1. Microsoft quietly kills Office Genuine Advantage program
Late last week, Microsoft put an end to its Office Genuine Advantage (OGA) program. The Office Notifier, the OGA ActiveX control for Internet Explorer, and the OGA plug-in for Firefox have also been retired. The change took place on December 16, was first confirmed in a KB article last updated on December 17, 2010, and found by ZDNet:
It's important to note that OGA is different from product activation. The former is Internet-based and permits users to download files and updates from the Microsoft website while the latter is enforced at the software level and is required to use the actual software. OGA rejects the product keys that have either been widely leaked or which have been generated to pass through the initial activation. OGA covers Office XP, Office 2003, and Office 2007.
OGA has an equivalent on the Windows side: Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA). WGA is required for much more useful downloads than OGA, such as Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE). Redmond has no plans to kill off WGA, at least not at this point in time.
"The Office Genuine Advantage program was designed to notify many customers around the world whether their copy of Microsoft Office was genuine," a Microsoft spokesperson told Ars. "The program has served its purpose and thus we have decided to retire the program. Given our strong commitment to anti-piracy, we are making several new investments that will allow us to engage with customers and help victims of fraud."
The change is a significant one because it implies that OGA was costing Microsoft more money than it was saving the company, suggesting that OGA was largely ineffective in its goal. This is hardly surprising given that the "Advantage" in Office Genuine Advantage was minor: the large majority of Office users can live without extra templates and samples.
Late last week, Microsoft put an end to its Office Genuine Advantage (OGA) program. The Office Notifier, the OGA ActiveX control for Internet Explorer, and the OGA plug-in for Firefox have also been retired. The change took place on December 16, was first confirmed in a KB article last updated on December 17, 2010, and found by ZDNet:
- The Office Genuine Advantage ("OGA") program has been retired. For more information about the benefits of genuine Office, please visit the following website:
- Benefits of genuine Office
It's important to note that OGA is different from product activation. The former is Internet-based and permits users to download files and updates from the Microsoft website while the latter is enforced at the software level and is required to use the actual software. OGA rejects the product keys that have either been widely leaked or which have been generated to pass through the initial activation. OGA covers Office XP, Office 2003, and Office 2007.
OGA has an equivalent on the Windows side: Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA). WGA is required for much more useful downloads than OGA, such as Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE). Redmond has no plans to kill off WGA, at least not at this point in time.
"The Office Genuine Advantage program was designed to notify many customers around the world whether their copy of Microsoft Office was genuine," a Microsoft spokesperson told Ars. "The program has served its purpose and thus we have decided to retire the program. Given our strong commitment to anti-piracy, we are making several new investments that will allow us to engage with customers and help victims of fraud."
The change is a significant one because it implies that OGA was costing Microsoft more money than it was saving the company, suggesting that OGA was largely ineffective in its goal. This is hardly surprising given that the "Advantage" in Office Genuine Advantage was minor: the large majority of Office users can live without extra templates and samples.
Over the last couple of weeks, lots of apps have debuted on Google Labs, a laboratory where our more adventurous users can try our experimental products and offer feedback directly to the engineers who developed them. Teams at Google are gearing up to deliver more and more cool innovations to users, and this month alone, we’ve launched six new products on Google Labs. Here are the highlights of our recent releases.
App Inventor for Android
App Inventor for Android makes it easier for people to access the capabilities of their Android phones and create apps for their personal use. Until now, it was only available to a group of people who requested and received invitations. Last week, we announced that App Inventor (beta) is now available to anyone with a Google account. Visit the App Inventor homepage to get set up and start building your own Android app—and be sure to share your App Inventor story on the App Inventor user forum!
Body Browser
Body Browser is a demo app that allows you to visualize complex 3D graphics of the human body. It works in the latest beta version of Google Chrome and uses WebGL, a new standard that enables 3D experiences in the web browser without any plug-ins. Using Body Browser, you can explore different layers of human anatomy by moving the slider to rotate and zoom in on parts you are interested in. Not sure where something is? Try the search box. You can also share the exact scene you’re viewing by copying and pasting the corresponding URL.
DataWiki
DataWiki is a wiki for structured data, extending the idea of a normal wiki to make it easy to create, edit, share and visualize structured data, and to interlink data formats to make them more understandable and useful. The project is inspired by the need to create customized data formats for crisis response, for example to quickly create a person-finder application after an earthquake, or share Internet and cellular phone connectivity mapsfrom an affected area. DataWiki operates as a RESTful web-service, is built on AppEngine and is completely open source.
Google Books Ngram Viewer
Google Books Ngram Viewer graphs and compares the historical usage of phrases based on the datasets comprised of more than 500 billion words and their associated volumes over time in about 5.2 million books. Last week, we released this visualization tool along with freely-downloadable phrase frequency datasets to help humanities research. You can find interesting example queries (e.g., “tofu” vs. “hot dog”) and more information about the effort in our blog post.
Google Earth Engine
Google Earth Engine, which we announced at the U.N. Climate Change Conference Cancun earlier this month, is a technology platform that enables scientists to do global-scale observation and measurement of changes in the earth's environment. It provides an unprecedented amount of satellite imagery and data online for the first time, as well as our extensive computing infrastructure—the Google “cloud”—to analyze the imagery. We’re excited about the initial use of Google Earth Engine to support efforts to stop global deforestation, but the platform can be used for a wide range of applications, from mapping water resources to ecosystem services. It’s part of our broader effort at Google to build a more sustainable future.
Google Shared Spaces
Google Shared Spaces is an easy way for you to share mini-collaborative applications, like scheduling tools or games, with your friends or colleagues. By creating a Shared Space, you can share a gadget with whomever you want by simply sending the URL. Once your friends join the Shared Space, you can collaborate with them in real-time on the gadget, and you can chat with them, too. This product is built on some of the technology used in Google Wave.
Those experimental products have been developed by many teams across Google. Some products were born in 20% time, and some were built by start-up-like teams inside the company. But all of these products were created by passionate, small teams just because they cared about them so much.
You can find more Labs products on googlelabs.com. Please play with them and give us feedback. And stay tuned for experiments coming in the future.
With Google's announcement Thursday of the Body Browser, online mapping technology finally caught up with the medical crew of "Fantastic Voyage," miniaturized in the 1966 sci-fi flick to enter a renowned scientist's bloodstream and save his brain from a life-threatening blood clot. A Chrome-OS driven onlineGray's Anatomy, Body Browser continues Google's quest to map everything, now including the human body. "Body Browser is a detailed, interactive 3D model," said Google representative Jason Freidenfelds.App Inventor for Android
App Inventor for Android makes it easier for people to access the capabilities of their Android phones and create apps for their personal use. Until now, it was only available to a group of people who requested and received invitations. Last week, we announced that App Inventor (beta) is now available to anyone with a Google account. Visit the App Inventor homepage to get set up and start building your own Android app—and be sure to share your App Inventor story on the App Inventor user forum!
Body Browser
Body Browser is a demo app that allows you to visualize complex 3D graphics of the human body. It works in the latest beta version of Google Chrome and uses WebGL, a new standard that enables 3D experiences in the web browser without any plug-ins. Using Body Browser, you can explore different layers of human anatomy by moving the slider to rotate and zoom in on parts you are interested in. Not sure where something is? Try the search box. You can also share the exact scene you’re viewing by copying and pasting the corresponding URL.
DataWiki
DataWiki is a wiki for structured data, extending the idea of a normal wiki to make it easy to create, edit, share and visualize structured data, and to interlink data formats to make them more understandable and useful. The project is inspired by the need to create customized data formats for crisis response, for example to quickly create a person-finder application after an earthquake, or share Internet and cellular phone connectivity mapsfrom an affected area. DataWiki operates as a RESTful web-service, is built on AppEngine and is completely open source.
Google Books Ngram Viewer
Google Books Ngram Viewer graphs and compares the historical usage of phrases based on the datasets comprised of more than 500 billion words and their associated volumes over time in about 5.2 million books. Last week, we released this visualization tool along with freely-downloadable phrase frequency datasets to help humanities research. You can find interesting example queries (e.g., “tofu” vs. “hot dog”) and more information about the effort in our blog post.
Google Earth Engine
Google Earth Engine, which we announced at the U.N. Climate Change Conference Cancun earlier this month, is a technology platform that enables scientists to do global-scale observation and measurement of changes in the earth's environment. It provides an unprecedented amount of satellite imagery and data online for the first time, as well as our extensive computing infrastructure—the Google “cloud”—to analyze the imagery. We’re excited about the initial use of Google Earth Engine to support efforts to stop global deforestation, but the platform can be used for a wide range of applications, from mapping water resources to ecosystem services. It’s part of our broader effort at Google to build a more sustainable future.
Google Shared Spaces
Google Shared Spaces is an easy way for you to share mini-collaborative applications, like scheduling tools or games, with your friends or colleagues. By creating a Shared Space, you can share a gadget with whomever you want by simply sending the URL. Once your friends join the Shared Space, you can collaborate with them in real-time on the gadget, and you can chat with them, too. This product is built on some of the technology used in Google Wave.
Those experimental products have been developed by many teams across Google. Some products were born in 20% time, and some were built by start-up-like teams inside the company. But all of these products were created by passionate, small teams just because they cared about them so much.
You can find more Labs products on googlelabs.com. Please play with them and give us feedback. And stay tuned for experiments coming in the future.
4. Jailbreakers Finally Free to Play - and Apple Wins the Game
The recent announcement that Apple was pulling the plug on the API that allows applications to ask if an iOS device has been jailbroken is very significant. Immediately, the Web has blown up trying to quantify the meaning of this decision. Sitting on the sidelines, it's looking more than ever that Apple is playing chess, while others are playing Parcheesi. This is a win-win for Apple. It has conceded to the carriers and the customers at the same time. The worst that can be said is that it is going with the flow of public sentiment and the laws that govern.
5. PlayStation app for iOS, Android is social, doesn't play games
Sony has announced on its PlayStation blog that a PlayStation-centric iPhone and Android app will soon be released in Europe. There's no date attached to the post, but the company did float some details about the eventual app's functionality, which seems grounded in social media.
Unfortunately, the app doesn't appear to allow for any game playing, like the XBox Live app for Windows Phone 7 does, so keep your hopes down where they belong. Instead, it seems aimed at giving users interaction with their PlayStation Network profiles. This includes allowing players to view various trophies they and their friends have won in order to validate their self-worth.
Players will also be able to view friends' online status and browse games for the PS3, PS2, and PSP with the app, as well as catch up on news and any relevant hardware announcements. If they see anything they like, the app will integrate with Facebook, Twitter, and e-mail to make for easy sharing. The post states that more features are coming; some users have expressed wishes for a phone-to-PlayStation messaging system.
Version 1.0 of the app will be available "very soon" in a few European countries, including the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands. No word yet on whether the US will be privy to the app, which will operate on devices with iOS 4 and Android devices with version 1.6 or better.
Sony has announced on its PlayStation blog that a PlayStation-centric iPhone and Android app will soon be released in Europe. There's no date attached to the post, but the company did float some details about the eventual app's functionality, which seems grounded in social media.
Unfortunately, the app doesn't appear to allow for any game playing, like the XBox Live app for Windows Phone 7 does, so keep your hopes down where they belong. Instead, it seems aimed at giving users interaction with their PlayStation Network profiles. This includes allowing players to view various trophies they and their friends have won in order to validate their self-worth.
Players will also be able to view friends' online status and browse games for the PS3, PS2, and PSP with the app, as well as catch up on news and any relevant hardware announcements. If they see anything they like, the app will integrate with Facebook, Twitter, and e-mail to make for easy sharing. The post states that more features are coming; some users have expressed wishes for a phone-to-PlayStation messaging system.
Version 1.0 of the app will be available "very soon" in a few European countries, including the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands. No word yet on whether the US will be privy to the app, which will operate on devices with iOS 4 and Android devices with version 1.6 or better.
6. The Rise of Cybervigilantism
Things took an interesting turn in the aftermath of Cablegate, which saw 250,000 documents, many of them sensitive, put on the open Web by WikiLeaks. Julian Assange, the founder of the site, has been charged by Swedish police with a sex crime; the U.S. government is seeking to try Assange, who's currently out on bail; hundreds of mirrored WikiLeaks sites have sprung up around the world; WikiLeaks supporters have launched DDoS attacks on the websites of anyone taking action against the whistleblower site; and free speech advocates have criticized actions against WikiLeaks.
7. The Next New Year of Linux on the Desktop: 2011?
Those of us who have been part of the FOSS community for more than, oh, say 10 minutes, are no doubt already familiar with the recurring "Year of Linux on the Desktop" debate. It's a topic that comes up again and again in the Linux blogosphere. The question -- or questions, really -- center on whether Linux has "arrived" on the desktop already, whether it's on the verge of doing so, whether it might possibility get there at some point in the undefined future, and so on. You get the idea. Well, guess what? It's baaa-ack.
7. The Next New Year of Linux on the Desktop: 2011?
Those of us who have been part of the FOSS community for more than, oh, say 10 minutes, are no doubt already familiar with the recurring "Year of Linux on the Desktop" debate. It's a topic that comes up again and again in the Linux blogosphere. The question -- or questions, really -- center on whether Linux has "arrived" on the desktop already, whether it's on the verge of doing so, whether it might possibility get there at some point in the undefined future, and so on. You get the idea. Well, guess what? It's baaa-ack.
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