Whistler has long been the northern playground for Microsoft employees at the company’s Redmond, Washington campus, and has figured heavily among the software giant’s pet names for different Windows products.
The Windows XP release, which joined Windows NT and Windows 9X versions into a single operating system, was released under the code name ‘Whistler’.
The second edition of Windows XP, scheduled to hit the market in early 2005, is code named "Longhorn" after Whistler’s Longhorn Saloon, one of the most notorious apres ski locales in North America.
The next Windows XP update after Longhorn is being developed under the code name of Blackcomb.
Microsoft gave professional developers, who will be building the software for Longhorn, a sneak peak at a beta of the new operating system last week, and the early word on the street is that it’s going to be good.
The usually secretive Microsoft let the developers in on a few internal projects related to the update, and even gave developers a copy of the early code to get started on. With open source operating systems based on Linux gaining ground in the marketplace, the move to share elements of Longhorn with developers this early in the game shows Microsoft may be embracing the times after all. Although they’re not giving it away like Linux, sharing the code will enable other companies to develop software that works with the system, while keeping an eye out for bugs, glitches and security holes.
Three components of Longhorn are particularly interesting. The first upgrade is WinFS (short for Windows Future Store), a file management system that is universal to a wide array of Windows applications and is backwards compatible with other Windows operating systems.
Another Longhorn innovation is Indigo, a messaging tool.
Avalon is a new presentation platform that updates the look and feel of the operating system, adding 3D elements, new taskbars, and more.
Longhorn also updates the graphic capability of Windows, utilizing the power of next generation graphic cards to support Avalon and other applications.
A completely new version of Windows Explorer is also on the way that will allow users to block pop-up windows and manage downloads.
The final version for 2005 will no doubt look and operate a lot differently than the Longhorn developers got a preview of last week, but the presentation got the point across nicely.
Quebec politicians take offence to video game
It’s been more than 33 years since Prime Minister Pierre Eliot Trudeau invoked the War Measures Act to put down the FLQ crisis, but it remains a sensitive subject for Quebec.
So much so that Sony Corp. was pressured into reworking an entire level in Syphon Filter 4: The Omega Strain, the newest addition to a popular video game series.
The game features a terrorist attack in Toronto by a group called the Quebec Liberation Front, which players have to repel using an arsenal of weapons.
"I don’t want to overdramatize this, but it’s hard not to feel targeted when there’s a game where you shoot at Quebeckers," said Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Montreal president Jean Dorion, who helped to put pressure on Sony. "If there was a game where people shoot at blacks or Jews there’d be an uproar."
Changing the characters from Quebeckers to run-of-the-mill, non-stereotyped terrorists should only delay the game, which is due out early next year, by a matter of weeks.
The game itself has 17 different missions which take place around the world in places like Chechnya, Yemen, Brazil, Uganda, Myanmar and Tokyo.
So far the Syphon Filter series has sold more than 11 million copies for Playstation and Playstation 2 game consoles, making it one of the most popular game series of all time.
Yahoo ends pay-per-view services
The concept was either before its time or overly optimistic; either way, Yahoo is putting an end to its short-lived video service.
The service was launched in February in advance of the annual March Madness NCAA basketball championships.
For $9.95 a month, customers could get streamed video clips of televised content, everything from evening news to episodes of Survivor.
That doesn’t mean that Yahoo is done with the pay-per-view concept. They plan to re-launch the service as part of a larger Yahoo Plus bundle, which will include a large capacity online e-mail account, financial services, and a host of other proprietary perks.
The decision to end the service puts a damper on the ambitions of Yahoo and other Internet companies like AOL that are looking for ways to generate revenue through the Web other than advertising.
Google mulls IPO
Over the past five years, Google has established itself as the pre-eminent search engine on the Web, helping people to find what their looking for using a unique search system that ranks search results by popularity, date and relevance. The Google news service, which collects popular headlines from thousands of publications to create a kind of "best of" search page, has also made headway.
Now word has it that Google is considering an initial public offering, selling shares that could value the company at approximately $25 billion. That’s a lot of zeros – still less than an actual google (a million millions), but impressive nonetheless.
The only concern here is whether the need to appease shareholders will result in banner ads, pop-up windows, and biased search results, something Google has so far done without. One can only hope.
