In PC World‘s January 2005 edition: “Google Desktop Search puts the index of your data in a well-known place on your hard drive,” says Stephen Green, principal investigator of the Advanced Search Technologies Group at Sun Microsystems. “It’s only a matter of time before there is a spyware application or a worm that sends your […]
Category: Software
Konfabulator bugfix release
If you use the excellent Konfabulator for Windows released earlier this month (see post), a bugfix version has just been released. The new version 1.8.1 fixes some issues with widgets not running if you delete Konfabulator files from your temp folder. Details in the support forum. Konfabulator for Windows download page
The future of MSN Spaces, Hotmail and Messenger
Neowin has a detailed report today on developments in Wave 11 of the MSN offering, including: MSN SpacesMSN are planning to create “Group Spaces”, although like the recently launched blogging service these will allow you to create a place to share ideas, to do lists, notes, calendars, etc. with your family and friends. On the […]
Firefox momentum continues
Two more Firefox milestones: Over 10.2 million downloads of the version 1.0 release in just over 30 days. The full-page ad in the New York Times is planned for publication this Wednesday 15 December. More information at Spread Firefox. Related NevOn posts: Helping Firefox spread the word Firefox call to arms paying off
IBM enters the fray as Microsoft launches new search tools
CNET News: IBM is building software it hopes will make it the Google of corporate-search technology. Big Blue has been quietly working on data storage software designed to greatly improve the ability of companies to find business documents scattered across their networks, Janet Perna, the general manager of IBM’s information management group, told CNET News.com. […]
Search libraries with Google
The libraries of five of the world’s most important academic institutions are to be digitised by Google, BBC News reports. Scanned pages from books in the public domain will then be made available for search and reading online. The full libraries of Michigan and Stanford universities as well smaller collections at Harvard, Oxford and the […]
Firefox NYT ad appears
Today the much-heralded Firefox full-page ad in the New York Times appeared. Except it’s not a full-page ad – it’s a two-page spread: As explained in a post today on Spread Firefox: […] Thousands of us rallied together in 10 short days to pull off the largest open source fundraising campaign in history. And today, […]
Firefox is to Internet Explorer as IE was to Netscape
Following Thursday’s Firefox ad in the New York Times, the paper has a great news article today (dated tomorrow) on why Firefox has been so successful so far: In late 1995, at a time when Netscape Navigator was synonymous with the Web and Internet Explorer had yet to attract many adopters, Microsoft made a risky […]
Google Print for searching and buying books
One thing you can say about Google is that they just keep on coming with new ideas and innovation. Earlier this week, there was news about Google’s plans to digitize the libraries of five of the world’s most important academic institutions. Now there’s Google Print: To use Google Print, just do an ordinary Google search. […]
Video search from Yahoo
PC World: Yahoo is pushing one of the frontiers for search engines, with its new test site for searching video content on the Web. The site, at video.search.yahoo.com, went up last Wednesday, and pits Yahoo against competitors such as Singingfish, which is owned by America Online. The Yahoo video search service lets users narrow their […]
No real alternatives to Microsoft Office
Reuters: Office, Microsoft Corp.’s collection of programs for business documents and tasks, is fast becoming a software platform unto itself. A growing number of software developers are creating programs that run on top of Office, in the same way that Office and thousands of other applications run on Microsoft Windows. […] It was the vast […]
Interesting developments with Skype
I’m a big fan of the Skype internet phone service, as I’ve written about many times previously (here and here, for instance). I use it a great deal, both for business and personal use. The free service is obviously good from a cost point of view. But it’s the paid service (SkypeOut) that is most […]
Listen to your search results
BBC News: A Scottish firm is looking to attract web surfers with a search engine that reads out results. Called Speegle, it has the look and feel of a normal search engine, with the added feature of being able to read out the results. Scottish speech technology firm CEC Systems launched the site in November. […]
Guide to tweaking Firefox
If you use Firefox, you might find this guide helpful. Although written in July and a little out of date in some areas (eg, discussing rumoured improvements in Internet Explorer in Windows XP SP2, which was released in August), there’s some good stuff here: keyboard shortcuts, advanced configuration options, performance settings, and links to extensions […]
Music for better decision-making
In its January issue, Wired magazine reports on a new technology that transforms stock market data into music-based sound to communicate meaning: Abstract snippets of clarinet and harpsichord waft from their workstations. But the financial advisers at Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, and Credit Suisse First Boston aren’t listening to Philip Glass. They’re the earliest adopters of […]
Podcasting and vlogging: It’s all about the distribution
Media reports on two rapidly-emerging communication tools – (audio) podcasting and video logging, or vlogging or vblogging: BBC News on podcasting, featuring pioneer Adam Curry: An Apple iPod or other digital music players can hold anything up to 10,000 songs, which is a lot of space to fill. But more and more iPod owners are […]
Back to Copernic Desktop Search
For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been using the new MSN Toolbar Suite of search tools since it was released. I uninstalled it all today and reinstated Copernic Desktop Search. While I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the MSN suite per se, even though it’s still beta, there were three main things that […]
Copernic gets grade A from Slate
After I posted yesterday about Copernic Desktop Search, I came across a review of five search tools in Slate, covering Ask Jeeves, HotBot, Google Desktop Search, MSN Toolbar Suite and Copernic Desktop Search. When I read the review, my first reaction was: Where’s X1? Blinkx? This doesn’t look like a good comparison. An explanation by […]
Six Apart to buy Live Journal
Six Apart, the parent company behind hosted blogging service TypePad and publishing platform Movable Type, is about to acquire Live Journal for an undisclosed amount, reports Business 2.0 writer Om Malik. If the deal goes through later this month, then Six Apart will become one of the largest weblog companies in the world, with nearly […]
Marqui could re-define marketing and PR
I spent a very interesting 30 minutes last night listening to a Geek News Central podcast recorded on Tuesday – an interview with Stephen King, the CEO of Marqui, the company who’s paying $800 a month to certain bloggers to write about their product. When I first wrote about Marqui’s pay-the-bloggers programme last month, I […]