Silverlight technology

The operating system landscape continues to heat up, with news from Intel that it will be releasing a version of its Moblin netbook OS for mobile devices, desktops and in-car computers. The Santa Clara, Calif.-based technology giant made the announcement this week at the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) taking place in San Francisco.

Microsoft has added images to its Bing search engine so search results now return images as well as text. Searches can also be started with preselected images at http://www.bing.com/visualsearch.

A search for "smartphones" produced more than 32 million results and clicking on the Images link produced 1,000 pictures so a phone could be selected by appearance rather than name. Scrolling over a phone image produces the image name and an option to show similar images. Caption details for the images can be turned on or off.

Technology companies are hoping President-Elect Barack Obama will spend millions on new IT bells and whistles for the U.S. government. In the meantime, however, a few companies, including Microsoft and YouTube, are jumping on Obama's high-tech bandwagon to make Inauguration Day available on the Web.

Microsoft announced Tuesday that it plans to finally allow the crown jewels of its applications -- the Microsoft Office suite -- to be delivered through Web browsers.

The announcement was made at the Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles.
Chris Capossela, senior vice president of the Microsoft Business Division, said Office Web will allow users to employ lightweight versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote to create, edit and collaborate with Office documents through a Web browser.

Microsoft announced Tuesday that it plans to finally allow the crown jewels of its applications -- the Microsoft Office suite -- to be delivered through Web browsers.

The announcement was made at the Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles.
Chris Capossela, senior vice president of the Microsoft Business Division, said Office Web will allow users to employ lightweight versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote to create, edit and collaborate with Office documents through a Web browser.

NBC Universal is running an unprecedented 3,600 hours of Olympics coverage on television and the Internet, most of it live online, letting fans track their favorite sports in a way not possible even if they'd gone to Beijing.

Excited by the prospects, I set my alarm for 4:45 a.m. on Sunday to catch cycling, handball, archery and rowing events on NBCOlympics.com as they happen half a world away in China -- 12 hours ahead of New York.

The Democratic National Convention Committee is preparing for a crush of traffic on its Web site in August.

And that's what the committee wants, with plans to offer gavel-to-gavel coverage, including live speeches, caucus meetings, video highlights and archived material that can be accessed on demand.

"The real goal online is to bring down the walls of the Pepsi Center so as many people as possible can experience what's inside," said Aaron Myers, the DNCC's director of online communications.