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San Francisco - Microsoft released Monday beta versions of separate service packs for the Visual Studio 2008 software development platform and the accompanying .Net Framework 3.5, a Microsoft official said in a blog.

General-release SP (Service Packs) 1 for Visual Studio 2008 and .Net Framework 3.5 are due this summer. SP1 for Visual Studio is the first release for Visual Studio that offers full support for the SQL Server 2008 database, said S. “Soma” Somasegar, senior vice president of the Microsoft Developer Division, in a blog entry.

SQL Server 2008 offers such features as the ability to store data from structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data. It is due to ship in the third quarter of this year.

Other capabilities cited in the SP 1 beta release for Visual Studio 2008 include improved functionality and performance for Windows Presentation Foundation designers and additional tools for Visual Basic and Visual C++. Office 2007 Ribbon functionality is highlighted as well. Also offered are richer JavaScript capabilities and improved Web development and site deployment.

This service pack also offers improvements for the Visual Studio Team System application lifecycle management platform, including support for work item-tracking via the Office 2007 ribbon and version control of unbound files.

SP1 for .Net Framework 3.5 introduces the ADO.Net Entity Framework. This framework raises the level of abstraction for data programmers to help eliminate the impedance mismatch between data models and languages.

The service pack for .Net Framework 3.5 also offers ADO.Net Data services to simplify data access code in applications, Somasegar said. .Net Framework presents Microsoft's managed code programming model for building Windows applications.

SP1 for Net Framework 3.5 introduces more controls, a streamlined setup, improved AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), and a new graphics features.

Also featured is .Net Framework Client Profile, a redistribution of .Net Framework optimized for clients.

“Some of the benefits of this profile are immediate responsiveness with a 200K bootstrapper to enable the fastest response to the application setup URL, an integrated custom UI allowing packaging of your application and the framework for a seamless install experience, and lastly incredible install speed at 26.5 MB (this translates to about six minutes on a typical connection),” Somasegar said.

The SP1 beta for Visual Studio 2008 can be downloaded here while the SP1 beta for .Net Framework 3.5 is accessible here.

Microsoft released Visual Studio 2008 and .Net Framework 3.5 in November 2007.

Users who thought the Windows XP operating system would be more reliable than its younger sibling Vista are being buffeted by reports that the latest update for XP, Service Pack 3, has its own problems.

A variety of complaints about SP3 are being posted on the Web, with users complaining about system crashes, spontaneous reboots, and other issues. On the Windows XP forum at Microsoft.com, for instance, a poster named Doug W. said that, after installing SP3, he had to use system restore “after three attempts, with different configurations each time.” He mentioned that his system has an Athlon chip from Advanced Micro Devices, and other users have reported similar problems with SP3 on AMD machines.

AMD-Based HP Machines

According to news reports, a Microsoft document lays the blame for the endless reboot problem after installing SP3 on some computer makers. The issue, the document said, is when the XP disc image is created on an Intel-based computer and then run on a non-Intel-based machine, such as an AMD one.

Jesper Johansson, who used to work for Microsoft, noted on his blog that Microsoft identified the same problem with Service Pack 2 for XP, and that the particular problem is unique to Hewlett-Packard AMD-based desktop machines.

He quoted the company as saying in an article written following the XP SP2 problem that it did not support using a computer with one kind of processor to run an operating system based on an image created on a computer with another kind of processor. The article described how to modify the Windows registry to correct the problem.

SP3 was released to broad distribution by Microsoft last Wednesday, and is available from Windows Update service or from the company's Download Center. It offers a variety of fixes and enhancements to XP, which Microsoft has said it will begin phasing out at the end of next month.

Could Be 'Pretty Significant'

It has also been reported that SP3 will not install on systems that run a beta of Internet Explorer 8 and, after successfully installing SP3, IE7 cannot be uninstalled to, say, use IE6 instead.

Laura DiDio, an analyst with industry research firm Yankee Group, said some of the bugs in SP3 “were usual,” but others, such as the apparent issues with AMD-based HP machines, were the kind of “serious problems” with an update that haven't been heard about “in years.”

She said observers should “give it another week or two” to see if people are still having substantial problems” and, if they are, “this could be pretty significant.”

DiDio added that the reported “hundreds” of complaints will be seen by Microsoft as relatively few. But, she said, it could impact enterprise users, since continued reports of problems could provide more reason for IT departments to delay updating XP with SP3.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - The effort to make it easier for Web surfers to connect with their friends is attracting a crowd.

Following similar moves by the two biggest online hangouts, Internet search leader Google Inc. is introducing tools that are supposed to make any Web site more sociable.

The service, expected to be available on a limited basis Monday evening, provides a framework that will enable people to interact with their friends and use favorite applications they have accumulated on social networks like Facebook and Plaxo even when they aren’t visiting those sites.

Google’s initiative, called “Friend Connect,” follows pledges by MySpace and Facebook last week to allow their users to transport their personal profiles and applications to other Web sites.

News Corp.’s MySpace and privately held Facebook — the Internet’s two largest social hubs — announced their plans for wider accessibility late last week.

“Social is in the air,” said David Glazer, a director of engineering for Google.

Only about two dozen Web sites initially will have access to Google’s Friend Connect code to start. The trial run includes a site devoted to musician Ingrid Michaelson and another site providing recipes for guacamole. The coding is expected to become widely available during the next few months.

Without providing specifics, MySpace and Facebook have said it will be several more weeks before their users can transplant their personal information to other Web sites.

Google hopes its latest social tools will encourage people to spend even more time online, giving the company more opportunities to show the advertising that generates most of its profits.

Social networks provide powerful mechanisms for connecting people and information, but their benefits are limited to those who sign up with one service or another. For example, a Facebook user can't use her content or friends on LinkedIn or any other network.

That may change soon with top social networks Facebook and MySpace — as well as Google — all promising to enable data portability. Google announced Monday a preview release of Friend Connect, a technology that allows regular Web sites to join the social-networking trend.

Sites that add a code snippet become Friend Connect-enabled, giving them the ability to add user registration, invitations, a member's gallery, message posting and reviews, as well as third-party applications built with Google's OpenSocial technology, the company said.

Return of the Long Tail

“Google Friend Connect is about helping the 'long tail' of sites become more social,” said David Glazer, a director of engineering at Google. “Many sites aren't explicitly social and don't necessarily want to be social networks, but they still benefit from letting their visitors interact with each other.”

Google's announcement comes immediately following news that Facebook will launch a portability technology called Facebook Connect. An extension of Facebook's third-party development platform, Facebook Connect will “allow users to connect their Facebook identity, friends and privacy to any site,” according to a blog posting by Dave Morin, Facebook senior platform manager.

On Thursday, MySpace announced a “Data Availability” initiative to allow partners to access MySpace data and combine it with their own user data in new ways. The program launched with just four partners — eBay, Yahoo, Twitter and MySpace's own Photobucket.

The Simplicity of Google

Despite all the talk of open platforms and portability, it's clear the companies are competing hard for what could become a massive part of the overall Web. “Social networking right now is more hit-and-miss than science, and there are a lot of folks trying to find the next Facebook or MySpace. Google has the advantage of reach and a large employee group that can help drive the effort,” said Rob Enderle, principal analyst with the Enderle Group.

“Google understands 'simple,' and Facebook is beginning to get annoying with regard to complexity and noise,” Enderle said. “In addition, the number of these services is driving many to start thinking about change. Done right, Google could become the provider folks gravitate to as the market consolidates.”

Friend Connect leverages three new standards — OpenID, OAuth, OpenSocial — as well as data-access programming interfaces from Facebook, MySpace and Google itself, to “let people easily connect with their friends, wherever they are on the Web,” Glazer said.

Making Music More Social

The technology was to debut Monday night on up-and-coming singer-songwriter Ingrid Michaelson's Web site. Michaelson has added social-music features from iLike, an OpenSocial developer. Visitors will be able to use iLike's features, including seeing friends' comments and concert plans and adding music to their own profiles, all without leaving Michaelson's site.

iLike President Hadi Partovi called Friend Connect a “significant opportunity” for the company, whose Artist Dashboard now allows artists to post content simultaneously to all their social networks and manage content on their own sites.

Google was to officially launch the preview at a Campfire One developer event at Google's headquarters Monday night. More information on the technology will be posted at http://www.google.com/friendconnect.

A webcam and Apple's .Mac subscription service resulted in the arrest of two thieves and the recovery of Kait Dupalga's Mac laptop. Dupalga, an employee at the Apple Store in White Plains, N.Y., lost her Mac when thieves broke into an apartment she shares with two roommates. The thieves took the computer along with televisions, DVDs, iPods, a box of liquor, and even a set of car rims.

But thanks to some high-tech sleuthing by Dupalga — plus the fact that the thieves were known to the victims — police were able to nab the alleged perpetrators: Edmon Shahikian, 23, and Ian Frias, 20.

Back to My Mac

Dupalga's career as a digital private eye started when a friend messaged her congratulations on recovering her computer. The friend said Dupalga had “popped up as being online,” in the words of Daniel Jackson, deputy director of public safety for White Plains.

Dupalga immediately got onto another Mac and signed on to her .Mac account, which includes a feature called Back to My Mac. Apple promotes the feature on its Web site this way: “Access and control your Mac running Mac OS X Leopard from any other Leopard-based Mac over the Internet.”

So that's what Dupalga did. She turned on the laptop's webcam, which soon enough revealed a man sitting in front of the machine. She snapped a photo, which displayed a countdown on the screen. “It all clicks for him, and he puts his hand up to cover the lens, but it was too late. She had already taken the picture,” Jackson told The New York Times.

Lessons for Enterprise?

A photo of a suspect is a “great lead,” Jackson said, but wouldn't be enough to identify the person — at least not without a lot of additional work. But this case came to a rapid close once Dupalga described the man to her roommate, who replied, “Oh, I know exactly who that is — it's Ian.” Dupalga also snapped a photo of Shahikian with the computer.

When police went to the men's homes they found virtually all of the gear that had been stolen from Dupalga's apartment. The two were arrested and face charges for burglary and possession of stolen goods. Shahikian was released on $3,500 bail and Frias is still being held on $7,500 bail.

A fascinating story, but does it mean remote-access technology now provides a new means of protecting computer assets? If this had been an enterprise computer with sensitive data, couldn't an administrator remotely wipe the machine? A nice idea, but unfortunately most data thieves are not as unsophisticated as these two, said Andrew Storms, director of security operations at nCircle Network Security.

Encryption a Better Solution

“This asset-recovery method, along with so many other ideas, assumes that the perpetrator will be naive enough to boot up and plug the device into a network with Internet access,” Storms said in an e-mail. “However, the persons in the business to steal laptops for private or confidential information are generally more astute than this.”

Still, a few vendors have products along these lines. One product alters the computer BIOS, Storms said, so “even if the thief deletes the data and reinstalls the operating system, they still claim to be able to find the stolen laptop.”

Another vendor claims it can do remote data wipes of laptops. But this approach has largely been “trumped” by data-encryption features available on Windows and Mac, Storms said. Anyone who owns a laptop “ought to be turning these features on and using a strong password,” Storms said.

Data wipe is a standard feature on mobile devices like Research in Motion's BlackBerry. “If your corporate Blackberry is lost or stolen, your IT team can initiate a remote signal which will instruct the device to self-destruct,” Storms noted. This feature will be available on Apple's iPhone as well when support for Microsoft Exchange becomes available.

“Of course, the more intelligent smartphone-nabbers know about this feature and will generally know to immediately disable the network connectivity on the device, thus disabling its ability to receive the remote kill signal,” Storms said. Aware of this countermeasure, RIM has developed a “unique method to still ensure the device will delete itself,” Storms said.

PALO ALTO, Calif. - Personal computer and printer maker Hewlett-Packard reportedly is nearing a deal to buy information technology services provider Electronic Data Systems for between $12 billion and $13 billion.

The Wall Street Journal reported the talks Monday on its Web site. The newspaper said the acquisition could be announced as early as Tuesday, citing unnamed people familiar with the matter.

HP spokesman Ryan Donovan declined to comment Monday. Plano, Texas-based EDS didn’t immediately respond to messages.

Buying EDS would give Palo Alto-based HP more tools to compete against IBM in the lucrative field of technology consulting and customer support.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - What do you want your cell phone to be able to do?

Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Hal Abelson put that question to about 20 computer science students this semester when he gave them one assignment: Design a software program for cell phones that use Google Inc.’s upcoming Android mobile operating system.

In the process, they revealed the power of an open system like Android to shake up the mobile phone industry, where wireless companies are being pressured to loosen the control they have maintained over what devices do. If the brainstorms of these MIT students are an indication, phones will soon challenge the Internet as a source of innovation.

For these students at least, cell phones should be all about location, location, location. Most of the projects produced by the seven teams of students involved programs that let phones track people’s physical place — or that of their friends — to help them do things and meet up.

One project named GeoLife gives users a way to set to-do lists and get reminders on their phones. Walk by the market, and the device might buzz with a message that you’re supposed to pick up milk. Another effort, named Flare, was designed to help small businesses like pizza shops cheaply track their drivers.

Then there was Locale, which lets users configure their phones to automatically adjust their settings when the devices detect themselves in certain zones. So you might set your phone to automatically go into vibrate mode in the office and silent mode at the movie theater, and ring everywhere else.

The class had about three months to build software for an Android phone. The idea had to have a solid business case, a probable way of making money.

Some of that required conjecture, because there are no Android phones yet. A group called the Open Handset Alliance, with more than 30 wireless companies, has committed to using Android, but phones aren’t expected to hit the market until the second half of the year. The students developed their work on a PC program that simulates a phone’s operation.

Even so, the possibilities of the new wireless age seemed clear to the class. For example, Clare Bayley, an MIT sophomore on the Locale team, said her group’s software eventually should adjust its operation based on factors beyond location. Perhaps calls from certain people in the contact list could go through in some locations, but not in others. Or the phone could tweak its screen brightness depending on remaining battery life.

Such customization would have seemed like a stretch until recently, when the idea began to take hold that cell phones should be as open to new programs as PCs are to Web sites. In addition to Android — which is Google’s attempt to extend its online advertising dominance to a new venue — an industry group called the LiMo Foundation is backing open-source phones. Apple Inc. has taken steps to let third-party software developers create new applications for its iPhones.

“This class is a glimpse of the future, and what’s nice, the not-so-distant future,” Abelson said Friday at a gathering where the students presented their final projects.

In the audience were some of the professional mentors the students had during the semester, including Rich Miner, who’s overseeing Android for Google from an office across the street from MIT. Miner said afterward that the students’ work — which they are free to continue pursuing — was generally as good as anything other developers are trying.

In fact, the Locale group won $25,000 and advanced to the finals of a $10 million Android developers challenge Google is running.

The other student projects included Re:Public, a social-networking program that helps people make new friends in their area. Loco offers a way to find events around town and invite other people. Snap guides users to interesting places in their vicinity.

And there was KEI, pronounced “key,” because that’s what it is: software that enables a cell phone to unlock your car. It was the lone entrant not to tap the location craze.

But no matter: Abelson said they all would get an “A.”

___

On the Net:

Google’s Android development page:

http://code.google.com/android

(This version CORRECTS to MIT’s proper name in 2nd graf.)

SAN FRANCISCO - Apple Inc. says its online stores in the U.S. and U.K. are sold out of the iPhone, a sign supplies are being winnowed ahead of the launch of the device’s next generation that will feature faster Internet surfing speeds.

The Cupertino-based company has confirmed that the iPhone is out of stock online, but added that brick-and-mortar stores run by Apple and iPhone carriers including AT&T Inc. might still have units available.

Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris declined to comment on reasons for the shortage and on Apple’s plans for an update to the device, which is widely expected to be unveiled in June at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco.

SEATTLE - The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation says Microsoft Corp. executive Jeff Raikes will be its next CEO.

The world’s largest charitable foundation has been looking for a new leader since chief executive Patty Stonesifer announced in February that she would be stepping down.

Raikes has been the top executive in Microsoft’s business software division, responsible for such things as the Office software suite, Microsoft’s server software and applications that help businesses track customers and business processes.

In the past decade, the Gates Foundation has made more than $16 billion in grants, mostly in global health, global development and U.S. education.

Advanced Micro Devices has taken the wraps off its first energy-efficient x86 server chips featuring four processing cores and a low 55-watt thermal envelope. The five new Opteron HE processors for blade and rack systems are all targeted at the enterprise data center, noted Randy Allen, AMD's server and workstation division manager.

“These new processors, which feature AMD's advanced power management and virtualization innovations, offer a compelling platform for power-conscious data center managers who are changing the way they think about performance” and “see power consumption and virtualization as the keys to solving their overall performance equation,” Allen said.

An Important Metric

AMD's new energy-efficient quad-core chips are available for two-, four- and eight-way rack servers and blades. According to company executives, the chips have already set new performance records among comparable x86 energy-efficient processors.

Matthew Wilkins, a principal analyst at semiconductor research firm iSuppli, noted that energy efficiency has become an important metric of any microprocessor, regardless of whether it is used in a desktop PC, notebook or server. “For example, having a power-efficient multicore processor in a notebook PC ultimately equates to longer battery life, which vastly improves the laptop's value proposition,” Wilkins said.

Last month AMD introduced two 45-watt Athlon processors for desktop PCs. The company's latest quad-core server chips round out the chipmaker's microprocessor lineup to cover all three of its power-efficient computing bases.

“Data centers consume an awful lot of energy — not only in terms of the servers themselves, but also because of the associated cooling infrastructure,” Wilkins said. “All of these energy costs can add up to a lot of money, so anything that can be done to reduce the costs of running a data center is certainly a very worthwhile development.”

Playing Catch-Up

Both Intel and AMD are committed to advancing multi-core technology. Earlier this month, AMD updated its multi-core server microprocessor road map to meet manufacturers' demand for greater performance per watt and more advanced virtualization features, Allen said.

AMD's first server chip made in the more power-efficient 45nm process, code-named Shanghai, is on track to begin production in the second half of this year. A six-core server chip, dubbed Istanbul, is scheduled for delivery in the second half of next year.

Then in the first half of 2010, AMD intends to introduce its first third-generation Opteron processors with DDR3 memory capabilities. The six-core and 12-core Opteron processors are code-named Sao Paulo and Magny Cours, respectively.

However, Wilkins points out that the multi-core processor era has only just begun and it will take some time for software developers to catch up. “Independent software vendors are likewise in the early days of figuring out how to run their applications on these multi-core chips,” Wilkins said.

Multi-core processors are capable of delivering higher levels of performance, Wilkins observed, but they also increase the performance demands placed on the software they run. “Over the next couple of years we will see software written in a way that makes it possible for it to run on all six or 12 cores of a processor simultaneously, taking full advantage of the potential performance improvements,” Wilkins said.