Shop Ship Wise - Your Guide For Shopping Online

Steven Sinofsky, Senior VP in charge of Windows 7 development, has just posted some details on the Microsoft’s Windows 7 Engineering blog on what the internal structure looks like for the upcoming OS. It sounds (at least to us) equal parts logistical nightmare and brute force “1000 monkeys at 1000 typewriters”, with 25 teams divided up to an average of 40 developers per team.

The organization is divided up into 25 teams, which encompases stuff like Applets and Gadgets, the File System, Core User Experience, Find and Organize, IE, Kernel & VM, Media Center, and Security. Of course many features span various parts of the OS, and it’s up to the management to coordinate between the numerous groups. What would we want to see more of? Better and smarter integration between various apps on Windows, for example having their Mail application be tied into Calendars for meeting schedules and Contacts, or making Gadgets able to access various parts of the OS. These are just two examples we came up with in as many seconds, but you get the idea. More integration. [Windows 7 blog]

Original post by Jason Chen

Microsoft hasn’t released its own Xbox Live iPhone app (and we’re kinda thinking they won’t), but it’s definitely cool letting developers fill the gap, on one condition: They can’t charge for the app. Of the three Live apps in the App Store, two are free right now, though iLive still charges $1.99, even though it has the worst interface of the three. Microsoft can boss them around ’cause they’re all getting Live info through the Xbox Community Developer Program. Either way, that works for us. [Joystiq]

Original post by matt buchanan

What is the best way for IE to gain market share back from Firefox? Porn. That’s right—when it comes to the internet, the answer is always porn. You know it, I know it, and apparently Microsoft knows it because there are rumors floating around that they may incorporate a private browsing feature, a.k.a “porn mode,” similar to Safari (Firefox pulled the feature from 3.0) that would allow users to thoroughly cover up their smutty tracks from anyone who might be checking their browsing history.

The IE 8 Beta 2 release should be hitting any day now, so we shall see soon enough whether or not this feature made it into the build. But, the question is, would private browsing make IE more appealing to you, or is it a non-issue? [istartedsomething via ZDNet Image via ninamariebarbuto]

Original post by Sean Fallon

The ultimate Microsoft fanboy concept, Fenêtres 3.1 (or the Windows Window as we’re insisting on calling it) is a normal house window decorated with all of the accouterments of the classic Windows 3.1 OS (along with the placeholder background from Windows XP). And yes, pulling down the blinds even brings up the dreaded BSoD. The designer truly thought of everything, except it’s missing the boot disk you’ll need to actually open the window or anything in it. [John Nouanesing via Unplggd]

Original post by Mark Wilson

PlayOn, a program that allows Vudu, ESPN, YouTube and CBS streaming from a Windows PC to a PS3, Xbox 360 or HP MediaSmart TV, has just been released as a free beta to the public (well, the first 60 days are free, after that it’ll cost $30). And to make things even better, the software should expand to support Netflix streaming and the Nintendo Wii within the year. Finally, that whole console becoming as complicated as a PC trend is paying off. [PlayOn via PS3Fanboy]

Original post by Mark Wilson

Zune Guy says he’s leaving the Zune because Microsoft is leaving it to die on the vine (or wherever MP3 players hang). But that’s just not true! They’re actually verrrry busy poking Hollywood types to get exclusive original video just for the Zune. It’s not just any video they’re looking for though, but video that can “capitalize” on its social networking features. I’m not really sure what that is, but I’m going to take a wild swing and guess it’s not going to be awesome enough to send sales skyrocketing, unless like, they get South Park to only be available on Zunes or something. Man that would suck. [Reuters]

Original post by matt buchanan

Samsung is working with software developers to increase the performance of Solid State Drives for computers using the Sun’s ZFS file system, which the next version of OSX Server, aka Snow Leopard, can take advantage of. The way traditional HDDs handle data transfers is different than how SSDs do, and it’s Samsung’s goal to make sure future operating systems are optimized for SSDs as well as HDDs. The performance upgrades could mean overall operational increases for OSX-equipped Macs that use SSDs. Currently the MacBook Air is the only Mac that ships with the option, but if Apple decides to make SSDs available on all MacBooks then this development would make the SSD option more desirable than it is now. Microsoft is also starting talks with Microsoft to work the same enhancements into the next version of Windows. When all major operating systems have optimized support for them, SSD could finally replace HDDs as promised. [InfoWorld via MacRumors/]

Original post by Matt Hickey

The 2008 Olympics have already started, but those of us stuck here in America and not lucky enough to own Vista must deal with NBC’s often delayed event broadcasts. Sure, if it’s American basketball or track you’re looking for, you can find everything you need without stepping away from your HDTV set. But if you’ve waited four years to watch table tennis or want to see how that Latvia-Angola rivalry plays out, you’ll definitely have to use NBC’s streaming online player. The Silverlight-based player runs well—even on a Mac—but it has a few rough spots when it comes to interface. If you want to make the best of your Olympic experience, here are the things you need to know. galleryPost(’olympicplayer’, 4, ”);

Streaming Player vs. HDTV
When it comes to content, there is no comparison—the web player will stream 2,200 hours of live video, where most of the stuff on TV will be glorified clip roundups of assorted events. But quality is a much different story. The streamed video is blurry no matter what size you watch it in, and even the full-size player is only about 720×480, so standard def at best. Also, while it’s understandable that NBC wouldn’t provide announcers for a North Korea vs. Nigeria soccer game, there wasn’t any commentary for a match between USA and Norway either. We find it almost impossible to believe that major sports like US men’s basketball would go without someone calling the games, but based on what we’ve seen so far this may be the case.

Finding Content
Seeing the player for the first time may tempt you to bust out the Rosetta Stone. It’s actually three players in one, starting with the standard player which is stuffed with ads, tabs, lists, menus and more. For this one, you’re best off browsing by channel (#1 in the pic above), clicking the sport you’re interested in and seeing what videos are offered. A button in the corner of the video section (#2) directs you to the enhanced player, which is the best way to watch—it’s got a bigger video screen and is so frill and distraction-free even Frank Costanza would approve. In the enhanced player, you can watch highlights (#3) and live content with picture-in-picture (#4), and swap between the two seamlessly. Searching for content is hard to do in the enhanced player, so you’re better off finding it elsewhere and switching over. Finally, a button on the left (#5) takes you to the “Live Video Control Room” which offers the most hyped way to watch the sports you crave—four-channel multicasting.

The Multi-Cast Experience
Gambling junkies and cubicle drones alike will love the multi-cast, which allows you to watch up to four events at once. For people trying to actually enjoy the sports, the largest video is still too small to see a score, and the other three are barely the size of postage stamps. Swapping between games is easy, but if you expand one to the full-sized player, you lose your other streams, and have to to add them all over again when you return to the multi-cast. Also, sifting through content is shaping up to be unbearable; you can scroll through about five games at a time, which is fine when there are only 16 available, but what will we do when there are hundreds of videos to sift through, by early next week?

The Final Word
NBC’s done a fair job so far with their streaming player and by offering up an unprecedented amount of Olympic coverage. But by trying to make things easier, the network seems to have made them harder. It’s decent for diehards of weird sports like fencing or those who need their content more live than Bill O’Reilly. But using it feels obtuse, like it’s the bastard love child of Windows Vista and Symbian. However, Microsoft’s Silverlight is not to blame—you can’t even detect the difference from Flash. It’s all about content management: At this point there are increasingly vast amounts of material, some live, some taped and mostly impossible to tell the difference, which may even be shockingly announcer-free. Maybe NBC will figure this stuff out when the games really get rolling, but for now it’ll have to settle for a Bronze. [NBC Olympics]

Original post by Benny Goldman

David Gallagher at the New York Times had to do some rumor control when a reader wrote accusing Microsoft of prohibiting the word “Tibet” in Hotmail addresses to appease the Chinese government. No “freetibet@hotmail.com”, no “tibetsmellsofwetmonks@hotmail.com”, no “ilovetibet@hotmail.com.” Is this another Chinese-Microsoft evil conspiracy? While there are some of those going on between China and companies like Microsoft, Google, or Yahoo, this is not the case.

As David discovered, it turns out that you can’t register any name with the word “tib” on them, not just Tibet. Microsoft gave him an explanation for this: they wanted to protect customers of the TIB Bank in Florida, so they can’t receive a message from “tib-support@hotmail.com” asking for their bank account passwords. As he was able to test, if you try to use any other bank name in the address, it won’t work. Mystery solved! [NYT]

Original post by Jesus Diaz

Sure we like the design, but we love that despite the muddy, spontaneous pewter finish of this homemade Gears of War Xbox 360, the creator very carefully negotiated all of the Xbox’s machined ventilation holes. All-in-all, it’s a pretty decent-looking mod, and those red lights are actually pretty quite when they’re not signaling a melted 360. galleryPost(”gowxbox360″, 3, “”); [Llama’s]

Original post by Mark Wilson