Author Archives: Steven

WordPress 2.7 “Coltrane”

The first thing youll notice about 2.7 is its new interface. From the top down, weve listened to your feedback and thought deeply about the design and the result is a WordPress thats just plain faster. Nearly every task you do on your blog will take fewer clicks and be faster in 2.7 than it did in a previous version. (Download it now, or read on for more.)

Next youll begin to notice the new features subtly sprinkled through the new interface: the new dashboard that you can arrange with drag and drop to put the things most important to you on top, QuickPress, comment threading, paging, and the ability to reply to comments from your dashboard, the ability to install any plugin directly from WordPress.org with a single click, and sticky posts.

Digging in further you might notice that every screen is customizable. Lets say you never care about author on your post listings  just click Screen Options and uncheck it and its instantly gone from the page. The same for any module on the dashboard or write screen. If your screen is narrow and the menu is taking up too much horizontal room, click the arrow to minimize it to be icon-only, and then go to the write page and drag and drop everything from the right column into the main one, so your posting area is full-screen. (For example I like hiding everything except categories, tags, and publish. I put categories and tags on the right, and publish under the post box.)

Introduction video and rest of article here: http://wordpress.org/development/2008/12/coltrane/

Windows Live For Mobile Updated

While we are all eagerly waiting for the release of Windows Live Essentials, let me ask you this: are you used to all those new services yet? I for one love them, especially the new Homepage. This truly is the one-stop-page to keep up to date with what your friends are up to AND holds all the links to the other services. Did you know you can have this same experience on your mobile phone? On any mobile phone (as long as it has an internet browser)?

You can! As the Windows Live Services for mobile have also been updated, as we announced it would earlier.

WLMobileFeatures

Text messaging
Access Windows Live via SMS. Get mobile alerts and more…coming soon you will be able to send SMS commands (update personal message, add people to your network, check calendar etc.) to Windows Live and Windows Live will send you a text message with the result! To get started, sign in and add your mobile.

Homemobile.live.com
What you are used to on your PC now also on your mobile device, stay up to date with your friends whereabouts and links to all the other services.Just like on the homepage on your POC you can also change your personal message from this page.

Hotmailmobile.live.com/hm
Email on the go! Read, write and delete!

Peoplempeople.live.com
Your Windows Live Contact list. You can even search for a specific contact and call him/her, if he/she has that set up, by clicking on the Call link.

Photosmphotos.live.com
Save, share and view Photos from your mobile device. You can view your own and your friend’s pictures (and comments on them) on your mobile and…
Yes, you can upload all those pretty pictures you took straight to Photos (skydrive) and share them with the people you wish to share them with. No more waiting until you can connect your phone to your PC or mobile photo blog services that come with some phones.

Messengermim.live.com
Chat with your friends from your phone.

Searchm.live.com
Windows Live Search to find what you need on the go.

MSN Mobilehttp://home.mobile.msn.com/en-us/default.aspx
News, sports, weather and more.

Spacesmobile.spaces.live.com
Express yourself on your space right from your phone by using blogs, photos, customization and lists.

Profilemprofile.live.com
Manage your network on the go.

To learn more, get a preview of what the mobile experience looks like for you and/or to register your phone, visit http://mobile.live.com. Want to go look for yourself and experience it on your phone?

MobileTryNow

As you can see, in this day and age in which our mobile device becomes more and more important to us, you can now also enjoy Windows Live on the go!

 

Source: LiveSide.net

Brown urged to keep hacker in UK

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has been urged to halt the extradition to the US of computer hacker Gary McKinnon.

Mr McKinnon, from Wood Green, north London, faces up to 70 years in prison if found guilty in the US of breaking into military computers.

Supporters held a vigil and delivered a letter to Downing Street calling for him to be tried in the UK instead.

Campaigners said the fact that Mr McKinnon has Asperger’s Syndrome should be taken into account.

Decision due

Glasgow-born Mr McKinnon trespassed on networks owned by Nasa, the US Army, Navy, Air Force, and Department of Defense in 2001 and 2002.

Despite taking his appeal to the House of Lords last year, he lost a six-year legal battle to avoid extradition.

The European Court of Human Rights also declined to back Mr McKinnon’s case against extradition.

A decision on his proposed extradition is expected at a High Court hearing on 20 January.

 

Article continues here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7768394.stm

Facebook gets hit with a virus

Facebook has been hit with a virus that could spread to its 120 million users. The virus has been dubbed “koobface”, which tries to gather personal information from users computers such as credit card numbers.

The virus dubbed “koobface” sends a message to all the friends of the infected titled “You look just awesome in this new movie”. Users who opened the messaged where asked to download a fake update for Adobe flash player, which was actually the virus itself being downloaded and installed onto victims computers. If users attempted to use any of the major three search engines such as Yahoo, Google, or Live search, users would be taken to contaminated sites.

All users are being asked to run their updated anti-virus scanners to check for potential contamination. Facebook has also posted a response to help users clean infected machines on their security web site.

The “koobface” hit MySpace in August, where users had a similar situation where the virus took over their computer. Researchers believe that this is not the last of the “knobface” virus we will see, but the hacker or hackers are improving it.

News Source: Neowin.net

Quote from Facebook friend Aaron Hall and sums up what some users are like on-line.  “Unfortunately, this one isn’t just a hoax, and while it should go without saying in this day and age that you shouldn’t just click every link you see, I always see many of you install apps and send out invites without discretion. Please take this opportunity to change that behavior.”

Virgin’s 50Mb broadband arriving December 15?

Virgin Media looks set to launch its 50Mb broadband on December 15 after inviting journalists to a mystery event.

Although the company has thus far declined to give a firm date for the launch of its 50Mb service, it has always maintained that it would be before the end of the year.

Now, journalists have been told to ‘hold the date’ on December 15 – where the company will almost certainly show off the fastest broadband in the UK.

Preparation

The fibre optic service will speed past everything currently available – and Virgin Media has been working towards the launch for months.

The company has already publicised the failure of online speed testers to cope with the speed of ultra-fast broadband in the run up to the launch, after public trials of the service in Kent showed up major discrepancies.

The 50Mb modem has already been unveiled, with TechRadar bringing you the first pictures, and we’ll make sure that you are updated as the service launches across the UK.

Unsuprisingly, a spokesperson for the company refused to comment on our speculation.

By Patrick Goss

 

News source: TechRadar.com

Note: Look’s like Patrick can’t spell.

Life Without Walls, Windows Live Timeline Revealed

As some of you may know, I attended “Life Without Walls” here in the Netherlands today.

The Event was all about Windows Live Wave 3: Darren Huston kicked off with Vision on Life without Walls (PC, Mobile and Online – Windows + Windows Live = full Windows experience), followed by Joost Nienhuis who spoke about the digital behavior of consumers which led to the Windows Live demonstration given by Arnout Hemel. Here we saw how the new Windows Live will make live easier for the various consumer groups, mainly the Social web users (stay in touch with friends easier and in a more personal way), and the Functional web users (how to organize my online life better).

Most of this we already informed you about. We informed you about the services which were released in the last two days, and we also informed you about the applications already, looks to the right in the Sidebar, still there was new information too.

Some questions that might have crossed your mind are:

– When will the (RC) apps (Windows Live Essentials) be released?
The answer to that is they will be released next week at http://download.live.com/
– When will Hotmail, Calendar and People get their final update/release?
Answer: February 2009. Once this is done all Windows Live web pages will have the same header (menu):

WLheader

Of course we’ll update you next week when the apps are available for download too. Stay tuned!

News source: LiveSide.net

Windows Vista SP2 – What’s Inside? What’s Important?

With today’s launch of the Customer Preview Program (CPP) for Windows Vista® Service Pack 2 (SP2), we wanted to provide a brief synopsis of the elements in this service pack, and encourage you to download and test this release. Windows Vista SP2 is a traditional service pack release with all cumulative released security updates available since the SP1 release in March 2008. In addition, Windows Vista SP2 includes support for new types of hardware and emerging standards that will grow in importance in coming months, along with fixes discovered via automated error reporting as part of our Customer Experience Improvement program.

What makes the Windows Vista SP2 release unique is that it represents a single service pack which applies to both client (Windows Vista SP1) and server (Windows Server 2008) operating systems—since the code base for Windows Vista is shared with that for Windows Server® 2008, a single update can be deployed across your infrastructure. This service model also provides the ability to detect an incompatible driver and block service pack installation, or warn users of any loss of functionality during installation. Other highlights for IT pros include:

Emerging Hardware Support

  • Bluetooth 2.1 feature pack
  • Ability to record data on Blu-ray media
  • exFAT file system now supports UTC timestamps, which enables correct file synchronization across time zones
  • Support for the new VIA 64-bit CPU
  • Support for ICCD/CCID smart cards

Hyper-V

  • Windows Vista SP2 includes Hyper-V™ technology, enabling full virtualization of server workloads

Continues at source: TechNet Blogs