Can you believe Microsoft has built an entire OS from scratch? While this is true, we won't get to use it on our computers anytime soon, because Singularity is a Microsoft Research project started back in 2003, with the purpose of creating a highly-dependable system in which the applications, device drivers, and even the kernel itself, are written using managed code. Yesterday, Microsoft has finally shown this OS to the entire world...


After almost 5 years of hard work, Microsoft has decided to make this prototype available for free to the academic and research communities, with the hope of helping in developing new kinds of computer architectures. The general director of Microsoft Research, Rick Rashid, said that Singularity is "a new system built from the ground up, with the specific goal of being more reliable."

Revealed at Tuesday's TechFest, Singularity is available for download on Microsoft's CodePlex site, as a Research Development Kit, or shortly, RDK. The package includes source code, build tools, test suites, design notes and other materials useful for those that feel up to the task of playing with a brand new system, written entirely in C#.

If you think you're up to the task...please, go ahead and grab Singularity, but once you get into it, remember to get back here and share your impressions with the rest of us, all right? Good luck!

Microsoft seems to really get into the online realm, and its tools become with each day more and more Web-oriented. Leaving the subscription-based services aside, there's still a lot to get from Microsoft when it comes to online document access and sharing, and I am talking about Office Live Workspace, made available for free as a Web-based extension for the notorious Microsoft Office software suite...


Microsoft's Office Live Workspace has been previously available only as a private beta, and now everyone can register for free, with the final release being pretty close, scheduled to happen later this year.

With this occasion, I found out an impressive detail - according to Stephen Elop, president of the Business Division at Microsoft, the online service I mentioned above, combined with the "rich client experience" of the Office suite itself would provide "a seamless computing experience for our 500 million Office users worldwide". Half a billion Office users? WOW!

While Office Live Workspace doesn't provide full capabilities online, it allows you to take advantage of features like remote storeage or version control, which can prove extremely useful for collaboration and small business management.

The most interesting part is that Office Live Workspace is not a direct competitor to Google Docs, after all, just as Google Docs is not a realy threat to Microsoft's Office, unlike OpenOffice or other free office productivity suites...

With only a few exceptions, the software provided by video card manufacturers to tune the settings of their products is hard to use, or lacks advanced features, Also, ATI and NVIDIA's "control center" applications are not that great, either. Leaving them aside, there are a few third-party programs that can get the job done wonderfully, and one of them is RivaTuner, a program which just got updated, bringing the current version number up to 2.07.


If this sounds new to you, it's enought to say that RivaTuner is a freeware program for the Windows platform, working for both ATI and NVIDIA video cards, despite its name. From overclocking to advanced refresh/graphics quality perapplication settings, everything's there, and this latest version comes with some things that I know for sure some old users were waiting for...

Apart from a few minor bugfixes, RivaTuner 2.07 comes with updated support for the latest ForceWare and Catalyst drive families, experimental G94 graphics processors support, a new and powerful task scheduler module, updated Easter Eggs, as well as a looong list of improvements and updates.

To download this program, simply go here and choose your favorite download location. Since installing and using this program isn't hard at all, there's nothing else to say than "Good Luck!"...

I know, I know - Microsoft again, but what can I do? No matter if we love or hate them, Microsoft is an unstoppable force in the IT world, and it seems that only... Microsoft can stop Microsoft (see what's happening with Vista and you'll get the meaning of that!), but now I don't have anything negative to say about them, because I just found out that the Redmond giant is expanding its Web services offer for business users!


Earlier today, Microsoft said they are going to allow smaller businesses use some of their key products over the Internet, but this is only going to happen later this year. Microsoft's hosted software program was initiated last September, to allow companies with less than 5,000 users access applications hosted on Microsoft's server, for a fee.

Obviously, these subscription-based services are cheaper than installing the same programs on the company's hardware, maintenance costs are also smaller, while updates are much easier to accomplish, since they are done directly on the server.

For now, small US companies can subscribe to the limited beta trial available here, and the last thing to say about this topic goes here - Exchange Server 2007, Office SharePoint Server 2007, and Office Live Meeting - these are the applications hosted on Microsoft's servers for this hosted software program.

If you want to create a search engine for your website and you have no idea where to start, today I may have a clue for you. Its name is Search Engine Studio, a software application for Windows built to help you create search engines, and since it just got a new version, everything fits in just fine, don't you think?


The German software company Xtreeme GmbH released Search Engine Studio 5.0.5 a few days ago, but this is only a minor update, so all the features of the program remain the same. Anyway, there's plenty to talk about, when it comes to what can be done by using Search Engine Studio...

Search Engine Studio uses its own database engine, so you don't have to install anything on the server, but simply follow a few easy steps to allow the program automatically index your site and upload the required files to your server, so you can use the online search engine. The search results won't have any ads, and they are also fully customizable.

I could tell you about this program for an entire hour, and still there would be enough left, but I won't do that. After all, there's a free demo version for you to try, and since Search Engine Studio works with virtually any Windows version since Windows 95, and only needs 100MB of free memory, I am sure you have what it takes to give it a try!