Just yesterday Apple launched iTunes 7.1 which had a feature that sparked a lot of conversations on the Web. The big thing that has people talking is the full-screen Cover Flow, and other than that there isn’t much new according to their site:

Using iTunes 7.1, you can now enjoy your favorite iTunes movies, TV shows, music, and more from the comfort of your living room with Apple TV. iTunes 7.1 also supports a new full screen Cover Flow and improved sorting options to let you decide how iTunes should sort your favorite artists, albums, and songs.

The Cover Flow (pictured above) is a cool feature because it lets you shuffle through all of your albums while displaying the album cover, and it does it in a way that is sure to leave you in awe. Making it fullscreen adds a lot more to it, but to be honest I was expecting to see a version of iTunes that was completely compatible with Vista.

I started browsing around Apple’s site and found a page that had a list of things that still doesn’t work right with Vista. They do, however, say that they are actively working with Microsoft to fix these issues:

• Ejecting an iPod from Windows Explorer or the Windows notification area (system tray) using the “Safely Remove Hardware” feature may corrupt your iPod. To always safely eject an iPod, choose Eject iPod from the Controls menu within iTunes. If your iPod becomes corrupt, selecting your iPod in iTunes and clicking Restore in the iPod’s Summary panel should return your iPod to a working condition.
• iTunes may display text or graphics incorrectly on your screen. Resizing the iTunes window should correct this issue.
• Contacts from Windows Address Book may not sync with iPod.
• iTunes remains unsupported on 64 bit editions of Windows, including Windows Vista and Windows XP x64.

The first item was what really caught my attention because I have always used the “Safely Remove Hardware” to disconnect my iPod. I haven’t tried this version of iTunes on my Vista machine yet because of the problems it still has, so I’m running it on my one and only remaining XP machine. It’s not that big of a deal because I normally don’t do much with iTunes other than sync my songs and podcasts, but it would be nice to get this up and running on my primary PC which has Vista installed.

So now I’ll cross my fingers that Vista will be added to the list of operating systems that are currently supported for the next release. While I understand that Apple is going to cater to the Mac operating system more than Windows, I would have thought that a Vista-compatible version of iTunes would have been ready when the OS launched over a month ago. I’m a little disappointed with Apple from that standpoint.

Download iTunes 7.1

Time Saving Tuesday – Part 1

Sometimes it’s nice to know what the most popular pieces of software are, because that could help you decide what you want to use. It wasn’t that long ago that I noticed SourceForge (the largest open source development site) supplied stats for each of their products so that visitors knew how many downloads a particular project has received. They even provide detailed stats for all of the projects such as these for Azureus:

From the chart in the upper-right corner you can see that Azureus gets nearly 100,000 downloads per day and the site receives around 8 million pageviews every day! Now that is some serious traffic!

What I’m going to focus on in this post is giving brief explanations of each SourceForge project in the top 25 list, as well as provide the total number of downloads (as of 3/4/2007) and what operating systems the software is compatible with.

1. eMule
   Total Downloads: 292,372,052
   Useful Links: Homepage
   Operating Systems: All 32-bit MS Windows (95/98/NT/2000/XP)
   Description: File sharing application that utilizes the eDonkey2000 network. Unlike the BitTorrent network the eDonkey2000 network actually uses a built-in search to find the files you are looking for instead of a website.
   Screenshot:
   
2. Azureus
   Total Downloads: 138,614,512
   Useful Links: Homepage
   Operating Systems:  All 32-bit MS Windows (95/98/NT/2000/XP), All POSIX (Linux/BSD/UNIX-like OSes), OS X
   Description: Azureus is one of the most popular BitTorrent clients currently available. It runs on Java which is, in my opinion, a downfall because it seems a bit sluggish. My personal preference for a BitTorrent client is uTorrent.
   Screenshot:
   
    
3. Ares Galaxy
   Total Downloads: 85,011,556
   Useful Links: Homepage
   Operating Systems:  32-bit MS Windows (NT/2000/XP)
   Description: Continuing with the trend is yet another file sharing client. I haven’t gotten around to trying this one out, but it uses a decentralized network much like BitTorrent so that it is next to impossible to be shutdown.
   Screenshot:
   
    

Continue reading CyberNotes: Top 25 SourceForge Open Source Projects

So many people use Google as their primary search, both geeks and non-geeks alike. It’s simple, and it gets the job done. However, many people don’t take advantage of the advanced search options that Google has included.

SmallBusinessHub put a list together a list of 12 tips to help you search Google like an expert. Google has an extensive list with all of the options listed, and below are the ones that I tend to use most often, which might help you as well.

1.  Word definitions – you can easily look up a definition to a word using Google as your dictionary by typing “define: example.” Google will display a list of different definitions from around the web.

2.  Movies – if you’re wanting to find what movies are playing near you, and the show-times, all you have to do is type in “movies.” If your location has been saved it will pull up the movies for your zip code, otherwise you can include your zip code. (I.E. Movies 20052).

3. Excluding Words – This is one that I haven’t really used, but I should.  It narrows down your search and gives you more relevant results.  For example, if you were searching for cars but you didn’t want any results that had to do with Cars the Movie, you’d type in “cars -movie” and it would exclude any results with the word movie.

4. Phone Searches – Google includes two different ways that you can get help with phone searches.  If someone were to call you and you missed the call, but didn’t know who it was, you could take the phone number and look it up.  All you’d have to do is type “phonebook: 541–555–1111” You can also do an area code look up and Google will tell you where the area code belongs. I typed in “847” and Google displayed a result that told me it was the area code for “Northern Chicago Suburbs, Illinois, and gave me the option to show the map of the area.

5. Currency Converter – There are times when I find something priced on the Internet in a currency that I’m not familiar with. The currency converter that Google offers solves my problem quickly.  All you have to do is enter in the currency that you know, and what you’d like it to be converted to. For example: Enter in “3.5 USD in GBP” and you’d get the conversion.

—Using Gmail Effectively—

Many of you probably use Gmail as your primary email account. Matt Cutts who works for Google has put together a few tips to increase your Gmail productivity. You can read more about these tips in detail over at his blog, but here’s a quick run-down of what you’ll find there.

Tip 1: How to keep most mailing lists out of your inbox.

Tip 2: How to use Firefox and Greasemonkey to prioritize your emails and give you easy access to the most important ones.

Tip 3: Create labels for “external” mail.

I’m sure there are plenty of other helpful tips for both searching Google, and using Gmail effectively. If you have other suggestions, let us know in the comments below.

Image from: www.sevensheaven.com

Tracking Down Great Software For You!

Calgoo is a calendar application that interacts with your online Google Calendar so that you can manage your life without always being connected to the Internet. While it sounds very appetizing having a software application that prevents you from having to manage your calendar only online, in the past (first release and second release) I have not been very fond of Calgoo. The biggest reason that I didn’t like the application was that the interface seemed a little clunky and the amount of screen space available for the calendar itself was not very much on an averaged size monitor.

For the last several months I have been involved in a closed Beta process that consisted of around 275 participants. We were able to see new features as they were rolled out and I’ll be the first to say that the things they implemented along the way were really great. However, the interface for the most part remained the same and I never felt as though I could use the application on a daily basis.

When I downloaded the newest version of Calgoo that was released today I was shocked to say the least. They had removed the right sidebar from the screen and combined it with the one on the left side! I couldn’t believe what a difference that made and honestly Calgoo has just taken a tremendous step forward. If that right sidebar had still been in place like previous releases I am confident that this review would not be a positive one.

Despite what I consider to be a huge visual change, there are also a lot of new features included with this release of Calgoo:

• Add/manage tasks – Very cool, but the tasks don’t synchronize with Google Calendar.
• Synchronization with Outlook Calendar
• Subscribe to iCal calendars
• Compatible with Google Apps for your domain (both free and Premium versions)
• Modify Calendar options – Right-clicking on a calendar will present you with some quick-access options, such as changing the color of a calendar.
• Dragging and Dropping – Drag and drop madness! Everyone loves being able to drag and drop things around the screen and now you can do it with Calgoo. This makes things feel more natural I guess you could say.
• Minimize to System Tray – Took me a little while to figure this one out, but then I realized that the “Close” option in the File menu will actually minimize to the System Tray. I would have expected it to say “Minimize to Tray” instead.
• Themes – There are now 3 themes available: Blue, Silver, and Black. I like them because they’re not very overwhelming and I would be happy using any of them. Personally though, I have chosen the black one.
• Mini Day Summary – I really like this Mini Day summary thing. I was confused at the purpose initially, but after learning about it I have really grown to love it. So what is it? Basically when you click on a day in the month view it will show you a list of everything scheduled for that day in the Mini Day sidebar module. I originally didn’t think this was useful, but then I found a day that had more items scheduled than could actually fit in the small calendar space in the month view. I guess it is hard to explain, but when you click on a day that has 5 or 10 appointments scheduled I’m sure you’ll see what I’m talking about.
• Appointment Dialogue – This is pretty cool…now you can schedule your appointments in a popup window instead of having to used the cramped sidebar item. Sure the sidebar item let’s you add things a little quicker, but everything is spaced out a lot better with the popup window.
• Reminders – Calgoo now supports the use of reminders. I haven’t tried it yet, but I’m wondering what kind of notification it gives a user when displaying a reminder.

Overall, this version of Calgoo not only has a more simplified interface, but it also has a large list of new features that make managing your calendar easier and more powerful. The calendar is cross platform (runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac) because it is written in Java, but there is one thing you should know if you’re using Vista that I had to find out the hard way. Calgoo needs to have Java Runtime Environment 5 installed and by default Sun wants Vista users to install version 6 since it is newer and more compatible. Once I manually installed Java 5 I got Calgoo up and running without any issues.

Now for the screenshots. Below are thumbnails of screenshots from Calgoo Beta version 0.34 so click on any of them for a fullsize version. From left to right you’ll see the main calendar display, appointment editor, task list, task editor, and the preferences:

If you’ve yet to try out Calgoo, I would say there hasn’t been a better time. Head on over to the Calgoo site to sign-up and download their latest Beta release.

Recently, Yahoo launched a new service called Pipes. It’s a pretty powerful tool that is an interactive feed aggregator and manipulator. I haven’t really taken the time to experience everything that it can do, but from others who have spent the time learning how to use it, the options are endless. 

People enjoy manipulating their feeds so that they work better for them. Customization is key, and recently I came across a service called FeedBlendr which gives you the customization aspect that you might want, but in a more simplified, cut and dry manner. It’s similar to Yahoo Pipes, yet different, and I found it to be helpful and easy to use.

FeedBlendr allows you to take all of your favorite feeds including RSS, Atom or RDF, and blend them into one. It works by pulling all of the individual entries from each feed, sorts them by date, and then blends them into one. I divide all of my feeds into folders like “Gadgets”, “Google”, etc. which means  I could easily create one blended feed that contains all of the individual feeds from one of those folders.

There are plenty of other ways that you could use the service. Read/Write Web points out a few:

• Make your own radio or tv station by mixing together favorite podcasts or videos
• Blend events from multiple Google calendars
• Combine feeds from 43places.com, 43things.com, 43people.com and AllConsuming.net to get an ‘all-about-you’ feed.

FeedBlendr is a useful tool with a lot to it, even for developers. Their blog has a lot of great information that will give you a further explanation and more ideas on what you can do with it.

According to TUAW.com, they’re saying that the latest numbers suggest that there are around 9,000 new people per day that switch to a Mac. The numbers come from Tom Yager over at InfoWorld who based his calculations upon Steve Jobs’ claim that half of Macs are sold to first-time buyers.

Yager is also conducting an experiment with a lifelong Windows user. He’s set someone up with a MacBook and a copy of Paralells so that she can experiment with the Mac operating system, but still have access to Windows. He’s trying to see if in the end, she’ll make the switch.

While Apple is growing, 9,000 seems a bit high, but also doesn’t take into consideration all of the people who don’t use Apple exclusively. I know several people who use a Mac for work, and stick with their PC at home.

If it’s true, perhaps the Get a Mac campaign is doing more than giving people a few laughs?

When I think of USA Today, I think newspaper. However, with some new changes to their site, USA today wants you to think “Social Network”.  Reading through the comments on their announcement, veteran readers are not liking the change too much. There are comments like “this redesign is horrible,” or “I think you did too much too soon,” or “Improved search, NOT.”

After taking a look at all of the new features they have added, I think it was a great move. While some might find it hard to adjust to initially, I think they’ll end up falling in love with the new look that’s easy on the eyes, and features that will make their news experience that much better.

To make it “social,” they started with the obvious. Conversation. Now every single news article will have a comments section where people can discuss the news. USA Today will place the most interesting comments featured up at the top of main pages.

Along similar lines as the conversation feature, they’ve added a community center where readers will be able to find some of the best comments, user-submitted photos, and other things. You can become a member of the community by creating a profile page where you can upload photos, write a blog, upload your Avatar, and send messages to others users. Sound familiar?

They’re even adding in a voting system where readers can “recommend” an article, or vote on a story that they think others will be interested in.  The purpose of this is so that it’s easier to see what the hot topics are, or what everybody is reading.

There’s a whole list of features that I haven’t even mentioned. It’s a big change, and one that their loyal readers will probably have to adjust to. Steve Rubel over at Micro Persuasion thinks that the change is good but it doesn’t go quite far enough.  He suggests that the media needs to “bridge their communities to the ones where we already spend out time. RSS, widgets and embedded content would help here.” His ideas make sense, but I think USA Today needs to take a few baby steps after this giant step to allow readers time to catch up and adjust to the differences.