Android: MS-DOS of Our Time

Google's Android Eclipses Apple to Become the MS-DOS of Our Time | Wired Business | Wired.com:

Android’s share of the mobile phone market topped 80 percent of units shipped...
"Back in the mid-1980s, several competing personal computing platforms owned somewhat comparable pieces of the operating system market. Apple, Commodore, Atari, and IBM were all in the picture, each with an apparent fighting chance. But as the decade wore on, systems referred to at the time as IBM and its clones shot up in one of corporate history’s most legendary hockey sticks. The real winner in that ascendancy was Microsoft, the software platform powering all those machines...
The value wasn’t in the machines but the code that powered them, an insight that made Bill Gates the world’s richest man"

Book: ‘David and Goliath' by Malcolm Gladwell

A Summary of ‘David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants’ by Malcolm Gladwell | New Books in Brief
the book is about the curious nature of advantages and disadvantages, and how each can (under certain circumstances) become its opposite.



PART I: WHEN ADVANTAGES BECOME DISADVANTAGES

PART II: WHEN DISADVANTAGES BECOME ADVANTAGES: DESIRABLE DIFFICULTIES

PART III: UNDERDOG GROUPS: THE EFFECTIVENESS OF UNCONVENTIONAL TACTICS AND APPROACHES

Podcast interview with author:  Malcolm Gladwell | Daniel H. Pink

Dell Venue Tablets

Dell Venue 8 & 11 Pro Windows Tablets and Venue 7 & 8 Android Tablets | Dell

Dell Venue 8 Pro Windows 8.1 HD Tablet Details | Dell

8" tablet with Intel Atom CPU and Windows 8.1, $299.

This means it can run any windows app, not only WinRT.
Optional stylus available.

Dell Venue 8 Pro Review | UMPCPortal – Ultra Mobile PCs:

Android version: $179
Dell Venue 8 Inch Android Tablet Details | Dell

Xamarin + Microsoft, .NET for iOS and Android

Xamarin teams with Microsoft on cross-platform mobile development | Microsoft net - InfoWorld:
"The collaboration with Microsoft involves the release of portable class libraries, for sharing Microsoft .Net libraries across Microsoft devices and non-Microsoft devices, said S. Somasegar, Microsoft corporate vice president for company's developer division. Xamarin is integrating with Microsoft Portable Library projects in iOS and Android, making it easier to share code across devices, according to Xamarin."

Microsoft and Xamarin Partner Globally to Help You Build Great Apps | Xamarin Blog

Modern Application Development - .NET Rocks! Roadshow

Visual Studio Launch 2013

Visual Studio Online

Microsoft’s Visual Studio 2013 Launches With New Online Tools, Previews Browser-Based Code Editor | TechCrunch:

Visual Studio Online, a set of development services running on Windows Azure that focus on agile team collaboration, Application Lifecycle Management and support for Windows Azure. The service will also include an elastic load testing service based on Azure that will launch in public preview today, but the focus is currently on making the development process easier for teams, which essentially makes Visual Studio Online an extension of what the company has been doing with its Team Foundation Service.

IE11 for Windows 7 Globally Available

IE11 for Windows 7 Globally Available for Consumers and Businesses - IEBlog - Site Home - MSDN Blogs:

IE11 is quite good browser. IE10 was originally not planned for Windows 7,
and then Microsoft changed plans, and provided latest version IE11 for Windows 7 also.
But not for Windows 8!
IE11 comes with Windows 8.1 only. So you need to upgrade OS to get new browser...