Archive for: September 10, 2007

Filed under: Portable Audio
It seems like very couple months one of the major labels announce yet another harebrained scheme to entice consumers to purchase CDs, regardless of what humans actually prefer, and right on schedule, Sony BMG and Universal have announced their latest three-martini-and-a-c…

podcast yahoo software macintosh sun microsystems server itunes blogging palm apple

Gadgets

Microsoft appears to have quietly expanded its suite of Live services with the addition of a language translation application.

Industrious bloggers playing around with a variety of URLs this weekend found that three Web addresses now link to a site for Windows Live Translator Beta.

Users who land at translator.live.com, translate.live.com or windowslivetranslator.com can copy and paste text into one window and have it translated into German, French, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Russian, Dutch, Arabic or Portuguese.

Microsoft has not yet responded to our inquiries about the app, so no word on whether Translator will be rolled into Microsoft's new unified installer offering. That feature, which was announced last week, enables one-stop downloads of Windows Live Gallery, Windows Live Mail, Windows Live Messenger and Windows Live Writer.

Translator is reportedly powered by Systran, which also does work on a similar offering from Google, dubbed Google Translate, which currently supports English, Arabic, Chinese and Russian. Systran also did not respond in time.

The Microsoft beta launch comes a week after Google launched a Web-based, volunteer language translation program.

Approved volunteers are given a list of products to translated, including main Google sites like Gmail, iGoogle and Google Maps, according to a Google blog post. It typically takes a volunteer "weeks" to finish translating one site, but Google has thus far finished translating 95 percent of the Armenian, Estonian and Slovenian content, and Latin is 70 percent complete, according to Google.

The search engine giant has had difficulty locating translators for Abhazian,Tibetan, Inupak, Inuktikut, Wolof and Zhuang, Google said. The service has added additional languages recently, however, including Navajo, Filipino, several Russian Federation ...

Many IT professionals want to be notified when the software they use has been updated, but they don't want to be inundated with e-mail from the company they purchased the software from. At the same time, they don't want to be out of the loop when an important patch or bug fix is released.

ITerating, a new catalog of open-source and commercial software, wants to help. The service allows IT professionals to find the software they use, rate it, write reviews, track updates and fixes, and find new applications that might fit their projects. Additionally, ITerating adds a wiki page to each application entry that the community can fill out with important information and notes that might not be on the product page.

I do a lot of IT purchasing at my office, and some of that purchasing involves the licensing for applications we run on our servers. And if I had a dollar for every promotional e-mail I've received from Citrix, Microsoft, and others, I'd make about twice what I do now. I wind up filtering them straight to the trash, because more often than not, the messages are more marketing than information. At the same time, I don't want to miss an important security fix, so I find myself going out of my way to keep myself updated.

ITerating is designed to solve that problem. I can sign up for a free account and add my favorite applications to my profile, so I can be notified when they're updated. The service is strongly based on the idea of ...

According to a BBC report nowadays, a UK defense firm called Qinetiq has developed and tested a lightweight, solar-powered plane which has just broken the world record for longest unmanned flight. The plane, known as the Zephyr, spent 54 hours in flight using only self-recharging solar ability…

aol design hardware web msn developer iphone software rss internet

Gadgets, Transporation

Well just like the software emulation-only backwards compatibility that has followed the PlayStation 3 out of Europe, so too has the ol’ online compat checker crossed the pond to helpfully inform you of the glitches you can expect in your favorite classic titles whether you pick up the new 80G…

hacking blogs windows palm web iphone developer rss computers video

Gaming

Almost every blog these days has ads; some are flashy and graphical, others simple and text-based. But what if you're looking for something different than your every day Google Ads? PopShops has the answer.

PopShops is a service that allows you to create custom virtual "shops" in the form of widgets, text ads, and graphic ads from thousands of online retailers around the Web. The service even helps you manage your virtual shops, embed your shops in your blog or Web site, organize them by target audience or blog, and update them regularly.

Every blogger dreams of striking it rich and being able to sit in his or her pajamas, writing entries all day long. I don't blame them. I'd love to get rich, too. Unfortunately, blog posts alone don't put food on the table.

Popular bloggers know that selling advertising on their high-traffic blogs is a surefire way to generate some income from their work. PopShops is a service designed to help bloggers of all experience levels create custom ads for their blogs and Web sites from start to finish, without depending on someone else to manage the content and design of their ads, and how they fit on the blog. Google AdSense, for example, is incredibly easy to set up, but you have limited customization tools and little control over what ads are displayed.

PopShops is different. As soon as you sign up for the service, you can create individual "shops," which you can fill with different kinds of merchandise. If you own a gadget blog, you can create ...

Lenovo’s current forays into Linux-based laptops haven’t precisely generated the excitement that the company may have hoped, but it doesn’t look like it’s giving up on the notion just yet, and it’s now turning to its user base for advice. In a post on the official Inside the Box blog, Lenovo’s…

seo iphone windows VoIP sun microsystems apple linux msn mac red hat

Laptops

So final Friday we got two things from iPhoneSIMfree: the demo app of their “retail” software SIM unlock solution, and the promise that it would be available for purchase nowadays. We can’t confirm that everyone’s already received their iPhone unlocks, but we did get to tryout the final consum…

electronics red hat video apple microsoft itunes design macintosh blogging palm

Cellphones

certain, we’re all super-excited about the Gamepark Holdings’ next iteration of its Linux-based, homebrew masterpiece, the GP2X F-200, but did you know that the company is tough at work on a separate, completely new device? That’s right, straight from the developer’s fingers (and 63 forum page…

games red hat hardware mozilla apple electronics macintosh internet windows linux

Gadgets, Gaming

It may not boast the most original design or feature set, but Prolink’s just-announced “PixelView PlayTV Media Box” looks like it should nonetheless handle your basic media recording needs just fine. Somewhat interestingly, that one doesn’t pack any storage of its own, relying instead on SD …

server aol rss internet games mac fun video iphone palm

Home Entertainment

You’ve got to stay on the bleeding edge of component offerings when you’re trying to charge the prices that Alienware does, so it’s no surprise that the Dell subsidiary is the self-proclaimed first manufacturer on the market to stuff dual 64GB solid state disks into a consumer PC. Of course, y…

open source podcast linux rss server red hat mozilla hackers msn seo

Gaming, Laptops, Storage

This isn’t precisely what we had in intellect when we pined after an iPhone unshackled from AT&T’s network, but hey, it could work. BusinessWeek is reporting that a couple of sources have relayed that Apple is contemplating a tender in next year’s FCC auction for the coveted 700MHz band, s…

VoIP msn server yahoo developer electronics microsoft web sun microsystems blogs

Gadgets, Wireless