About six months ago at Microsoft PDC09, Dean Hachamovitch revealed Internet Explorer 9 for the first time and teased a relatively new browser rendering technique based on Direct2D, at the time. Barely weeks after, Mozilla also showed off their implementation of Direct2D rendering in a nightly build of Firefox.

Now at MIX10 Microsoft once again showed off a bunch of groundbreaking new (performance) features but I’m now skeptical second time coming if they’ll be as innovative when it eventually ships. Remember, even Internet Explorer 8 took the lead in terms of performance, when it was announced too.

In a press briefing I asked Dean if they fear the new features they showed off today could be implemented by other browsers that ship sooner, he responded “the Windows API is very rich” and he supports other applications who take advantage of them.

Of course this shouldn’t take away the fact that when Internet Explorer 9 will be great for end-users and the web as a whole when it finally ships, but by that time, it might be back right where it started – catching up to what is easily the fastest evolving industry in the world with an update cycle that doesn’t match.

Be wary when using PayPal abroad

One of PayPal’s (www.paypal.co.uk) security checks when account holders make an online payment is to monitor unusual activity or use of the account. If PayPal spots suspicious activity, it sometimes temporarily freezes the account, leaving legitimate users frustrated. PayPal account holders need to be especially wary when using the service abroad. Some people have complained that after using PayPal while on holiday, they’ve returned home to find their account suspended and the payment reversed – because they made the payment from an IP address they’ve not used before. PayPal can capture the IP address of account logins and can build a pattern of behaviour if an account tends to log in from the same IP or group of IPs. Web User spoke to PayPal, which confirmed that using its service abroad can trigger the temporary freezing of an account. “If a user logs in or tries to send money from a location around the world that is unusual for the account – for example, if they were a British account holder and have transacted with PayPal for three years from a British IP only – then they try to log in from a holiday hotel room in Bali to buy a digital camera, this might prompt a security check for suspicious behaviour,” said a PayPal spokeswoman. Although this type of scenario can lead to an account being frozen, the spokeswoman said: “In most cases a user will be asked a few short security questions in order to ‘unfreeze’ the account so they can continue with their login.” These questions appear on-screen during the login process when the customer tries to make a purchase. Further advice on how to stay safe online when using PayPal for buying or selling on the internet can be found at www.paypal.co.uk/securitycentre.


Source of Information : WebUser February 11 2010

Dean Hachamovitch finished his demo of Internet Explorer 9 at MIX10 a short while ago. He did a variety of demos for folks to see. Many of these you can try for yourself with the Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview on the Test Drive site. To do these demos, a variety of Windows PCs were used. I thought I would call out those PCs and their specs.

In the first part of the demo, Dean used an HP xw8400 Workstation. Dean used this PC for demoing interoperability and standards (same markup!). This PC comes with dual Intel Xeon 5150 2.66GHz processors, 4GB of memory, 150GB hard drive, and NVIDIA Quadro FX 1500 graphics.

For the GPU-Powered HTML5 demo Steven Sinofsky, President of the Windows and Windows Live Division, dropped by to take part in showing off IE9 with Dean. Both he and Dean used identical PCs for this demo. The Windows PC they both used was the Dell Studio XPS 1640. The Studio XPS 1640 models they used had a Intel Core 2 Duo P8600 2.4GHz processor, 4GB DDR2 800MHz, ATI Mobility Radeon 3670 graphics, and a 500GB 7200 RPM Drive.

For the HTML5 YouTube and Video Carousel demos, Dean used the Dell Studio 1555. This PC comes with an Intel Dual Core T9600 2.8GHz processor, 4GB of memory, a 250GB 7200 RPM SATA hard drive, and ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4500 graphics.

Special note from me: the Studio 1555 is the very same model I use as my everyday laptop here at work. I refer to it as “The Goat” due to the special design on the back. You can see the design here. Dell’s Design Studio has 200+ designs to choose from for customizing your Dell laptop.

The netbook Dean used was the HP Mini 311 which comes standard with an Intel Atom N270 1.6Ghz processor, 1GB of DDR3 memory, 160GB 7200 RPM SATA hard drive, and NVIDIA Ion graphics.

You’ll notice a few of these PCs use NVIDIA graphics. NVIDIA posted a blog post earlier today about GPU computing and highlights IE9.

The breadth of different types of Windows PCs used in today’s demos of IE9 at MIX10 shows how the browser takes advantage of the power of modern hardware while utilizing fewer resources.

Yesterday was Day 1 of MIX10 in Las Vegas and a lot of really cool things were announced – specifically around developing for Windows Phone 7 Series. You’ll find the gist of the Day 1 news from MIX10 here on the MIX10 website. Today is proving to be an equally exciting day as yesterday with Dean Hachamovitch, General Manager for Internet Explorer, taking the stage for Day 2 Keynote to show off what we’re doing with Internet Explorer 9. Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) is the next version of our Internet Explorer web browser. Steven Sinofsky first gave an early look at IE9 last year at PDC09. But today at MIX10, Dean is officially going beyond the “early look” phase by diving deeper into the specific investments we’re making to the platform behind IE9 and delivering code in the form of a Platform Preview. To be specific, we are highlighting 3 key investments we’re making in IE9 today.

Performance, specifically with JavaScript: We are announcing a new JavaScript engine for IE9 which is designed to make Internet Explorer faster. This new JavaScript engine for IE9 places us faster than the shipping version of Firefox today on Webkit.org’s SunSpider benchmark test.

Standards and Interoperability: We are committed to the ideal of having the same markup (tags, script, and language) work across all the different browsers. This makes it easy for developers to develop their websites. With this commitment, HTML5 is at the center of IE9, and IE9 will include extensive support for DOM, CSS3, SVG standards and XHTML.

GPU-powered HTML5: We believe that HTML5 applications will take advantage of the latest in PC advancements to offer a truly graphically rich and functional experience that customers and developers want them (and expect them) to be. IE9 is the first browser designed to take advantage of modern hardware by shifting from the CPU to the GPU for hardware-accelerated SVG, enhanced JavaScript performance, and GPU-powered HTML5. By moving IE9 to the GPU and taking advantage of the latest Direct2D technology in Windows, webpages will load faster, graphics will be improved and users can take advantage of the modern hardware in their Windows PCs while taking fewer resources from their PC.

With these key investments for IE9, this translates into a great opportunity for developers to build rich websites.

For more from Dean, he’s posted a blog post about his MIX10 Keynote over on the IEBlog. I definitely suggest checking it out. You can also watch the keynote on demand here.

In talking about the platform behind IE9, we wanted to give developers a way to try out the investment we’ve done to-date with IE9. Today we’re announcing the Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview. The Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview is simply a preview of the platform subsystems code that is “under the hood” of the browser. This Platform Preview is designed specifically for developers so that they can get an early sense of some of the changes in the browser including capabilities, performance, and standards support (investments I mention above).

 

The Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview includes the IE9 Test Drive website that presents a series of tests that allow developers to test the functionality of the investments we’re making with HTML5, Java Script, etc. To ensure we’re keeping developers actively engaged and aware of our continued work in key investments in IE9, we’re also announcing today that we’re making a commitment to deliver updates to this build approximately every 8 weeks leading up to the beta of Internet Explorer 9.

One thing I need to be clear about – the Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview is not a full-fledged web browser to be used for everyday browsing of the Internet (it doesn’t even have a “back” button). It is designed specifically to run side-by-side to your regular browser and is simply a preview of the platform investments we’re making in IE9 designed for developers to learn how to take advantage of these investments in their websites. For everyday browsing of the Internet, I highly recommend continuing to use Internet Explorer 8. If you’re not necessarily a developer (like me) but want to get an idea on what we’re going to be doing with IE9 and the direction we’re going, I certainly recommend giving the Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview a test drive and try out some of the tests we’ve included. In particular, seeing how it performs on new hardware is pretty exciting.

We’re very excited today to be able to talk more about the work we’re doing in Internet Explorer 9. As we move toward the beta for IE9, you can expect to see more posts from me on IE9 moving forward.

Microsoft Hardware has announced today TrueColor Technology - designed to enhance the color and brightness of webcam video in the worst of lighting conditions. TrueColor Technology is a new image processing technology that automatically adjusts the picture quality to provide more colorful video.

In support of TrueColor Technology, Microsoft Hardware is also announcing 3 new LifeCam models that support TrueColor Technology. All of these new LifeCam models not just support TrueColor Technology, but include 720p HD sensors and Auto Focus technology as well.

LifeCam HD-5000

LifeCam HD-5001

LifeCam HD-6000 for Notebooks

The LifeCam HD-5000 and the LifeCam HD-5001 will have an estimated retail price of $49.95 and will be available later this month. The LifeCam HD-6000 will have an estimated retail price of $59.95 and be available in May. The LifeCam HD-5000 and LifeCam HD-6000 will be available for pre-sale on Amazon.com and Buy.com starting today.

If you’re a LifeCam Cinema owner like me, you’ll be happy to know there is both LifeCam software and a firmware update for the LifeCam Cinema available now that enables TrueColor Technology!

The Microsoft Hardware folks have also launched a new Microsoft Hardware blog today. Check it out and make sure to subscribe to their RSS feed!

We’ve survived Las Vegas and it’s day 2 of Microsoft’s MIX10 conference. The word of the day is “Internet Explorer” and the number is 9.

To bring you the event live, join Ed Bott, Mary Jo Foley, Kip Kniskern, Benjamin Rubenstein, Paul Thurrott and myself in our hallmark group liveblog. Audience participation will be enabled by default so feel free to ask questions and provide your thoughts on the announcements live.