Hot on the heels of a visual face-lift, Facebook on Friday announced that the prototype version of its photo uploader, which was introduced in mid-November of last year, will soon be rolling out to all users.
Unlike the existing version of Facebook's photo uploader, the new uploader requires the installation of a browser plug-in. This inconvenience is rewarded with the option to leave Facebook entirely, while the photos continue to upload in the background. Previously, users would have had to leave that window or page running while the uploader did its magic.
Facebook also said the new uploader supports a few extra photo formats, though it did not specify which ones. The company has, for some time now, had unofficial support for a handful of alternate formats, including raw images. However, on its official spec sheet the company says only .jpg, .gif, .bmp, and .png files will work.
Facebook currently gets 2.5 billion photo uploads per month. To put that in perspective, the company hit the 10 billion mark in October of 2008, a whole three years after first introducing the photo-sharing feature in 2005. In other words, any small change that makes it easier for people to get their photos onto the social network could end up having a big effect on how fast Facebook's photo collection will continue to grow.
If you can't wait for Facebook to activate the uploader on your account, you can do it yourself. Just head over to Facebook's prototype page, and turn it on.
Source:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-27076_3-20000051-248.html?tag=newsEditorsPicksArea.0
Chicago Web Design Firms
Showing posts with label Windows. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Windows. Show all posts
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Monday, December 7, 2009
Boxee Beta is Cleaner, Better, Still Closed
On Monday, the media-viewing app Boxee is going into a closed, private beta test. This app has been in private alpha testing for about a year and a half, and has won praise while generating some frustration among its test users. At first, for example, it was a great interface to the Hulu service, but Hulu made its content unavailable to Boxee users (there's a less-elegant workaround baked into the current product). AppleTV users who hacked the app into their system have also hit speed bumps--the app won't work on the newest updates of the AppleTV product.
Boxee soldiers on, gaining fans and adding content from other sources. I recently covered the Boxee version of Clicker, for example, which shows us how the Boxee platform might some day do a credible job of replacing users' TiVos or cable boxes.
The Boxee experience is improving, too. Monday's new beta has a completely redone interface that is far superior to the alpha's. The idea of the slide-out toolbar menus, an anachronistic throwback to Windows and Mac desktop operating systems, is thankfully gone, replaced by a more visible and consistent interface.
The app also gets new features. If you tell Boxee your Facebook and Twitter IDs, it will scan your friends' posts continuously, and tell you what they're talking about in a new "recommended" column on the Boxee home screen.
The home screen also shows your queue, which can include content that pops up based on shows you're subscribed to. It also has a "featured" column that Boxee can use to promote new content, included paid placements--a new revenue stream for the company.
Boxee can also now search the entire Netflix online inventory. Previously, you could view your online Netflix shows and see a smattering of new ones. Now you can see and stream everything, assuming you're a paying user.
There are also new content partners: The Escapist (which makes the Zero Punctuation video), and SuicideGirls. (I wasn't aware until I got the beta demo that Boxee supports adult content; the NSFW feeds don't appear until you disable the parental controls.)
The new Boxee begins to address my biggest gripe about the system, which is that it can be hard to find content from the multitudinous streams that feed into the platform. A new TV menu combines content from the user's hard drive as well as subscription and streaming sources, and it has a useful search feature. There's also an improved table of contents for shows. But Boxee still doesn't have a global search to find everything it can play, so in some cases you need to know which "application" (Boxee content stream) has a show you want to watch. Boxee VP Andrew Kippen did tell me it's an ongoing goal to improve the search process on the platform.
Kippen says the company recommends the Mac Mini as the best platform for the app at the moment. There are also OS X and Linux versions, and a Windows port, but it's for 32-bit installations only. The Linux port will be used in the dedicated Boxee hardware, details of which are being announced shortly. In the meantime, Roku has a somewhat competitive hardware-based product now shipping, and it has the additional benefit of offering access to a user's Amazon streaming-video account, which Boxee doesn't do.
Boxee is still closed to most new users. Everyone, even existing alpha users, has to sign up for the beta lottery to try it out. The beta will open to all around the Consumer Electronics Show time frame, in January.
Source:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-19882_3-10410159-250.html
Web Design Firms Chicago
Boxee soldiers on, gaining fans and adding content from other sources. I recently covered the Boxee version of Clicker, for example, which shows us how the Boxee platform might some day do a credible job of replacing users' TiVos or cable boxes.
The Boxee experience is improving, too. Monday's new beta has a completely redone interface that is far superior to the alpha's. The idea of the slide-out toolbar menus, an anachronistic throwback to Windows and Mac desktop operating systems, is thankfully gone, replaced by a more visible and consistent interface.
The app also gets new features. If you tell Boxee your Facebook and Twitter IDs, it will scan your friends' posts continuously, and tell you what they're talking about in a new "recommended" column on the Boxee home screen.
The home screen also shows your queue, which can include content that pops up based on shows you're subscribed to. It also has a "featured" column that Boxee can use to promote new content, included paid placements--a new revenue stream for the company.
Boxee can also now search the entire Netflix online inventory. Previously, you could view your online Netflix shows and see a smattering of new ones. Now you can see and stream everything, assuming you're a paying user.
There are also new content partners: The Escapist (which makes the Zero Punctuation video), and SuicideGirls. (I wasn't aware until I got the beta demo that Boxee supports adult content; the NSFW feeds don't appear until you disable the parental controls.)
The new Boxee begins to address my biggest gripe about the system, which is that it can be hard to find content from the multitudinous streams that feed into the platform. A new TV menu combines content from the user's hard drive as well as subscription and streaming sources, and it has a useful search feature. There's also an improved table of contents for shows. But Boxee still doesn't have a global search to find everything it can play, so in some cases you need to know which "application" (Boxee content stream) has a show you want to watch. Boxee VP Andrew Kippen did tell me it's an ongoing goal to improve the search process on the platform.
Kippen says the company recommends the Mac Mini as the best platform for the app at the moment. There are also OS X and Linux versions, and a Windows port, but it's for 32-bit installations only. The Linux port will be used in the dedicated Boxee hardware, details of which are being announced shortly. In the meantime, Roku has a somewhat competitive hardware-based product now shipping, and it has the additional benefit of offering access to a user's Amazon streaming-video account, which Boxee doesn't do.
Boxee is still closed to most new users. Everyone, even existing alpha users, has to sign up for the beta lottery to try it out. The beta will open to all around the Consumer Electronics Show time frame, in January.
Source:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-19882_3-10410159-250.html
Web Design Firms Chicago
Friday, November 13, 2009
Microsoft Developer Technologies Take Center Stage at PDC
With a full schedule on tap, the 2009 Microsoft PDC (Professional Developers Conference) next week will tout efforts ranging from the company's Windows Azure cloud platform to plans for programming languages.
Session descriptions for the Los Angeles event reveal topics such as "Architecting and Developing for Windows Azure," "Future Directions for C# and Visual Basic" and "Software + Services Identity Roadmap Update."
Introduced at last year's PDC, Azure remains a hot topic for the company, based on this year's PDC schedule. One session, entitled "Bridging the Gap from On-Premises to the Cloud," invites attendees to hear " how Microsoft views the future of cloud computing and how it is starting to deliver this vision in the Windows Azure platform."
"Learn how applications can be written to preserve much of the investment in code, programming models, and tools, yet adapt to the scale-out, distributed, and virtualized environment of the cloud," the session description reads. Migrating applications to Azure also will be covered at PDC.
In addition to hearing C# and Visual Basic plans, attendees interested in programming languages can learn about Axum, which provides a .Net language for "safe and scalable" concurrency, the PDC Web site states.
Axum is a project from Microsoft's Parallel Computing Platform. "It's a language that builds on the principles of isolation, agents, and message-passing to increase application safety, responsiveness, scalability and developer productivity," according to the PDC site.
A roadmap for the Silverlight rich Internet application platform will be detailed at PDC. Microsoft's M data and modeling language will be covered as well. "Explore the future of M, where DSL, schema, and lots of other great ideas come together as a single Web-centric data processing language," the PDC Web site states. XAML futures for .Net Framework, Silverlight, and tools will be covered in a separate session.
The Microsoft "Velocity" project, featuring distributed in-memory caching, is to be detailed at PDC. Velocity "will change how you think about scaling your Microsoft .Net-connected applications," a session description reads. Also on the roster of sessions is one entitled, "InferNet: Building Software with Intelligence." Infer.Net is a machine-learning framework for building .Net software that can adapt to a user, learn from examples or work with uncertain information.
Also at PDC, Microsoft will discuss its SQL Server Modeling technology, formerly known as the Oslo modeling platform, Microsoft's Douglas Purdy, a software architect, revealed this week in a blog. But the transformation of Oslo has not sat well with some Microsoft observers.
"Oslo seems to have gone from a potential new enterprise architect modeling platform to just a modeling tool and DSL stack for SQL Server. This ignores all those large enterprise IT departments with heterogeneous data platforms," said one person commenting in the blog.
A community technology preview featuring SQL Server Modeling technologies is set for release at PDC.
Source:
http://www.infoworld.com/d/developer-world/microsoft-developer-technologies-take-center-stage-pdc-292
Chicago Web Design Firms
Session descriptions for the Los Angeles event reveal topics such as "Architecting and Developing for Windows Azure," "Future Directions for C# and Visual Basic" and "Software + Services Identity Roadmap Update."
Introduced at last year's PDC, Azure remains a hot topic for the company, based on this year's PDC schedule. One session, entitled "Bridging the Gap from On-Premises to the Cloud," invites attendees to hear " how Microsoft views the future of cloud computing and how it is starting to deliver this vision in the Windows Azure platform."
"Learn how applications can be written to preserve much of the investment in code, programming models, and tools, yet adapt to the scale-out, distributed, and virtualized environment of the cloud," the session description reads. Migrating applications to Azure also will be covered at PDC.
In addition to hearing C# and Visual Basic plans, attendees interested in programming languages can learn about Axum, which provides a .Net language for "safe and scalable" concurrency, the PDC Web site states.
Axum is a project from Microsoft's Parallel Computing Platform. "It's a language that builds on the principles of isolation, agents, and message-passing to increase application safety, responsiveness, scalability and developer productivity," according to the PDC site.
A roadmap for the Silverlight rich Internet application platform will be detailed at PDC. Microsoft's M data and modeling language will be covered as well. "Explore the future of M, where DSL, schema, and lots of other great ideas come together as a single Web-centric data processing language," the PDC Web site states. XAML futures for .Net Framework, Silverlight, and tools will be covered in a separate session.
The Microsoft "Velocity" project, featuring distributed in-memory caching, is to be detailed at PDC. Velocity "will change how you think about scaling your Microsoft .Net-connected applications," a session description reads. Also on the roster of sessions is one entitled, "InferNet: Building Software with Intelligence." Infer.Net is a machine-learning framework for building .Net software that can adapt to a user, learn from examples or work with uncertain information.
Also at PDC, Microsoft will discuss its SQL Server Modeling technology, formerly known as the Oslo modeling platform, Microsoft's Douglas Purdy, a software architect, revealed this week in a blog. But the transformation of Oslo has not sat well with some Microsoft observers.
"Oslo seems to have gone from a potential new enterprise architect modeling platform to just a modeling tool and DSL stack for SQL Server. This ignores all those large enterprise IT departments with heterogeneous data platforms," said one person commenting in the blog.
A community technology preview featuring SQL Server Modeling technologies is set for release at PDC.
Source:
http://www.infoworld.com/d/developer-world/microsoft-developer-technologies-take-center-stage-pdc-292
Chicago Web Design Firms
Monday, November 2, 2009
Windows 7 Share Surges 40% in First Week of Release
Overall, the Windows OS continued to lose share globally while Apple's Mac OS X picked up most of that loss, according to Net Applications
Windows 7's market share surged nearly 40 percent in the week following its release, according to Web measurement company Net Applications.
Overall, Windows continued to lose share globally, dropping 0.23 of a percentage point during October, while Apple's Mac OS X picked up most of that loss, gaining 0.15 of a point to finish the month near 5.3 percent, its highest ever.
For the week after Microsoft launched Windows 7 on Oct. 22, the new operating system's share averaged 2.66 percent, a jump of more than 39 percent over the 1.91 percent average for the part of October prior to its retail release.
Windows 7's peak of 3.48 percent on Saturday, Oct. 31, represented an even larger 82 percent increase over the average of Oct. 1 through Oct. 22. For the month, Windows 7 finished with a market share of 2.15 percent, up 41 percent over the 1.52 percent for September. The numbers from Net Applications mean that about one in every 44 personal computers was running Windows 7 last month.
But some countries boast a much higher Windows 7 share, Net Applications said. "Upon analysis of global Windows 7 usage share, we noticed a distinct pattern," the company said in a note posted on its site. "Russia and many Eastern European countries already have significant share of Windows 7 usage. We are sure these are all properly licensed users."
The tongue-in-cheek comment was well taken: Of the top 25 countries by Windows 7 usage, 17 are in Eastern Europe or formerly part of the U.S.S.R. Slovenia, where 7.8 percent of the computers ran Windows 7 last month, led the list, followed by Lithuania in the No. 3 spot (6.5 percent), Rumania as No 4 (6 percent) and Latvia at No. 5 (6 percent). In Russia, at No. 21, 4.2 percent of all machines used Windows 7.
Net Applications' implication -- that the Windows 7 share in Eastern Europe is due to counterfeit copies -- is backed up by data from a May 2009 report generated by the Business Software Alliance (BSA), an industry-backed anti-piracy organization, and research firm IDC. In 2008, the piracy rate in Central and Eastern Europe was the highest of all seven regions the BSA and IDC tracked.
Slovenia's piracy rate -- the estimated percentage of all software in use that is not legally licensed -- was 47 percent last year, more than double the rate in the U.S. Lithuania, Rumania, Latvia and Russia, meanwhile, had piracy rates of 54 percent, 66 percent, 56 percent and 68 percent, respectively.
However Windows 7 was acquired -- legally or not -- its increase was outweighed by a steeper-than-usual decline in Windows XP last month. The eight-year-old operating system lost 0.92 percentage point in October, significantly more than the 0.64 point average loss each month during the past year, falling to 70.6 percent.
Vista rebounded from September, when it fell for the first time in more than two years. Vista's October share of 18.77 percent, however, was still off its record of 18.8 percent in August.
Windows' overall share dropped 0.23 of a percentage point to 92.5 percent. Microsoft's OS has lost about two and a half share points in the last year.
As it has repeatedly, Mac OS X was the recipient of most of the users lost to Microsoft: Apple's operating system climbed by 0.15 of a percentage point to end October at 5.27 percent, a new record and only the second time it's finished above 5 percent since Net Applications revised its methodology in June.
Net Applications Measures Operating System usage by tracking the machines that surf to the 40,000 sites it monitors for clients, which results in a pool of about 160 million unique visitors per month. It weights share by the estimated size of each country's Internet population.
Source:
http://www.infoworld.com/d/windows/windows-7-share-surges-40-in-first-week-release-471
Chicago Website Design
Windows 7's market share surged nearly 40 percent in the week following its release, according to Web measurement company Net Applications.
Overall, Windows continued to lose share globally, dropping 0.23 of a percentage point during October, while Apple's Mac OS X picked up most of that loss, gaining 0.15 of a point to finish the month near 5.3 percent, its highest ever.
For the week after Microsoft launched Windows 7 on Oct. 22, the new operating system's share averaged 2.66 percent, a jump of more than 39 percent over the 1.91 percent average for the part of October prior to its retail release.
Windows 7's peak of 3.48 percent on Saturday, Oct. 31, represented an even larger 82 percent increase over the average of Oct. 1 through Oct. 22. For the month, Windows 7 finished with a market share of 2.15 percent, up 41 percent over the 1.52 percent for September. The numbers from Net Applications mean that about one in every 44 personal computers was running Windows 7 last month.
But some countries boast a much higher Windows 7 share, Net Applications said. "Upon analysis of global Windows 7 usage share, we noticed a distinct pattern," the company said in a note posted on its site. "Russia and many Eastern European countries already have significant share of Windows 7 usage. We are sure these are all properly licensed users."
The tongue-in-cheek comment was well taken: Of the top 25 countries by Windows 7 usage, 17 are in Eastern Europe or formerly part of the U.S.S.R. Slovenia, where 7.8 percent of the computers ran Windows 7 last month, led the list, followed by Lithuania in the No. 3 spot (6.5 percent), Rumania as No 4 (6 percent) and Latvia at No. 5 (6 percent). In Russia, at No. 21, 4.2 percent of all machines used Windows 7.
Net Applications' implication -- that the Windows 7 share in Eastern Europe is due to counterfeit copies -- is backed up by data from a May 2009 report generated by the Business Software Alliance (BSA), an industry-backed anti-piracy organization, and research firm IDC. In 2008, the piracy rate in Central and Eastern Europe was the highest of all seven regions the BSA and IDC tracked.
Slovenia's piracy rate -- the estimated percentage of all software in use that is not legally licensed -- was 47 percent last year, more than double the rate in the U.S. Lithuania, Rumania, Latvia and Russia, meanwhile, had piracy rates of 54 percent, 66 percent, 56 percent and 68 percent, respectively.
However Windows 7 was acquired -- legally or not -- its increase was outweighed by a steeper-than-usual decline in Windows XP last month. The eight-year-old operating system lost 0.92 percentage point in October, significantly more than the 0.64 point average loss each month during the past year, falling to 70.6 percent.
Vista rebounded from September, when it fell for the first time in more than two years. Vista's October share of 18.77 percent, however, was still off its record of 18.8 percent in August.
Windows' overall share dropped 0.23 of a percentage point to 92.5 percent. Microsoft's OS has lost about two and a half share points in the last year.
As it has repeatedly, Mac OS X was the recipient of most of the users lost to Microsoft: Apple's operating system climbed by 0.15 of a percentage point to end October at 5.27 percent, a new record and only the second time it's finished above 5 percent since Net Applications revised its methodology in June.
Net Applications Measures Operating System usage by tracking the machines that surf to the 40,000 sites it monitors for clients, which results in a pool of about 160 million unique visitors per month. It weights share by the estimated size of each country's Internet population.
Source:
http://www.infoworld.com/d/windows/windows-7-share-surges-40-in-first-week-release-471
Chicago Website Design
Friday, October 23, 2009
Google Chrome Browser Snubs Windows 7
Google has pushed back plans to integrate its Chrome browser with Microsoft's new OS
Google has scrubbed plans to fully integrate its Chrome Web Browser with Microsoft's new Windows 7 operating system.
The news follows an announcement by the Mozilla Foundation that Firefox 3.6, the next version of the open source browser, would integrate with Windows 7 features such as taskbar thumbnail previews and Jump Lists.
However, according to reports in The Register, Google's internal issue tracking system indicates that work on the features has been pushed back to version 5 of the browser. Chrome is currently on the 3.0 release, while version 4 is currently in development.
Despite the scaled back ambitions, work seems to be progressing on Google's Chrome OS. An early developer build of the operating system has been leaked onto Google's Web site. Stay tuned for more details.
Source:
http://www.infoworld.com/d/applications/google-chrome-doesnt-integrate-windows-7-409
Professional Web Design
Google has scrubbed plans to fully integrate its Chrome Web Browser with Microsoft's new Windows 7 operating system.
The news follows an announcement by the Mozilla Foundation that Firefox 3.6, the next version of the open source browser, would integrate with Windows 7 features such as taskbar thumbnail previews and Jump Lists.
However, according to reports in The Register, Google's internal issue tracking system indicates that work on the features has been pushed back to version 5 of the browser. Chrome is currently on the 3.0 release, while version 4 is currently in development.
Despite the scaled back ambitions, work seems to be progressing on Google's Chrome OS. An early developer build of the operating system has been leaked onto Google's Web site. Stay tuned for more details.
Source:
http://www.infoworld.com/d/applications/google-chrome-doesnt-integrate-windows-7-409
Professional Web Design
Sunday, October 11, 2009
How to Prepare for and Install Windows 7
InfoWorld's Windows 7 Boot Camp online class helps users deploy Windows 7 with the least pain possible
With Windows 7's launch just a few short weeks away, both individual users and businesses will soon be preparing to install and upgrade the new Microsoft OS on their PCs. But the process is not that easy.
To help both individual users and IT pros successfully deploy Windows 7 with minimal pain, InfoWorld.com is offering a free, 15-class course via e-mail on installing and fine-tuning Windows 7. Windows 7 Boot Camp starts on Monday, Oct. 26, and you must sign up on or before Sunday, Oct. 25.
In addition to the class, InfoWorld has put together a set of resources to help people prepare for the upcoming transition to Windows 7:
# For medium-size to large businesses, be sure to read "Ready for Windows 7? Here's how to deploy it right," a tutorial by InfoWorld's Enterprise Windows columnist J. Peter Bruzzese.
# For individuals planning to shift from Windows XP to Windows 7, be sure to read "XP users: How to upgrade to Windows 7."
# For even deeper insights into Windows 7, get InfoWorld's "Windows 7 Deep Dive," a 21-page hands-on look at the next version of Windows, including deployment tips on security, Windows Server 2008 integration, and Windows XP migration, all from InfoWorld's editors and contributors.
# For a tour of what's new in Windows 7, watch InfoWorld's "Hands-on video guide to Windows 7" and "The top 20 features of Windows 7" videos.
# See how Windows 7 actually performs compared to XP and Vista based on the InfoWorld Test Center's benchmarks in "Windows 7 RTM: The revenge of Windows Vista."
# Find out if your PC can run Windows 7 with InfoWorld's compatibility checker, part of the no-cost Windows Sentinel monitoring tool. Windows Sentinel users also can run InfoWorld's OfficeBench tool to benchmark their own system's Microsoft Office performance and compare it to the average performance of thousands of other users.
# Follow InfoWorld's ongoing coverage of Windows 7.
Readers can also monitor the current state of Windows PCs -- what users have installed, what apps they run, and so forth -- at InfoWorld's Windows Pulse page, which provides real-time snapshots of Windows usage based on contnuous readings of more than 10,000 PCs worldwide.
Source :
http://www.infoworld.com/d/windows/how-prepare-and-install-windows-7-582?page=0,0
Professional Web Design
With Windows 7's launch just a few short weeks away, both individual users and businesses will soon be preparing to install and upgrade the new Microsoft OS on their PCs. But the process is not that easy.
To help both individual users and IT pros successfully deploy Windows 7 with minimal pain, InfoWorld.com is offering a free, 15-class course via e-mail on installing and fine-tuning Windows 7. Windows 7 Boot Camp starts on Monday, Oct. 26, and you must sign up on or before Sunday, Oct. 25.
In addition to the class, InfoWorld has put together a set of resources to help people prepare for the upcoming transition to Windows 7:
# For medium-size to large businesses, be sure to read "Ready for Windows 7? Here's how to deploy it right," a tutorial by InfoWorld's Enterprise Windows columnist J. Peter Bruzzese.
# For individuals planning to shift from Windows XP to Windows 7, be sure to read "XP users: How to upgrade to Windows 7."
# For even deeper insights into Windows 7, get InfoWorld's "Windows 7 Deep Dive," a 21-page hands-on look at the next version of Windows, including deployment tips on security, Windows Server 2008 integration, and Windows XP migration, all from InfoWorld's editors and contributors.
# For a tour of what's new in Windows 7, watch InfoWorld's "Hands-on video guide to Windows 7" and "The top 20 features of Windows 7" videos.
# See how Windows 7 actually performs compared to XP and Vista based on the InfoWorld Test Center's benchmarks in "Windows 7 RTM: The revenge of Windows Vista."
# Find out if your PC can run Windows 7 with InfoWorld's compatibility checker, part of the no-cost Windows Sentinel monitoring tool. Windows Sentinel users also can run InfoWorld's OfficeBench tool to benchmark their own system's Microsoft Office performance and compare it to the average performance of thousands of other users.
# Follow InfoWorld's ongoing coverage of Windows 7.
Readers can also monitor the current state of Windows PCs -- what users have installed, what apps they run, and so forth -- at InfoWorld's Windows Pulse page, which provides real-time snapshots of Windows usage based on contnuous readings of more than 10,000 PCs worldwide.
Source :
http://www.infoworld.com/d/windows/how-prepare-and-install-windows-7-582?page=0,0
Professional Web Design
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)