Google Will Kill Microsoft With Web Apps

"Steve Ballmer says Microsoft has "no choice" but to embrace the web app revolution." Um... what web app revolution? The real revolution will come from virtualization and open source software. Google will likely succeed with a few useful services, but Microsoft's plan to embed spyware and advertising into Windows & Office will be a dismal failure

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How To Use Firefox

A pretty good guide to dressing up Firefox for any occasion and the plugins that you should use to do it.

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ONLINE STORAGE: 80+ File Hosting and Sharing Sites

Huge list of sharing services

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HP Photosmart D5160 £19.95

This is not my usual type of entry for this blog, but at such a cheap price I thought it was worth advertising for you all to see...



Delivery is £4.50 + vat. (spend another £49.03 for free delivery).

Special offer: HP Photosmart D5160

The HP Photosmart D5160 Printer series is designed for families looking for a versatile printer offering the best of all worlds - lab-quality 6-ink photo printing, fast laser-quality document printing plus the ability to print directly onto CD/DVDs.

Printing system

* Print technology: HP Thermal Inkjet
* Print quality (colour, best quality): Up to 4800 x 1200 optimised dpi colour when printing from a computer and 1200 input dpi
* Print quality (black, best quality): Up to 1200 rendered dpi black when printing from a computer
* Print speed (black, fast normal quality, A4): Up to 11 ppm
* Print speed (colour, fast normal quality, A4): Up to 7.2 ppm
* Print speed (colour photo, best quality on photo paper, 10x15): As fast as 64 sec

More specs and info here

Also if you want to save an additional 1.5% then head over to Rpoints - the bargain-hunting community with cashback rewards. Join for free now to claim your £5 welcome bonus"

Vista's successor now known as "7," due out within three years, Get RAM now

Although Vista still seems fresh as a daisy, that hasn't stopped Microsoft from planning their next major OS release, and it looks like a part of the plan is changing the internal codename from Vienna to "7."

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Firefox Lite: Together, old PCs can crush IE

Firefox supporters, take note. A bare-bones Firefox will get the browser into more houses, increasing the Fox's market share and keeps it in novice users' eyes for when they get a new PC. From the article: "Give the Celerons and the K6s some of the power back and let light users rediscover what it's really like to rediscover the Web with Firefox."

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Digg up if you think GIMP needs a facelift

The GIMP has the power to bring more people to Open Source. First it will need to clean up it's tarnished image to attract serous users. I've never been a Photoshop user but I find even the change from any photo editing software frustrating with it's strange interface that doesn't seem to be based on standard computer interface design at all.

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RIAA LOSES - Orderd to pay $68,685.23 in Legal Fees

RIAA member Capitol Records to pay legal fees for the first time - ever.

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Microsoft: Live Earth concerts are most watched event in online history

According to Microsoft, the Live Earth concerts were the most watched event in online history. That's pretty impressive for an event that was the least watched television show last Saturday night.

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Microsoft Admits *ALL* Xbox360's Are Defective

If you thought that Sony was the only console manufacturer having a really bad day, guess again. After many months of public complaints and outcries, Microsoft has publically admitted that *ALL* (as in every single one ever sold) Xbox360's have a design defect that can lead to their failure.

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Make Gmail even more functional with Better Gmail Firefox add-on

This plugin takes Gmail from great to perfect!

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How To: Use Gmail over IMAP and tag your mail, too (Workaround)

This describes an interesting way to use Gmail along with IMAP. While geared towards using Apple Mail, it is also just as easy to do using Windows.

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Why we should all use Picasa

It's not just free. It's better than ever. This past summer, the ever-expanding Google empire acquired Picasa (Google Pack), one of my favorite photo-management tools, and a week later, in keeping with its usual business strategy, the company quit charging for the application. Now, for the first time since the acquisition, Google has released a new version, Picasa (Google Pack) 2.0, and we like it even more than before.

With this release, Picasa (Google Pack) is even easier to use for organizing, editing, and sharing your digital photos. Without leaving the application, you can now move photos across your Microsoft Windows file tree, add captions to your pictures, pan and zoom, and use 12 new lighting and color effects. You can also save photos to an external drive, burn them to a disc, or upload them to popular photo-sharing Web sites. And that's just for starters.

When you install the app, it immediately scans your system for photos and collects them into a single library. By default, Picasa (Google Pack) scans your entire hard drive, but if your system is particularly cluttered, you might opt for a scan of just your Windows desktop, your My Documents folder, and your My Pictures folder. The app collects not only JPEGs and GIFs, but all sorts of other image formats—even video files.

With past versions of the app, this photo library acted independently of your Windows file tree, but now the two dovetail quite nicely. One section of the library, dubbed Folders On Disk, shows how your photos are organized within Windows, and you can easily move photos from folder to folder.

You can still organize photos into virtual albums or "labels" that don't correspond to your Windows file system, and you retain the ability to use the same photo across multiple albums. Picasa (Google Pack)'s nifty Timeline still lets you instantaneously scroll through a chronological catalog of your photos. If you aren't already using a photo manager with such a timeline interface—Adobe Photoshop Album also offers one—you might try Picasa (Google Pack) for this feature alone. It may be the best way to browse large numbers of photos.

As you organize your pictures, Picasa (Google Pack) also lets you change filenames, key in captions, and add ratings to your favorites. Then, as time goes on, you can easily track down old photos with the app's improved search tool, which lets you locate files by keywords, ratings, and dates.

The real news, however, is the long list of photo-editing tools available with Picasa (Google Pack) 2.0. You can instantly adjust highlights, shadows, fill lights, and color temperature. You can add all sorts of effects, including sepia, black and white, and soft focus. You can crop, straighten, remove red-eye, and more. And if you don't like an edit, you can reverse it with no more than the click of a mouse.

Picasa (Google Pack) even provides new ways to share your photos. In addition to sending pics via your local e-mail client or Picasa (Google Pack)'s built-in client, you can now send images via Google's new Web-based e-mail service, Gmail. You can also easily upload pictures to popular photo-sharing sites, including Shutterfly and Ofoto, or burn photos onto CD or DVD. Plus, the app still integrates with Picasa (Google Pack)'s photo-sharing client, Hello, which works a lot like instant messenging software, and you can still upload pics to Google's popular blogging tool, Blogger.

Unlike Adobe Photoshop Album, Picasa (Google Pack) doesn't offer dedicated tools for transferring photos to handheld devices, cell phones, and digital video recorders. But this is a minor quibble. With its latest release, Picasa (Google Pack) stands toe to toe with Photoshop Album, and unlike ACDSee, it's intuitive enough for even the greenest of computer newbies. Novices may be intimidated by the breadth of tools on offer, but when they get over that hump, the app is wonderfully easy to use. Once again, Google's done it right.

Mininova Enters List of 100 Most Popular Sites on the Internet

Mininova is the fist BitTorrent site to enter the list of 100 most visited sites on the Internet, joining sites like Google, Yahoo! and Digg. A great accomplishment proving that BitTorrent’s popularity and Mininova in particular continues to grow.

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So you want a link back to your site? Try 15Blogs Instant Linkbacks PR4 PR5

Looking for a solution to creating a links back to other blogs and sites I devised 15Blogs.com. All you do is go there and post your URL. The same URL you post there gets crawled on a PR4 or PR5 site. While you are there click on the other blogs and sites and help them with their traffic. Don't forget to stumble and digg the sites you see.

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MGTEK dopisp 1.2.0378 - iPod plug-in for WMP

MGTEK dopisp is a plug-in for Windows Media Player that enables you to sync your MP3 music to your iPod directly from within Windows Media Player. There is no external user interface, no fluff, not even a program icon to click on. Just connect your iPod, fire up Windows Media Player, start moving your music to your iPod, and forget that the two once didn't play together. That's right, kiss iTunes goodbye and start syncing your iPod with Windows Media Player! Finally, there is a solution that is fully integrated into Windows Media Player. MGTEK dopisp delivers support for Windows XP, Windows Vista and is designed to integrate with Windows Media Player 11.

Revision History of MGTEK dopisp 1.2.0378 (08JUL2007)

* Fixed bug that caused WMP to crash when a headless GUI mode is active and a sync error occurs.
* Added capability to initialize a brand new or formatted iPod.
* Added support for using embedded album art in ID3v2 tags.
* Added an online-help file.

Download: MGTEK dopisp 1.2.0378 30 days trial
Screenshot: >> Click here <<
Link: MGTEK Home Page

The White Lies ISPs Tell About Broadband Speeds

In a recent PC Magazine article, writer Jeremy Kaplan did a fantastic job of exposing the true Internet access speeds of the large consumer providers. The results are surprising.

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Ebuyer.com runs on a Commodore 64

A hawk-eyed El Reg reader points out that UK online retailer Ebuyer.com appears to be cutting costs by running its site on servers dating back to the late Cretaceous period - roughly speaking. According to internet monitoring company Netcraft, the e-tailer has bypassed run-of-the-mill legacy servers for some serious heirlooms.

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UK firm preps iPhone unlocking software

A UK firm that specialises in unlocking mobile phones reckons it's close to developing an application that would allow iPhone owners to use the device John McLaughlin, founder of Uniquephones, told IDG that his software engineers were working "around the clock" in order to bypass Apple's restriction that ties activation of the iPhone....

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Autopatcher Vista/XP/2003/2000 June 2007 Updates

How often do you install Windows? Crashes, viruses, or even fixing other peoples' computers... Most people install their operating system regularly, whether they want to or not. After a while, you will get sick of going to Windows Update and continuously downloading patch after patch, update after update. Well, we have just the thing.

AutoPatcher is a comprehensive collection of patches, addons and registry tweaks that give you peace of mind in the knowledge that your Windows system is up to date, even before you connect it to the Internet. It's designed to quickly patch a system with the most current updates and tweaks available, and requires no user interaction once you have selected what to install.

For support regarding AutoPatcher click here

AutoPatcher_WinXP_Jun07_x86_ENU_Update.exe
AutoPatcher_Win2K3_Jun07_x86_ENU_Update.exe
AutoPatcher_Win2K_Jun07_x86_ENU_Update.exe
AutoPatcher_WinVista_Jun07_Core.exe

or click here for more download options.

Prior to installing XP/2003/2000 June 2007 update please ensure you have Autopatcher XP/2003/2000 May 2007 Core Release. These can be downloaded here.