In response to the state of the economic downturn, Microsoft has launched a page on its website designed to help IT professionals. Microsoft Thrive, which is entirely Silverlight-based, has various resources that are divided into three sections: Advance Your Career, Enhance Your Technical Skills, and Align IT with Business. When you first load up the site, a one-minute video rather annoyingly starts playing in the bottom left.
Read More......
Seattle Tech Report discovered that Microsoft has teamed up with Girl Scouts of the USA to create LMK ("let me know"), an online safety website for girls. There is a version for teenagers, lmk.girlscouts.org (blogs, forums, articles, quizzes, and polls), and one for parents, letmeknow.girlscouts.org (lead by Internet security lawyer Parry Aftab). Subjects that are discussed include cyberbullying, predators, and social networking.
It's a girl-for-girl tech campaign that also gives parents the tools they need to protect their girls. The campaign also includes a monthly e-newsletter distributed to adults that covers the Internet safety topic the all-girl editorial board explored that month. Shannon, a member of the LMK editorial team, said it best: "Being online is a part of every teenage girl's life. Now we have a chance to teach our parents a thing or two about the real issues we face every day."
So how does Microsoft fit in? The software giant offers resources and provides online safety guidance in support of LMK. "Most teens understand the Internet and technology better than their parents," says Erika Takeuchi, product manager for Windows Client Interactive and Digital Creative Development at Microsoft. "These tools will teach parents effective ways to help protect their families from risks such as file-sharing abuse and exposure to potential dangerous content." It's always heartening to see different organizations collaborating together for the common goal of raising awareness about issues.
After moving the Wave 3 version of Windows Live Essentials out of beta last month, Microsoft has now updated specific applications in the suite. Windows Live Essentials, which refers to the suite of Windows Live client applications (as opposed to Web services), consists of a long list of software: Messenger, Mail, Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, Writer, Toolbar, Family Safety, Office Live Add-in, and Silverlight. Movie Maker remains in beta but its build has changed along with every other application (grab the new build from download.live.com.
The new builds only have bug fixes and while I was hoping that Messenger functionality with the Superbar would be fixed, it has not been. I did, however, notice that I can now again communicate with my friend who is using Adium; functionality for that broke a couple of days ago. According to the Inside Windows Live Messenger blog, users of previous Messenger builds will be prompted to install the new build over the coming month.
Windows Live Wave 4, which is widely expected to be ready by the RTM of Windows 7, is already being tested internally, and beta invites are to be sent out in the coming weeks.
Ubiquity is an experimental Firefox extension developed by Mozilla Labs that extends the browser user interface with a context-sensitive command system. The latest version of the extension already includes a lot of really useful capabilities, but we could see some even more impressive features arrive soon.
In a blog entry today, Mozilla's Aza Raskin revealed plans for building a lightweight browser-based photo editor that will be accessible through Ubiquity. Jacob Seidelin, the developer behind the Pixastic JavaScript image processing library, will be leading the effort. He plans to begin work on the project next month.
Raskin has created several mockups that demonstrate user interface concepts, partially inspired by Adobe Lightroom, that could potentially be adopted for the photo editor.
"The open Web has no good way to edit images. There are tools like Picnic, Sumo, and Aviary, but they all revolve around proprietary tools and destination sites," Raskin wrote in his blog entry. "Making graphical edits is a fundamental action that should be available anywhere you see an image on the web."
Integrating the feature into Ubiquity will, as the name of the browser extension suggests, make it a ubiquitous part of the Web experience. He also says that the feature could potentially be deployed separately as a stand-alone Firefox add-on.
Asus, the company behind the Eee PC netbook, has created a small, low-cost touchscreen desktop that appears to be a great fit for the kitchen. Its on-screen keyboard and modified Windows XP layout makes it very easy to use, but it's limited by poor video performance and screen visibility. Perhaps the next model will fix these shortcomings, writes reviewer Peter Svensson.
Read More......
Posts
All Comments
