Microsoft has confirmed it is developing a set of applications and services codenamed “Albany,” designed to provide users with the essentially productivity features of the company’s flagship Office productivity suite, combined with Windows Live OneCare and online collaboration and sharing features. Word of Albany began to leak last money when Microsoft began asking selected customers and partners to participate in a private beta. And while speculation had Microsoft offering up a set of Microsoft Works-like features on a subscription basis, the company has been referring to Albany has a “value box,” indicating the Redmond giant plans to offer Albany as a retail product. And instead of being a warmed over version of Microsoft Works, Albany looks to tie together with the Home Office/Student Edition of Microsoft Office, along with elements of OneCare and Windows Live Workspaces.
Albany is apparently intended to compete against free productivity application offerings like OpenOffice and Google Apps, covering what the company believes to be the essential productivity and sharing functions consumers expect from a computer without the high price tags and extensive feature sets of the full version of Microsoft Office—which comparatively few users need on a regular basis.
In addition to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint applications, Albany will reportedly feature tie-ins to Office Live Workspaces, enabling customers to store and share documents via the Internet directly within Office applications. Microsoft will also roll in Windows Live OneCare, its own security, antivirus, and firewall service aimed at keeping Windows computers safe, along with consumer-level email, photo-sharing, instant messaging, and other online components via Windows Live.
Microsoft hasn’t set any pricing or release date for Albany, saying only that it will be offered on a subscription basis. Reports have Microsoft considering a public beta for the product before the end of 2008.
In 1950, Alan Turing asked whether machines can think. Rather than argue over definitions, he turned the question into a party game, where an interrogator trades typed messages with hidden players and tries to work out who is who. Since then, chatbots have gotten so good that they have already fooled humans in modern versions of the test.
So, four researchers from Paris Cité University asked the obvious follow-up question in a new study published in Computers in Human Behavior Reports: can AI at least catch its own kind?
Mozilla is giving Firefox’s Smart Window two new tricks. If you haven’t tried it yet, Smart Window is an optional AI mode in Firefox with a built-in chat that helps you get things done while you browse. With this update, it can fill out online forms using details from your tabs and keep an eye on websites for you.
Tired of typing the same details into every form?
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.