Bill Gates Talks To Steve Jobs In The Afterlife
From: http://socialspew.com/
Showing posts with label Microsoft. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Microsoft. Show all posts
Monday, October 10, 2011
Monday, September 19, 2011
Friday, September 16, 2011
Windows 8 Hands-On Video Preview, Blindingly Fast Boot-Ups
There has been no shortage of buzz and chatter about the Windows 8 Developer Preview that Microsoft let fly during their BUILD Developer's conference this week. What's even more interesting is that they made their new beta baby available for public download as well. So we wasted no time in installing the pre-release software on one of our Intel Core i5-based notebooks here in the HH Lab. We came away impressed at the current state of the new operating system, however, there is little question that Win 8 is a radical departure from previous versions of Windows. In fact, it could be easily said that Windows 8 isn't really "Windows" at all.
You be the judge on that but to be sure, Microsoft is developing their new OS from the ground up to offer a whole lot more than some short-sighted opinions have judge it to be. Windows Phone 7 for the desktop? No, not in our opinion. There's little question that Microsoft is placing a monumental bet on touch interfaces in the future but even with a keyboard and mouse at the helm, it's easy to see there's a whole lot more going on under the hood of Win 8.
And performance? Well, just watch at least the first 30 seconds of our video walk-through of Windows 8 and see for yourself. If boot times are any indication of Microsoft's performance targets, we think speed freaks and performance enthusiasts might be in for a nice surprise as well. Fire up the video reel and kick back. Then peruse the screen shot gallery below. Of course, be sure to check out our BUILD conference preview of Windows 8 as well. Enjoy.
Windows 8 Screen Shot Gallery - Click images for high res
Metro and The Classic Desktop
Performance Monitor, IE10 and Gallery of Memories
Paint and RSS Headlines
Control Panel
Near Me and Sharing via Social Networks
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
MS-DOS is 30 years old today
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IBM released its Personal Computer in August 1981 running version 1.14 of SCP’s QDOS — but a few months later Microsoft produced MS-DOS 1.24, which then became the standard IBM PC operating system. In March 1983, both MS-DOS 2.0 and the IBM PC/XT were released. The rest, as they say, is history. MS-DOS 3.0 followed in 1984 (alongside the IBM PC/AT), and MS-DOS 4.0 with a mouse-powered, menu-driven interface arrived in 1989. It’s around this point that IBM’s PC operating system, PC-DOS, began to diverge from MS-DOS — and of course, come 1990, Microsoft released Windows 3.0, which would change Microsoft’s focus forever. It’s also around this time that developers start to feel the pinch of the 640KB conventional memory limit imposed by IBM’s original hardware specifications.
Wikipedia has an excellent account of the history of x86 DOS operating systems, and also a table that compares and contrasts each of the different versions from IBM, MS, Digital Research, and others. If you’re interested in the original development of QDOS, check out its creator’s blog.
Read more about QDOS, CP/M-86, MS-DOS, and the IBM PC
First Windows "Mango" Phone Unveiled
The first smartphone based on the new "Mango" edition of Microsoft's Windows Phone platform was unveiled on Wednesday in Tokyo.
The phone is the first of several handsets due over the next few months, that Microsoft hopes will signal its return to the smartphone market as a serious player. (Video of the new phone and its launch is available on YouTube.)
If that wish sounds familiar, it is. This time last year the company was hoping the first version of the Windows Phone 7 would accomplish the same thing. But that didn't happen.
Despite getting several thousand applications and generally positive reviews, the new platform, which replaced Windows Mobile, was relegated to the sidelines by a rush of new Android devices and updates to Apple's iPhone.
Far from boosting its market share, the introduction of the new operating system saw Microsoft lose share.
Microsoft captured 2.7 percent of the smartphone market during the first quarter of 2011, according to IDC. But a year earlier during the first quarter of 2010, its market share was 7.1 percent, the market research company said. In terms of handsets shipped, those with Windows Phone 7 or Windows Mobile fell from 3.9 million to 2.8 million phones in the two periods.
"We've gone from very small to....very small," quipped Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer earlier this month on his company's lackluster performance.
Mango, officially Windows Phone 7.5, adds some 500 improvements to the Windows Phone 7 platform, according to the company. They include an e-mail "conversation view" that is said to make long e-mail discussions more efficient, a "threads" feature that brings together text, instant messages and Facebook chat, and Internet Explorer 9 for faster Web browsing.
Some of those improvements can be seen in the new handset, the IS12T, which will be available in Japan only. Built by Fujitsu Toshiba Mobile Communications, the phone will be available in September or after. No price was disclosed.
The company is one of several partners Microsoft is working with on Mango handsets. Others include Taiwan's Acer and China's ZTE, but perhaps the most awaited phones will be from Nokia.
The Finnish cell phone maker threw its weight behind Windows Phone 7 earlier this year when it announced a wide ranging agreement with Microsoft to collaborate on future handsets and technologies.
Nokia is losing market share to aggressive competitors, but it remains one of the world's largest manufacturers of smart phones, so it has the potential to help Microsoft shift the market.
The launch of the phone came just hours after Microsoft signed off on the operating system and declared it ready to be installed in consumer handsets. That should mean additional phones will get launched in the coming weeks.
For Japanese consumers, the IS12T phone has a 3.7-inch screen and a 13.2 megapixel camera. Bluetooth and Wi-Fi are included in the CDMA-based phone. It weighs 113 grams and Fujitsu Toshiba says the battery should provide more than 11 days on standby and more than 6 hours of talk time.
The phone has 32GB of memory and is waterproof with an IPX5 rating.
Martyn Williams covers Japan and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Martyn on Twitter at @martyn_williams. Martyn's e-mail address is martyn_williams@idg.com
The phone is the first of several handsets due over the next few months, that Microsoft hopes will signal its return to the smartphone market as a serious player. (Video of the new phone and its launch is available on YouTube.)
If that wish sounds familiar, it is. This time last year the company was hoping the first version of the Windows Phone 7 would accomplish the same thing. But that didn't happen.
Despite getting several thousand applications and generally positive reviews, the new platform, which replaced Windows Mobile, was relegated to the sidelines by a rush of new Android devices and updates to Apple's iPhone.
Far from boosting its market share, the introduction of the new operating system saw Microsoft lose share.
Microsoft captured 2.7 percent of the smartphone market during the first quarter of 2011, according to IDC. But a year earlier during the first quarter of 2010, its market share was 7.1 percent, the market research company said. In terms of handsets shipped, those with Windows Phone 7 or Windows Mobile fell from 3.9 million to 2.8 million phones in the two periods.
"We've gone from very small to....very small," quipped Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer earlier this month on his company's lackluster performance.
Mango, officially Windows Phone 7.5, adds some 500 improvements to the Windows Phone 7 platform, according to the company. They include an e-mail "conversation view" that is said to make long e-mail discussions more efficient, a "threads" feature that brings together text, instant messages and Facebook chat, and Internet Explorer 9 for faster Web browsing.
Some of those improvements can be seen in the new handset, the IS12T, which will be available in Japan only. Built by Fujitsu Toshiba Mobile Communications, the phone will be available in September or after. No price was disclosed.
The company is one of several partners Microsoft is working with on Mango handsets. Others include Taiwan's Acer and China's ZTE, but perhaps the most awaited phones will be from Nokia.
The Finnish cell phone maker threw its weight behind Windows Phone 7 earlier this year when it announced a wide ranging agreement with Microsoft to collaborate on future handsets and technologies.
Nokia is losing market share to aggressive competitors, but it remains one of the world's largest manufacturers of smart phones, so it has the potential to help Microsoft shift the market.
The launch of the phone came just hours after Microsoft signed off on the operating system and declared it ready to be installed in consumer handsets. That should mean additional phones will get launched in the coming weeks.
For Japanese consumers, the IS12T phone has a 3.7-inch screen and a 13.2 megapixel camera. Bluetooth and Wi-Fi are included in the CDMA-based phone. It weighs 113 grams and Fujitsu Toshiba says the battery should provide more than 11 days on standby and more than 6 hours of talk time.
The phone has 32GB of memory and is waterproof with an IPX5 rating.
Martyn Williams covers Japan and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Martyn on Twitter at @martyn_williams. Martyn's e-mail address is martyn_williams@idg.com
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
NASA and Microsoft Let You Explore Mars Like Never Before
From: http://mashable.com/
Microsoft Research and NASA have teamed up once again and brought the “most complete, highest-resolution coverage of Mars available” to WorldWide Telescope. Microsoft’s app lets you explore space either through a zoom-and-pan interface or guided tours.
This imagery is the handiwork of a group informally called the Mapmakers, led by NASA’s Michael Broxton. Their job is to take satellite images from Mars and elsewhere in our solar system, and turn them into maps.
Yes, it sounds like every geek’s dream job, and having a name that sounds like something from a William Gibson novel doesn’t hurt, either. Director of Microsoft Research’s Earth Dan Fay has worked with Broxton to turn these images and maps into an immersive new experience for the Worldwide Telescope.
“NASA had the images and they were open to new ways to share them. Through the WorldWide Telescope we were able to build a user interface at WWT|Mars that would allow people to take advantage of the great content they had,” Fay says.
As far as what kind of imagery you can expect here, one example is a new dataset from the University of Arizona’s High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE), which is a remote-sensing camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. These images are taken in an incredibly high resolution — each image is a gigapixel in size — and the team took all 13,000 HiRISE images and stitched them onto one map. This map, says NASA, is the “highest-resolution map of Mars’s surface ever constructed.”
WorldWide Telescope is available as a desktop application or a web client (which requires Microsoft Silverlight) over at www.worldwidetelescope.org.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Microsoft’s 'Manual Deskterity' Enhances User Touchscreen Experience (w/ Video)
by John Messina
from http://www.physorg.com/
Microsoft’s “Manual Deskterity” adds power and a more natural user experience to the tablet PC.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Microsoft's "Manual Deskterity" combines touch and pen for a more natural user experience working with Microsoft Surface (tabletop touchscreen) and newer versions of Windows 7 tablet.
Microsoft’s aims are to combine pen and multi-touch input into a more natural user experience. For example, moving papers around on your desk and jotting notes on them, and then dropping them into folders for filing. The pen input is great for certain tasks, but not others; the same holds true for touch.
Microsoft’s new user interface exhibits many interesting features when combining the pen and touch interaction on the touchscreen. Take for instance, if a user wanted to copy an object, they can do so by holding it down with one hand and dragging the pen across the image to peel off a new one and place it anywhere on the desk.
The above video demonstrates many user interface techniques that would have to be learned to fully utilize all the features incorporated into “Manual Deskterity”. Microsoft believes that the natural user interface will ease the learning process and prevent users from trying to remember a sequence of commands or menu operations.
Microsoft’s Bill Buxton explains what the Natural User Interface is all about, in the above video.
Microsoft’s researchers have arrived at the following perspective: the pen writes, touch manipulates, and the combination of both yields new tools.
Pen writes, touch manipulates.
Enlarge
Pen plus touch equals new set of tools.
By combining the two, Microsoft researchers are working on a whole new variety of tools for interacting with your computer. There are also plans to adapt this user interface to work on mobile devices.Thursday, February 18, 2010
10 Hot Questions About Windows Phone 7, Answered
Sascha Segan
from: http://www.pcmag.com/
from: http://www.pcmag.com/
After years of watching its Windows Mobile operating system languish behind sexier products from archrivals Apple, Google, and Palm, Microsoft launched the Windows Phone 7 platform Monday morning. Why is it important? Does it live up to the rumors? And more to the point, what can you expect? Here are the top ten questions about the new Windows Phone 7 OS, and their answers.
1. What is Windows Phone 7? It's Microsoft's new mobile-phone operating system. A total break from the past, it focuses your smartphone life around "hubs" rather than apps – the people you talk to, the pictures they post, or the games you like to play.
2. Is it a "Zune Phone?" No, but Zune is one of the built-in "hubs." So is XBox Live. So is Bing.
3. What will the phones look like? There will be many form factors, but they all have to have capacitive, 800-by-480 or greater touch screens and have three buttons at the bottom: Home, Back and Search. They will all have four-point multi-touch displays, compasses and accelerometers. You'll see phones with and without sliding QWERTY keyboards, but no BlackBerry-style candybars or non-touch phones.
4. What carriers will they run on? All four major U.S. carriers, but AT&T will get the first crack with an as-yet unannounced phone.
5. How's the Office and e-mail support? Looking great. WP7 - that's the new official acronym - supports OneNote, Office, multiple Exchange accounts and SharePoint. But the interface is definitely more about communicating and having fun than about doing spreadsheets.
6. Can it sync with a Mac? Not initially. WP7 will require the Zune software to sync, and there's no Mac Zune software. Look for third parties like Mark/Space to fill in the gaps with a syncing solution.
7. Will it run old Windows Mobile apps? I don't think so. The interfaces are very different. Microsoft promised we'd find out more at their MIX developers' conference in mid-March.
8. Does it have multi-tasking? We can't tell, but Microsoft said you'd be able to "play music in the background".
9. How about Adobe Flash? Not at launch, but Steve Ballmer himself said that he doesn't have anything against it.
10. When's it coming? For the holidays, 2010.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Windows Phone 7 Series: Everything Is Different Now
It's astounding that until this moment, three years after the iPhone, the biggest software company in the world basically didn't compete in mobile. Windows Phone 7 Series is more than the Microsoft smartphone we've been waiting for. Everything's different now.
Today, at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Microsoft is publicly previewing Windows Phone 7 for the first time. The brand new, totally fresh operating system will appear in phones this year, but not until the holidays. All of the major wireless carriers and every likely hardware maker are backing it, and they'd be stupid not to. It's awesome. We've got a serious hands on for you to check out, but here is everything that you need to know:
The name—Windows Phone 7 Series—is a mouthful, and unfortunately, the epitome of Microsoft's worst naming instincts, belying the simple fact that it's the most groundbreaking phone since the iPhone. It's the phone Microsoft should've made three years ago. In the same way that the Windows 7 desktop OS was nearly everything people hoped it would be, Windows Phone 7 is almost everything anyone could've dreamed of in a phone, let alone a Microsoft phone. It changes everything. Why? Now that Microsoft has filled in its gaping chasm of suck with a meaningful phone effort, the three most significant companies in desktop computing—Apple, Google and Microsoft—now stand to occupy the same positions in mobile. Phones are officially computers that happen to fit in your pocket.
Windows Phone 7 is also something completely new for Microsoft: A total break from the past. Windows Mobile isn't just dead, the body's been dumped, buried and paved over by a rainbow brick road.
The Interface
It's different. The face of Windows Phone 7 is not a rectangular grid of thumbnail-sized glossy-looking icons, arranged in a pattern of 4x4 or so, like basically every other phone. No, instead, an oversized set of bright, superflat squares fill the screen. The pop of the primary colors and exaggerated flatness produces a kind of cutting-edge crispness that feels both incredibly modern and playful. Text is big, and beautiful. The result is a feat no phone has performed before: Making the iPhone's interface feel staid.
If you want to know what it feels like, the Zune HD provides a taste: Interface elements that run off the screen; beautiful, oversized text and graphics; flipping, panning, scrolling, zooming from screen to screen; broken hearts. Some people might think it's gratuitous, but I think it feels natural and just…fun. There's an incredible sense of joie de vivre that's just not in any other phone. It makes you wish that this was aesthetic direction all of Microsoft was going in. Another, sorta similar interface, in terms of data presentation, is this Android Slidescreen app, which gives you a bunch of info up top.
Windows Phone 7 is connected in the same sense as Palm's webOS and Android, with live, real-time data seamlessly integrated, though it's even smoother and more natural. Live tiles on the Start screen, which you can totally customize, are updated dynamically with fresh content, like weather, or if you've pinned a person to your Start screen, their latest status updates and photos.
The meat of the phone is organized around a set of hubs: People, Pictures, Games, Music + Video, Marketplace, and Office. They're kind of like uber-applications, in a sense. Massive panoramas with multiple screens that are each kind of like individual apps. People, for instance, isn't just your contacts, but it's also where social networking happens, with a real-time stream of updates pulled in from like Facebook and Windows Live. (No Twitter support announced yet, it appears—a kind of serious deficiency, but one we're sure will be remedied by ship date.)
As another example, Music + Video is essentially the entirety of Zune HD's software, tucked inside of Windows Phone 7.
A piece of interface that's shockingly not there: A desktop syncing app. If anyone would be expected to tie their phone to a desktop, you'd think it'd be Microsoft, but they're actually moving forward here. All of your contacts and info sync over the air. The only thing you'll be syncing through your computer is music and videos, which is mercifully done via the Zune desktop client.
Hello, Connected World
The People hub might be the best social networking implementation yet on a phone: It's a single place to see all of your friends' status updates from multiple services in a single stream, and to update your own Facebook and Windows Live status. Needs. Twitter support. Badly. But you have neat things going on, like the aforementioned Live tiles—if you really like someone or want to stalk them hardcore, you can make them a tile on your Start screen, which will update in realtime with whatever they're posting, and pull down their photos from whatever service. There's also your very own profile page, where you can scan your current social state and post updates to multiple services simultaneously.
All of your contacts are synced and backed up over-the-air, Android and webOS style, and can be pulled from multiple sources, like Windows Live, Exchange, etc. Makes certain other phones seem a little antiquated with their out-of-the-box Contacts situation.
Holy Crap! The Zune Phone!
Microsoft's vision of Zune is finally clear with Windows Phone 7. It's an app, just like iPod is on the iPhone, though the Zune Marketplace is integrated with it into the music + video hub, not separated into its own little application. It's just like the Zune HD, so you can check out our review of that to see what it's like. But you get third-party stuff like Pandora, too, built-in here. Oh, and worth mentioning, there will be an FM radio in every phone (more on that in a bit).
Pictures is a little different though, and gets its very own hub. That's because it's intensely connected—you can share photos and video with social networks straight from the hub, and via the cloud, they're kept in sync with your PC and web galleries. The latest photos your friends post also show up here. Of course, you get around with multitouch zoom and zip-zip scrolling stuff.
Xbox, on a Phone
I'll admit, I very nearly needed to change my pants when I saw the Xbox tile on the phone for the first time. Obviously, you're not going to be playing Halo 3 on your smartphone (at least not this year), but yes, Xbox Live on a phone! It's tied to your Live profile, and there are achievements and gamer points for the games you can play on your phone, which will be tied to games back on your Xbox 360.
If Microsoft's got an ace-in-hole with Windows Phone 7, it's Xbox Live. Gamers have talked about a portable Xbox for years—this is the most logical way to do it. The N-Gage was ahead of its time. (Okay, and it sucked.) The DS and PSP are the past. The iPhone showed us that the future of mobile gaming was going to be on your phone, and now that just got a lot more interesting. The potential's there, and hopefully the games will be plentiful and awesome enough to meet it.
Browser and Email
Yes, the browser is Internet Exploder. And yes, the rumor's true: It won't be as fast as Mobile Safari. Not to start. But it's not bad! Hey, least it's got multitouch powers right out of the box. Naturally, you've got multiple browser windows, and you can pin web pages to the Start screen, like any other decent mobile browser.
The Outlook email app makes me question how people read email on a BlackBerry. It is stunning. I never thought I'd call a mail app "stunning," but, well, it kind of is. It's the best looking mobile mail app around. Text is huge. Gorgeous. Ultrareadable. Of course, it's got Exchange support too.
Apps, Office and Marketplace
Remember what I said earlier about Windows Mobile being dead? So are all the apps. They won't work on WP7. Sorry Windows Mobile developers, it's for the best. Deep down, we all knew a clean break was the only way Windows Phone wasn't going to suck total balls.
Apps will have some standardized interface elements, like the app bar on the bottom for common commands. But here's a question: Will they multitask? Um, that depends on your definition of multitasking! When we asked Joe Belfiore, the guy running Windows Phone, he alluded to live tiles and feeds as some ofthe ways that third-parties will be able to "bring value to the user, even when their apps aren't running." Which sounds to us like a big ol' "shnope," but we'll see more next month at Microsoft's developer event MIX.
The Marketplace is where you'll buy apps. Since we've got like 6 months 'til Windows Phone 7 launches and people should be excited to develop for it, hopefully there'll be plenty of stuff to buy there on day one.
Naturally, Bing and Bing Maps are built into the phone as the default search and maps services. They're nice, smartly contextual, and very location-oriented. Bing's also used for universal search on the phone, via a dedicated Bing button. (There is no search but Bing search, BTW.) Bing Maps is multitouchable, with pinch-to-zoom. It's rich, with built-in listings with reviews and clever ways of searching for stuff. And yeah, Office! It's connected to that cloud thing, for OTA syncing and such. Business people should be happy.
Hardware and Partnahs
Another way the old Windows Mobile is dead is how Microsoft's handling partners and hardware situation. With Windows Mobile, a phonemaker handed Microsoft their monies, and Microsoft tossed them a software kit, and that was that. Which is why a lot of Windows Mobile phones felt and ran like crap. And why it took HTC like two years to produce the HD2, the most genuinely usable rendition of Windows Mobile ever.
Microsoft's not building their own phones, but they're going to be picky, to say the least, with Windows Phone 7. Ballmer phrases it as "taking more accountability" for people's experiences. There's a strict set of minimum hardware requirements: a capacitive, multitouchable screen with at least four points of touch; accelerometer; 5-megapixel camera; FM radio; and the like. There are serious benchmarks that have to be met. And only chosen OEMs get to build the phones now, not like before, when anybody with $20 could get a license. The OEMs that Microsoft's announcing they're working with at launch are: Qualcomm, LG, Samsung, Garmin Asus, HTC, HP, Dell, Sony Ericsson, and Toshiba. AT&T's their "premiere partner" in the US (dammit). (Take note people! Premiere does not mean exclusive!)
Every phone will have a Bing (search) button and a Start button. Custom skins, like the minor miracles HTC worked, are now banned. The message to hardware makers is clear: It's a Windows Phone, you're just putting it together. Basically, phonemakers get to decide the shape of the phone, and whether or not there's a keyboard.
One other word on hardware, in a manner of speaking. Hardware it won't work with? Macs. Which is kind of stupid to us—a lot of the people Microsoft wants to use Windows Phone 7, like college students, have been going Mac in droves. You wanna lure them back Microsoft? Let them use your phone with any OS.
The Big Picture
Windows Phone 7 Series is, from what we've seen, exactly what Microsoft's phone should be. It's actually good. It brings together a bunch of different Microsoft services—Zune, Xbox, Bing—in a way that actually makes sense and just works. But there's a real, lingering question: Are they too late? The first Windows Phone 7 Series…phone—goddamn that is a stupid name—won't hit until the end of this year. That's more than three years after the iPhone, two years after Android, hell, even a year after Palm, the industry's sickly but persistent dwarf.
History is on Microsoft's side here—we know what happened the last time Apple had a massive head start. Microsoft is, if nothing else, incredibly patient. Remember the first Xbox? Back when it was crazy that Microsoft was getting into videogames? It's cost them about a billion dollars and taken nearly 10 years, but now, with Xbox Live, Project Natal and their massive software ecosystem, they arguably have the most impressive gaming console you can buy. That was a pet project. Now, mobile is the future of computing. What do you think Microsoft will sink into that?
The mobile picture is now officially a three-way dance: Apple, Google, and Microsoft. The same people who dominate desktop computing. Everybody else is screwed. Former Palm CEO Ed Colligan famously said a few years ago: "PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They're not going to just walk in." That's precisely what's just happened. Phones are the new PCs. PC guys are the new phone guys.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Meet Marko, the 9-year-old systems engineer
Marko Calasan, a 9-year-old from Macedonia, is more than just a kid who's into computers.
At age 6, he got his first systems administrator credential from Microsoft and, last month, he became perhaps the youngest Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer.
"I must say that from the technological point of view, Marko is definitely a wonder child," said Matej Potokar, the general manager of Microsoft Slovenia. Potokar said in an e-mail interview that he first heard about Marko two years ago and was eager to get the chance to meet the young prodigy.
"When we were informed that he is coming to Ljubljana (Slovenia's capital) and would like to meet with people from Microsoft Slovenia I was looking forward to meet him," Potokar said. For a half an hour, Marko made a presentation to Potokar and his team about Active Directory and its benefits and challenges.
"It is amazing how much time and energy he dedicated to study this complex and extensive material. On the other hand, I hope that...he still finds time for his second biggest love, which is football."
Marko already has his first gig as a system administrator, remotely managing a network of computers for a nonprofit that works with people with disabilities.
"The employees...are very glad that there is a good administrator," Marko said in an e-mail interview. "I think that it's true, but who knows."
"I do not play games on computers because there is nothing serious about playing games on computers...If you want to play, go outside and play with your friends."
Marko said he typically spends about four hours a day at the computer, but concedes that it is sometimes 10 hours or more. --Marko Calasan, 9
Marko is also a teacher with his own computer lab on the grounds of an elementary school where he teaches 8- to 11-year-olds the basics of computers. The lab houses 15 PCs provided by the ministry of education. That's on top of the five computers already in the Calasan home--Marko's dad is also an IT systems manager.
To allow him more time with his computers, Marko has permission from the government to attend school infrequently. Sometimes it's only several times a month. And he also has a set of keys so he can go into the lab at any time.
"Sometimes when the other classmates are sleeping, I go and practice in my lab," Marko said in an e-mail interview.
His latest project is trying to devise a way to send high-definition television signals over a comparatively slow network infrastructure. To support his effort, a Macedonian telecommunications company has given him a direct connection to its network backbone.
Marko proudly says that even over a basic DSL connection one can get HDTV without glitches. "The buffering will be very short," he said. Marko hopes to demonstrate the technology at this year's CeBIT show in Hannover, Germany.
The one computer-related activity Marko is not all that into is video games.
"I do not play games on computers because there is nothing serious about playing games on computers," Marko said. "If you want to play, go outside and play with your friends."
Although he is something of a celebrity in Macedonia, Calasan said he really wants to move to the United States to be closer to the latest technology--and to Microsoft itself.
"That's my biggest wish," he said. "I want to live in America because there are the highest technologies."
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