HP Open webOS goes Beta. In September to announce future plans.

WorldWide Tech & Science. Francisco De Jesùs.

The webOS Open source roadmap tasks for August are on track. The Beta release is out. And promises for September to reveal the future plans when the final task is accomplished, webOS Open source version 1.0

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All the goodies about the August Open webOS beta release, directly from webOS open source project blog, after the break.

Open webOS August Edition

Eight months ago we announced our ambitious plan to make webOS available under an open source license and bring the innovation of the webOS platform to the open source community. We are proud to have hit another milestone with today’s Beta release.

We delivered on our promise

It has taken a lot of hard work, long hours and weekend sacrifices by our engineering team to deliver on our promise and we have accomplished this goal.

The Beta release is comprised of 54 webOS components available as opensource. This brings over 450,000 lines of code released under the Apache 2.0 license, which is one of the most liberal and accepted in the open source community.

Ideal environment for developers

Today’s release provides— not one— but two build environments.

Our desktop build provides the ideal development environment for enhancing the webOS user experience with new features and integrating state of the art open source technologies. Developers can now use all their desktop tools on powerful development machines.

Our OpenEmbedded build provides the ideal development environment for porting webOS to new and exciting devices. 

New build & Desktop functionality  

OpenEmbedded was a natural choice for many reasons:

• Its widespread community adoption
• Excellent cross-compiling support for embedded platforms
• And support for multiple hardware architectures

The build provides an ARM emulator, running core services such as db8 and node.js.We are actively converging on an OE Core image which boots to System Manager and the full webOS experience.

The desktop build brings together all of the elements released so far on the Ubuntu desktop. Our upleveled System Manager now has support for applications, including the Core Applications such as Calendar and Contacts, with their underlying Synergy services.What’s more, many 3rd party Enyo apps are supported too.

Community: Getting involved

No Beta release would be complete without a full complement of ways for the community to contribute and engage with us.  Come join the community to discuss porting, features and fixes on our mailing lists. You can also submit and track bugs and feature requests in our public Jira system.  

Finally, you spoke, and we listened. We have enlisted feedback from the community and have selected an approach to contributions inspired by the popular Linux Certificate of Origin.  

Community activity

Great collaboration continues on the Community Edition with the release of LunaCE. The webOS-Ports team have combined the community efforts into one package and made it simple to install on to TouchPad devices through their Preware software.

The latest release brings a host of new features including new Gestures and Card Stack Tabs.

As we work with the community to deliver innovation to the webOS platform, we will highlight and promote the most innovative and noteworthy contributions. Let us know of your breakthroughs and where you might need help. We have the specialists to assist.

Be part of our growth

We are continuing our hiring drive. Some great people have come on board and we are looking to add even more. Head on over to our jobs page for a full list of open positions.

Stay tuned for more updates from us, with the September release we will announce our future plans for Open webOS.

Show me the money!

So what does it look like? Below is a screen shot of the Open webOS Beta running on a Ubuntu desktop. The screen shot shows the iconic card view of the system running multiple applications.

The excitement continues to build as we approach 1.0 and beyond. Looking forward to hearing from and seeing you online in the community.

Source: OpenwebOSprojectBlog

Canada: Windows 8 available in August for manufacturers, and late October for general public.

WorldWide Tech & Science. Francisco De Jesùs.

Canada: Windows 8 available  in August for manufacturers, and late October for general public.

Microsoft used the morning keynotes to say before 16,000 at the Worldwide Partner Conference in Toronto  that Windows 8 will be released to manufacturing the first week in August and generally available by late October.

The company also announced a plan to let partners resell the Office 365 cloud application suite and bill customers for the subscriptions, eliminating a point of contention that's existed between Microsoft and its partners since Office 365 went live more than a year ago..

"I will tell you, our partners, that this year, this year, is the most important year of unparalleled opportunities," said Ballmer, as exuberant as ever despite battling several balky microphones while speaking in the cavernous Air Canada Center. "The chance to strike, the chance to make a difference, the chance to build your business, the chance to grow," he said.

The theme of Ballmer's address was the wave of new products Microsoft has already introduced this year and will be debuting later this year. "It's Windows, it's Windows Phone, it's Windows Servers, it's Windows Azure, it's Office. It's the core of Microsoft reinventing itself for a modern era," he said. "This year will be the best year ever, ever, ever, to be a Microsoft partner."

Opening the keynote session, Jon Roskill, corporate vice president and head of the worldwide partner group, said Microsoft's partners generated $609 billion in total sales last year, up 13 percent from the previous year. "Microsoft and its partners are getting it right, and we're onto something big," he said.

The Windows 8 general availability announcement, made by Tami Reller, corporate vice president and CFO of Windows and Windows Live, was one of the biggest applause-getters of the morning. Ballmer called Windows 8 "simply the biggest deal for our company in 17 years," a reference to the launch of the breakout Windows 95 desktop OS. "It's a huge opportunity for our partners."

But, upgrades to the current generation Windows 7 has also presented opportunities for partners as well. Reller said more than 50 percent of all enterprise desktop PCs are now running Windows 7 and more than 630 million Windows 7 licenses have been sold overall.

The other big applause generator was the announcement of the Office 365 Open Program under which channel partners can buy Office 365 subscription keys from Microsoft, resell them to customers and directly bill customers for the subscriptions along with other services.

Until now Microsoft controlled the Office 365 billing, a policy some partners felt got between them and their customers.

Partners can continue to offer Office 365 under the existing Office 365 Advisor program under which partners received a percentage of the subscription fees for reference-selling the cloud application suite. Monday, Microsoft announced that it is increasing those margins up to as much as 23 percent, 11 points more than today, when they sell more than 150 seats of Office 365, said Kurt DelBene, president of the Microsoft Office Division.

While virtually every Microsoft executive at one point referred to the new Surface tablets, there was no specific announcement about the role the channel will play in selling them. The Surface announcement has also created tension with Microsoft's OEM partners who manufacture Windows-based tablets.

The executives appeared to be downplaying that tension: Ballmer at one point referred to the Surface devices as "just a design point" and said Microsoft has a "mutual goal" with OEM partners to bring a diversity of devices to market. In her presentation, Reller demonstrated a number of devices from OEM partners running Windows software.

Microsoft also announced that it is acquiring Perceptive Pixel Inc., a New York-based developer of large-scale, multi-touch display technology, for an undisclosed sum. DelBene said the technology can be combined with Windows 8 and hardware from OEM partners to create interactive wall displays and other products.

A demonstration of the technology by Jeff Han, Perceptive Pixel founder and CTO, wowed the audience. Watch this video: http://worldwidegadget.blogspot.com/2012/07/look-what-microsoft-just-bought-video.html

Ballmer and DelBene also touted the potential opportunities for partners that Microsoft's pending acquisition of Yammer, the developer of social networking cloud applications for businesses, will bring. But other than general plans to integrate Yammer with SharePoint, Skype and Lync, there were no specific announcements made.

CRN