Yup ! Java 6 Update 15 is out…

Couple of good things…

“This release is Windows 7 support-ready and includes support for Internet Explorer 8, Windows Server 2008 SP2, and Windows Vista SP2. New features include the G1 garbage collector, plus performance and security enhancements.”

Yes, Sun is indeed up to speed on the latest on Windows. I am running Windows 7 (non-RTMed version) and I am already pleased with the experience. MSIE 8 is far better than MSIE 7 but I am not throwing my FireFox away yet… choice is good.

Secondly, the new JDK/JRE comes updated with a BING offer.

But strangely, Sun did not manage to rebundle the latest JDK with their other products like JavaFX SDK, Java EE and NetBeans 6.7.

I have no doubt it will be in due time…

By the way, test your JAVA runtime via browser here. Always run the latest versions of the plug-ins where possible to take advantage of the “security enhancements”. Cheers !

More info about the Microsoft/Yahoo news here. Looks like it won’t impact paid search ads, and there’s still some question if it will raise antitrust flags with the Department of Justice. Would certainly make life easier if you only need to pay attention to 2 search engines instead of three.

Bem, o Windows Live Hotmail é um dos populares serviços de webmail mundialmente, ainda mais com o programa de mensagens instantâneas Windows Live Messenger. Só que a Microsoft anunciou há algum tempo a criação do Live, uma nova plataforma de Internet da gigante de Redmond, só que a mesma não oferece a opção de criar endereços de e-mail com a extensão @live.com, somente a opção @hotmail.com.

Só que depois de muitas dúvidas, achei uma solução eficaz. Veja como você pode conseguir um e-mail com a extensão @live.com!

1. Acesse a página: http://get.live.com/en-us/mail/overview ou http://get.live.com/en-uk/mail/overview
   
2. Clique no botão Get it Free
3. Preencha o cadastro nos seguintes campos:
   • Windows Live ID: Digite o nome desejado para o seu nome de usuário, ao lado deverá aparecer a opção @live.com.
   • Create a password: Digite a senha que você deseja cria para o seu e-mail.
   • Retype password: Digite a senha que você inseriu acima.
   • Alternate e-mail address: Digite um endereço de e-mail para caso, você esqueça a sua senha
   • First name: Digite o seu primeiro nome
   • Last name: Digite o seu sobrenome
   • Country/region: Deixe em United States
   • State: Selecione California
   • ZIP code: Digite 91000
   • Gender: Seu sexo: Masculino (Male) ou Feminino (Female)
   • Birth Year: Digite o ano que você nasceu
   • Characters: Digite a seqüencia de caracteres que apareceram
4. Clique no botão I accept
5. Pronto, agora é só logar normalmente com o seu novo e-mail @live.com

O motivo de você indicar que mora na Califórnia usando o código ZIP 91000, é que esse código ZIP (equivalente ao nosso CEP) é de Redmond, aonde fica a sede da Microsoft. Isso pode fazer você ganhar algum espaço extra.

Tutorial criado através de um comentário no Google Discovery e e do antigo tutorial do blog Techmundo (não funciona mais)

Acabei de ver no Lifehacker.com, Hotmail e Live.com já trabalham com acesso POP3, haviam liberado mês passado só para os EUA mas agora é para todos.
As configurações são:

POP server: pop3.live.com (Port 995)
POP SSL? Sim
Nome de usuário: Live ID, por exemplo seunome@hotmail.com ou @live.com
Senha: Sua senha
servidor SMTP: smtp.live.com (Port 25)
Autenticação? Sim (Isso diz Lifehacker mas eu não precisei marcar essa opção)
TLS/SSL? Sim

Fecha: 8 de marzo de 2009

Esta semana hemos podido ya confirmar por diferentes fuentes y finalmente del propio blog de los desarrolladores que Microsoft está probando ya Kumo su “herramienta definitiva para batir a Google” o por lo menos su enésimo intento de hacer un sistema de búsqueda que plante cara al aplastante dominio de Google a nivel mundial.

Microsoft ha utilizado en los últimos años un montón de estrategias y herramientas para tratar de batir a Google, pero podemos contarlas todas por fracasos. Su actual buscador Live ha sido siempre muy criticado, aparte de las capacidades de búsqueda, porque Live es un nombre demasiado común y no tiene el gancho de nombres míticos como Google, u otros como Adobe, Yahoo, Sun, etc. Microsoft no ha dejado de intentarlo con otras estrategias  como fue el caso de Yahoo durante el pasado año, hasta que a mediados de 2008 compró Powerset, una empresa dedicada a hacer motores de búsqueda semánticos.

¿Qué es un motor de búsqueda semántico? Si pensamos en Google por ejemplo, que es un motor de búsqueda literal de los que siempre hemos estado acostumbrados a utilizar, las diferencias se pueden ver a través de una simple cadena de búsqueda. Si yo escribo en Google “¿Dónde puedo comer una pizza?“, la primera respuesta que obtenemos es una relativa comer pizza y no engordar. En un motor de búsqueda semántico, si introdujeramos esa frase el buscador nos diría a qué establecimientos de nuestra ciudad podríamos ir a comer una pizza, considerando dónde vivimos, qué hora es, el día de la semana, e incluso si tenemos niños o no (se supone que tenemos un nombre de usuario y un perfil definido previamente). Por tanto los motores de búsqueda semánticos humanizan las búsquedas en Internet, algo que será imprescindible en los próximos años donde la capacidad de búsqueda del ser humano con respecto a la cantidad de información que habrá en Internet será cada vez más limitada.

Sin duda la web semántica (conjuntamente con la interoperabilidad) son los dos grandes puntos de inflexión sobre los que pivota la web 3.0 o próxima generación de la web.

Kumo es la apuesta de Microsoft por la web semántica. Desde luego Kumo tiene muchos ingredientes que lo convierten en una apuesta diferente y tal vez más firme que otras apuestas anteriores de Microsoft:

• En primer lugar el nombre. Kumo me parece un nombre bastante bueno y bien escogido. No se asocia a Microsoft, lo cuál yo creo que es bueno si las campañas de sensibilización se hacen adecuadamente. Tiene muchas similitudes al mítico Kodak (un nombre de marca ejemplar que se lee y escribe exactamente igual en todos los idiomas y no significa nada, solamente Kodak). Kumo sólo tiene significado en japonés y significa algo así como nube o araña, muy apropiado por otra parte. No me imagino de momento a un chaval diciendo “I´m kumoing it” como paralelismo al neologismo cada vez más utilizando entre estudiantes americanos cuando buscan algo: “I´m googling it“.
• Aunque la iniciativa de desarrollar un motor de búsqueda semántico no es la primera que se produce, podemos considerar que de una forma más o menos seria sí que es la primera iniciativa que se desarrolla. La apuesta de Microsoft es segura en el sentido de que en pocos años todos los motores de búsqueda que conocemos hoy en día serán semánticos sí o sí. Microsoft en ese sentido se ha adelantado a los demás y además lo ha hecho comprando por 100 millones de dólares una empresa de bastante prestigio como era Powerset. Es decir, Kumo tiene unas bases tecnológicas bastante sólidas.

Si con lo que he comentado anteriormente podemos pensar que Google no está haciendo nada al respecto esto no es así. Lo que está ocurriendo es que Google no va a lanzar ningún buscador semántico, Google va a seguir siendo Google y ya está, pero hay signos en la forma de búsqueda que ya anticipan un cambio progresivo hacia modelos semánticos. Por ejemplo desde hace poco tiempo, determinadas frases de búsquedas como las relativas a fechas de nacimiento, lugares geográficos, etc, proporcionan resultados estructurados o semánticos a partir de información semiestructurada o no estructurada (no marcada semánticamente en las webs desde las que provienen). Por ejemplo si escribimos “What is the capital of Spain?” obtenemos resultados semánticos que tienen sujeto predicado y objeto (tripletes semánticos) y que por tanto responden a esa pregunta. Estos signos y algunos más relativos a conversión de divisas y determinadas funciones algo más avanzadas con operadores sintácticos indican que la estrategia de Google hacia la web semántica no está parada ni mucho menos, pero es diferente a la de Microsoft en el sentido que irán cambiando poco a poco hasta que el usuario entre en la web semántica casi sin darse cuenta. Creo que esta estrategia es la más apropiada para conservar su supremacía en la búsqueda a nivel mundial.

Creo que será difícil que Microsoft arrebate el liderazgo a Google con Kumo, pero parece una iniciativa mucho mejor dirigida que fracasos anteriores como live.com, msn, etc, y seguramente conseguirá incrementar su raquítica cuota de mercado (inferior al 9%) en comparación con las inversiones realizadas. Además creo que es elogiable que, aunque sea Microsoft, muy criticada por otros temas, alguien le plante cara a Google con sentido y base tecnológica ya que esto beneficia a los usuarios y a la innovación, que en último término será lo que nos beneficie a todos.

I guess by now everyone knows about the GMail incident affecting millions… (6 downtime events in 6 months ?)

Then there’s the other under-reported problems with Yahoo! Mail.

Yup ! No service or product is unbreakable… Only Larry Ellison is in denial (I always say… then comes hundreds of patches for all their products)

Now back to Yahoo! Mail… if you look at the big 3 “Free” Email providers (for non-US users), namely Live.com Mail, GMail and Yahoo! Mail. Yahoo! Mail stands out in the sense, it is the ONLY one don’t does not provide “free” POP3/SMTP or IMAP service to anyone unless you pay for it for “Yahoo! Mail Plus”.

Basically Yahoo! wants to force you to use browser for Email access and refuse to provide an offline mode that others provide. The only other “offline” mode available is via your smart phone in-built client or using Yahoo! Go which claims to be the “The best Internet experience for your phone. Period.”. Being there, done that… it does not wow for me.

So I and like everyone else is forced to use YPOPs! which was previously named YahooPOPs! until Yahoo stopped them. Basically YPOPs emulated a local POP/SMTP service on your local machine while using regular HTTP commands to pull and send your emails.

It was working fine until Yahoo put a stop to it recently… It was not the first time nor the last. I cannot really blame Yahoo for it as any change in HTTP Email services will break YPOPs!

So I tried to use their email service via the browser. Oops… no joy.

My next batch of woes are with SPAM. Lots and lots of them…false positives.

Look at it ! My regular mailing lists are still flagged as SPAM !

My problem is that the Yahoo’s SPAM filters does not learn. I am using Yahoo since the start of their service in 1997. So every time I login I need to do email recovery. Mostly by then, the email is too old to act upon. Yes, I actually missed some important stuff due to late discovery of the email trapped in the SPAM filter.

Yes, I used to be a SGI Geek way back in the heydays… but yet I need to recovery SGI emails every time till today !

sigh…………………………

I had a great time this morning leading a training session for Leadership Alexandria’s alumnus related to online marketing, local search and social media for non-profits and businesses.

Here’s the online marketing presentation from today’s training.

Well this is something I’ve been waiting for ever since I got my grubby hands on an iPhone back in March of last year. Wave 3 for Live Mail has finally gone, well, live! What does this mean for all the iPhone users out there?

Well, now you can access Hotmail properly through your iPhone (or other mobile device), without using the convoluted mobile.live.com site any more. It’s simple to set up. Just go to your iPhone’s Mail section under settings, add a new mail account under ‘Other’, put in your username and password details, and you’re away! Unfortunately first up it downloads all of your mail account to the phone, which means messages you’ve read before are now classed as unread. This mail is locally stored though, so you don’t have to worry about it being deleted off the server. You can clean it up as much as you like without fear of losing anything.

And there you have it! Proper email, on your iPhone, free of charge.

I just couldn’t resist posting these results even though I understand that this may strike you as rather obvious. 

Query: “Brazil nightclub dress code” (don’t worry, I’m not weird, just heading to Brasil)

Results: PATHETIC

I mean, Good Grief, better to give me a blank page. 

http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=brazil+night+club+dress+code&go=&form=QBLH&qs=AS

This is the first time I’m going to do a full online marketing 101 crash course (including email) in under an hour, so we’ll see how it goes. If you’re interested in viewing the presentation I’ll be using for Environmental Working Group this next week in Washington, DC, you can view the online marketing 101 presentation here.

Microsoft’s Live.com will soon be transformed into a full fledged social networking website. A user will be asked to create a profile after which he’ll be able to access IM, e-mail, share photos, files and even connect to their favorite people instantly. Microsoft is also touting support of 50 partners where the user can bring in content from a RSS feed or many other sites like Flickr, Twitter etc.

You can check this by click on the http://home.live.com/

Microsoft has updated it’s live.com portal, to resemble a social network. This is in conjunction with the launch of “Windows Live Photos” and “Windows Live People”. It will now act like friend feed, meaning you can add content from your blog or an RSS feed or even other social networks like “twitter”, “Yelp” and “Flickr”.

Source: TechCrunch

Oh boy, Microsoft really did something to improve their service “Windows Live” (Live.com), which has been on the web for a couple of years – so far without any big success, because the guys didn’t try hard enough. What they basically did was to repeat old web tactics, which means search engine in this particular case linked with some other features (there was this funny function that you could really ask a question like “How old can a crocodile get?”), and were hoping for Google to get down. And of course that didn’t happen at all.

In stead Google went on being the No. 1 in business, Apple got more and more buyers and Yahoo! rejected the best offer they could possibly receive.

But now finally Microsoft is moving on with an improvement worth to be mentioned.

Live.com gets a new face and great functions, that combine the best of the web, such as Twitter, LinkedIn, flickr and so on. (Facebook doesn’t seem to be in which is odd because Microsoft invested some 250 million dollars into the social network.) Their goal is to bring all your activities on the WWW together in one place, where your friends and family can see what you’re doing. You just have to tell Live.com where your profiles are and it will create a cool landing page, on which you can also add favorite blogs, websites and more and it even conjuncts Microsoft desktop applications and online services.

Further on your friends will be able to see new changes immediately when they are done. And everytime they are writing you an e-mail via Hotmail or are chatting with you with the Live Messenger those people can see your latest updates, so for instants thumbnails of some pictures you’ve just uploaded or reviews of recently bought products.

Have a look at this nifty video to get the impression: http://blip.tv/file/1462663/ (I can’t embed it, but WordPress.com doesn’t aloud me to do so… )

Of course Microsoft will still try to force you on the dark side, because one approach obviously is to get you to upload your videos, photos and other files onto the Windows Live storage or encourage your friends to join Live.com.

But all in all it seems to be a great service. One indication is that reliable Blogs such as TechCrunch and RWW are talking about it in the most significant spades.

I still won’t use it. Why? Because I got a MacBook Pro at home and I’d never trust Steve Balmer.
Anyway it’s the right way to go for Microsoft and I wish them all the best.

Muzeum Media is one of the most progressive and innovative online marketings firms in Europe.

Now, we come to Scandinavia – which is one of the most educated and developed internet markets.

Our major skill as a total internet marketing provider will make sure we succeed in Scandinavia.

Our coworkers are highly educated and have a long experience of consulting in internet marketing.

We all want to give something extra and 95% of our customers are quote: very satisfied.

Muzeum Media provides our customers a full and progressive mediaplan – can your company handle that?