Archive for: November 2007

Mozilla’s bug-munching mascot(Credit: Mozilla)

Mozilla on Friday released the third update to Firefox that month, version 2.0.0.11, to fix a stability problem in the preceding version.

“We strongly recommend that all Firefox users upgrade to that latest release,” a post on the Firefox developer …

software developer computers windows games blogs linux rss palm msn

Web

whether you’ve balked at the prices automakers are charging for integrated navigation systems, you should really take a look at what ¥300,000 ($2,746) would buy you in 1981. That atrocity you see above was an actual option in Honda’s Accord during Ronald Reagan’s presidency, and while it didn’t…

microsoft design video mozilla blogging electronics apple software developer podcast

Gadgets, GPS, Transporation

This program will transform your Windows user interface to ultimate Windows Vista alike looks that everyone will never notice it rsquo s the same old Windows XP or 2003 nbsp
nbsp
Changes in Version 8 0 1
Fixed pre configuration specifications to improve performance Removed unstable applications from list
Fixed TrueTransparency 39 s stability some settings in skin causing input hook problems
Fixed Visualtooltip configuration when user accidently deletes the configuration files in there
Removed backup files 39 status and put CPU model instead obsolete checking
Updated system files 39 status report to quot Out of sync quot and repairing system files information
Updated user account configuration system for more subtle performance

Changes in Version 8 0
Added CPU Speed information in Welcome Center
Added saving setup information file to save setup configuration for later uses with unattended transformation support
Added installation background
Added quot System optimized quot in Setup Configuration to configure the user account corresponding to machine 39 s spec
Added TrueTransparency 0 8 5 Glass border with ported AeroStyle skin
Added WinFlip 0 42 Vista 3DFlip
Fixed KB925902 hotfix issues with file processing animation
Fixed Media Center program execution error
Fixed rebuilding icon cache bug on non current users during the processes
Fixed Styler 39 s installation checking bug always set toolbar to styler mode when possible
Fixed failing to apply Vista screensaver
Fixed program name in Add Remove Programs
Fixed subscribing Windows X 39 s shrine to be default homepage bug in Welcome Center
Fixed visualtooltip 39 s advanced configuration bug
Fixed WindowBlinds 6 skin installation compatibility
Moved hotfix warning to user guide file ...

Dear Download Squad: Thanks. Honestly, despite it being the Friday after a holiday weekend, I've actually been having a fairly productive afternoon. And then, with a few minutes to go until 4:00 PM, I had to find this.

Now, as I've likely stated in the past, I'm not a cat person, so the idea of a feline-based Flash game doesn't immediate appeal to me. That said, I haven't been able to stop playing Chat Noir since I first loaded the game. Seriously, I even had some difficulty prying myself away long enough to work up this post.

The premise is simple: There's a cat in the middle of a board of green circles. You need to create a border around the cat to stop it from leaving the board. Every time you create a new link in the fence, the cat gets another move.

Fair warning: The Flash cat is a clever little bugger. Say goodbye to the rest of your afternoon.

Current.com, the media TV channel and Web site backed by Al Gore, is jumping into the 2008 presidential campaign with a new section featuring videos of the candidates waxing poetic about various issues.

At this point, the "Viewpoints" section features video snippets from Republican Mike Huckabee, Democrats Barack Obama and John Edwards and--because he can--Al Gore.

Candidates can pick from any of the 13 topics selected by Current: abortion, climate change, gay rights, government eavesdropping, healthcare, immigration, Iraq, poverty, prayer in schools, stem cells, taxes, torture in war, and waterboarding.

Their campaigns then package their candidates' thoughts on a particular topic into one-minute videos, which are shipped back to the Current staff and posted online.

Users who have registered at Current.com can then leave comments about the video and are asked to vote in a Digg-like fashion for their favorites.

With 12 video posts, Huckabee actually touches on the greatest number of topics. Obama has two videos on climate change and Iraq, while Edwards has three videos on poverty, healthcare, and Iraq. A spokeswoman said Obama's thoughts on climate change are apparently least popular, while Gore is actually winning the popularity contest with his thoughts on healthcare (above).

All of the major presidential candidates have been invited to post videos, and Current expects to be posting more responses from Republican candidates shortly, according to a spokeswoman. "Working with their staffs to get this done takes time."

I understand the idea behind this section--opening a dialogue, letting the young people have a voice, blah blah. But given that the videos are being prepared and edited by the ...

NORAD's now-famous Santa tracking program had its genesis in a happy accident. In 1955, a Sears store in Colorado Springs ran an ad for a hotline that purported to put kids in touch with Santa Claus.

Thanks to a misprint in the catalog, droves of Colorado kids looking to rattle off their wishlists found themselves on the line with the Continental Air Defense's (CONAD) director of operations.

After a few calls, Colonel Harry Shoup opted to take the mistake in stride, ordering his staff to give anyone under the influence of sugar-plum visions who called the number Santa's coordinates--the sort of information that can be generated only with the sort of high-tech machinery employed by the department of defense.

The tradition has continued ever since, with NORAD (CONAD's successor as of 1958) issuing an update on Santa's position every Christmas Eve.

This year, Google--abiding by its much-publicized "Don't Be Naughty" mission statement--has added its services to NORAD's annual tradition. Santa Claus watchers will now be able to track the jolly fat man via Google Maps, Google Earth, iGoogle and YouTube.

NORAD's Santa site will feature a countdown to Christmas, beginning tomorrow, with a new game or activity ever day until the holiday. On December 24th, beginning at 1:00 AM PST, visitors to the site will be able to track St. Nick's. You can also download a plug-in on the page to watch his progress via Google Earth, in 3D.

More info can be found at Google's blog, written by one of the company's employees--who also happens to be Col. Shoup's granddaughter.

...

Zoom Player is the most Powerful Flexible and Customizable DVD and Media Player for the Windows PC platform Using our powerful Smart Play technology more image audio and video media formats play with less hassle increased stability and better performance

I've been an unabashed fan of Deezer.com ever since the site launched with some AllofMP3.com-style gray-market policies (which means that they said they paid royalties to the artists while supplying a huge selection of music.)

Now, however, the site has gone legit, signing a license deal with Sony BMG. And that apparently has prompted the site to take down the majority of its music, causing index pages to be full of non-clickable grayed-out links like the image above

See, that's what happens when you try and pull a YouTube, after YouTube killed the YouTube 1.0-style business model.

And that simply means that users will flock to the most available free content, copyrighted or not, licensed or not. Call it the "ethics of crowds". Let's face it: YouTube built its business on providing free content, including clips of music videos, movies, and TV shows, and people discovered it. Traffic grew. Now we have ad gurus posting their secrets of how they get videos into the "Most Viewed" category through any means possible.

For Deezer, the plus side is that you can now listen to the small amount of music they have available without any delays.

Web companies are a dime a dozen, and every day, it seems, another startup with a new idea goes through a round of venture capital fund-raising. Everyone wants to make sure they're on board when the next big thing gets popular. But what do you do if you have an idea and some Web skills, but don't have the money or the people to make your dream a reality? You Be The VC, a new project, wants to help you. If you have an idea that you just know could be the next Digg or Facebook, you can join the project, submit your idea, and have it judged by a panel of professionals from Web companies such as Google, GrandCentral, and Pownce. If they like your idea and think it's worth exploring, you could win your own company.

If you pay attention to the news, you've probably heard that Facebook is estimated to be worth billions of dollars; and companies including Microsoft and Google have been fighting to get a stake in it. Web 2.0 company founders appear on the covers of business magazines these days, and the iPhone was Time Magazine's invention of the year. You don't have to work for Apple or Google or Revision3 to have a great idea; what if you have a great idea for a new Web service or product but don't have the means to make it happen? Perhaps you're just interested in exploring other people's ideas and meeting entrepreneurs whose ideas will shape the future of ...

Comedy Central has announced plans to put every episode of its long-running, button-pushing social satire, South Park, online for free. Like the recent move to stream episodes of the channel's The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, this marks a sea change for Comedy Central's parent company, Viacom: In the past, its new-media newsmaking has largely been confined to lawsuits against YouTube, whose users have enjoyed posting paltry 20-second clips of the show on the site.

Of course, full episodes of South Park have long been available via sites whose name we won't mention here. The online success of The Daily Show has demonstrated to Viacom that it actually makes a bit more fiscal sense to sit back and watch the money roll in from a monetized online version of its content, rather than investing money and effort into the pursuit of taking down the Google-owned YouTube for its inability to regulate the actions of every single one of its users.

Speaking to Reuters on the relation between the success of online content verses TV ratings, chairman and chief executive of MTV Networks Judy McGrath said, "One does not diminish the other by any stretch of the imagination. That is kind of our hat trick."

On a more symbolic level, Techdirt notes that this marks a return to its roots for South Park, which started life as one of the Web's first successful viral videos. In the mid-90s, a short animated film by University of Colorado students Matt Stone and Trey Parker found its way to the desk of Fox executive Brian Graden, who commissioned a second film from the writers, leading ...

If you're looking for an easy way to sync folders across two computers, Microsoft has a solution. SyncToy is a free utility that keeps folders and files synchronized on your computer, between drives on your computer, or across a network. The company has released a beta of SyncToy 2.0, which promises speedier synchronizations, an easier way to include or exclude files from syncing, and smart drive-letter recognition, so if you plug in a USB key today and it's drive F, but is drive G tommorow, SyncToy knows the difference.

I can think of a dozen uses for an app like this. I carry a 2GB flash drive to and from the office, and need to keep the files on it up to date between my work computer and my home computer. I have two iPods and two iTunes libraries on two different computers that I'd like to synchronize. I also have documents on my desktop that I like to back up on my computer downstairs. SyncToy can handle all of those tasks.

When you download the app and run it for the first time, you have to create a folder pair to synchronize. You can create multiple folder pairs to synchronize different folders at different times. The SyncToy 2.0 beta includes the ability to auto-detect when a flash drive or external hard drive has changed drive letters and adds several customization options missing in the previous version. For example, for each folder pair, you can include or exclude certain files or sub-folders, move overwritten files to the recycle bin or just delete ...

Facebook might not be ruining Christmas after all.

Amid pressure from MoveOn.org, Facebook on Thursday altered its Beacon advertising program to allow users more control over how their Internet activities are incorporated into their Facebook profiles. Facebook members who shop on Beacon sites such as eBay and Fandango must now give Facebook explicit permission before it can include purchase information in users' news-feeds or mini-feeds.

MoveOn set up a Facebook petition last week, calling on the social networking site to make Beacon an opt-in rather than an opt-out program. It charged that Facebook was "ruining Christmas" because unknown to at least some users, items they had purchased on participating Beacon sites were showing up in their Facebook newsfeeds, where they could be viewed by the intended recipient of that gift.

Initially, Facebook users who shopped on Beacon sites were shown a small "Facebook is sending this purchase to your news-feed" notice on the purchase confirmation page. If you missed that notice or failed to click the "No Thanks" button, all your Facebook "friends" would soon know what you bought from any of Beacon's 44 participants.

MoveOn charged that this practice was invasive and that Facebook did not adequately communicate with members how their purchase activities would be shared with friends. At first Facebook said MoveOn misrepresented how Beacon worked, because it shared information only with someone's friends, not the entire Web.

That's great, I guess, but how many of your Facebook "friends" do you actually want to keep apprised of all your Internet activities? Not very many, apparently, since MoveOn's petition garnered at least 52,000 members in the last week, the group said.

By Thursday night, Facebook ...