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Programmers, developers get early look at Microsoft Windows Vista with 'beta' version

Microsoft Corp. has released the first major test version of the Windows Vista operating system, giving a limited number of programmers and technology professionals the opportunity to test drive the highly awaited - and much delayed - program.

The "Beta 1" of Windows Vista, formerly code-named Longhorn, was being delivered to more than 10,000 developers and others who will test the software and provide feedback. It's the successor to Windows XP, which launched in October 2001.

The beta version does not have all the features that will be in the final product scheduled to hit store shelves in late 2006. Rather, it focuses on fundamentals such as security and overall manageability.

It includes new user account protection so users are given only the privileges required to do their work. This mirrors a similar security scheme used by Apple Computer Inc.'s Mac OS X and the Linux operating system.

Microsoft also said the test version includes numerous performance improvements, including faster startup and an improved "sleep" state that combines Windows XP's standby and hibernate modes.

Eventually, Vista's features will include better ways to visualize data, such as seeing through windows that are stacked atop each other, more natural file organization and faster searching. Microsoft said Beta 1 includes an early look at some of those new designs.

The next beta of Windows Vista is scheduled to be released later this year. Microsoft plans to make that version available to a wider audience.

In another milestone for Internet video, nearly 433,000 people simultaneously watched NASA's Webcast of last week's space shuttle launch.

That's more than twice the 175,000 streams that America Online Inc. had at its peak July 2 for the Live 8 concerts, an event widely cited as a coming-of-age moment for online video. It also nearly quadrupled a record for NASA set three weeks ago during Deep Impact's encounter with the comet Tempel 1.

Yahoo Inc., in a partnership with NASA, sent out 335,000 streams in Windows Media format, while Akamai Technologies Inc. sent the rest in RealMedia format.

Space shuttle Discovery lifted off at 10:39 a.m. Tuesday, when many Americans were at work and had no television access.

Scott Moore, Yahoo's vice president for content operations, acknowledged that the online audience would have been lower had the launch occurred over the weekend or at night.

"Watching streaming video on the computer today is still not the same quality experience as watching the same broadcast on television, but if your choice is to wait until you get home at night versus pointing your browser that's on your desk at work . . . then it's sort of a different choice," Moore said.

The day after launching a new Web-based mapping service, Microsoft has responded to critics by pledging to do better.

Visitors to MSN Virtual Earth pointed out that VE's depiction of the place where Apple Computer has its headquarters is an empty field. Google's mapping service shows buildings; presumably stuffed with iPods, remarked the United Kingdom's Register Web site.

"Even more disturbing, MSN's Virtual Earth still shows the twin towers of the World Trade Center in all their pre-9/11 glory," the Register added.

Steve Lombardi, who writes a blog for the Virtual Earth team, concedes some of the imagery in the MSN product is from the early '90s, before Apple built its campus. He offers some examples of where the Microsoft product is better than Google's.

"We know there's a lot of room for improvement, and that's exactly what we're up to," he wrote. "We're already working with our imagery partners to incrementally improve. Over the coming weeks you'll see a lot of these improvements rolling out."

Repetitive strain injury may be the scourge of the modern computerized workplace, but the engineers at Maltron Keyboards have been working on solving the problem since 1977. This British company makes ergonomic keyboards to reduce strain on the hands of the tapping masses.

The Maltron Ergonomic 3D has a concave shape that does away with the straight, staggered rows of keys on conventional keyboards, making greater use of the thumb and offering easier access to the backspace key. It conforms to the natural shape of the resting hand, so typists barely need to move their fingers and no longer need to twist their wrists to reach keys in the corners. It can take time to get used to the layout, but Maltron's Web site, maltron.com, offers testimonials from chronic stress injury sufferers who say they would never go back to a flat keyboard.

Such ergonomic liberation doesn't come cheap. The keyboard, assembled by hand in Britain, is available at sites like Thinkgeek.com for $495.

The creator of a well-known tool for keeping e-mail safe from prying eyes is working on a program that he says will help stop eavesdroppers from listening in on Internet-based phone calls.

Phil Zimmermann, who created the Pretty Good Privacy program for encrypting e-mail traffic, planned to demonstrate a prototype of his Voice over Internet Protocol security program last week during the Black Hat Briefings security conference in Las Vegas.

Most Internet-based phone calls are sent unscrambled, meaning it's possible for anyone to intercept the traffic and eavesdrop. Zimmermann's application scrambles the data until it reaches its destination. The recipient must be running a program using the same protocols.

Zimmermann said he's been talking to a "couple of companies" about his technology but declined to provide specifics.

The program should be ready for broad deployment within a year. Zimmermann said he will make the underlying code available for peer review, though he has not yet decided whether he will make it available as a formal open-source project.

Motorola Inc. plans to sell a wireless handset that sends e-mail, creating a competitor to Research In Motion Ltd.'s BlackBerry pager.

The keyboard-equipped handset, dubbed Q, will go on sale in the first quarter of next year, Motorola said. The company also plans to ship a music-playing phone made with Apple Computer in the next two months, Motorola chief executive Ed Zander said.

At less than a half-inch thick, Motorola's Q is thinner than the popular Razr, which helped boost second-quarter sales at the fastest pace in three periods. The Q device features Microsoft's Windows Mobile software.

Verizon Wireless plans to unveil its own music-playing phone, made by LG, this month, Verizon Wireless CEO Dennis Strigl has said.

Podcasters are finding lots of popularity by aiming for the "adult market."

About 10 percent of the 100 most popular programs in the iTunes Music Store are tagged "explicit." Podcast.net, a directory of programs available for downloading, reports that most of the searches through its database are for "mature" topics.

"Porn" and "adult" are the top two keywords, according to Chris Richardson at Webpronews.com. The top 10 list also includes "open source sex," "erotica," "pod porn" and "erotic."

"If not for the BBC, NPR, music and comedy," Richardson wrote, "this list would completely comprised of porn-related search terms."

Pricerunner.com is an Internet comparison-shopping service with a difference. Well-known in Europe and just launching in the United States, it doesn't rely solely on Web sites for its pricing information.

The company employs a team of actual "Price Runners" who go into major stores across the country as shoppers, gathering pricing information.

Pricerunner added that it also differs from other shopping services by always listing the lowest-priced retailer first. Some services, Pricerunner said, give priority in listings to merchants that also are advertisers.

Pricerunner is owned by ValueClick Inc.

Daniel Okrent, the former public editor at the New York Times, says he received 88,075 e-mail messages last year, half of which "were spam and from Nigerian billionaires." In an item in TimesTalk, an internal newsletter at the newspaper, Okrent said readers received almost 42,000 replies about the paper and its coverage and 146 hard-copy letters. "Times staff members made themselves available for more than 7,942 messages inspired by readers' queries," he added.

Readers with questions and comments about tech news of the day can submit them to Times personal technology editor Dave Gussow at the Times' Talkback site (www.sptimes.com/talkback)

[Last modified July 29, 2005, 09:36:03]