Microsoft’s Cortana could soon control your mood lighting

​Microsoft’s Cortana may be younger than counterparts such as Google Now and Apple’s Siri, but the virtual assistant already stands out thanks to some unique features. One prime example is Notebook, which the service uses to learn about your habits and keep track of your preferences. Another is the ability to communicate with third-party apps, opening the door up to plenty of new use cases. But we’re still just getting started; if the hackers at Onion.io have their way, Cortana will soon be controlling the lights in your home, among other automation tasks.

Using Onion.io’s backend for devices connected to the Internet of Things, hackers used voice commands to have Cortana turn lamps on and off, and even print out a basic grocery list. Imagine combining this home-automation functionality with Philips Hue bulbs — Cortana could soon be adjusting the lighting on command for dinner parties or home-movie nights. And voice commands could definitely come in handy for adjusting your house’s temperature, too. It will be exciting to see how companies choose to implement the tech, but if you don’t feel like waiting, you can always grab a Bluetooth module and a Netduino and hack something up yourself.

Filed under: Household, Software, Microsoft

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Via: Ubergizmo

Whatever happened to Netscape?

Netscape’s story reads like a proper fairy tale: takeovers, fierce and hostile competition, split-ups, a giant payout and even a dragon! While Netscape may now only be a sweet, sweet memory to those who used it to first discover the web, the browser’s monstrous impact has cemented it as one of the first and most important startups to shape the internet. Netscape’s founders successfully plucked a brilliant idea from academia and pushed it onto the world’s stage at a time when competition didn’t exist, websites were not much more than plain-text blurbs and inline images were still revolutionary. Consider the battle that would ensue between this web pioneer and Microsoft. The “browser wars,” as they came to be known, would ultimately lead to creation of Internet Explorer, Microsoft’s antitrust suit and the formation of the Mozilla Project and Firefox.

Netscape was born the child of University of Illinois graduate Marc Andreessen and Silicon Graphics’ Jim Clark. Andreessen had spent some of his time at university working on the NCSA (National Center for Supercomputing Applications) Mosaic browser and understood full well the potential it offered. With Clark’s help, the two created Mosaic Communications Corporation in April 1994, pulling in many former SGI and NCSA employees. The team then churned out the first point release in October of that year: Mosaic Netscape release 0.9. By the end of December, the company underwent a significant transformation, adopting the name Netscape Communications and launching Netscape Navigator 1.0.

Jim Clark (left) with Marc Andreessen.

The company launched Netscape Navigator into the market without even a glimmer of real competition and the browser went on to become the de facto portal to the web in early 1995. Of course, Microsoft was working feverishly in the background to play catch-up with a browser of its own creation, licensing Mosaic’s tech to build the first iteration of Internet Explorer.

On August 9th of that year, the then roughly 1-year-old Netscape went public with its initial stock offering at $28 per share. By close of day, the company’s valuation skyrocketed to nearly $3 billion. It was around this time that Microsoft was preparing to release Windows 95 and a separate add-on pack: Windows 95 Plus! Pack, which included Internet Explorer 1.0 and TCP/IP, the protocol needed to use the web. At last, Microsoft had arrived with its first effort at a Netscape killer.

The company launched Netscape Navigator into the market without even a glimmer of real competition and the browser went on to become the de facto portal to the web in early 1995.

Netscape and Internet Explorer traded releases in lockstep throughout 1995 and 1996, but by the time Internet Explorer version 3.0 was released, Microsoft had fully caught up and was able to match Netscape feature-for-feature. In an attempt to differentiate from its IE rival and grow its user base, Netscape took a stab at the enterprise crowd and launched the Netscape Communicator 4.0 bundle in late 1996. Communicator added in a Usenet client, web editor, e-mail app and even an address book; in short, it quite handily defined the very early days of sales- and management-driven bloatware. The move, however, failed to gain much traction with the suit-and-tie set.

Netscape’s browser icon through the years.

Netscape continued to develop both Netscape Navigator 3.0 and Communicator 4.0, but the looming threat of Internet Explorer, with version 3 bundled into Windows 95 service release 2, still lingered heavily in the background. The rivalry was compounded even further when Microsoft’s browser team apparently dropped its massive IE logo off at Netscape’s campus the night of Internet Explorer 4′s launch. The Netscape crew understandably took issue with the slight and toppled the giant IE logo over, placing its Mozilla dragon mascot atop it and holding a sign that read “Netscape 72 Microsoft 18.”

In January 1998, Netscape announced its intention to release the source code for Netscape Communicator to the public; a move that gave rise to the Mozilla Organization. Unfortunately for Netscape, this also had the effect of stalling development on its browser platform through much of that year, essentially giving Microsoft the lead it needed. And that summer, Internet Explorer finally overtook Netscape as the most used browser, a mantle Netscape was never able to win back.

Netscape responds to Microsoft’s prank by putting its mascot atop a toppled Internet Explorer logo.

The company, however, was far from being completely wiped out: AOL recognized some value in the struggling company and purchased it in November 1998 for a whopping $4.2 billion. The acquisition did nothing to spur development efforts though, and it wouldn’t be until April of 2000 that preview versions of Netscape 6, based on Mozilla code, saw the light of day. A further two years later, Netscape 7 was released, serving as the last major build version to come from that source code.

AOL recognized some value in the struggling company and purchased it in November 1998 for a whopping $4.2 billion.

Not long after, AOL shuttered the Netscape department and laid off most of the staff in 2003, opting instead to continue development in-house with Mozilla’s Firefox as its code base. The once proud web app was also re-branded as Netscape Browser and AOL eventually outsourced successive releases to Mercurial Communications, a Canadian software developer. Mercurial babysat and pushed out versions 8 through 8.1 of the Netscape Browser between 2005 and 2007 to a public that largely didn’t care any longer. And, in a sad final gasp, AOL cobbled together a dev team to push out Netscape Navigator 9, its first internally built browser effort since version 7. Its release would signal the end of Netscape the browser, as AOL pulled the plug on it in February of 2008.

While Netscape didn’t stand the test of time quite like its chief rival Internet Explorer has, its open-source transition into Mozilla did eventually birth Firefox — a browser success story in and of itself. But Netscape’s precipitous rise and fall in those early internet days wasn’t without lasting effects: Its brief stint at the top and tense rivalry with Microsoft laid much of the groundwork for innovation in the browsing space.

[Image Credit: Associated Press; snafu.de]

Filed under: Internet, Software, Microsoft

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Microsoft says ‘shwmae’ to the Welsh language

If you’ve ever struggled to understand what Cymru am byth means, you’ll have found that few web translators are prepared to help you out. That’s changed now, thanks to a deal between Microsoft and the Welsh Assembly, which teamed up to bring the language to Office, Bing and the Windows and Windows Phone translator apps. The country’s national body passed a law back in 2012 requiring public bodies to treat both English and Welsh equally, but didn’t have the tech necessary to ensure all employees had access to translation gear. Both parties are keen to stress that, despite the official involvement, it’s just as (un)reliable as translators for other languages, but hey, at least one or two kids might avoid our childhood fate of having gau’r drws barked us by an annoyed Grandmother and not knowing what the hell it meant.

Filed under: Internet, Software, Microsoft

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Source: Microsoft, Welsh Assembly