The Midweek Download: Oct. 19th Edition–Windows Intune is Here, plus More News on Windows 8, Windows Phone 7.5 & Internet Explorer 10

In this edition of The Midweek Download, we’ve got stories on Windows Intune, PASS Summit 2011, Windows Phone 7.5, Windows 8 and Internet Explorer 10. Check ‘em out.

The next release of Windows Intune is here. On March 23rd, Microsoft delivered the first commercial release of Windows Intune, a subscription service that offers PC management and security through the cloud along with upgrade rights to Windows 7 Enterprise and future versions of Windows. Less than seven months later, the next release of Windows Intune is now available! Read this Monday post on the Windows for Your Business Blog for the rest of the story.

News from the PASS Summit 2011. Kicking off PASS Summit 2011, Microsoft Corporate Vice President Ted Kummert addressed an audience of more than 5,000 technology professionals to discuss how Microsoft is evolving its data platform to respond to customer needs. For more details on PASS, read this press release on the Microsoft News Center and this Oct. 12th post on The Official Microsoft Blog authored by Kummert. Also at PASS, Microsoft announced new technologies that will help customers achieve greater flexibility and scalability across public, private and hybrid cloud deployments.

Microsoft and Quanta Computer sign patent agreement covering Android and Chrome-based devices. Microsoft and Quanta Computer Inc. have signed a patent agreement that provides broad coverage under Microsoft’s patent portfolio for Quanta’s tablets, smartphones and other consumer devices running the Android or Chrome platform. Although the contents of the agreement have not been disclosed, the parties indicate that Microsoft will receive royalties from Quanta under the agreement. Read this press release on the Microsoft News Center to get the rest of the story.

HTML5 video support in IE9 Mobile. HTML5 video is one of the most visible and easily adoptable features of the HTML5 standard. It is even more important on smartphones because there isn’t another standard for delivering video that works across all major mobile browsers, making HTML5 video the only interoperable way to embed video on Web pages. With the Windows Phone 7.5 release, we are adding support for the HTML5 <video> tag to the browser in a way that is standards-compliant, hardware-accelerated and optimized for a mobile viewing experience. Read this Oct. 13th post on the Windows Phone Developer Blog for more details.

The Windows 8 task manager. Microsoft is really excited to share some of the improvements it’s making to the Task Manager in Windows 8. Task Manager is one of the most widely used apps, and it has a long history. It showed up in early versions of Windows as a simple utility to close and switch between programs, and has had functionality added to it through several releases to make it what it is today. Want the rest of the story? Read this Oct. 13th post on Building Windows 8.

More for developers on IE10. Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) provides Web developers with a declarative, markup-based language for building rich, interactive content as part of their Web sites. With SVG Filter Effects, supported in IE10 in the Windows Developer Preview, developers have a collection of powerful, image-based effects that apply to all SVG elements. Like all Web page content in IE9, SVG Filter effects in IE10 are built with hardware-accelerated rendering, resulting in stunning performance, and opening up new opportunities for Web developers to create exciting content for end-users. Read this Oct. 14th post on the IEBlog for the rest of that story.

That’s it for this edition of The Midweek Download. Thanks for reading!

Posted by Jeff Meisner
Editor, The Official Microsoft Blog

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