BBC web2.0 look goes live!

A while ago I posted a blog entry about the beta for the new 'web2.0' look of the BBC homepage. They have now gone live with this. It is only on the home page and there are a few changes but the major feature are still there. Still love that clock!

Microsoft changes focus from money to minds

Free branded drinks for their employees, now free software for the future generation. Is it possible that Microsoft is loosening their money belt? Well..only technically.

The new scheme from Microsoft involves potential developers and programmers being supplied with software such as Visual Studio and XNA Studio (software used to develop the Xbox 360) - for free. Students across the world (although initially limited to 10 countries) can also get free copies of Windows Server and the developer version of the SQL Server database.

This is all part of future investment called DreamSpark, and the expected result is pretty obvious. If supplied with tools to express their interest early enough, students will soon develop skills which they will much prefer to extend once at University, making them much more employable and making more profit for Microsoft.

So is it a win-win situation? Microsoft is not going anywhere and can afford the initial expense of distributing free software, resulting in them reaping the rewards and profits at a later date. Students will always need subsidising when it comes to their education, so this scheme is ideal.

Still, at the end of day Microsoft will always be one step behind. Freeware isn't exactly new, but perhaps full versioned freeware designed by a multi-billion company is a pretty nifty trick.

Mozilla FireFox's 3rd Version

Mozilla is currently coding their fingers to the bone as they are working to the final release of the third version of its Firefox Web browser.

With the recent launch of the browser's third beta version, the open source code has made Firefox available to almost 500,000 developers and testers to put the browser through its paces.

Although the third beta version of the browser includes some 1,300 separate changes from the previous beta, Mozilla said it still busy working on additional changes to the browser.

"This beta will give you a taste of what's coming in Firefox 3, but there's still more to come, and much of what you'll see may still be a bit rough around the edges," the company said.

The beta, however, is intended for Web developers and testers for "testing purposes only," Mozilla cautioned.

"We do not recommend that anyone other than developers and testers download the Firefox 3 Beta 3 milestone release," the company warned.

The great internet clean up starts

Address overhaul begins

It was stated in a report that all of the master address books on the internet will be tidied up and updated in the first major step to overhaul and streamline the internet's core addressing system.

The new format is commonly known as IP version 6 (IPv6) and the updates and maintenance play a vital part in ensuring that the massive pool of unallocated internet addresses is not exhausted by 2011.

We use words and letters to navigate the web, but our machines use only numbers and your computer will try to access the numerical equivalent for the site you are searching for and these numbers are acquired from the net's master address book.

The latest developments have seen the birth of IPv6 and will be an upgrade on its predecessor IPv4. The upgrade will mostly consist of adding a small number of records into the new IPv6 records on master and root servers.

This a huge step forward in internet development, because for the first time pc's and servers will be able to communicate without using IPv4 technology at all.

Paul Twomey, the president of Icann (they oversee the addressing system) told the BBC website that : "There's pressure for people to make the conversion to IPv6, we're pushing this as a major issue."

The main reason for this is the fact that all of the unallocated addresses on IPv4, some 4,294,967,296, is decreasing fast.

He also added that, "we're down to 14% of the unallocated addresses out of the whole pool for version 4," and he concluded that "There's not a Y2K problem per se, but there's going to be a crush so we need to get people applying for them now."

When IPv6 becomes effective, we will unlock a virtually infinite pool of addresses to use. The take up of IPv6 is expected to increase as people that will try to register IPv4 addresses will simply have to deal with the fact that their might not be any sites left in a couple of years.