The All About Microsoft blog posts a seriously complete list of what's going to be included in Service Pack 2 for Windows Vista, expected to be out in April 2009. Major items include the Vista Feature Pack for Wireless for easier/better connections, built-in Blu-Ray writing, and reduced resources required for sidebar gadgets. Nothing majorly huge, so it's worth looking at Windows 7 features you can get in Vista....
Google today released a preview of its 2008 Year End Zeitgeist. What was the 2nd fastest rising search term for 2008, after Obama? Facebook. Meanwhile, MySpace’s search volume declined: Interestingly, most of Facebook’s search growth came from outside North America. Who’s searching the most for “facebook”? Here are the top 10 countries by search query volume for 2008: 1. Turkey 2. Colombia 3. Croatia 4. United Kingdom 5. South Africa 6. Chile 7. Canada 8. Venezuela 9. France 10. Australia See more detailed data on Facebook’s 2008 international growth. The...
It’s the season for top searches, and Ask.com just doesn’t know how to play the game. To compile these, big search engines take all the top search terms for the year and promptly throw the data out. They then compile a list of terms that they think properly reflects key trends that people are looking for, occasionally looking at the actual data for guidance. We saw Yahoo’s list earlier today. Ask’s comes next. And it’s clear they are being way too honest. The top search is Dictionary followed by MySpace, Google, YouTube and Facebook. These aren’t searches, they’re navigation queries....
Ok, folks, I know not all of you approve of culture jamming shenanigans, but here are some gift ideas for that mischief maker in your life! Peggy Kit Create a light board with your own picture! You can make an LED sign for your window, a geeky valentine for your sweetie, one bad-ass birthday card, or freak the holy bejesus out of Boston. Your call. It's a versatile, high-brightness display. How you configure it and what you do with it is up to you. This first version can make any static design you can dream up. Version 2 adds...
The Friday page for the ScienceOnline09 is not up to date yet, but will be soon. What is planned? In the morning, there will be something related to coffee - Coffee Science of sorts. Place and time TBA. For lunches, you are free to organize yourselves by editing the Friday page. In the afternoon, we will have a set of Lab Tours starting at 2:30pm and ending around 4pm. BRITE and NC Museum of Natural Science are already set in stone. Several others are still in the process of finalizing the details (e.g., how many participants, etc.). We will...
Not only are CompUSA and TigerDirect doing discounted deals for Black Friday—they call it Pink Friday because they are supporting the fight against breast cancer—but they are also giving away free desktop computers in store. You'll also get some insane discounts online on limited-quantity goodies. Two crazy examples: A $5,999 Sony Vaio TT with a 256GB SSD, 11.1-inch screen, and Blu-Ray for only $999 (yes, nine hundred ninety-nine dollars) or a Xbox 360s for $99 during a 12 hour webcast. Read on for the complete list. While not everyone will get the crazy deals—they are limited quantities—the products above look...
Behold! The Vulcan Ironworks sign on Cumberland Street in Charleston, South Carolina, circa 1865. Such steampunky exuberance! Teresa sez, "I count wagon wheels, a plow, an anvil, what may be some wagon springs, a great deal of ornamental ironwork, a purely ornamental sword, what look like some arrow fletchings (except those aren't normally made out of iron), a wrought iron hand holding a wrought iron candlestick, a rather fine alligator or dragon, and a small cannon. I'm sure that's not the complete list." Vulcan Iron Works Sign, Vulcan Iron Works: 1865 (Thanks, Teresa!)...
We gave you our theory, we gave you RIM’s official statement and now people, it’s time to move on. The bottom line is that everyone who snagged a Storm from Verizon ended up with v4.7.0.65. The indisputable caveat - v4.7.0.65 has issues. No firmware is perfect and no future firmware revision will ever be completely bug-free, but what we can tell you is that the folks at RIM and Verizon know v4.7.0.65 might be just a little sub-par. How do we know they know? Why else would they be issuing OS updates just a few weeks after releasing the...
Google Chrome 0.4 is now available. It now includes a Bookmarks Manager, a decent pop-up blocker and options to control your privacy. You can update your copy of Google Chrome manually by clicking on About under Wrench icon, though it’ll update automatically in a day or two. The new features and enhancements in this version are: 1. Bookmarks Manager: Google Chrome now includes a bookmarks manager that lets you organize bookmarks into folders, drag n drop bookmarks to other folders, search for your bookmark and import/export your bookmarks. Bookmarks manager is accessible under Wrench icon or you can use...
Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Freeware While Adobe may have been the driving force behind the PDF, Adobe Acrobat Reader has grown to be a bloated application which can take an excruciatingly long time to load. One of my favorite alternatives is Foxit Reader, which can open most PDF files in just a second or two, while providing many of the same features you'd expect from Adobe Acrobat Reader, like the ability to fill in text boxes or open password protected documents.Last week the Foxit team released version 3.0, with a ton of updates. Possibly the most exiciting is a plugin...
I thoroughly enjoyed Malcolm Gladwell's first two books, The Tipping Point, and Blink -- so I'm excited to dive into his latest book, Outliers. Outliers poses the question "why do some people succeed, living remarkably productive and impactful lives, while so many more never reach their potential?" Should be a good read -- I'll give a deeper review once I finish. Gladwell speaking at the TED conference: To see a complete list of books I've enjoyed, check out the lower right corner of this page....
Filed under: Software Update, iPod touchApple also released a firmware update for iPod touch, bringing it in line with most version 2.2 updates for iPhone released a little while ago. It doesn't appear, however, that iPod touch users get the enhancements to the Maps app that iPhone users do. (Thanks, Guillermo!) The update contains enhancements to Mail, fixes connection issues with WPA-secured wireless networks, improves Safari stability, and includes a new preference to turn off auto-correction for typing. Also, podcasts are now available for download from within the iTunes app, and pressing the Home button from any home screen will...
I think Rebtel CEO Hjalmar Windblah should do one of those crazy adverts, you know the ones, “Come on down, we are giving these calls away, he har” Seriously though, Rebtel’s pricing changed today and its bloody amazing. More below from Rebtel blog New Users All new users that sign up from today (you have until December 18) will automatically receive these super-low rates on up to 1,000 minutes to 22 countries (see table above the complete list) and up to 3,000 minutes to India. You will be able to go on a calling spree and make use of these...
App developers know that Facebook’s restrictions on application emails have made the use of email as an effective communication channel much more challenging. Tonight, there is good news: Facebook is announcing several new features for developers to employ in their application emails. Here’s a quick summary: Many new formatting tags are available for the first time. For a complete list of which HTML tags developers can use in their emails, see the Developer Wiki page. Demographic restrictions are now available in email through FBML Personalization is now available in subject lines through FBML (”Justin, your latest updates…”) Internationalization tags are...
Happy Anniversary to Calvin and Hobbes! It was November 18, 1985 (I know, I’m a day late), that the precocious little boy and his sage stuffed tiger/real tiger first hit comic pages across America. So, I thought I’d hit you guys with a little C&H trivia… I know, it’s not nearly enough to fill the void Bill Watterson has left us, but it’s a little something. Bill Watterson Ever since he retired from Calvin and Hobbes, Watterson has been painting and “studying music”. He’s notoriously private and apparently hasn’t changed his lifestyle much. Up until fairly recently, he still lived...
Micro Center has apparently decided to beat the Black Friday rush by offering up some pretty enticing deals this coming weekend. There’s a small catch, of course: you’ll need to get your hands on a special coupon this Saturday. These coupons “will be distributed to customers in the line prior to store opening, or in the order of entering the store until gone” and must be redeemed by 2:00 PM on Saturday. Stores will open at 10:00 on Saturday and, again, you’ll have to get there in time to grab a coupon. If you have a Micro Center near...
