Month: December 2006

Once upon a time, Palm OS was the pre-eminent mobile computing platform. Synonymous with professional gadgetry, Palm had a range of devices to match most budgets and an impressive network of software developers, large and small, constantly releasing new titles for every imaginable use. Then, amid strong competition from Microsoft’s Pocket PC and Windows Mobile platforms, as well as a confusing series of buy-outs, mergers and de-mergers, Palm seemed to have lost its way. News, two years ago, that PalmOne would be releasing Windows Mobile compatible handsets seemed to confirm the inevitable: palm’s operating system was dead.

But there’s life in the old dog yet. The recently released Treo 680 has received strong reviews despite using an operating system which hasn’t changed significantly in years. Palm has a broad customer base and a huge back catalogue of compatible software which is arguably unrivalled by even Microsoft’s strong presence in the market. The release of Palm handhelds featuring version 6 of the operating system (named ‘Cobalt’) may still be some time away but the OS – and its family of independent shareware developers – seems to be doing just fine.

The Venice project has opened up to Beta testers. A few lucky users who have applied on the website will receive a copy of the soon to be released online video application. Another way of obtaining an entry is by receiving an invite from one of the lucky Beta testers.

To recap, The Venice Project is a new online TV experience currently being developed by the creators of Kazaa and Skype. Neither truly a P2P app nor a web TV streamer it very humbly aims to “redefine the way people think about television”.

Janus Friis, one of the main developers of the Venice Project, provides a couple of screenshots. So far the application looks to us like a cross over between Apple’s Front Row and the web tv app, Democracy. Channel menus are clear and transparent and thumbnail views of channels give you an idea of what to watch. The controller is similar to Windows Media Player’s minized controls, and features the essential action buttons and quick browsing between channels. from other screenshots, it also seems likely that you will able to chat with other users and put up ratings and comments of the shows you’ve been watching.

Over on Techcrunch one lucky tester commented “the video quality isn’t the best I’ve seen from p2p video but its watchable”. He also revealed the presence of numerous pop up ads. We’ll keep you informed as more information from Beta testers is revealed.

If you’ve been pestered to make an unusual number of updates by Windows recently then don’t worry, you’re not alone. On Tuesday, Microsoft released an unprecendented seven security updates to patch 11 vulnerabilities, almost half of them “critical.” Its the biggest Windows update in 4 years according to the company.

Microsoft Word was the biggest target with several new security holes discovered that needed plugging. However, Internet Explorer was targeted for the same old script flaws that continually plague it whilst Windows Media Player was patched for a vulnerability that could allow criminals to hijack PCs by creating malformed .asx playlists and entice users to dodgy sites.

The update bonanza means a record-breaking year of 78 in total for 2006 – six more updates than the previous record set in 2002. If you haven’t been pestered by the dreaded yellow shield in the corner of your screen for an automatic update and god knows how many restarts, you can obtain them manually from Microsoft Update services. Since many of these are critical patches, the sooner you do this, the better.

Just like the recently added support for reviewing other non-Gmail mailboxes from your loved Gmail interface, Google is slowly allowing old Blogger users to switch to the brand new Blogger beta. So, if you are amongst the chosen ones, congrats! You’ll see a small blue box in the sidebar of your sideboard, ready to help you through the whole process. And if not, well, you can always start a new blog from scratch and later on, merge this account with your original Blogger account.

The first important change is that, from now on, you’ll be using your Google account to enter Blogger. It seems that more and more services (e-mail, blog, chat, RSS feeds, web analytics, docs…) are getting integrated under this single account, until finally one day everything will be google-ized…

Now, back the point. The new Blogger Beta allows users to change their templates even more easily, without the hassle of HTML. The blog’s layout, in fact, can be modified by simply dragging and dropping elements on the editor interface. It also includes the long-awaited categories (labels) to organize posts more efficiently. Also, the dashboard has been redesigned to ease blog managing and maintenance.

Beside all these exciting new features, chances are that somewhere in the near future Blogger will produce RSS enclosures and also allow direct video uploading to blogs, as a result, I reckon, of Google’s recently acquired toy.

Some years ago, working environments were completely different: smaller, more familiar, with a kind of charming air surrounding desks, water coolers and meeting rooms. Internal communication was just a question of leaving your place and joining the quick chat beside the water cooler for just five minutes, before going back to your daily tasks.

However, things have changed quickly over the last few years. Companies have grown really fast, not only in financial terms, but also in number of workers. New people join the staff everyday and it’s harder to make new friends. Those five-minute breaks begin to be scarcer, until one day there’s not a single one during a whole working day.

When communication reaches a non-existence level, you know it’s time for a change. Most office managers reject the idea of using traditional instant messaging tools such as MSN or Yahoo, mostly because workers end up chatting with friends outside the office instead of answering the dud from accounting. This is why local network based IM applications like Neos have become a more popular solution: they allow workers to exchange messages, files, even media streams… without the temptations of the outer world.

Continue reading “Neos, local network IM with support for other protocols”