel=nofollow attribute for the purpose of not sharing PageRank.

If you own a blog, setting up the ‘nofollow’ attribute to all comments means conserving your blog’s ‘link juice’ and getting fewer comments. The ‘do-follow’ principle can lead to more spam, but it’s a good way to attract webmasters to your site. On the other hand, if you are a webmaster trying to obtain more links by commenting on blogs, don’t rely solely on this method of link popularity improvement. Use a combination of methods, including the time-proven ways of press releases, articles and site submissions to relevant lists and directories, and the newer techniques for site promotion in social media.

Chrome OS Partners: Acer, Adobe, ASUS, Freescale, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments

Google is starting to respond to questions about the just announced Chrome operating system. In a short FAQ today they talked about cost and initial partners.

First of all, the software will be free, which was an easy assumption to make since it will be open source. Like Android, Google will not charge users or device manufacturers to use the Chrome OS.

Yesterday Google said they were already working with device manufacturers to roll out Chrome OS devices late next year. Today they announced at least some of those partners: Acer, Adobe, ASUS, Freescale, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments.

Acer and ASUS are the no. 1 and no. 2 netbook manufacturers worldwide. HP and Lenovo are also large netbook manufacturers. Freescale, Qualcomm and Texas Instruments are chip companies that Google is likely working with to ensure a good user experience. What I’d really like to know is if Google is working with these or any other partners to release products off the ARM or Atom processors. A desktop or even dual core laptop running Chrome OS would be a compelling device too.

Google is clearly aiming Chrome at Windows, and focusing less on battery management (Android’s strength) to focus on robust driver support. Users will not be happy unless they can plug any printer, camera, or other peripheral device into these computers and have them work properly.

The other focus is on speed, which is why Google is working so closely with the chip guys. This isn’t going to just be Linux with a browser bolted on. It will be (or should be) a compelling user experience with super fast boot and web surfing times.

Bing Comes To Hotmail

Microsoft has upgraded its Quick Add feature in Hotmail, first announced earlier this year, with a number of features from their new Bing search engine.

We’re not talking about a small number of users who will be affected. Hotmail is still by far the largest web mail provider on the Internet, with 343 million monthly users according to Comscore. Second and third are Yahoo (285 million) and Gmail (146 million). A year ago Hotmail had just 273 million users, so it is still growing rapidly.

The new features let users search for and insert maps, movie listings and times, in addition to the restaurants, videos, images and business listings that were there before. And all of these have been upgraded with Bing functionality via the API.

Some of these quick adds are quite useful, particularly the maps and movie listings. For the masses that use Hotmail, it’s also a great way to introduce them to Bing.

Why Chrome OS Now? Because Microsoft Office In The Cloud Comes Monday.

The timing of Google’s announcement of Chrome OS was curious. I don’t mean the fact that Google moved up the post on it by a day when some details leaked out, I mean the fact that they were announcing it on some seemingly random date in July, well before anything is actually ready to show off. Now, we likely know why.

On Monday, Microsoft is set to unveil its plans to counter the attack Google previously had launched on it with Google Docs. Yes, Microsoft Office is going to the cloud. This is something which we all knew was eventually coming, and there is already some limited functionality, but the full details will pour out Monday at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans. You can expect the new version of Office, that syncs with the cloud, and the ability to use it in the cloud without any software as well.

Almost immediately following the Chrome OS announcement, Robert Scoble took to his favorite home on the web, FriendFeed, to have one of his, I-know-something-you-don’t-know “discussions.” During the course of those “discussions,” Scoble gave dropped quite a few hints about what Microsoft planned to announce on Monday, including “Diego, no, it’s one of Microsoft’s primary businesses. Did you know Microsoft has 14 billion dollar businesses?” Guess what that is? Microsoft Office.

It doesn’t take a genius to put two and two together. And several bloggers already have. And it was especially easy after Scoble ruled out the new browser project Microsoft has code-named “Gazelle.” Scoble also noted that what Microsoft was showing off would run in browsers beyond just IE.

So yes, it’s Office Web that was first talked about at PDC last year.

And it’s possible that Microsoft could unveil that this new web-based Office will reside and the great domain, office.com. That site is clearly going through a transition to new ownership right now, and that would make a lot of sense.

Office is obviously the 900-pound gorilla that Google is attempting to slay with Google Docs, but a 900-pound gorilla with a matching web offering will be a lot tougher. And that’s likely why Google wanted to get its own uppercut in first this week. And it’s a strong one. But now Microsoft is going to have to come up with some answers to how it can counter Chrome OS, rather than focus on talking about the new Office.

Google Chrome: Redefining The Operating System

It’s hard to type a blog post when one hand is being used to pat myself on the back.

Last year I wrote a post about the just launched Chrome browser titled Meet Chrome, Google’s Windows Killer. From that article:

Chrome is nothing less than a full on desktop operating system that will compete head on with Windows…Expect to see millions of web devices, even desktop web devices, in the coming years that completely strip out the Windows layer and use the browser as the only operating system the user needs.

One representative response to my quote above, from The Register: “In no way can this statement be construed to make sense, and I’m not just being a pedantic asshole here. Fortunately, El Reg readers are with it enough to know that you need a proper OS before you can have a browser.”

Purists complained that a browser isn’t actually an operating system, and brought up mundane issues about hardware drivers, memory and processor management, and other red herrings. Sure, they were right – the Chrome browser isn’t an operating system. It is, you could say, sans the bag of drivers needed to meet the definition. Still, the writing was on the wall – Google quite clearly saw Chrome as an operating system that competes with Windows.

Fast forward to today. The Chrome browser now has 30 million active users, says Google, and tracking services say it has 6% or so market share. Not bad for a browser that’s less than a year old.

And now, WOW. Google just bolted a big ol’ bag of drivers (also known as the Linux kernel) to Chrome and are calling it the Google Chrome Operating System. It’s going to be hard for people to continue to deny its operating systemness now.

The new OS will focus entirely on the web: “The software architecture is simple — Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel. For application developers, the web is the platform.” What that means is this. The browser is the platform. The browser is the UI.

Now, finally, even the tech purists can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Windows is hardware management plus an application platform, and we call that an OS. Chrome OS is hardware management plus an application platform (the browser), and we call that an OS, too.

Don’t worry about those desktop apps you think you need. Office? Meh. You’ve got Zoho and Google Apps. You won’t miss office. Chrome plus Gears plus Google Wave plus HTML 5 and web platforms like Flash and Silverlight all combine into a single wonderful computing device. The Internet Is Everything. All the OS has to do is boot the damn computer, get me to a browser as fast as possible and then stay the hell out of the way.

Chrome will do just that. And it will be free, unlike Windows. Forget the netbooks, which Google is targeting initally. We’ll see PCs of all types being sold by the major manufacturers as soon as Google gets this out of beta next year. Microsoft has a very serious competitive threat to the core of their revenues. Every Chrome computer bought won’t have Windows and won’t have Office. That must send chills down the spine of the guys up in Redmond. But hey, at least they can now point to Google when the antitrust guys come knocking. Someone other than them are bundling the operating system and browser into one neat package.

Google Drops A Nuclear Bomb On Microsoft. And It’s Made of Chrome.

Wow. So you know all those whispers about a Google desktop operating system that never seem to go away? You thought they might with the launch of Android, Google’s mobile OS. But they persisted. And for good reason, because it’s real.

In the second half of 2010, Google plans to launch the Google Chrome OS, an operating system designed from the ground up to run the Chrome web browser on netbooks. “It’s our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be,” Google writes tonight on its blog.

But let’s be clear on what this really is. This is Google dropping the mother of bombs on its chief rival, Microsoft. It even says as much in the first paragraph of its post, “However, the operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no web.” Yeah, who do you think they mean by that?

And it’s a genius play. So many people are buying netbooks right now, but are running WIndows XP on them. Windows XP is 8 years old. It was built to run on Pentium IIIs and Pentium 4s. Google Chrome OS is built to run on both x86 architecture chips and ARM chips, like the ones increasingly found in netbooks. It is also working with multiple OEMs to get the new OS up and running next year.

Obviously, this Chrome OS will be lightweight and fast just like the browser itself. But also just like the browser, it will be open-sourced. Think Microsoft will be open-sourcing Windows anytime soon?

As Google writes, “We have a lot of work to do, and we’re definitely going to need a lot of help from the open source community to accomplish this vision.” They might as well set up enlistment booths on college campuses for their war against Microsoft.

Google says the software architecture will basically be the current Chrome browser running inside “a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel.” So in other words, it basically is the web as an OS. And applications developers will develop for it just as they would on the web. This is similar to the approach Palm has taken with its new webOS for the Palm Pre, but Google notes that any app developed for Google Chrome OS will work in any standards-compliant browser on any OS.

What Google is doing is not recreating a new kind of OS, they’re creating the best way to not need one at all.

So why release this new OS instead of using Android? After all, it has already been successfully ported to netbooks. Google admits that there is some overlap there. But a key difference they don’t mention is the ability to run on the x86 architecture. Android cannot do that, Chrome OS can and will. But more, Google wants to emphasize that Chrome OS is all about the web, whereas Android is about a lot of different things. Including apps that are not standard browser-based web apps.

But Chrome OS will be all about the web apps. And no doubt HTML 5 is going to be a huge part of all of this. A lot of people are still wary about running web apps for when their computer isn’t connected to the web. But HTML 5 has the potential to change that, as you’ll be able to work in the browser even when not connected, and upload when you are again.

We’re starting to see more clearly why Google’s Vic Gundotra was pushing HTML 5 so hard at Google I/O this year. Sure, part of it was about things like Google Wave, but Google Wave is just one of many new-style apps in this new Chrome OS universe.

But there is a wild card is all of this still for Microsoft: Windows 7. While Windows XP is 8 years old, and Windows Vista is just generally considered to be a bad OS for netbooks, Windows 7 could offer a good netbook experience. And Microsoft had better hope so, or its claim that 96% of netbooks run Windows is going to be very different in a year.

Google plans to release the open source code for Chrome OS later this year ahead of the launch next year. Don’t be surprised if this code drops around the same time as Windows 7. Can’t wait to hear what Microsoft will have to say about all of this.