Why Chromium-powered Edge could be a gamechanger | IT PRO
Might this be the tipping point that finally brings us a common platform across all desktops?
— Lees op www.itpro.co.uk/web-browser/34267/why-chromium-powered-edge-could-be-a-gamechanger
Tag: Open Standards
IBM, Microsoft Back Zend Open Cloud API
While cloudcomputing is at the peak of the hypecycle, a question many people ask is “which cloud should I choose ?” what they mean in most cases is that they’re afraid of being locked in a certain platform based on the fact that some of the interfaces are not standard simply because not all standards exist ..
Well today a big step towards standard is being set by some of the cloud vendors in this field. I am very glad to see Microsoft being there from the start ..
Zend Technologies’ Simple API project provides a common API set from which developers may call application services.
A group of prominent cloud vendors has banded together behind an open source project that promises to make application services available across clouds. Zend Technologies, the supplier of the PHP scripting language, launched the Simple API project Tuesday, and IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) were among the first vendors to sign on.
"We’re very excited to participate. This is a very important effort," said Vijay Rajagopalan, principal architect for Microsoft’s interoperability strategy team, in an interview. Microsoft will supply the project with a PHP software development kit for its Azure cloud, which is due to become operative in the second half of November.
Simple API will seek to counteract the tendency of each cloud to have some proprietary parts, making it difficult for an application to work with services in more than one cloud at a time.
The Simple API is intended to provide a common API set from which developers may call application services, regardless of which cloud they reside in. Files generated by an application running in one cloud could be stored on Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN)’s S3, Rackspace’s Cloud Files, Nirvanix Storage Delivery Network, or Microsoft’s Azure Windows blobs. Rackspace and Nirvanix are also members of the project.
DMTF to Develop Standards for Managing a Cloud Computing Environment
Hopefully a cloud initiatve that does work. Interoperability is a key component in Cloud Computing. Glad to see Microsoft is one of the active participants.
Open Cloud Standards Incubator Created to Address Management Interoperability for Cloud Systems
… The Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF), the organization bringing the IT industry together to collaborate on systems management standards development, validation, promotion and adoption, today announced that it has formed a group dedicated to addressing the need for open management standards for cloud computing. The "Open Cloud Standards Incubator" will work to develop a set of informational specifications for cloud resource management.
As virtualization technology continues to be more rapidly adopted, it is emerging as a common enabling foundation for delivering software solutions into IT environments along with the potential to lower IT costs and improve operational efficiencies. While deploying virtualization technologies it is also critical to have comprehensive management capabilities associated with the implementation. Along with the adoption of virtualization, more and more enterprise IT customers are looking at the cloud computing paradigm to better deliver services to their customers.
No specific standards currently exist for enabling interoperability between private clouds within enterprises and hosted or public cloud providers. DMTF’s Open Cloud Standards Incubator will focus on addressing these issues by developing cloud resource management protocols, packaging formats and security mechanisms to facilitate interoperability.
"Cloud computing will have a major impact on IT management," said Winston Bumpus, DMTF president. "With the DMTF’s track record for leading the industry in the development of proven standards for management interoperability, along with its extensive network of Alliance Partners, this Open Cloud Standards Incubator provides an ideal setting for initiating work on specifications to enable interoperable cloud management."
The work of the Open Cloud Standards Incubator will focus on ways to facilitate operations between private clouds within enterprises and other private, public, or hybrid clouds by improving the interoperability between platforms through open cloud resource management standards. The group also aims to develop specifications to enable cloud service portability and provide management consistency across cloud and enterprise platforms.
The Open Cloud Standards Incubator was formed as part of the DMTF Standards Incubation process, which enables like-minded DMTF members to work together and produce informational specifications that can later be fast-tracked through the standards development process. The incubation process is designed to foster and expedite open, collaborative, exploratory technical work that complements the DMTF mission to lead the development, adoption and promotion of interoperable management initiatives and standards.
The current incubator leadership board consists of AMD, Cisco, Citrix, EMC, HP, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Novell, Red Hat, Savvis, Sun Microsystems, and VMware. Please click here for more information, or to learn more about participating. …
Continue at source
OpenXML … this is what it’s all about …
There are some things you don’t notice when comparing functions and features in Office Suites and Document Formats. Accessibility is such a thing. How do people who are for example visually handicapped use Office and how do they access document or consume information.
Accessibility is a very important “feature” in Microsoft Office. The capabilities of OpenXML enhance that even further. A great example is the fact that the DAISY consortium has now created a save to DAISY add-in for Microsoft Word.
I do wish that the ODF lobby would stop their politics and start focussing more on making Open Standards work, not for shareholders and politics but for end users, yes meaningfull stuff for end users …
In association with Microsoft, the Digital Accessible Information SYstem (DAISY) Consortium has announced the second version of the Save as DAISY add-in for Microsoft Office Word, available for download over at openxmlcommunity.org. With the integration of DAISY Pipeline Lite, version 2 of the add-in produces a full DAISY multimedia publication with synchronized text and MP3 audio (instead of converting to just a DAISY XML file).
This means it is possible to transform Word documents into accessible multimedia formats for people unable to read print due to a visual, physical, perceptual, developmental, cognitive, or learning disabilities. It generates full text and audio books using the Text-to-Speech service on your PC. DAISY XML files can be read natively by some DAISY players, and the DAISY Pipeline is still available for processing those XML files. A more complete description of the DAISY standards and Word-to-DAISY conversion is available on daisy.org.
Version 1.0 of the add-in was released in May 2008 for Microsoft Office Word 2007, Word 2003, and Word XP. Since the project is open source, the Open XML to DAISY XML Translator source code is also available for download on SourceForge.net.
Source: ArsTechnica.com
Suikeroom Google blijft Mozilla spekken
Is Google hiermee grootaandeelhouder van Mozilla ? En wat als Google Chrome groter wordt .. neemt dan de interesse af net als bij StarOfifce in Google Pack. ?
De omzet die Mozilla vorig jaar binnenhaalde was voor 88 procent, 66 miljoen dollar, te danken aan Google. In 2006 was dit 85 procent. De totale omzet van de organisatie steeg met twaalf procent tot 75 miljoen dollar.
Source: Suikeroom Google blijft Mozilla spekken
Update: 22/11/08
Grappig, via de weblog van Peter O’Kelly kom ik op een artikel over de Mozilla / Google relatie en de druk die hier op ontstaat. Daar is trouwen sprake van 91% van het Google aandeel in de omzet …
Microsoft Office Web Applications = Multiplatform
Interoperability, or in this context Office for the web available to all users on all platforms. Just one of the examples of Software + Services. An article on ComputerWorl clarifies some details in the platform that Office Web Application will support. Just consider the potential of this …
November 13, 2008 (Computerworld) Microsoft Corp. clarified this week that the upcoming Office Web — a lightweight version of its Office suite that runs as an online service — will be available to users running Mac OS X and Linux, as well as from Apple’s iPhone.
In a post to the Microsoft-run Channel 10 blog, someone identified as Sarah Perez spelled out system requirements for Office Web. According to Perez, the online versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote will be accessible not only from Microsoft’s own Internet Explorer (IE) and within Windows, but also from Mozilla’s Firefox and Apple’s Safari browsers running on Mac OS X and Linux.
Firefox comes in versions for Mac OS X, Linux and Windows, while Safari has editions for both Mac OS X and Windows. Together, Firefox and Safari accounted for more than 26% of all browsers used during October, Web metrics firm Net Applications reported earlier this month. Microsoft’s own IE, meanwhile, owned 71% of the browser usage share in October. ….
Source: ComputerWorldhttp://computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9120143&intsrc=hm_list
Windows Live ID Becomes an OpenID Provider
Another big step in interoperability for Microsoft. Windows Live ID, one of the most widely used authentication mechanisms becomes and OpenID privider … This is just one of the many announcements made at PDC this week
Windows Live ID Commits to Support OpenID
Beginning today, Windows Live ID is publicly committing to support the OpenID digital identity framework with the announcement of the public availability of a Community Technology Preview (CTP) of the Windows Live ID OpenID Provider.
You will soon be able to use your Windows Live ID account to sign in to any OpenID Web site!
The Windows Live ID OpenID Provider (OP) enables anyone with a Windows Live ID account to set up an OpenID alias and to use that alias for identification at an increasing number of OpenID 2.0 relying party sites-for example: Plaxo, Pibb, StackOverflow.com and Wikispaces.
What is OpenID?
The official answer from the OpenID Foundation (the guardians of the OpenID specs) is that "OpenID is a free and easy way to use a single digital identity across the Internet." (Source: http://openid.net/)
OpenID is an emerging, de facto standard Web protocol for user authentication. It helps eliminate the need for multiple user names across different Web sites, thereby simplifying a user’s online experience. Stated another way, you can reuse your OpenID account at different Web sites without having to create a new user name and password at each site you use.
More information about OpenID is available at http://openid.net.
Windows Live ID OpenID Provider – October 2008 (CTP)
The initial release is a Community Technology Preview (CTP) Release in the Windows Live ID Integration (INT) environment. It is intended primarily for relying-party Web sites and developers of relying-party client libraries, to enable them to test the interoperability of their implementations against the Windows Live ID OP endpoint and flush out any bugs or incompatibilities.
Note that the Windows Live ID OP supports only the OpenID 2.0 protocol.
The Windows Live ID INT environment is separate from the main Production environment, and is for testing purposes only. If you have not already created a Windows Live ID user account for testing in INT, you can do so at http://login.live-int.com/.
After you have your Windows Live ID account in INT, go to https://login.live-int.com/beta/ManageOpenID.srf to set up your OpenID alias on that test account.
NOTE: INT accounts are for testing purposes only and are NOT intended to be permanent user accounts. They do not allow access to Windows Live services in Production.
Source: Microsoft Live Services blog
Microsoft Expands List of Formats Supported in Microsoft Office
Microsoft will include the support of ODF 1.1 in Microsoft Office. Good move showing that Microsoft is serious about interoperability …
… Microsoft Corp. is offering customers greater choice and more flexibility among document formats, as well as creating additional opportunities for developer and competitors, by expanding the range of document formats supported in its flagship Office productivity suite.
The 2007 Microsoft Office system already provides support for 20 different document formats within Microsoft Office Word, Office Excel and Office PowerPoint. With the release of Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2) scheduled for the first half of 2009, the list will grow to include support for XML Paper Specification (XPS), Portable Document Format (PDF) 1.5, PDF/A and Open Document Format (ODF) v1.1.
When using SP2, customers will be able to open, edit and save documents using ODF and save documents into the XPS and PDF fixed formats from directly within the application without having to install any other code. It will also allow customers to set ODF as the default file format for Office 2007. To also provide ODF support for users of earlier versions of Microsoft Office (Office XP and Office 2003), Microsoft will continue to collaborate with the open source community in the ongoing development of the Open XML-ODF translator project on SourceForge.net.
In addition, Microsoft has defined a road map for its implementation of the newly ratified International Standard ISO/IEC 29500 (Office Open XML). IS29500, which was approved by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) in March, is already substantially supported in Office 2007, and the company plans to update that support in the next major version release of the Microsoft Office system, code-named “Office 14.”
Consistent with its interoperability principles, in which the company committed to work with others toward robust, consistent and interoperable implementations across a broad range of widely deployed products, the company has also announced it will be an active participant in the future evolution of ODF, Open XML, XPS and PDF standards. …
Source: Microsoft Expands List of Formats Supported in Microsoft Office
Microsoft to Help Disabled Access Office Documents
… Microsoft has released a software add-in to help those who have difficulty reading printed documents to turn Word documents into audio files.
The “Save as DAISY XML” add-in makes it easier to create audio books from text files, and was developed by Microsoft, Sonata Software, and the Digital Accessible Information System (DAISY) Consortium as an open-source project. It can be downloaded for free, and is compatible Microsoft Word 2007, Word 2003 and Word XP.
The add-in allow users to save Open XML-based text files as DAISY XML, which in turn can converted into the DAISY Digital Talking Book (DTB) format using another software tool, Pipeline, the latest version of which was also released Wednesday. …
Source: CIO.com
I really like the fact that Microsoft’s approach to providing Office functionality is also focussed on disabled people.
This is a very good example of how OpenXML enables the creation of “DAISY XML” a format that can be used to create a format to create audio books.
My wife uses a DAISY player for years now and it is an excellent device snd very easy to operate / browse trhough audio books …
Microsoft Protocol information for SharePoint and Office
Microsoft Corp. today took another step toward fulfilling its interoperability principle of ensuring open connections to its high-volume products and driving greater interoperability, opportunity and choice across the IT community of developers, partners, customers and competitors.
Microsoft today posted on MSDN more than 14,000 pages of preliminary versions of technical documentation for Microsoft protocols built into Microsoft Office 2007, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. With this action, Microsoft will have posted a cumulative total of more than 44,000 pages of protocol documentation that it committed in its interoperability principles. Anyone who wishes to do so can now access, for free, preliminary versions of the documentation for the “connection points” between these Microsoft products as follows:
- Protocols between Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft Office client applications;
- Protocols between Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and other Microsoft server products;
- Protocols between Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 and Microsoft Office Outlook;
- Protocols between 2007 Microsoft Office system client applications and other Microsoft server products.
As a result of today’s posting, all types of developers — including independent software vendors, open source developers and developers in customer IT departments — will have consistent, open access to this protocol documentation that defines how these high-volume Microsoft products communicate with other Microsoft products. This consistent, open access to information will promote more interoperability options for developers of all types and will help foster improved real-world interoperability solutions in the marketplace.
Source : Microsoft PressPass
- Office Protocol Documentation
The Office protocol documentation provides detailed technical specifications for Microsoft proprietary protocols (including extensions to industry-standard or other published protocols) that are implemented and used in Microsoft Office client programs to interoperate or communicate with Microsoft products.
The documentation includes a set of companion overview and reference documents that supplement the technical specifications with conceptual background, overviews of inter-protocol relationships and interactions, and technical reference information.
- SharePoint Products and Technologies Protocol Documentation
The Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies protocol documentation provides detailed technical specifications for Microsoft proprietary protocols (including extensions to industry-standard or other published protocols) that are implemented and used in SharePoint Products and Technologies to interoperate or communicate with Microsoft products.
The documentation includes a set of companion overview and reference documents that supplement the technical specifications with conceptual background, overviews of inter-protocol relationships and interactions, and technical reference information.