Apple has released version 1.0.3 of its Bonjour software for Windows. Bonjour is a zero-configuration networking protocol that allows automatic discovery of computers, devices, and services, on IP networks. Bonjour devices would be able to communicate with each other without needing to know IP addresses or configure DNS servers.
This release allows Internet Explorer users to auto discover web servers on their network by activating and icon in the toolbar. Also, Bonjour for Windows allows users of the Microsoft operating system to print to printer shared via Bonjour such as though connected to Airport Express and Airport Extreme base stations.
What’s more interesting to me is the possibilities of porting Mac OS X applications for Windows such as iChat. iChat uses Bonjour technologies to allow users on the same network to chat with each other. Even if Apple does not release an iChat for Windows developers could use the Bonjour protocol to create their own chat clients that could talk with local iChat users without the need of a Jabber or AIM account. If Apple were to create iChat for Windows they could market their iSight camera to Windows users as well as those using Boot Camp to dual boot their machines into Windows. There are a lot of possibilities with this technology I guess time will tell what will happen.
