News time: Happenings of the day

Hello Everyone, today instead of posting individual blog posts on different topics, I will quickly link to the interesting news I found on the Internet. Follow the links to find out more. 1. Google acquires @Last Software. @Last has created a software called Sketchup which is a 3D program as I understand. One more company under Google's belt which might mean more feature rich products will be available soon. 2. Get secure VoIP phone with Zfone. 3. A nice IPOD box parody from Microsoft. It's a nice ad, I sure did enjoy it. 4. More Google news, Volkswagon and Google develop a fantastic navigational system. 6. A 15 year old plays prank with Google News System (this is funny and interesting to me) 7. 18th Commonwealth Games begin in Melbourne, Australia.I just watched the opening ceremony and I can say that a lot, means a lot went into organising the opening event. It was great.

Isolatr, Anti-social networking service

You have been hearing about social networking sites and services for quite a few years now. Some people think that it just gets too much to keep themselves productive with so many social sites and services around. So for those who want to be anti-social and be confined into their own space, there is a new site/service called Isolatr. Not much information is available on it's site and the site does have a good sense of humour. Looks like it is a project owned by Yahoo. They would also be having a service called IMolatr, where one is always listed in 'away' mode. Let me know if anybody knows any more on what Isolatr is and how it will work.

Create presentations at Thumbstacks.com

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Thumbstacks is the new service for the day. It is a online tool for creating presentation. You can keep presentation either public, private and can even have remote presentation sessions (the limit I see is 5 users, is this to match Skype's conference limits?). The service is still in Alpha, so it still have many important features missing. None of the less it is still usable as a service for creating basic slides and saving them to HTML. One great feature to have is to have some format of existing presentations imported into Thumbstacks ( I am sure it would be coming soon). I thought I would show you some of it's existing features eather then just posting screen shots. So I have created a presentation which you can watch it here. Good luck to people involved behind Thumbstacks.com Via Expert:- Michael Arrington

Writely is now 'Google Writely'

One day it is a rumour the next day the rumour gets confirmed. It is confirmed that Google has bought a online word editing and collaboration suite called Writely. Just to recap on Writely: - What does Writely do? Writely allows you to edit documents online with whomever you choose, and then publish and blog them online. What exactly can I do with it? You can: * Upload Word documents, OpenOffice, RTF, HTML or text (or create documents from scratch). * Use our simple WYSIWYG editor to format your documents, spell-check them, etc. * Invite others to share your documents (by e-mail address). * Edit documents online with whomever you choose. * View your documents' revision history and roll back to any version. * Publish documents online to the world, or to just who you choose. * Download documents to your desktop as Word, OpenOffice, RTF, PDF*, HTML or zip. * Post your documents to your blog. So where all can we use Writely integrated? I see that it can be integrated with Gdrive, Gmail and as a stand alone app by itself. Google is becoming mightier. Looking forward to seeing Writely integrated with Google Services. Update: in the title I had 'not' instead of 'now' before, so changed that.

Windows Live.com :- Review Update

Microsoft's Live.com got a page refresh today. To get the best experience for now, check live.com in Internet Explorer rather then Firefox. I like the new interface. It can be as plain as the image below
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or you can put different things as an example below.
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I like the neat,plain and simple search box at the top. We can just search in a term and hit enter and it will open up a window as shown below.
Media_httpwwwsoftware_ubkql
The beauty of this page is you can just hit "Esc." on your keyboard and the page will disappear. Other prominent feature is the search result page will have few tabs. I don't see images tab, but I think it is supposed to be there as well. But the tabs that I can see are 'Web', 'News','Feed', and "Find Macros" option. You can both add the search result to Live.com personalised home page or even add feeds to your home page. The slider on the side as marked on the image above, shows that you can just scroll using your mouse or arrow key and the page will scroll down. You don't have to click on page no. as you have to do with most other search engines. With add on modules, I have the conveniency to check my Windows Live email straight from the Live.com personalised home page.
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Live.com has a feature where you can add more then one page to your personalised set of pages. You can add different modules/feeds/search results on different page and have the conveniency to change the names of the pages on the fly. Just click it!
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Settings menu is very convenient and offers few color customisations to suit different tastes. This includes few language options. To the home page you can add news and blog feeds from the pre selected list or add your own. You can also add cutomised modules by visiting www.microsoftgadgets.com website. The modules ranges from fun to productive modules to modules for getting Gmail updates on Live.com personlised page.
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Most importantly the search function seems to have improved with many important enhancements that they have made. Before when I thought of search Google, then Yahoo is what came to my mind but how I think I will make sure I visit Live.com before giving it up. I think Microsoft can definately work on improving the performance of the site to give users a more better experience. One minor problem I have seen is The world clock module is not showing me the Day Light Saving time, so it shows me time one hour back when I check the time for Melbourne, thought Microsoft might want to fix that or someone involved ;). Will have to keep an eye in the coming future.

Windows Live.com :- Review Update

Microsoft's Live.com got a page refresh today. To get the best experience for now, check live.com in Internet Explorer rather then Firefox. I like the new interface. It can be as plain as the image below
Media_httpwwwsoftware_ibcuf
or you can put different things as an example below.
Media_httpwwwsoftware_blzfd
I like the neat,plain and simple search box at the top. We can just search in a term and hit enter and it will open up a window as shown below.
Media_httpwwwsoftware_oeesg
The beauty of this page is you can just hit "Esc." on your keyboard and the page will disappear. Other prominent feature is the search result page will have few tabs. I don't see images tab, but I think it is supposed to be there as well. But the tabs that I can see are 'Web', 'News','Feed', and "Find Macros" option. You can both add the search result to Live.com personalised home page or even add feeds to your home page. The slider on the side as marked on the image above, shows that you can just scroll using your mouse or arrow key and the page will scroll down. You don't have to click on page no. as you have to do with most other search engines. With add on modules, I have the conveniency to check my Windows Live email straight from the Live.com personalised home page.
Media_httpwwwsoftware_mesis
Live.com has a feature where you can add more then one page to your personalised set of pages. You can add different modules/feeds/search results on different page and have the conveniency to change the names of the pages on the fly. Just click it!
Media_httpwwwsoftware_unpbf
Settings menu is very convenient and offers few color customisations to suit different tastes. This includes few language options. To the home page you can add news and blog feeds from the pre selected list or add your own. You can also add cutomised modules by visiting www.microsoftgadgets.com website. The modules ranges from fun to productive modules to modules for getting Gmail updates on Live.com personlised page.
Media_httpwwwsoftware_dwfzb
Most importantly the search function seems to have improved with many important enhancements that they have made. Before when I thought of search Google, then Yahoo is what came to my mind but how I think I will make sure I visit Live.com before giving it up. I think Microsoft can definately work on improving the performance of the site to give users a more better experience. One minor problem I have seen is The world clock module is not showing me the Day Light Saving time, so it shows me time one hour back when I check the time for Melbourne, thought Microsoft might want to fix that or someone involved ;). Will have to keep an eye in the coming future.

Get your work done without being the software pirate

We all have specific needs from time to time for which we don't have the software on our systems and we start looking out for options. Sometimes we find what we want and pay the price for that, other times we compromise using a trial version of some paid software, we go and download pirated software from the Internet and for the wise of us, they try to get their work done with the free software available in the market. Of course, they might not be the best of the software, but still they are OK for the occassional use. Some of my friends who got recently into photography were going to spend few hundred dollars for Adobe Photoshop. When I asked them why they needed it, they said they needed to digitally touch five of their really cherished pictures and they were advised to buy Adobe Photoshop. I suggested that they give out a try to few of the free software and see if that will do the trick, and to their surprise they got whatever they want and more from the free software they installed. When people are Internet savvy enough, they know that they would be able to find software on the P2P networks which in other words is software piracy. But if we look around, we don't necessarily have to use paid software to meet our requirements, free software and services can meet our demands. Critter has posted a extended list of all free software that can be used for different purposes from 3D Graphics to PDF Utilities and more. Check out the extended list. Ofcourse I have bookmarked the links on Diigo and Del.icio.us and forwarded it to my friends so they can check out the list before looking on P2P networks next time.