After over a week of the Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 Preview being leaked, Microsoft has now officially released it to the public to test. This came earlier than most expected because we all thought it was going to be in February.
Many of my readers know that I am an Iowa State University student. Today we had a Program Manager from Microsoft come to discuss the software engineering process that Microsoft uses. He is one of the two Program Managers for the DWM (Desktop Window Manager) department.
For those of you who have pre-ordered your HD-DVD players then this article is for you. Now you have the opportunity to pay double the price in order to get your HD movies pre-ordered. Non-HD movies that normally cost just $9.99 will run you around $25 for the HD version! Guess HD isn't going to be for the faint at heart.
Amazon is selling an Xbox 360 Pro Warrior Bundle for $829.91 on behalf of GameStop.
The thought a few weeks ago that all Windows Vista versions were going to ship on the same CD has been said to be incorrect by Jim Allchin, Co-president of Microsoft's Platform Products & Services Division. He pretty much said that there isn't enough time to gather everything needed and compile it all to the same CD.
If you are an iPod freak, then you probably have every accessory imaginable. There is one thing, however, that you probably don't have yet and its name is Blinkit. Blinkit is a safety flasher/flashlight which plugs into the docking port of your iPod. It is also cleverly designed to prevent the headphone jack from being covered on certain iPods where the headphone jack is next to the dock connector.
If your iPod earbud headphones are broken, then send them back to Apple and they will replace them for FREE! They won't give you any hassle as long as your iPod is still under the warranty. Apple will even cover the shipping cost.
Microsoft has changed the name of Microsoft AntiSpyware to Windows Defender, as many of you know. However, they have not released a version that has Windows Defender branded to the program. It should be coming around the February or March time frame. The biggest change is that Windows Defender Beta 2 will be able to run on Windows 2000, XP, 2003, R2, Vista, and LH server.
Looks like Microsoft may be using Windows Live.com as a whole media hub. Windows Media Center users will be able to select a show and record it all from Live.com! This is similar to technology that can be found in true PVR's, such as ReplayTV.
We have just released a page that will allow people to view technology news which is aggregated from 50+ sources. This makes it easier for people to read the recent news that people are posting. It will update the sources about every 20 minutes. Some examples of news sources are Google Sci/Tech News, Engadget, Wired, Gizmodo, and Neowin.
If your laptop gets stolen, what do you do? Do you call the police or put up posters? Why not just post the stolen laptop on eBay. That is what one company from Australia did that has surveillance tapes and everything else of the people who stole it. The goal of the eBay auction is to get the storey out for everyone to see.
Apparently there has been an invisible cloak made that will make the wearer of the cloak disappear! It almost seems like the movies that demonstrate the cloak have been edited. The creator of this is a professor from the University of Tokyo which developed the cloak using moving images and a viewfinder to make the object appear invisible. This is just weird, only Harry Potter should have this.
Now there is a way to find out what the most common words on the Internet are, and it is called Word Count! This is a simple site that will allow you to view a list of words in order of their ranking, or you may also search for a word and find out how it ranks.
I was having problems trying to stream music from Internet radio stations on my HP iPaq Pocket PC. I tried using both Windows Media Player and Real Player, both to no avail. Then I stumbled upon someone who said to try GSPlayer to stream your music. GSPlayer is FREEWARE which makes it even better, and it works flawlessly.
Some sources are saying that Yahoo! could be paying $30 million to purchase the popular site Digg. This would be just another addition to Yahoo! who has been on a purchasing frenzy lately. I don't think that anyone would be surprised by this purchase, but Digg creator Kevin Rose says 'we are focused on features, not selling the company'. Guess we will have to wait this rumor out.
A GMail user recently wrote an article on why he prefers to use GMail to write his essays as opposed to Microsoft Word. While reading the article you start to think to yourself 'why am I not doing this also?', or at least that is what I thought. GMail does a way better job of backing up files as you work on them and you won't lose all of your files if your computer crashes.
It appears that Intel will donate 100,000 PCs to classrooms in developing nations. This is in addition to the 10 million teachers it wants to train in the next five years. In the past 6 years Intel has trained 3 million teachers in 35 different developing countries. They also donate oodles of money, but I am sure it is all worth it to know they are using your products!
If you are a Firefox fan (like me) then you may have heard about Firefox 1.5.0.1 being tested. This version of Firefox fixes a few bugs in the browser but has not officially been released.
Have you ever been in the grocery store and had problems finding things? Well, with the 'Smart Cart' you will not have that problem. The LCD screen provides you with the information to find the products in the store or get more information on them with the built-in RFID reader. Of course, this isn't being tested in America at the moment (it is currently in Japan).
If you are a VoIP user and a Firefox user, then you may see a lot of possibilities with this. A company called Zoep has released an extension for Firefox 1.5 that allows users to call other Zoep users. Also, if you like to call landline phones then you can do so by pre-paying for your calls.
