Archive for: October 29, 2008

Google Chrome is a browser that combines a minimal design with sophisticated technology to make the web faster safer and easier It has one box for everything Type in the address bar and get suggestions for both search and web pages Will give you thumbnails of your top sites Access your favorite pages instantly with lightning speed from any new tab
Google Chrome is an open source web browser developed by Google Its software architecture was engineered from scratch using components from other open source software including WebKit and Mozilla Firefox to cater for the changing needs of users and acknowledging that today most web sites aren 39 t web pages but web applications Design goals include stability speed security and a clean simple and efficient user interface

Kaspersky Lab represents a new generation platform for creating applications specifically designated for complex protection of personal computers and workstations nbsp

cFosSpeed is a high performance network driver for DSL modems and routers Highlights of this program include Traffic Shaping For DSL modems and routers Fully compatible with conventional PPPoE drivers Automatic router detection Self calibrating Highly responsive when used with online games and Peer to Peer networks like eMule or Kazaa and Freely configurable priority classes

I want my MTV ... online?

The cable music channel, which debuted in 1981 with round-the-clock music videos but now primarily focuses on reality programming, has archived its video collection on a new Web site, MTVMusic.com.

"For all of you haters out there griping about how MTV doesn't play music videos anymore, here's something to calm the waters," according to a Tuesday blog post from MTV. "MTVMusic.com offers up a more in-depth library, including over 16,000 videos, "Unplugged" performances and exclusive MTV concert footage."

MTV promised to add more videos daily. It currently filters videos by most viewed, top rated and vintage videos (David Bowie, New Order, Duran Duran ...). Users can also search by artist or song name.

As of Wednesday afternoon, the "most viewed" videos on the site were Britney Spears' "Womanizer," Dire Straits' "Money for Nothing," and Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up." Insert Rickrolling joke here.

Guns N' Roses |MTV Music

Dear Google,

These are hard times, we know. Things are rough all over, particularly in the tech sector. Heck, hardly a day goes by that we don't blog about yet another startup folding or a larger company announcing massive cutbacks. When we heard that even Google would be tightening its belt, though, we were surprised. Surely if there's one bulletproof company in the tech sector, it's you.

As any company that's gone through tough times can tell you, the first thing to go is the snacks. As Valleywag reported earlier today, that's exactly what happened to Google's Chelsea headquarters.

Your company has always been the envy in the rest of the tech sector because of its impressive snack selection. You gave us a tour of your NYC campus earlier this year, we thrilled at the bins of granola and the world famous Google frozen yogurt machine.

Sergey Brin and Larry promised that, as time went on, the perks would only get better. However, few could see that the current economic crisis would hit as hard as it has. A few months ago, though, free meals came to an end in your California headquarters. Now, New York is following suit.

With all of this in mind, the editors at Appscout have put together a care package to help you through these trying, snackless times. America's a tough country, and Google is the embodiment of that toughness. Together we will persevere.

In the meantime, please accept this care package. Inside we've included Smart Water, granola, a Cliff Bar, some green tea, and dry cereal--all your favorites.

Sincerely,
Your pals at Appscout

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As we reported yesterday, a number of Comcast users have been having trouble logging onto their Comcast.net e-mail addresses over the past couple of months. The issue first came to our attention when fellow blogger Geoff Fox mentioned that his wife had been experiencing problems with her account recently. A post on Comcast's forums echoed her sentiments, with a comment count that numbered in the mid 400s.

We called Comcast spokesman Charlie Douglas, who told us, "The vast majority of the customers that were affected should be able to access accounts now." Geoff told us that his wife was indeed back online. By the evening, however, her e-mail was down again.

Judging by the number of comments we got on our original post, she was not the only one still having issues. We contacted Douglas again. He let us know that the issues were the results of two unrelated problems, both of which, according to him, have since been resolved.

"Yesterday, we had two separate email access issues," he explained. "The first was in the mid-afternoon EST and was related to a server issue, which was resolved pretty quickly. The second incident occurred around 6 PM EST and lasted until midnight. That one had to do with some router equipment and it was resolved as quickly as possible. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience, but things should be back to normal now."

So, what say you, Comcast users? Is everything back to normal now?

A video of an application or service in action can mean the difference between an easy rollout or fielding calls and e-mails for explanation later. Videos are perfect solutions to demoing the features of a new application or service, providing troubleshooting tips to a novice, or adding more value to your product documentation. Thankfully, ScreenToaster allows you to create high-quality screencasts to share on the Web for free.

There are a number of good screencasting applications available for download--Jing and Debut come to mind--but even though they're solid apps, they still require you to download software and run it in order to record what's on your screen.

If your system is particularly low-powered or you're on a corporate machine where you're not allowed to install software, you may need to turn to a Web service like Screencast-O-Matic. Unfortunately, even Screencast-O-Matic has its limitations; you can only record video up to a certain size and the quality isn't that great. With ScreenToaster, you can generate high-quality screencasts for free without having to download anything.

Because ScreenToaster is completely Web-based, it works on any system running any operating system, including Windows, Linux, and MacOS. As long as you have Internet access, you can use ScreenToaster to make a recording. The service does require that your browser have the Java plugin installed, but most systems already have it, and it's available for every OS. Once you log into ScreenToaster, creating a screencast is as simple as hitting the key command to start recording.

ScreenToaster supports selection recording and full-screen ...

Several months after it joined Google's OpenSocial program, Yahoo! has officially opened its platform to developers.

"As of today, developers can start using our newly available data on their own web sites and even start deploying new applications into Yahoo," Jay Rossiter, senior vice president of the Yahoo Open Strategy (Y!OS), wrote in a blog post.

"Most obvious will be the social aspects," Rossiter wrote. "At a high level, we're rolling out a social platform that will draw on the hundreds of millions of connections on Yahoo--everything from random encounters with someone who commented on the same photo as you, to deep connections you have with friends who know nearly everything about you."

Y!OS has three components: the Yahoo Applications Platform (YAP), Yahoo Social Platform (YSP), and Yahoo Query Language (YQL).

"The Yahoo Applications Platform represents the first time that Yahoo is opening up the 'canvas' of Yahoo to developers, allowing you to easily author and publish your apps across the Yahoo! Network," according to Yahoo!'s developer page.

YSP, meanwhile, allows developers to tap into the social data of millions of users on and off the Yahoo! network while YQL is a single endpoint that allows developers to query, filter, and combine data across Yahoo, as well as external sources such as RSS feeds or HTML pages.

What will this mean for users?

The move will likely build on recently announced social networking changes at Yahoo!, such as its centralized profiles.

You'll be able to see what friends are doing on Yahoo!, whether they are entering ratings on Yahoo! Buzz, commenting on a blog post, uploading photos, or rating a movie, Rossiter wrote. Import your address book to ...

Services like Spock turned people onto the idea of "people search," that is, search engines that crawl the Web looking for information about named individuals, not people in general or broad concepts. Most people-search engines don't want to replace traditional search, they just want to make it a bit easier to dig up information on a specific person if, for example, they apply for a job at your company or you want to see what an old friend is up to.

123People is a new people-search engine that scrubs various social networks and search engines for the person you're looking for. After collecting the data, the site presents the results to you in a clean and organized way. However, whether or not the information is accurate or relevant to the person you're searching for is another story.

Predictably, the most popular searches at 123People are for celebrities. Movie stars Michelle Trachtenberg and Salma Hayek are among the top results, next to musicians Lisa Loeb and Britney Spears. The profiles of those celebrities are full of information, which may or may not be true. The philosophy behind 123People, unlike Spock and other more targeted people-search tools, seems to be "display it all and let the user sort it out," instead of trying to pin down specific profiles or bits of information found in searches.

This philosophy can be good and bad. At a service like Spock, when I search for my full name, I see the profiles of others located around the globe that happen to share my name. When ...

Dynamic Calories - Stephen malkmus

Social music discovery site Imeem today announced that it has struck deals with two major indie labels: Beggars Group and Matador Records.

The deal will bring the entire digital music and video catalogs of both companies to the site, included indie superstars Bon Iver, Devendra Banhart, The Pixies, Sigur Ros, Vampire Weekend, TV on the Radio, and my personal favorites, Pavement. Imeem users can stream albums for free and can add songs and videos to playlists and embed them on Websites or social networks.

The two labels will be integrating Imeem's playlists into their own sites and will work on promotions utilizing the social media site.

Google today announced the triumphant return of SearchWiki, the company's collaborative search experiment feature. The company describes the experimental feature as a method for "customize[ing] your search results with your rankings, deletions, and notes--plus, see how other people using Google have tailored their searches."

The feature is a bit Digg-like, in that it lets users comment on search results and vote them up or down, ranked by helpfulness.

The feature is not yet available to all users. For more information on SearchWiki, and hands-on reviews from those who have seen the feature in its early stages, check out Google's SearchWiki blog.

Q: We use a fairly large spreadsheet that is formatted with various colors, italics, bold, and different fonts. We are using Excel 2007, which has Bloomberg add-ins. We copied and pasted as values to remove the Bloomberg add-ins functionality, since the customer does not have that. We then save in Excel 97-2003 XLS format, as the customer does not have Excel 2007. When we open the XLS file to check it before emailing it to the customer, it loses all the date, color, text, and other formatting. If we close it and open again, it still loses all the formatting. - Daniel J. Hillis.

A: Mr. Hillis had another problem specific to the Bloomberg add-ons, something most users wouldn't run into. But my solution for the simple copy/paste problem should be helpful for almost anybody.

As noted, when you choose Paste Special and paste only values, you replace all formulas with their current values. That can be important if you want create a non-volatile copy of a worksheet's data or if, as in this case, you need to share it with someone who doesn't have the same add-ins installed. However, doing so also wipes out all formatting. There's another option in Paste Special called "Values and number formats" which handles things a little better. It retains number formats such as date, percentage, currency, and so on, but it still drops colors, text formatting, and the like.

Fortunately there's an easy way to copy data from an Excel spreadsheet while both replacing formulas with their values and retaining all ...