Microsoft announced the big news at Microsoft Sales Training Conference in Orlando, FL. The big news was what was previously been called as “Vienna”, the next major version of Windows, will now be called “Windows 7″ and would be due in the next 3 years time frame.Source: Engadget
Tags: Windows, Windows Vista, Windows Vienna, Windows 7, Microsoft, News
Google just released a new feature to its Google Maps called Mapplets. Mapplets are simple/small gadgets that can be embedded into the Google Maps. Mapplets can be found under “My Maps” if you are signed-in to Google network. There are bunch of Mapplets that Google has put out to begin with including, Real Estate Search, Photos, Gas Prices, Distance Measurement Tool, Earth as Art, and Crop Circles. But when you click the “Add Content” button you get a much bigger list of all the available Mapplets and I’m sure if you don’t find the one you are looking for it would be available soon.
To check out Google Mapplets you would, obviously, have to visit Google Maps.
Tags: Google, Google Maps, Mapplets, Google Mapplets, Breaking News, New Features
I’m not sure if the mainstream media and the public is fully aware of the US Immigration fairlessness and the hardship legal immigrants face before getting past the immigration gate. One good example is the latest fiasco by the USCIS/DOS on it’s Visa Bulletin game. You can read a little bit about this fiasco from here. It looks like not just the poor legal immigrants but the employers as well go thru this hardship it seems and one good example is this move by Microsoft to open up a development center in Vancouver, Canada.
Read the full story from here.
Tags: Microsoft, Immigration, News, Development Center, Canada, Vancouver
AutoBlog has sneaked some pictures which it claims are of 2008 Honda Accord’s.
Isn’t that looking great (I mean without those bumper cover stickers)?
tags: Honda, Honda Accord, Car, Sneak Preview, Sneak, New
Initially it was Leopard (the latest Apple Mac Operating System) that was delayed until at least October 2007 because Apple was leveraging engineers from the Leopard team to focus on the iPhone delivery.
But rumors are popping out on the net cloud that the iPhone could also be delayed. It looks like the extra features in the iPhone software is taking a huge drain on the battery life and that’s a huge concern for Apple given that it’s a phone and on top of that it’s $500 with a contract.
I was kinda’ waiting for this iPhone to hit the market in June so that I can think about having one once my Cingular contract gets over. But now given this concern about the battery life I would rather have to wait and decide.
tags: Apple, iPhone, Leopard, Breaking News
Discover Card is giving 5% Cash Back during the months of April and June 2007 when you shop at participating stores including Circuit City, CompUSA, Apple Store, and more.
Log in to your Discover Card account and click on “CashBack” in the left column to see all offers.
Eligible cards:
Discover More Card (previously named as Discover Platinum Card)
Discover Student Card
tags: Deals, Discover Card, Cash Back Bonus, Save at Circuit City, Best Deal
A Pennsylvania based company, Powercast, came up with an impressive product to cut the wires on small to medium gadgets and let the recharge happen wireless. That is a pretty cool concept and the good thing about this is that they just didn’t come up with the concept but they’ve made that concept into a product and have successfully signed agreements with more than 100 companies including the electronics giant Philips.
Here is how it works…A transmitter plugs into the wall, and a dime-size receiver (the real innovation, costing about $5 to make) can be embedded into any low-voltage device. The receiver turns radio waves into DC electricity, recharging the device’s battery at a distance of up to 3 feet.
Read more about this cool stuff here.
tags: Recharge over the air, Wireless Recharge, Gadgets, Recharge, Wireless Electricity, Cool Gadget, Powercast, Cool Product, Innovative Product
Fortune magazine again nominated Google as the best place to work for. It is just so unique of a company that offers that much perks and challenge mixed together. That would be fun and motivating.
This video quantifies that Google could be on the top of the list for quite sometime to come.
Note: If you can’t view the video above then here is the link to the video.
tags: Google, Fortune Magazine, Best Companies to work for, Best Company, Video, Google Campus
Viacom, the sole brand owner of MTV, VH1, Comedy Central, Paramount Pictures and a whole lot of world famous entertainment brands, have decided to slap YouTube with a $1 billion lawsuit. We all know that people turns to YouTube for copyrighted content most of the time and the biggest hitter on this ordeal was Viacom. Given it’s diverse brands it was no surprise that Viacom took the biggest hit and now since they know the financial power of Google they wanted a share on that.
My question was, what if this has happened a year before Google bought YouTube? I’m sure Google must be aware of this risk.
Read the full story here.
It’s been a breaking news on the blogosphere. That’s no surprise given the popularity of WordPress blogging platform. They just (few days back) released the latest version of WordPress 2.1.1 and that had some good stuffs that must have got attention of some of the bloggers to upgrade.
To their surprise, it’s been revealed that the copies they’ve downloaded might not be the genuine copy. Someone (?) had hacked into their servers to modify the release bits to include backdoors. So whomever have downloaded WordPress 2.1.1 for the past few days are advised to upgrade to WordPress 2.1.2.
Given the severity of this stuff, they’ve even established an email address, 21securityfaq@wordpress.org, that you can use if you have any questions regarding this.
Source: Matt at WordPress
Even though I like MapQuest better than Google Maps (alternating routing is MapQuest’s major advantage), I do acknowledge the fact that Google Maps revolutionized the online mapping segment. Google just silently released a new feature, Traffic, to their Google Maps. You should be able to see a “Traffic” button on Google Maps if it’s available in your area.
Google Traffic is color coded. If you see RED, it means that there is less than 25 MPH traffic flow. YELLOW means that there is 25–50 MPH traffic flow. GREEN means the traffic is flowing at more than 50 MPH.
Initially, Google released this feature to San Francisco, New York, Chicago and Dallas, covering each region. Now they have released this feature for more than 30 major US cities.
Check it out, if it’s available in your area.
Yahoo is in the process of releasing a killer feature on their Yahoo Mail (beta) platform, to integrate it’s ultra-famous Yahoo Messenger with Yahoo Mail. The way they are doing it makes it even neat. What that brings to user experience is that a single platform for both mail and messaging. Google tried that a while back but it wasn’t a huge hit with the users as Yahoo Messenger seems to still rule the instant messaging world.
I use Yahoo Messenger a lot and I love it. And then I use Yahoo Mail as well. So we are talking about 2 applications and so 2 windows on your precious Windows Taskbar real estate. With this integration you’ll be able to see the online status of your contacts from the Yahoo Mail and if they are online you can ping them to get them involved in a chat session. That will open up a new web tab within the Yahoo Mail window (this tab is not a browser tab, don’t get confused with that) and you can have a hierarchical view of the conversation. The neat thing about this whole thing is that you can convert the whole chat session into an email and have a record of what you said or embarrass your buddies, however you wanna’ do it.
This new service from Yahoo is not yet available to the whole public. The requirement is that you have to use their new Yahoo Mail Beta (not the traditional one) and keep your fingers crossed. If you see an online status icon next to your contacts name on the email then you are all set to chat within the context of Yahoo Mail.
Good luck.
tags: Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Mail Beta, Yahoo Messenger, Yahoo Mail and Yahoo Messenger Integration, Yahoo, New stuff from Yahoo
The consumer version of Office 2007, which launched only four weeks ago, is designed to withstand higher scrutiny by malicious code writers, as Microsoft subjected the software to code auditors as part of its security development lifecycle.
But researchers at eEye Digital Security found a file format vulnerability in Microsoft Office Publisher 2007, which could be exploited to let an outsider run code on a compromised PC.
“We were surprised we could find a flaw so quickly (after Office 2007 launched) and one that was part of their core products,” said Ross Brown, eEye’s chief executive.
An attacker could create a malicious publisher file, he said. Once the recipient opens the file, he or she could find the system infected and susceptible to a remote attack.
Researchers at eEye used a standard process of code auditing in discovering the vulnerabilities, Brown added. He noted that Microsoft either did not do a “good job” with its code auditing, or it may not have had enough people working on such a task.
Microsoft, meanwhile, said it is investigating eEye’s report of a possible vulnerability in Publisher 2007 and will provide users with additional guidance if necessary.
Executives at the software giant have recently said they expect security challenges to keep emerging, as an increasing number of devices connect to the Internet.
No public exploits have been reported in circulation for Publisher 2007 and, given Office 2007’s recent release, the flaw may hold little attraction for attackers who may wish to concentrate on software that is in greater distribution, eEye said.
tags: Office, Microsoft, Microsoft Office 2007, Bug in Office 2007, Error, Bug
I’m not sure how many of you use Weather.com but I do use it almost daily. I stress the word “daily”. Even though it’s not that accurate in getting the accurate weather information I still feel that it’s worth a service to check for every day.
Even though I like the service pretty much, I wasn’t been a big fan of their map (I like their “Map in Motion” a bit). Lately, without any headlines, they came up with a neat map, based on Microsoft’s Virtual Earth, that has some good sense of interactivity. You can drag the map as you do in Virtual Earth/Google Maps. They also have provided us with quite a bit of controls to control the map. Looks pretty good. If they could make sure that the projections they make are also accurate then this would be one “heck of a” service.
Check it out from here.
tags: News, Weather, Weather.com, New Feature, Interactive Map
If you are into virtualization then you should give a good hard look into the Microsoft’s latest in the virtualization arena, Microsoft Virtual PC 2007. Microsoft just released Virtual PC 2007 and is available as a free download. Of course, you’d need a machine with some spare memory and hard disk space to handle the extra load of the virtual PC.
Here is what you need to install Virtual PC 2007 on these platforms,
Windows 98, Windows 98 Second Edition
64 MB – Memory
500 MB – Hard Disk Space
Windows Millennium Edition (Windows Me)
96 MB
2 GB
Windows 2000 Professional
96 MB
2 GB
Windows XP Home Edition
128 MB
2 GB
Windows XP Professional
128 MB
2 GB
Windows Vista Enterprise
512 MB
15 GB
Windows Vista Business
512 MB
15 GB
Windows Vista Ultimate
512 MB
15 GB
OS/2 Warp Version 4 Fix Pack 15, OS/2 Warp
Convenience Pack 1, OS/2 Warp Convenience Pack 2
64 MB
500 MB
Download it from here.
You must not have noticed this but Microsoft just moved it’s YouTube competitor Soapbox service from private beta to public beta. So what does that mean to you and me? It means that they are done with a smaller user base testing and now they want to expand that user base to a larger scale. That’s a step forward.
Gone were the days where you have to wait for someone to send an invitation to create an account for Google’s best application so far, GMail. Google just announced that they are making GMail open for anyone to enroll without any invitations. Google Docs & Spreadsheets and Google Calendar and few other Google web applications are an added bonus that you can access with the GMail account.
Sign-up for a GMail account.
Apple Inc. will have plenty of room to eventually reduce the retail price of its upcoming iPhone, according to preliminary gross margin estimates by a market research company.The iPhone, the combination cell phone-iPod media player that Apple unveiled last week, will yield gross margins of more than 50 percent at the current set of retail prices, iSuppli Corp. said in an analysis of presumed component and manufacturing costs.
The 4-gigabyte version of the iPhone, with a retail price of $499, will cost Apple $245.83 to make, iSuppli estimated. The 8-gigabyte version, priced at $599, will cost Apple $280.83.
”With a 50 percent gross margin, Apple is setting itself up for aggressive price declines going forward,” said Jagdish Rebello, a director and principal analyst with iSuppli.
An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment.
“Since Apple will face stiff competition in the cell phone market, the company may need to cut into its margins to reduce pricing in the future”, he said.
The Apple iPhone, which was announced by CEO Steve Jobs last week, will be available starting in June exclusively through AT&T’s Cingular Wireless. Apple has said it hopes to sell 10 million units in 2008, or about 1 percent of the market.
That goal ‘’seems attainable,” Rebello said.
Source: WindowsX
Microsoft has confirmed an issue with the Windows Vista Speech Recognition feature.
An issue has been identified publicly where an attacker could use the speech recognition capability of Windows Vista to cause the system to take undesired actions. While this is possible there are a number of factors that make this “attack” very hard to pull off.
In order for the attack to be successful, the targeted system would need to have the speech recognition feature previously activated and configured. Additionally the system would need to have speakers and a microphone installed and turned on. The exploit scenario would involve the speech recognition feature picking up commands through the microphone such as “copy”, “delete”, ”shutdown”, etc. and acting on them. These commands would be coming from an audio file that is being played through the speakers. Of course this would be heard and the actions taken would be visible to the user if they were in front of the PC during the attempted exploitation. It is not possible through the use of voice commands to get the system to perform privileged functions such as creating a user without being prompted by UAC for Administrator credentials. The UAC prompt cannot be manipulated by voice commands by default. There are also additional barriers that would make an attack difficult including speaker and microphone placement, microphone feedback, and the clarity of the dictation.
The flaw is being regarded by many as a non issue.
It’s hot news everywhere on the internet, Bill Gates appearance on The Daily Show with John Stewart. Even though I didn’t get a chance to watch it live on TV yesterday I can still watch the video archive, thanks to ComedyCentral.com. They’ve put out the video for the public.
Here is the Part-1 of the video archive for those of us who missed the live show,
And here is the Part-2 of the video,
In case if you are not able to see the embedded videos here are the URL’s for both the parts,
(If you use Firefox and if you are not able to see the video on the page that comes up after you click on the above link please make sure to click a similar image on that page to get the video loaded. It seems like an issue with their plugins that forces you to click these extra steps. Sorry for any inconvenience.)
I really liked the moment when John asked about Bill’s pet name and there was a little lag time when the world’s richest man realized that it was a plot to get his password. Even though I’m sure he won’t have his pet name as the password but that was a nice play in context from John.
We all know that Microsoft is good at marketing it’s products even if they are a bit less than sublime. Now, how about $500 million budget for the grand mela? That sounds a stretch too far since the PC’s that will be shipping from now on till for some time is going to carry Vista by default. But…hey…it’s Microsoft, the hefty.
Read the full story from here.
The revamped Windows Messenger, Windows Live Messenger is out of it’s beta life. Here is an overview of the features of the new Windows Live Messenger,
Call your friends’ mobile or landline phones.* It’s affordable, both within the US and internationally. And calling someone’s PC is always free.
Show and tell: Grab a webcam and start a video conversation within minutes.
Set up a Sharing Folder with a friend. Drop in photos and other stuff, as many as your computer can handle. See your Sharing Folder even when one of you is offline.
The world’s largest IM network has just gotten bigger—and better. With Windows Live Messenger you can now connect with your Yahoo! IM contacts. Forget about using multiple accounts to talk to your friends—IM them all with Windows Live Messenger.
…and much more. Check it out from here.
Get the Windows Live Messenger from here.
A while back I’ve blogged about an awesome Windows Live Messenger extension pack Messenger Plus Live! that extends your Windows Live Messenger experience. Take a look at that blog post here. Download the Messenger Plus Live! extension from here.
Microsoft just made available the updates for it’s to-be-released-tonight Windows Vista. As soon as you buy-it-and-install-it-tonight you can get the updates using Vista’s “Windows Update Client”. There are 22 updates altogether, if you don’t see all 22 of ‘em you should use the “Check for updates” option.
Here’s the breakdown of the 22 updates,
Microsoft is prepping itself for the flagship Windows Vista launch by giving Windows Vista home page a redesign. It now has a bigger Vista Orb that animates along with it’s Vista launch slogan “The Wow starts now”. The menu bar got a Windows Media Player 11 skin. Overall it looks great, just in time for the launch event.
Visit the new Windows Vista home page.
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates is scheduled to appear on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on Monday, January 29, the eve of Microsoft’s Windows Vista launch.
The Daily Show, while taped earlier in the evening, airs at 11 p.m. EST, which is an hour before Vista’s official midnight launch.
Source: CNET News
Until now the pay-per-click terrain is completely dominated by the mighty Google Adsense program. With the acquisition of Overture back in 2003 Yahoo thought it can step into that terrain but lack of development and integration efforts made Yahoo to fall behind Google.
Now, Yahoo is planning to release their own version of pay-per-click program Panama by February 5, 2007. Initially they planned to release Panama by March 2007 but they’ve pre-empted their plan to release it by February 2007 itself.
Source: vnunet
With Microsoft’s latest operating system Windows Vista in the horizon of getting to the user’s hand near soon it is obvious that we tend to think what will happen to it’s second best (claims to be) operating system Windows XP.
Well, Microsoft announced before that they will end any mainstream support of Windows XP by April 2009. Now they have announced that they will provide an extended support program which will add an additional 5 more years of support and that translates to ~ April 2014. And they say they will provide the support for the Home and Media Center editions of Windows XP.
Source: PC Pro
Microsoft has updated its Windows Live Mail service to M9. New features include:
Not all the servers have been updated as of yet. Use the link below to access Windows Live Mail using the bay117 server.
Access the fastest Windows Live Mail from this bay117 server. Believe me…it’s really fast.
Source: Neowin.net
WordPress just released it’s latest stable version 2.1, code named “Ella”, named after Ella Fitzgerald. Here is a list of features that’s been bundled with the new release,
Get WordPress 2.1 from here.
Google is plotting to do for books what the iPod has done for music: make them purchasable by download to a portable access device. Could civilization as we know it be under threat?
The UK’s Times newspaper reported that “Google is working on a system that would allow readers to download entire books to their computers in a format that they could read on screen or on mobile devices such as a Blackberry.”
It quoted Jens Redmer, director of Google Book Search in Europe, speaking at ‘Unbound’, an invitation-only conference at the New York Public Library, saying: “We are working on a platform that will let publishers give readers full access to a book online.” Redmer said that the project was likely to come to fruition “sooner rather than later”.
The Times said the initiative would be part of Google’s Book Search service and its partnership with publishers, which makes books searchable online. Readers are then linked to sites such as Amazon where they can buy a physical copy of the book.
The news immediately lead Sunday Times commentator, Bryan Appleyard to bemoan the fact that: “We are, it seems, about to lose physical contact with books, the primary experience and foundation of civilization for the last 500 years.”
Read the full story from here.
Microsoft announced Friday it has hit the 100 million installation milestone for Internet Explorer 7, a figure that makes the new browser the second most used behind IE6. Web analytics firm WebSideStory reports that 25 percent of all Web surfers in the United States are now running IE7.
“We expect these numbers to continue to rise as we complete our final localized versions, scale up AU distribution, and with the consumer availability of Windows Vista on January 30, 2007,” wrote IE group program manager Tony Chor on the IEBlog. Because IE7 is built into Windows Vista, Microsoft expects adoption rates to jump further as consumers upgrade. Already, Microsoft is preparing to discuss the next version of Internet Explorer at the company’s MIX conference that begins April 30.
Source: BetaNews
Steve Jobs’ MacWorld Expo 2007 Keynote video was streaming at Apple’s website. You know that. But who wants to watch the keynote in the computer? What happened to the Apple frenzy, iPod?
Here is a location from where you can download the keynote video in m4v format (widescreen - 680×360) and can carry it in your iPod.
Pre-download Warning: The video file size is around 1.2 GB and you might want to be little diligent while downloading.
Download it from here.
GigaOm reports that, under competitive pressure from local cable competitors like Cablevision, Verizon is fighting speed with speed. The company just announced that it is now offering connection speeds of up to 50 Mbps (megabits per second) downstream and 5 Mbps upstream over its FiOS network.
Though there isn’t any explicit detail of what the pricing might be, it is for sure to be super expensive. I have a 5/2 Down/Up speed and I pay 45 bucks a month. I’m sure it won’t be 10 times of what I pay now but certainly it would be expensive.
That tells me that I’ll just stick with what I get from my FiOS. It is indeed sufficient for my regular usage.
What is your opinion? What kind of service/speed do you have/prefer?
Om Malik at GigaOm concludes that by dropping the “Computer” from it’s name Apple has become not just a computer manufacturing company but a consumer electronics company.
Here is a quote from GigaOm,
Dropping Computer from its name is a sure sign that Apple, from this point forward, is a consumer electronics company, a mobile handset maker – one that also makes computer hardware and software as well.
And the picture is the proof.
At it’s annual Macworld expo in San Francisco, Steve Jobs announced their latest gizmo, iPhone. Yes, you read it right…a phone from Apple. The pretty neat thing about this phone is that it has a nice built-in web browser that’s almost as functional as it’s PC counterpart. The next neat thing I like the most is that it allows you to have widgets which are pretty handy to have some much needed information on the go at the fingertip.
The phone, which runs the Mac OS X, will come in two models — a $499 version with 4 gigabytes of flash memory and a $599 one with 8 gigabytes of flash memory. And one more interesting fact, my cell phone service provider Cingular is the official partner. Yeaaaaayyy!!!
Take a look at here for an introductory video.
No…it doesn’t come with that extra black border 
One of my favorite video blog on the internet, The ScobleShow, by my favorite blogger Robert Scoble, has gone premium with its flash video player. It used to be that you have to launch a new window or a popup to play the content but now Scoble has upgraded the site to play the video with in the same window itself (like what YouTube does).
I like the change much better even though it lost the flexibility in adjusting the size of the video. For interviews like with Om Malik it’s okay to have the small in-built video player but for some videos where people demo stuffs the flexibility to adjust the size of the video would be a darling. I’m sure he will have that in no time.
Good job Scoble. Way to go!!!
Having the count down already started for the consumer release of Windows Vista, what’s next in the line cooking up there at Redmond? Windows Fiji and Windows Vienna. That’s right. These are the Windows version on the queue to be in line for the subsequent releases.
On a gist, Windows Fiji will be either an update or a service pack to the current version of Windows Vista. This release should have features that didn’t make it in time for the Windows Vista launch.
According to Wikipedia here are some of the rumored features to be included in Windows Fiji.
If Windows Fiji is an update to the current Windows Vista, Windows Vienna is a complete revamp of the way Windows works and behaves. I particularly like the concept of “pie” menu instead of the traditional one (yeaaaay!!! more screen real estate).
Cybernet Technology News has a nice article with screenshots.
Disclaimer: As I’ve said it’s all in a very early incumbent stage and things might change drastically as the development progresses (like Windows Vista).
Mozilla today silently released a patch version of Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.1. The update is not available yet on the Firefox homepage but you can get this update thru their FTP servers.
This update includes some major bug fixes and some fixes to memory leaks. Here is a complete list of bugs that are fixed in 2.0.0.1.
Firefox team indicates that some of the memory leak issues are because of the Adobe Flash Player issues and they suggest to download the latest Adobe Flash Player (version 9.0.28.0).
Download Firefox 2.0.0.1 (Direct Link – Approx. 5.8 MB)
Digg.com just unveiled a revamped Digg.com design which among other things makes uses of the screen real estate to deliver more content. They’ve added 3 major Digg categories, News, Videos and Podcasts (which is still in beta as they’ve unrolled). The overall look and feel of the site looks great..
Digg founder Kevin Rose has blogged about this at his Digg The Blog and has posted a short video that summarizes the new design features.
Visit Digg.
Yes, on December 14th Microsoft.com has launched the newly redesigned site.
I think the site deserves a redesign and that was due for a while. The site looks good overall but the page background color is very plain (no patterns) and the Microsoft logo and the page image (the big one) takes up too much space for me to scroll down to see the page content, on a 1280 x 800 screen resolution.
Visit Microsoft.com to see the new design.
For Q&A on the redesign, visit this page.
The ever famous Google Maps now allows you to get directions for multiple destinations. That’s pretty cool of a feature that was missing for quite a while from a service like Google Maps and the Google Maps team has just unveiled the feature for your convenience.
To add multiple destinations to your driving directions, just click the Add destination link below the directions and add as many touchpoints as you would want.
Visit Google Maps.
PS: I’m not sure whether they have rolled this out in a hurry or not but Google Maps now complains when I tried to locate my home address. Duh!
You must be remembering the last time Amazon ran the Customers Vote program, it was a big hit and the products disappeared in no time. Now they are back with a Special Edition of the Customers Vote program.
This time the whole gist of it is a bit different. Here is a quote from Amazon on how it works.
Select the item that you want: the Sony PlayStation 3 (20GB), the Nintendo Wii, or the Sony PlayStation 3 (60GB). Then click the “Sign up” button under that item to get a chance to be randomly selected for the opportunity to purchase that item. Note:
- Your Amazon.com account must have been created no later than 11:59 p.m. (Pacific time) on December 11, 2006.
- You need an authorized credit card on your account.
- The claim codes will be distributed only to randomly selected customers.
- If selected, you are eligible to buy only the deal that you signed up for.
The sign-up process ends on Sunday, December 17, at 11:59 p.m. Pacific time. Come back to this page anytime on Tuesday, December 19 (12:00 a.m. – 11:59 p.m. Pacific time), to find out if you have been randomly selected for the opportunity to purchase the console that you signed up for.
Dates to remember:
I’ve signed-up for the “incredibly hard to find” Nintendo Wii console. Last time when I tried for an XBox 360 console the site was slow enough to let me loose my bid. I hope this time there won’t be any competition for traffic.
Here is the link to the page.
Good luck and please leave your comments.
Last August Google announced the availability of “Google Apps for your domain”. Here is a quote from Google of what the “Google Apps for your domain” feature is.
Google Apps for Your Domain lets you offer private-labeled email, IM and calendar accounts to all of your users, so they can share ideas and work more effectively. These services are all unified by the start page, a new addition to this service, a unique, dynamic page where your users can preview their inboxes and calendars, browse content and links that you choose, search the web, and further customize the page to their liking. You can also design and publish web pages for your domain.
Until now the feature was only available to the people who already own a domain, who wanted to add Google Apps to their domains.
Now surprisingly Google added a new cool feature to it that lets people who don’t yet have their own domain to register new domains for $10 per year. Google has partnered with GoDaddy.com and eNom, two leading domain registration services, to offer domains for $10 per year. And what’s further cool is that it includes “private registration”. Private registrations helps protect your personal information by not publishing your private information to the Whois database.
Make use of the service here.
Adobe Labs now offers the new beta version of Photoshop CS3 for public download. The beta is available as a Universal Binary for the Macintosh platform as well for Microsoft Windows XP and Windows Vista computers, with the final shipping release of Adobe Photoshop CS3 planned for spring 2007.
The Photoshop CS3 beta is available in English only but to Photoshop CS2 users worldwide. It is available to licensed users of either the Photoshop CS2 (full, upgrade, and education), Adobe Creative Suite 2 Standard or Premium (full, upgrade, and education), Adobe Production Studio Standard and Premium (full, upgrade, and education), Adobe Video Bundle (full, upgrade, and education) or Adobe Web Bundle (full, upgrade, and education). You will need to provide your Photoshop CS2, Creative Suite, Production Studio or Bundle serial number in order to get a Photoshop CS3 beta serial number, enabling you to activate the Photoshop beta and use it beyond the two-day grace period.
DownloadSquad reports that even if you don’t own CS2 you can still try the CS3 beta for free for 30 days.
Download the Adobe Photoshop CS3 Beta from here.
Howard Schultz, Steve Case, Vinod Khosla…these are the major venture capitalists whom have backed many of the mega hits in the business world. CNN Money and Business 2.0 Magazine have a list of smart business ideas that these and other major venture capitalists will back to give the entrepreneurs a total of $100 million if they can make these ideas happen.
Some of them are pretty interesting concept, like, iDrive, a better Energizer, Patient Monitoring to Go, GPS Guided Coupons and the Social Marketplace.
Read the full list here.
We saw how quick the 1,000 XBox 360’s went off on Week 1 of Amazon’s Customers Vote program. I think it wasn’t even 4 minutes before it said that it’s sold out. I tried my best but couldn’t get one.
Now is Week 2. Not so great of things when compared to Week 1. Here is what they have for week 2.
To me, the Amazon Prime Membership looks cool. I might vote for that. What would you vote for?
On how to vote to get these items at these low prices, check out my previous post.
Go…vote for it…and let’s get the best of every week’s items at these low prices.
If you are an MSDN Subscriber, head on to fight for bandwidth with every one of your fellow MSDN’ers for Windows Vista. That’s right…Microsoft has released Windows Vista a day earlier than expected. To get the download bits you will need to login with your MSDN subscription credentials and request the proper keys for the installation.
The product key used to install Windows Vista will determine which edition will be installed. The product keys used to install Windows Vista Business N, Windows Vista Home Basic N, and Windows Vista Starter are not currently available.
It looks like MSDN has got only the x86 bits whereas TechNet has got both the x86 and x64 bits.
This single download, which is the file “en_windows_vista_x86_dvd_X12-34293.iso” is an ISO-9660 DVD Image, with a total of 2555 MB, includes the following Windows Vista editions:
Let us know how your install experience was. And enjoy the early Vista experience!!!
Microsoft chairman Bill Gates said at the annual shareholders meeting on Tuesday that “Microsoft will take Zune even further by connecting Zune to the Windows PC or Xbox, there is a lot more coming there”.
Yes, Microsoft plans to extend the wireless capability of its new Zune device to PCs and the company’s Xbox 360 game console, according to Gates. Zune, Microsoft’s competitor to the iPod, shipped with the capability for users to share photos, videos and music between Zune devices. However, Gates says that eventually Microsoft will connect Zune to other Microsoft products that serve as content and entertainment platforms.
Gates says that Zune’s wireless connectivity is just one way Microsoft is changing how people enjoy and share various multimedia. “We’re changing entertainment from something you do in isolation to connected entertainment,” he says.
Connecting Zune with its Xbox 360 console seems like a logical next step for Microsoft, as the company is promoting both as devices to serve up a variety of multimedia content. Later this month, Microsoft will allow customers to download movies and television programs to their Xbox 360 gaming consoles through the Xbox Live Marketplace, an online store where Xbox users already can purchase game updates and other content.
To facilitate the Xbox video-downloading service, Microsoft signed a deal that allows it to sell or rent an initial 1,000 hours of programming from various broadcasting companies, such as CBS Broadcasting, Viacom’s MTV Networks and Paramount Pictures and Turner Broadcasting System. The company signed similar deals with record labels such as Sub Pop Records to provide some of the initial media on its Zune devices.
Source: ComputerWorld
It’s official. Amazon has confirmed that they have 1,000 of brand new XBox 360’s that are available for sale this Thanksgiving day for $100.
When I blogged about this early on I thought it might be very less in numbers and the lucky ones will get one. But it turns out that Amazon will be offering 1,000 XBox 360’s. That is quite a number. Still I know that it will disappear in few minutes for sure.
To get this you have a part to play. You have to vote on to get one. Read my other post on how to vote your favorite product at Amazon so that it can be made available at these prices.
Go vote. Keep in mind that you can cast your vote each week for the next 4 weeks. Go for it.
You’ve heard about the rumor/speculation that Amazon is planning to sell XBox 360 for $100 this Thanksgiving day. I’ve even blogged about that. Now to add more juice to it here is what Amazon says on their web site. Take a look at the picture on the right.
Yes, Amazon is asking for you to vote before they decide what to put on for this Thanksgiving day. I’d vote for the XBox 360 offer and the 1 year Amazon Prime Membership. Since I can’t vote for both I would rather vote for the XBox 360 deal.
To add a bit more lime to the juice, Amazon says they are going to offer deal like this for the next 4 weeks this holiday season but with each deal the items listed would be different. That makes it even more interesting.
Here is what you have to do to make this deal happen,
Keep in mind that you can vote once every week for the next 4 weeks this holiday season. Bookmark the page and keep a reminder on your Google Calendar (How to bring Google Calendar on to your Windows desktop?) and keep hitting the site at least once a week.
So I ask you, please go ahead and vote for it here.
PS: For XBox 360 vote Amazon says,
Voting ends Tuesday, November 21, and the winning item will be announced Wednesday, November 22. It goes on sale Thanksgiving Day at 2 p.m. Eastern, 11 a.m. Pacific.
Michael Arlington at TechCrunch reports this,
If you are thinking of buying an Xbox 360 in the next few days, don’t. We’ve gotten information that Amazon may be putting the $300 Xbox 360 bundle on sale for $100 in the next week or so as a promotional move for the holiday season. We don’t know if this will be limited to the Xbox or will include other items, or exactly how many will be put on sale – but it came from a rock solid source.
I’ll keep you posted as this story develops.
With all the cool things that Gmail already offers, here are some new features that Gmail team has added to Gmail and is available for you to experience.
Reply on top
No more scrolling to the bottom of a long message to find the “Reply” link. Now there’s a Reply button right on top, along with a lot of other options under the little dropdown arrow.
Embarrassment-reducing new message notifications
Ever replied to a message only to find out that someone sent a better, smarter reply right before you? Now, if someone sends a reply while you’re in the middle of reading a conversation (or replying to it), you’ll get a notification that a new message has arrived. Click “update conversation” to see what you’ve missed.
Forward all
When viewing a conversation, use the new “Forward all” link on the right if you want to forward the entire conversation instead of just one message.
Chat even when your friends are offline
Chatting in Gmail just keeps getting better. Now, if you’re chatting with a friend who goes offline, your friend will be able to see whatever you were typing the next time he or she goes online.
I’m a regular viewer at Channel9. I keep hitting that site at least once a day. It has such great content in video and what I like the most is that they’ve put a human face to the otherwise hidden development team at Microsoft. Even though it had great content I never liked the design of the pages. It always looked to me like they were stuck with the <tr><td> world.
I was surprised to see that they are working on a new redesigned Channel9 which looks much better than the old design. Here is what the home page looks like. (click on the image below for the full image. If you cannot see the image click this link for the full image.)
I particularly like the new layout and also the many different download options. It looks like with the new design you can download Channel9 videos to your iPod, PSP, Windows Media Player and guess what, to Zune as well. That’s plenty of options and surely will make the life of the viewers a lot easy.
Thank you Channel9 team. Keep up the good work.
It seems like by last Friday, November 3rd, at approximately 2:30 PM Microsoft Office Team has signed off on build 4518.1014 as the 2007 Microsoft Office system and has released it to manufacturing.
How you can get Office 2007?
Office 2007 products will be available at retail by early 2007 so you’ll be able to get your hands on them soon. Business customers will be able to get Office 2007 through the volume licensing program before the end of this year.
