Sun jumps into the Silverlight vs. Flash battle with JavaFX

There have been an incredible amount of internet discussion in the last few weeks about the potential of Microsoft Silverlight taking on Adobe's Flash for being the basis of building rich interactive applications running on the internet. Sun must have been feeling left out. Hence, review this announcement by Sun:

At the JavaOne conference in San Francisco, Sun will roll out a Java-based product family called JavaFX, which covers Java development from the desktop to the Web to mobile devices. It features a new scripting variant of the Java, called JavaFX Script. JavaFX is a line of products focused on opportunities in the consumer communications market, including desktops, mobile clients, and TVs. The first product release is JavaFX Mobile, a software system for mobile devices.
JavaFX will be open sourced. "We plan to open-source all of JavaFX as we work through the program," said Green. Plans call for eventually offering a line of developer tools to work with JavaFX with a basic, introductory tool to be offered on Tuesday, Green said.
Sun officials acknowledged that JavaFX bears a similarity to enhanced graphics capabilities offered in the new Microsoft Silverlight platform. But Gosling added that Silverlight differs in that it is mostly focused on video-streaming.

Suddenly, in the space of a few weeks, the battle for the tools of choice to build the next generation internet applications is wide open. Adobe is the entrenched player with the Flash and Flex combination, Microsoft has thrown a spirited challenge through Silverlight (tightly integrated with .Net), and now this announcement by Sun.
This is a last gasp by Sun. Java was the development with immense promise, but it has never fully lived upto its promise. Microsoft has used all its tricks to promote its development tools. Now, this release can bring back all the non-Microsoft types, especially with the promise of open-source and similarity to AJAX.
However, one major item to note is the emphasis on the cell phone as one of the key players in this market. The cell phone is already ascendant as a mini-computer, and as the power and capabilities of this device grow (foldable typing pad and foldable big screen, anyone?), being able to develop quickly and efficiently on this platform will be a major requirement.

MySpace buying Photobucket ?

MySpace is one of the biggest spaces in the world of social networks. It fact, most people would call it the biggest space. Pretty simple to operate, it allows users to create their own profiles and put whatever they want on these pages; text, pictures, video, anything goes. The younger generation have taken to MySpace like a fish to water. But you really can't store much of photos and videos on MySpace, so users need to store these on another service and link them off their MySpace pages.
Photobucket attempts to fill that void, and allows users to store their photos and video at the site, and more importantly link them from their MySpace page so that users viewing their profile are able to see these images and videos in a very efficient way.
But one wonders as to how Photobucket makes money ? It allows millions of users to store their images and videos, but it does so for free. If they started to charge money for this service, people would switch to something else in a flash. Trying to entice advertisers by showing them lots of young users trying to update images and edit videos may not exactly work. After all, YouTube also had a ton of users, but they were not exactly able to set the advertising world on fire. So it is apt that Photobucket tries the same route that YouTube took, selling themselves to a richer buyer who is looking for this functionality.
Refer this article from Forbes:

Are MySpace and Photobucket tying the knot?
But that's what Gawker Media's Valleywag blog reported Monday morning. A few hours later, the TechCrunch blog said it had confirmed the acquisition at $250 million. Both MySpace and Photobucket representatives declined to comment--which could very well mean that something is going on between the two companies. Or not.
A brief recap: MySpace is one of the world's most dominant social networks--with 107.7 million visitors per month--and allows its users to stick just about anything they want on their pages. Many of them have been using Photobucket, a relatively unknown start-up until recently, to store the images they stick on the site, as well as other sites they visit.
MySpace’s interest in Photobucket should not serve as evidence of a probable exit strategy for other start-ups that thrive largely on the user bases of social networks like MySpace. Photobucket is a rare case. In many other instances, MySpace would prefer to build its own competitor than buy a tool or feature off a popular widget maker. And when MySpace does that, those start-ups are toast.

Microsoft eyeing Yahoo

This piece of news is big news. It is being widely reported that Microsoft is eyeing a 50 billion dollar bid for Yahoo. This was first reported by the New York Post which reported that Microsoft is trying to get Yahoo to agree to this takeover. They have held talks in the past about such a deal, and senior executives of both companies might be negotiating a deal in secret right now. Read this story in Forbes.

Shares of online search site operator Yahoo Inc. spiked Friday, as reports that the company could be bought out by software giant Microsoft Corp. drove the stock up 16.5 percent.
The dramatic rise was preceded by a Friday report in the New York Post, which cited unnamed sources saying Microsoft is trying to get Yahoo to formally negotiate a takeover by the software company. The story cited sources as saying Yahoo could fetch about $50 billion.
In a note to investors, Deutsche Bank analyst Jeetil Patel wrote a partnership or merger between the companies makes strategic sense, since Microsoft is one of the few companies that could repair Yahoo's technology and product development issues.

This deal may make sense for Microsoft since it will give them a pretty good web property, and the overall strength to pose a much bigger challenge to Google. However, a deal of such magnitude is not easy to push through. The companies have conflicting styles. In addition, since both Microsoft and Yahoo are big players in the online search and other properties market, such a deal may have anti-trust implications.

Busy week for Microsoft patching

Next week promises to be a busy week for systems administrators of companies where there are a number of Microsoft systems. These would consist of security updates for Windows, Office, Exchange and Biztalk. Microsoft normally does not disclose details of the updates, but this article provides some details of what the expected updates would be.
These are one of the issues with using Microsoft updates, in terms of the number of updates that need to be installed on a regular basis. And many of these updates require reboots, causing downtime on systems that are in regular use. Doing downtime on a production system requires some amount of coordination and making sure that users are aware of this downtime. Refer this article:

Two of the seven bulletins slated for the May 8 release involve Windows, three affect Microsoft Office, and one each impact Microsoft Exchange and the cryptography API within BizTalk Server. At least five of the seven updates will be pegged critical, Microsoft's highest threat score in its four-level system, according to the advance notification posted today.
As usual, Microsoft did not disclose details of the updates, but intelligent guesses are not difficult. One of the Windows updates, for example, will likely be a fix for the DNS (Domain Name System) zero-day bug found in all editions of Microsoft's server line, including the current beta of Windows Longhorn Server. While researchers predicted last month that Microsoft would issue an out-of-cycle fix for the DNS server service flaw, the company's security team instead has repeatedly blogged that it would probably wait until the regularly scheduled patch day.
If Microsoft issues the seven updates, users will have seen 29 bulletins in the first four months of the year, and at least 49 patches; more than half of those will have been marked critical. During the first five months of 2006, Microsoft issued 20 updates with 36 patches.

These are a significant number of updates. The biggest problem is that in the time that Microsoft releases a patch, the information about the bug is already being exploited by hackers. Microsoft normally releases a patch with some delay after reporting, while trying to make sure that information about the defect is not available publicly. However, with a reported market in defects, it would seem to be losing this battle.

Convert Flash to Silverlight: Electric Harmony

In the midst of all the discussions about the relative benefits and weaknesses of Flash and Silverlight, comes this conversion tool. A Colorado based company called Electic Rain is bringing out a product called Electric Rain Harmony that converts Flash SWF files to XAML. Read more about this here:

Electric Rain Harmony provides designers and developers with a fast and easy way to convert existing Flash SWF files (graphics and simple animations) into Microsoft-based XAML mark-up for immediate use in the Microsoft WFP and Silverlight (formally WPF/E) platforms.
Harmony not only eases the pain of repurposing Flash assets into XAML, it also helps designers learn the XAML syntax and mark-up structure by illustrating how graphics and animations are translated from the popular Flash SWF format into the new XAML format. By deconstructing how XAML mark-up builds, displays, and plays animations in context to Flash, Harmony accelerates the understanding and learning surrounding XAML and WPF graphics and animations.

Harmony will be available in the summer of 2007 and sold through the website www.erain.com
This makes the conflict between Adobe and Microsoft more interesting. Flash is the major owner of this market which is being challenged by Microsoft through Silverlight.
People are hesitant to switch technologies unless they have a level of confidence. If they are able to see existing Flash SWF files getting easily converted without a loss of the look and feel as well as the functionality, it will make them feel easier about using Silverlight.

Google blasts Viacom over lawsuit

Viacom had filed a $1 billion lawsuit with Google, alleging that YouTube, owned by Google was indulging in massive intentional copyright infringement. This is based on the fact that YouTube has a large number of video clips from Viacom's properties (MTV, Paramount Pictures, and numerous other media properties). Viacom claim that all these infringements are encouraged by the nature of YouTube, and that they are not doing enough to remove these.
Google, in a counter-offensive, has claimed that it is actually a hosting provider, and similar to numerous other hosting providers. It claims that Viacom's legal action, if taken forward will threaten the information exchange across the internet. The claims made from both sides are heated, and follow after failed negotiations.
Further, Google claims that it is protected by the terms of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, which protects Internet service providers that act quickly to block pirated material once notified by the copyright holder. Viacom claims that because of the large number of clips, it takes a large effort to identify these pirated clips.
There was a fair amount of debate over this exact issue when Google had acquired YouTube. Did Google factor in the legal troubles that it would face when it decided to spend around $1.6 billion to buy YouTube ? In a bit of time, as this case progresses, we will get to know.

Microsoft allowing Silverlight to mix with .Net

At its Mix07 web developers conference, Microsoft pushed further for making Silverlight as a cross-platform strategy, for allowing devlopers and designers to use technology other than AJAX / Javascript for developing web applications.
Continuing with its campaign to promote Silverlight as a Flash-killer, Microsoft fused a full portable version of .Net with Silverlight. This is supposed to allow developers the ability to mix their Silverlight apps with .net, even on non-Windows systems.
Silverlight is currently in Beta, with the final version likely to be released this summer. This will be an epic challenge. Adobe has the designer market, and will be loath to allow anyone else to take control over it. With the recent release of Creative Suite 3, Adobe would want to make sure that designers stick to the combination of Flash, Flex, Photoshop, and Dreamweaver; while Microsoft will use its power to try and get more traction for its Expression series of products.
Read this article in more detail:

Microsoft kicked off its Mix07 web developers' conference by revealing it has fused a full portable version of its .Net runtime with the next version of its Silverlight 'Flash-killer' technology.
"The web has been mostly about DHTML and AJAX," Ozzie said. "But AJAX has limitations...and there are better languages than JavaScript for the sophisticated applications that developers want to build."
Ozzie also said that web and graphic designers and developers will have free use of Microsoft's Windows Live Platform, a web storage service, to store, run and show off their Silverlight applications and videos.

With all this, designers should be enjoying this battle, since it gives them more options, and these mega companies will also be more sensitive to their concerns.