That’s what SD Times is claiming, based on “internal Microsoft documents” that give more details on the skunk-works research project currently brewing in Redmond. The docs supposedly hint at a fleshed out platform for distributed concurrency¡ªwhich entails moving what used to be core desktop OS functionality into the cloud for a partially or fully web-based platform. And while it almost certainly won’t make Windows 7, Midori could be the first step toward severing ties with legacy Windows once and for all.

Says SD Times:

Midori¡¯s design treats concurrency as a core principle, beyond what even the Microsoft Robotics Group is trying to accomplish, said Tandy Trower, general manager of the Microsoft Robotics Group.

The Midori documents foresee applications running across a multitude of topologies, ranging from client-server and multi-tier deployments to peer-to-peer at the edge, and in the cloud data center. Those topologies form a heterogeneous mesh where capabilities can exist at separate places.

In order to efficiently distribute applications across nodes, Midori will introduce a higher-level application model that abstracts the details of physical machines and processors. The model will be consistent for both the distributed and local concurrency layers, and it is internally known as Asynchronous Promise Architecture.

Sure, it’s a possibility that this could just be a technology that will be integrated into a more conventional desktop-based Windows successor, or that Midori will stay in the Research wing like many Microsoft projects tend to do. But with so many industry players jumping into cloud computing (and with the Microsoft lifers involved in Midori “going back to their roots and writing code like they probably did in the old days,” according to a previous rumor), the chances for something more ambitious are interesting to consider. [Subscribe SD Time for free]

Source: gawker.com

Online reputation company Rapleaf has released a new study of 49.3 million people, revealing gender and age data about social network users. On most of the main social networks – including MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, Hi5 – women outnumber men by a considerable amount. On Facebook, the 18-24 age group is largest, with 1,685,029 women in that age group compared to 977,753 men. In MySpace, the same age group dominates, with 7,091,214 women and 5,226,788 men.

The only social networks studied that didn’t have more women than men in the 18-24 year old group were venerable old LinkedIn (where incidentally the 25-34 age group was tops) and a site called Perfspot.

Other highlights:

• Women ages 14-24 dominate activity on social networks and have more friends than men of the same ages.
• Men ages 35+ are more active and have more friends than women of the same ages.
• The average social network user has 2-25 friends.
• There are a disproportionately high number of 69 year olds across various social networks. (my guess is that it’s the most popular ‘fake age’)

Rapleaf states that it “analyzed people who are on at least one social network and in which there exists age information on these individuals.” The study was done 10 June ‘08 and approx 90% of the 49m respondents were from the US. Here is the full data, courtesy of Rapleaf:

Gender and Age Analysis of Social Networking Users: Social Network Sites

Gender and Age Analysis of Social Networking Users: Number of Friends

You can also download the full dataset as a spreadsheet here.

Source: feedburner.com

Communications company British Telecom (BT) has acquired innovative web telephony platform Ribbit for a reported $105 million. BT has been sniffing around the Bay Area for startups to acquire for some time and this one is a great fit. Not just because both companies are in the voice market but because as a means of folding click-to-call functionality into any web application – Ribbit is fascinating.

BT was supposed to be a big mover and shaker in the communications industry of the future. Telephony expert Om Malik has been watching the company’s progress closely though, and says that it has largely failed to live up to its promise. Can Ribbit move the needle for BT? We think it could in a big way.

Who Cares?

We argue that well built developer platforms are the key to the future of every industry. The internet has blown wide open the means of production in content and is now aimed at the scarcity of functionality next. Even with giant research and development budgets, established companies are increasingly hard pressed to compete with the innovation brought to market by a whole world of developers once those developers are handed Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).

The big companies can offer mass distribution, financial and tech security – but they sure aren’t the only game in town any more. Smart telecom companies know their time as a local oligopoly is counting down fast. Companies like Ribbit and others powered by Ribbit could quickly offer better, cheaper, more exciting telephone service than companies like BT. Someone had to buy Ribbit and it’s a sign of the ineptitude of US telecom companies that none of them did.

What’s Ribbit All About?

When we first heard about Ribbit, we thought it sounded like a whole lot of hype that wouldn’t amount to much. How exciting is voice communication anymore? After hearing about a number of use cases, though, we became much more interested in the company.

Ribbit is a platform that lets developers add click-to-call functionality to other applications on the web. It’s really easy to set up a way for users to make a voice call over the internet to a particular phone number. See, for example, the shot below of Ribbit functionality being added to a widget in drag-and-drop widget authoring service SproutBuilder.

The other use case that interests us is a short list of Adobe AIR applications powered by Ribbit. Though the AIR iPhone may be more frivolous than anything else, as a proof of concept it’s powerful. Ribbit’s own consumer app Amphibian is more significant.

The point is that Ribbit is a platform that that offers to move voice calls off of the handset and outside the relatively slow-moving development environment of Skype. There are a world of interface and functionality possibilities that could be set on top of Ribbit.

Michael Boustridge, President, BT Americas said in the release about the deal: “The Ribbit platform makes it simpler, cheaper and faster to build communications functionality into applications, enabling developers to introduce new revenue-generating voice services in hours, rather than weeks. By combining the Ribbit platform with BT’s existing web services, we have the potential to deliver some of the world’s finest applications for communications innovation benefiting consumers and businesses alike.”

Will Acquisition Propel Ribbit Forward?

Will developers engage, though? As Om Malik again pointed out today, Ribbit to date has stirred up limited developer interest. We suspect however that two factors will contribute to a significant increase in interest.

First, being owned by a very large company (operating in 150 countries after 27 years) could lend some real stability and visibility to Ribbit. Second, being owned by a European company, where there’s a stronger history of innovation in telephony and higher expectations, could help propel development better than the climate in Silicon Valley has. There is relatively little innovation in telephony in the US, in case you haven’t noticed. The iPhone platform could help change that but it’s only beginning.

We’re excited to see what BT can do with Ribbit. We’re thrilled to see a consumer infrastructure play, based on APIs, focused on an unexpected technology (a telephony API instead of say, an ecommerce API) rock out to the tune of $100 million plus. That’s great news for innovators in general.

Will BT strangle Ribbit? Telecom companies generally aren’t a breath of fresh air into any polite conversation, but to a great degree this situation isn’t unlike every other acquisition by a major player of a small one. As a development platform, however, Ribbit seems particularly well oriented to maintain some integrity in a larger company. We’ll have to watch and see.

Someone had to buy Ribbit, though, and we expect to see developer platforms rolled out by all telecom companies around the world within the next two years. In many cases it will cost a lot more than $100 million, too.

Source: feedburner.com

Last night, the new search engine Cuil launched out of stealth-mode. As some had predicted, it seems Google’s announcement about the size of its search index was a preemptive move to take some momentum away from one of Cuil’s main features: the size of its index with 120 billion pages. As Cuil’s team features quite a number of Google alumni, comparisons with Google’s search are inevitable. In our tests, however, Cuil performed nowhere near as well as Google.

Layout

The Cuil homepage is a study in simplicity, with a black background, the Cuil logo, and the search box as its only major design elements. The search form is supposed to return typing suggestions, but this didn’t work for us on any browser we tested. Maybe Cuil turned this off for the time being to take some load of its servers.

Cuil takes a very different approach to displaying its results. Instead of a list, it displays results in three columns (though you can switch to a two-column view as well). Intuitively, it would seem that the most important results would be in the top left corner, but Cuil does not make this explicit. The top right spot is reserved for related searches, which usually displays either five or ten main suggestions and then, on mouse-over, slides open and reveals a more detailed selection.

Related Searches

Cuil prominently features its related searches, both in the box on the top right, as well as in a bar right underneath the search box. Overall, these seem to work surprisingly well. Thanks to the ability to quickly go down two levels of related searches, this function works better than the similar features in Yahoo Search, Ask, and Live Search, though they are not as extensive as the related searches on Clusty. Google tested a layout with prominently featured related searches last year, but hasn’t made it a default feature.

The results Cuil displays in the related searches are usually relevant, though often, like in our search for ‘Portland, OR,’ it returned some strange results as well. For Portland, it seemed to think that we would also be interested in “Airlines of the United States” and “Regional Airline of the United States.”

Unlike Google and its brethren, Cuil does not check your spelling and does not make an effort to suggest the correct search terms for you.

Test Searches

Of course, we couldn’t do a comprehensive test of Cuil’s 120 billion page index, but we did a couple of test searches and the results Cuil returned were often disappointing. Our search for ‘Cessna 152,’ one of the most popular general aviation training aircraft, gave us links to Wikipedia and the Cessna company on the big three search engines. Cuil, on the other hand, linked to an online store with manuals for sale.

On the other hand, searches for ‘Linux’ or other computing terms usually returned pretty good results and good suggestions for ‘related searches’.’

Searching for people, however, was often a disappointment. While it worked great for historical figures, prominent bloggers were often nowhere to be found.

In our search for “Portland, OR,” Cuil failed completely. Its top result was a link to a local Best Western hotel. Interestingly, a search for “Portland” only, however, gave us great results.

No Wikipedia?

One thing we noticed in our searches was the Cuil never returned any results from the Wikipedia. It isn’t clear if Cuil is biased against displaying these, but it seems like a strange omission. Especially in our searches for historical figures, the results would have been far better if they had included Wikipedia articles. The top results for “Hitler Biography,” for example, is a biography on BioAndLyrics, a site which copies the related Wikipedia article and suggests we also look at his discography.

Still Changing

One thing we noticed in our tests was that Cuil seems to be tweaking its servers constantly. Searches that returned no results last night now display thousands of links, while others, like our “Portland, OR” search above, stopped returning results completely for a while. Some of this could be explained by Cuil getting slammed with traffic right now (the site did slow down quite often during out tests), but that would also suggest that their system isn’t quite as stable as it should be. Right now, for example, Cuil doesn’t even display results for ‘computers.’

Good, but not Great

Google, as well as Microsoft and Yahoo, profit from the simple fact that they have a far larger portfolio of sites to work with. A search for a city on the big three search engines, for example, will often display a map as one of the top results, while Cuil does not have that option. Similarly, searches for a stock symbol will show the performance of that stock in a little graph as one of the top results in Google, Live Search, and Yahoo Search, while Cuil, with some luck, returns a link to Yahoo’s finance page as the top result, but without linking to the actual stock’s page on Yahoo finance.

When it comes to current events, Google’s results are simply fresher than Cuil’s, thanks mostly to the results from Google News being displayed as part of the main search results.

Verdict

Overall, our experience with Cuil was a bit uneven. While the related searches often are very well chosen, the actual search results are disappointing. Cuil says it ranks results by the content on the pages only and not by popularity – however, it seems like this makes it a bit more susceptible to SEO manipulations, as some of our tests showed.

On some levels, Cuil doesn’t feel like it is quite ready for prime time yet – even the links from its about page mostly display 404 errors. As of now, it’s a worthy challenger and the size of its search index is impressive, but in the end, all consumers are going to care about is the quality of the search results, and there, Cuil’s results are still too inconsistent.

Source: feedburner.com

One of the biggest problems with the iPhone is that you can’t run multiple applications in the background. When it comes to IMing friends, this could be a huge problem. Currently there’s only one application available that lets you connect to all your IM networks, saving users the time and pain of switching between clients. Here’s a look at Palringo on the iPhone.

Standard Networks

The Palringo app for the iPhone is small enough to download over Edge or 3G. To get started you’ll need to have a Palringo account. If you don’t already have one, there’s a link available in the app that will take you to the registration site. Registration is quick and easy and no confirmation email is necessary to respond to.

Supported services for Palringo include:

• Windows Live Messenger
• Yahoo! Messenger
• AIM
• Gadu-Gadu
• ICQ
• XMPP / Jabber
• Google Talk
• iChat

Conversing with Friends

The user interface for Palringo is fantastic! Adding networks and friends to each of the services is quick and easy. All of your online contacts are shown together alphabetically regardless of service. When you receive a message, you’ll see a small mail icon pop up in the lower left corner accompanied by a chirping notification sound. Press the mail icon and you’ll see a list of all your conversations along with a notification of which ones have new messages. You can leave conversations open and simply swipe your finger across the screen to switch from one conversation to another. You can also send an image from your camera or albums on your iPhone to friends.

Goodbye AOL and Hello Palringo

Palringo for the iPhone is a great application to have and highly recommended. According to Palringo’s description of the app,

“Using Palringo uses hardly any data: just one megabyte is sufficient for Palringo to send and receive the equivalent of about 4500 SMS messages, 32 picture messages, or up to 15 minutes of voice messages.”

Not only will Palringo save you a ton of time, but also a ton of money if you’re refusing to buy into AT&T;’s ridiculous messaging plan pricing.

Source: feedburner.com

As a rule of thumb, if you want to get your name out there and continuously make connections when traveling or attending conferences, having a business card is your best bet. While there are a variety of ways to make your business card, the costs of making them can be pretty expensive and it kills a ton of trees. Why not send your business cards via the web or your mobile phone instead?

Retaggr

Retaggr is a nifty interactive profile card service. Create a new and unique way for people to not only email or call you, but also connect with you on social networks that you’re active on. Promote your blog, work, and RSS feed all in the same space. Once your done creating your profile card, share it with friends via email or embed it in your blog.

211me

211me is a funky and creative business card service. However, a key feature of 211me is being able to send your pre-made business cards to someone’s mobile phone. If your phone supports v-card downloading, you can save the information from each business card sent to you. 211me gives users a ton of room to express themselves with their 211me cards by providing a great selection of customization options to choose from.

DropCard

DropCard allows you to create both personal and business cards and send them via email from your cellphone. However, it’s a little more limited than the previous services listed. For example, the number of services available to add to your card is short compared to 211me and Retaggr. Nevertheless, it makes up for what it lacks with it’s nifty text messaging service and the option to add in your social network profiles manually.

The Future of Business Cards?

Business cards are exchanged left and right at conferences and tech gatherings all the time. However, how many cards do you keep up with? Will the fact that people can now send you such information to your cell phone or inbox drive you crazy or help you manage your contacts even better? I personally wouldn’t want people emailing me such information. However, I wouldn’t mind using these services to manage contacts in my cellphone, especially 211me. What do you think: could this be the future of business cards?

Source: feedburner.com