Join Scott Guthrie as he discusses Microsoft’s commitment to web standards development, Rich Internet Applications and how Microsoft is contributing to help move the web forward. Watch as Guthrie showcases the absolutely free version of Visual Studio that supports standard semantic markup, CSS, JavaScript ,and 3rd party AJAX framework support. Follow along as he introduces ASP.NET MVC and its focus in building light-weight standard web solutions. Learn about Microsoft how Silverlight, AJAX and media enable a whole new generation of Rich Internet Applications

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The popular microblogging site Twitter announced and launched a refresh of its interface on its company blog Thursday. Updated tabs, a new design customizer, and Ajax work on the back end are the major features of this release.

Twitter’s redesign sports a more attractive following/followers display and better tab placement.

The most noticeable UI change is the move of the smaller tabs that were on top of the timeline to the right sidebar, where they can occupy more space, making them larger clicking targets. They also moved the following/followers/updates stats to the top of the page and made them larger, so now I can really see how deflated my follower numbers are.

The Twitter Blog also notes that moving the tabs to the side was necessary to make room for future tabs since space was limited in their previous location. While Twitter doesn’t clue us in to what features might be housed in these new tabs, Summize (now Twitter Search) is a likely candidate for some sort of inclusion since Twitter’s old search box disappeared in this update.

The most important change, in terms of functionality is the addition of AJAX to the “Home” and “@Replies” pages. Their new implementation allows you to refresh the items in your timeline without having to reload the whole page. This makes for faster load times and less bandwidth intensive reloading of pages.

Twitter’s new design customizer.

Twitter also introduced a new design customizer with this release, which allows you to change the colors on your Twitter profile with the help of a color wheel. Instead of typing in color codes and hoping that you got all of the colors right, they are now reflected in real time as you change them on the page. This is an awesome implementation of this feature and makes it far easier to create a good looking profile.

Other than the new Ajax functionality, this update is purely aesthetic. Even though we have not seen any major features added Thursday, this redesign has paved the way for a larger future update, which Twitter promises is coming soon.

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With the web as the new platform, it’s very clear that client-server application architecture of yesterday must migrate to the Rich Internet Applications (RIA) of tomorrow. This new RIA platform yields significant improvement to the user experience (UXP) while lowering the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). We will present several cases of real deployment (using Curl RIA Platform) by large customers and discuss the lessons learnt - such as demands for robust scalability, high security, and super high performance. The need for very flexible architecture and agile development will also be covered.

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Many stories focus on what Google Chrome means for Microsoft, Firefox, and the fate of the current online world. But what does it mean for up-and-coming Web start-ups? Here are six implications for the start-up world that I can see. These assume that Chrome lives up to its hype. That’s a big if.

1. Chrome is to current browsers what Windows was to DOS. Twenty-three years ago Microsoft started its march from being just another software company to being, well, Microsoft. It did this by offering order in a fragmented world. Back then, you couldn’t just run an app on your personal computer. There were dozens of OSes, all doing basically the same thing, just a little differently. If you wrote an app, you’d have to cater to not just OS, but sometimes to each version of an OS. Sound familiar?

Google, both for monetary and ideological reasons, aims to make Chrome the standardized operating system for Web apps–and to make Web apps indistinguishable from native desktop apps. That means Chrome will let you turn any Web app into something you can reach from your Start Menu, Dock or desktop. It means Chrome is taking on the key jobs of the OS, like partitioning memory and managing application processes. It means if people use Chrome as a platform they’ll get–Google says–huge, noticeable advantages like an end to worrying about the viruses and malware that use the Web as their primary means of infection.

The biggest hindrance to Web apps today are other Web apps that crash the browser. Google means to put a stop to this, and Chrome’s featureset and priorities align toward this objective.

2. Chrome rebuilds JavaScript from the ground up. The key chokepoint of the modern Web app is JavaScript. Originally little more than a way to play cute little sounds, JavaScript is pushed to the limits via Ajax programming techniques and the host of excellent JavaScript libraries like prototype, script.aculo.us, and extjs.

But after 13 years, the JavaScript interpreters built into browsers are way past their prime. They can’t carry the load and leak memory like sieves. Off in Denmark, Google has been building V8, a new from-the-ground-up JavaScript interpreter that’s built into Chrome and available under its own open-source license.

What does this mean? Take the online video revolution that advertisers are in heat over. It might be helpful if the underlying browser displaying the video, and the main interface language that accesses it, is based on current computer science rather than state of the art in 1992.

3. There’s a new sheriff in town: Google. How many times has some crappy JavaScript function, plug-in or giant image choked your browser to death? Chrome is designed not only to sandbox misbehaving code, but to make it easy for users to see who’s to blame. Chrome comes with its own task manager, and bandwidth malefactors will be called out of hiding.Chrome will be setting a very, very high expectation: if you use Chrome, Google in effect is saying, viruses, spyware, malware, keyloggers, and phishing will be trapped in their sandboxes. Given that the Net is the primary vector of infection today, Google is taking on the evildoers of the Net. As well as the current police force; Chrome could very swiftly adversely impact the business of every “anti” software vendor very quickly.

4. Google to closed social networks: Drop dead. How long before Google extends Chrome so as you surf the Web, you can connect with your friends looking at the same sites as you at the same time? How long before Google pulls together the strands of its social network initiatives (everything from Google Share to its growing support of OpenID to Google Talk’s instant-messaging functionality in Gmail) into one unified, Chrome-ified, service that anyone can use?

5. Chrome Extension API is coming. Get ready. Firefox’s huge extension “ecosystem” has been important to its adoption. While the beta released today doesn’t support extensions, that is definitely on the road map. Best to keep an eye on Chromium, the online home of the open-source project emitting Chrome.

Click here for full coverage of the Google Chrome launch.

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Facebook has recently launched a new feature that takes aim at life-streaming sites FriendFeed and Twitter. Facebook’s Live Feed is an evolved version of its hugely popular News Feed feature.

Facebook’s new Live Feed allows you to view all of your friends’ updates in real-time.

Found via a tab on the Facebook homepage, Live Feed loads up all of the stories from your friends and updates the list in real-time. The feed is available in Log Mode (seen above) or the more traditional Full Stories. When one of your friends does something, Live Feed slides everything down, making room for the new story, which fades in. The stream is very cool to watch roll down the screen and makes good use of the classic Web 2.0 AJAXy feel.

It’s no secret that Facebook has been pushing its microblogging and life-streaming features to the forefront of the site recently. Facebook’s “What are you doing right now?” feature is extremely similar to Twitter and its commenting system for news items is very reminiscent of FriendFeed. Facebook’s implementation of Live Feed makes it a lot easier to watch what all of your friends are doing.

FriendFeed and Twitter are both very good at what they do, but have yet to gain the mainstream appeal that Facebook enjoys. Facebook is adding another feature that FriendFeed has long had and that has very similar functionality to Summize (now Twitter Search), so maybe it’s time for them to start getting worried. By exposing its large user base to these features that FriendFeed and Twitter have perfected, Facebook poses a real threat.

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