iampowered: January 2006 Archives

E-Cards Gaining Popularity

This entry was posted in the following categories: News, Web services

When it comes to Hallmark holidays, I usually just opt out. I don’t have the time or patience to go to a store, pick out a card, wait in line to pay. And if I make the effort, I usually get busy and forget to write something nice in it, sign it, address it, stamp it and mail it. Those are way too many steps for my busy lifestyle.

So you’d think I would have been an early adopter of e-cards. Sure, I tried them but I found most were very cheesy with canned messages and not many options for customization.

So I figured I’d just punt. If you can’t do something right, don’t do it at all. However, an article in Monday’s NY Times (registration required) by Bob Tedeschi got my attention – and may get me to actually shift my behavior and revisit this whole e-card thing.

The e-card market is growing. American Greetings has 2.5 million subscribers who pay $14 annually to send an unlimited number of cards. Of the 8,000 cards on their site (a heck of a lot more than Long’s carries), about 80% are animated – truly leveraging the latest technology. Plus, when I look at my “address book,” is has more in the way of email addresses than actual street addresses. Sending an e-card is simpler, more convenient, more cost effective, and more likely to garner an immediate response.

The article talks about the resurgence of e-cards and mentions a new “up and comer” called JacquieLawson.com that had 22.7 million visitors in December (huge for a 5-person shop).

Looks like now is a good time to revisit e-cards. Do you suppose there’s one for Ground Hog day?

New news service- Newsvine

This entry was posted in the following categories: Guides, Home / Office, Productivity

There are many kinds of newsservices available over the Internet. There are RSS feeds, XML feeds, web sites, portals, the works.

Well, a new service is trying to launch into that newsspace, and its called Newsvine.

Newsvine wants to be the Digg.com to the not-so-bleeding-edge masses of online users, whose primary source of news still comes from traditional sites like CNN and MSNBC.

What makes Newsvine different, though, is that they are not simply a culmination of mainstream media sites, they also include blogs and stories found on the net and submitted by their community of users.

And, when we say "blogs," we don't mean personal blog entries a la Live Journal, but rather blog entries that are more like news stories -- editorial journalism at its best.

Submitted stories are auto-tagged, categorized, and displayed online without any filtering. To find anything on Newsvine, the URL would be newsvine.com/subject, where subject would be news item you want to read about.

To sign up for the service, go to their web site and enter your name and email information. Users will be entered for their beta service. The other way to get Newsvine at this time is via email invitation (a la Gmail).

Skype strikes a deal with Warner Bros music

This entry was posted in the following categories: Entertainment, News

With personalized ringtones being all the rage and cell phones being in everyone's pocket, it was time for home phones to get into the act.

VoIP service Skype has signed a deal with Warner Brothers to offer ringtones featuring the company's roster of best selling artists.

The artists include some of the world's biggest names including Madonna, whose tracks from'Confessions on the Dancefloor' have been popular downloads from services like iTunes.

Each 30 second sound clip will cost $1.50 and follows similar deals that the music arm of Warner Brothers has made with the mobile phone industry. However, this isone of the first deals made with a VoIP company.

Although Skype makes its software available for free, it makes its money through offering premium services. The deal with Warner Bros music is expected to be only the first of a series of announcements with the other major labels.

Fakes arent just for clothes and bags anymore- tech too

This entry was posted in the following categories: Home / Office, News

Now, most people from time to time have purchased a "copy" or a "fake" of some type of handbag, leather good or clothing item. Its not a real issue for most people. Its just a way to save some money.

Not all of us have $400 to spend on a Coach handbag.

But what happens when fake technology comes into play? This could cause poor performance and in some cases, health risks.

Besides endangering users, counterfeit products may perform poorly, corrupt a computer's data, or just plain not work.

This includes batteries, hard drives and other technical components. Batteries are the most counterfeited item, causing millions of dollars in damages to cell phones and other products.

Batteries aren't the only tech item that counterfeiters love. In October 2004, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials in Anchorage, Alaska, seized 20,000 suspected fake Memorex USB memory key thumb drives from Asia. And last year, Miami officials seized 900 allegedly phony laptops valued at $700,000.

Fake software is rampant, too. As much as a third of the money spent on packaged software globally may go for counterfeits.

New Google Toolbar features

This entry was posted in the following categories: News, Web services

Google is releasing new beta versions of its Google Toolbar for consumers and corporations.

After Google Toolbar 4.0 is released publicly today, new custom buttons will let people run search queries directly on any Web site from their toolbar.

People can easily create their own buttons from Web sites, and developers will be able to use a new XML application-programming interface to create more advanced buttons.

Bookmarks can be saved to a user's Google account so they can be accessed from any computer.

The enhanced search offers query suggestions and spelling corrections. Users can send Web pages via Gmail or mobile text messaging or to a blog with the click of a button.

The new enterprise edition lets administrators control which features to enable.

Google Toolbar 4.0 beta for Internet Explorer will initially be available in English, and in more than 16 languages by the end of March. It runs on Windows XP only.

Dual booting XP on an Intel Mac

This entry was posted in the following categories: Home / Office, Productivity

While the Intel Mac has only been out for a few weeks, hackers and users alike have been trying to see what they can get to run on these new PCs.

Well, someone has done the impossible, he has gotten a new Intel Mac to boot Windows XP successfully.

From the Ramblings of a Computer Guru web site:

The Problems

Macintosh uses a different MBR
MacBooks use EFI, XP x86 uses BIOS
The modified Darwin Bootloader is made for EFI w/ EFI supporting operating systems

OK… So step by step.

Where is the BIOS used? For what? How?

The OS sends low-level calls to the BIOS that tell it exactly how to deal with the hardware. Now I don’t have the Windows XP source code at hand.. so all I can tell you for a fact is that NTLDR uses it to access the drive at first to boot Windows, and Windows uses it at *least* once more when it is mounting the drives.

The Required Programs and Stuff

Acronis Disk Director Bootable CD
Acronis True Image
Another computer with a clean install of XP. No programs installed at all.
A MacBook obviously!
A Windows Vista DVD (not for installation purposes!)
Vista boot files
bcdedit.exe
BCDedit restore file

Most of the problems can be theoretically quickly dealt with.

Using the Bootable Acronis Disk Director CD on the MacBook, shrink the Mac partition. Create a new partition of type NTFS/HPFS in the remaining space.
Setup a clean version of XP on a PC.
Extract Boot.7z to the root drive of your XP installation.. So you have C:\Boot\
Copy bcdedit.exe to the root drive of your XP installation. C:\BCDedit.exe
Copy MacBook.bcd to the root drive of your XP installation
Use sysprep to “reseal” your XP install and remove all hardware info from the setup (thanks Kristan for pointing that out!).
Use Acronis TrueImage CD to make an image of your XP install.
Use the bootable Acronis True Image CD to recreate the image on the partition you just made on your MacBook.
Use the Bootable Vista DVD to boot on the MacBook.
Select “Repair Startup” -> Next -> CMD -> Run too.
Browse to drive C:\Boot (which is the partition you created on the MacBook and then extracted the Acronis TrueImage file to). (cd C:\boot)
Run “fixntfs.exe -lh” without the quotes
Browse back to drive C:\ (cd \)
Run “bcdedit.exe /import MacBook.bcd” without the quotes
Eject the CD and restart.
In Mac now, hack the Darwin Bootloader to add another entry that chainloads Drive(0) Partition(2). With GRUB it would look something like this… I’m not sure if Darwin is the same, but this step is very simple, and has nothing to do with EFI.
title Windows XP
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
chainloader +1
Restart
By selecting “Windows XP” on the Darwin Bootloader you should be chainloaded to the Vista bootloader, which should in turn boot the entry “NeoSmart Windows XP”
If everything has gone well, XP will boot!!

Sony's Connect Player has problems

This entry was posted in the following categories: Entertainment, News

Sony has apologized for problems some users have experienced with its Connect Player utility when the jukebox software is used with the firm's NW-A1000, NW-A3000 and NW-A608 digital music players, launched last November.

Walkman owners have complained on bulletin boards and to Sony directly that running the bundled Connect Player 1.0 can result in very slow system performance. It sometimes it crashes when transferring music files across to the devices

Last week Sony posted a notice saying there .are some issues and it is now investigating.

The consumer electronics giant said it "apologizes for any inconvenience caused", and suggested users who've found that either reinstalling the software or re-initialising their Walkman's hard drive hasn't helped should download its older digital music jukebox application, SonicStage, until a fix for Connect Player is posted.

Winamp flaw is security risk

This entry was posted in the following categories: Entertainment, News

Winamp, the popular media player for the Windows operating system, has a major security flaw that could potentially cause problems for user's PCs.

The flaw affects version 5.12 of Winamp as well as older versions.

The flaw could be exploited when a Winamp user visits a malicious Web site and a tainted media file is launched onto the person's system. A buffer overflow is triggered, which allows the attacker to take control of the computer without being constrained by security measures.

Users of Winamp are being advised to uninstall the player until the flaw has been corrected.

Enhance your lifestyle with Astraware software

This entry was posted in the following categories: Entertainment, Mobility

Astraware, a company known for its great Palm and Pocket PC software (including the addictive Bejeweled), has announced a special promotion for their Lifestyle channel highlighting some of the best Palm and Pocket PC lifestyle applications.

From Monday 30th January 2006 for just 8 days, 'Enhance Your Lifestyle' will feature a different application each day with a special exclusive 24-hour-only discount of up to $10!

With many new users looking for applications for their devices and more experienced owners looking for new titles to maximise their handheld use, the Astraware 'Enhance Your Lifestyle' promotion will offer a selection of top applications from Chapura, Deluxeware, Electric Pocket, Ilium Software, Landware, Llamagraphics, and SplashData.

All of the applications on the Astraware Lifestyle channel are personally selected by the Astraware Team from customer requests. 'Enhance Your Lifestyle' will begin at 8.00am GMT on January 30th, and a new application will be available from the same time each day.

Make sure you check back to the Astraware website to discover that day's offer!

Stanford Lectures on iTunes

This entry was posted in the following categories: Entertainment, News

Stanford University is collaborating with Apple Computer to allow public access a wide range of lectures, speeches, debates and other university content through iTunes.

This means no need to pay the $31,200 tuition, live on campus, or even be a student.

There are almost 500 tracks that available to anyone willing to download and listen.

There a several other universities using iTunes to distribute class-specific content to their students.

These include Duke, Drexel University’s School of Education and the University of Michigan School of Dentistry.

However Stanford is the first to make a substantial amount of recorded university events available to the general public.

Stanford has plans for adding more content.

They are even considering the recording of sports events & walking tours of the campus.

According to a Stanford representative, over 130,000 tracks were downloaded from the site in the first two weeks.

Google Video Now Offering NBA Games

This entry was posted in the following categories: Entertainment, News

Google Video has updated its content this week to include game footage from 30 NBA teams.

Those interested can purchase new and classic games for viewing on their PC at a cost of $3.95 USD each.

This new content joins music videos and classic TV episodes, which can be streamed on demand for between $1.99 and $3.99.

See Thumbnails of your Firefox Tabs

This entry was posted in the following categories: News, Web services

Firefox extension Reveal creates mini-windows (thumbnails) of your tabbed pages, allowing you to select, reorder, or even sort through pages in the session history.

Pressing F2 will pop up the thumbnails.

At that point you can even search through them with a Find feature.

Additionally, Reveal shows thumbnails of your page history if you rest your mouse over the Back and Forward buttons, and allows you to zoom in on the page you're visiting with a triple click.

To toggle reveal open/closed, hit F2 or Alt-` (alt-backtick). The second key assignment is useful if you're used to hitting Alt-Tab - the backtick key is right above the tab key on most keyboards.

An additional key is available for closing Reveal - Esc.

While Reveal is open, you can use the up and down keys to switch between adjacent thumbnails. The selection will wrap around, so if you're at the very first thumbnail and you hit up, it will jump to the last thumbnail.

Page up and page down will show the next/previous screen full of thumbnails.

Shift-delete will remove a thumbnail's corresponding tab. Be careful - the shift-delete will also delete characters in the text box. I have no fix for this yet.
Hitting insert will switch to history mode, with the currently selected thumbnail's history shown. If already in history mode, it will switch to tab mode. Hitting shift-insert will switch to all mode. If already in all mode, it will switch to tab mode.

Typing in the find box will cause the current thumbnails to be filtered as you type, according to the current find mode. Note that the find box is automatically focused when Reveal is opened. If the find box is not focused, all keys except for those opening and closing Reveal will not work. Changing the find mode, thumbnail mode, match case checkbox, or regex checkbox will automatically focus the find box.

January 23 was National Handwriting Day

This entry was posted in the following categories: News

Okay, stop what you're doing and dig out your trusty ballpoint pen. I just found out that The Writing Instrument Manufacturers Association (WIMA) has issued a notice encouraging everyone to celebrate National Handwriting Day.

This event is being held in conjunction with the birthday of John Hancock (for those who don't know, he's the one known for putting his signature big and bold on the Declaration of Independence).

I'm not sure what WIMA wants us to do-- but I'd start with making your To Do/Task list by hand today with an emphasis on making it legible. It's good practice.

Use GMail Instead of MS Word

This entry was posted in the following categories: News, Productivity

A GMail user recently wrote an article on why he prefers to use GMail to write his essays as opposed to Microsoft Word.

GMail does a much better job of backing up files as you work on them and you won’t lose all of your files if your computer crashes.

Also you won’t have anything to copy over when you get a new computer.

Here are the reasons that he uses GMail over Microsoft Word:

As I have now adapted to Gmail writing, I am comfortable writing from any computer in the world. Who needs Software? As long as there’s an Internet connection, Gmail will be there for me.
If the data is ever erased on my computer everything will be secure and sound in the Gmail safe house.
Gmail’s rich formatting options are easier for me to use for whatever reason. I also find the spell check less obtrusive.
Gmail automatically autosaves the drafts that you’re working on. I cannot count the amount of times I finished writing something in Word and then my battery dies or something of that nature. Then I’d have to pray that Word saved a backup.

Plan Your Exercise routes at WalkJogRun.com

This entry was posted in the following categories: Home / Office, News

WalkJogRun is a site where you can plan and share your walking, jogging or running routes.

It uses Google Earth to plan routes and calculate distance, but what really makes WalkJogRun cool is its community features.

You can save your maps by clicking on any of your markers and hit "Save Your Route" to add it to the database. Next time you or anyone else looking in your neighborhood is looking for a route, they will see your pin.

E-Cards Gaining Popularity

New news service- Newsvine

Skype strikes a deal with Warner Bros music

Fakes arent just for clothes and bags anymore- tech too

New Google Toolbar features

Dual booting XP on an Intel Mac

Sony's Connect Player has problems

Winamp flaw is security risk

Enhance your lifestyle with Astraware software

Stanford Lectures on iTunes

Google Video Now Offering NBA Games

See Thumbnails of your Firefox Tabs

January 23 was National Handwriting Day

Use GMail Instead of MS Word

Plan Your Exercise routes at WalkJogRun.com

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