New Flock 2.0 Beta Available for download

Flock is a consumer Internet business which has developed a free, next generation web browser. The web, and the way people engage online, has evolved dramatically over the past decade. But web browsers - the application that fundamentally enables online experiences and services across ones' connected life - have not kept pace.

Flock is focused on fundamentally evolving the browser, bringing a refreshing new approach to how people use and participate on the web and simplifying social and web-based applications by bringing them one step closer to the user and integrating them directly into the browser.

When using Flock, people can easily discover, access, create and share videos, photos, blogs, feeds and comments across social communities, media providers, and popular websites.

What to Expect

Now you can have the best of BOTH worlds!

Flock 2 includes all of the award-winning Flock features that people are raving about, PLUS all of the enhancements introduced by the latest FireFox 3 technology from Mozilla.

Enhancements From Firefox 3:

• New and improved security features - Better!
• Enhanced performance - Faster!
• Robust favorites and history handling - Stronger!

All the Flock Features You Love:

• People Sidebar: Keep your friends with you while you browse
• Drag’n’drop: Share photos and videos instantly
• My World: Everything you care about in one place

Get More Info

Flock 2 encompasses a heck-ton of enhancements, and you can find out more in our series of articles about Flock and Firefox 3:

• Performance in Flock 2 and Firefox 3
• Security in Flock 2 and Firefox 3
• User Interface in Flock 2 and Firefox 3
• Favorites Management in Flock 2 and Firefox 3
• Flock Feature Enhancements in Flock 2

source and download : flock.com

 

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Build a Web Chat Application Part 2 - Chat with Other Users Privately (in C# 3.5)

In Part 1 we built a very simple, flicker-free, frame-less, web chat application using ASP.Net 3.5, LINQ-to-SQL, AJAX and MS SQL Server, with your choice of either C# 3.5 or VB 9.0 in about 2 hours.

As promised, we will add functionality to our previous chatroom application so that users will have the ability to chat with each other privately.

You can read and download the code of Part 1 in C# 3.5 here, or in VB 9.0 here.

Here's a snapshot of the Chatroom area.

I noticed while coding for part 2 that the names (in black) of the chatters didn't show in the chatroom messages, so I added them real quickly. Continue here..

source : junnark.com

 

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Next-Generation Windows 7 User Experience

With Windows 7 Milestone 1 released in December 2007, Microsoft managed to give a taste of the user experience that is coming with the successor of Windows Vista.

At the same time, since Windows M1 was virtually identical with its predecessor in terms of the graphical user interface, the UX was also similar. But make no mistake about it; as part of the development process of Windows 7, Microsoft is also building the next-generation user experience for Windows. Starting with the graphical user interface, an aspect confirmed officially by Julie Larson-Green, Corporate Vice President, Windows Experience Program Management at the end of May, when she admitted that work was being done on the Win7 GUI but refused to give out any details.

However, crumbs from the Windows 7 UX feast do fall through Microsoft's fingers. The company is in fact looking for the right people to take the Windows user experience to the next level. For example, the Windows Experience Core User Experience team is hiring.

"We own the high-level features that users interact with daily, such as the desktop, taskbar, start menu, app switching, control panels, gadgets, media experiences, etc. etc. We *are* the face of Windows, and our charter is improving the everyday experiences for millions of customers. We’re looking for highly skilled engineers who are passionate about building and shipping the next-generation user experience for Windows," reads an excerpt from a Software Development Engineer in Test job for Windows.

But at the same time, the Redmond giant is looking for User Experience researchers and designers. In this regard, Microsoft places a great deal of emphasis on the intimate connection between future releases of Windows client and the Windows Live cloud platform. "Microsoft is looking for a design innovator," the company indicated in a job posting for User Experience Designer, the goal being to synchronize the Windows and Windows Live user experiences not only at product level but also as brands, from interaction to visual design.

"Someone who thinks strategically about brands and can invent, drive, and inspire great visual and interaction design to influence the course of the world’s most used software product - Windows, and its new suite of integrated online services, Windows Live. You’ll be working with the world’s best developers, visual and interaction designers, UX researchers, and brand managers, all dedicated to revolutionizing software design. You need to be somebody that loves software, thinks deeply about brands, is hands-on with technology, focuses on the customer, and absolutely exudes a passion for great design," Microsoft added.

There is no telling now where Microsoft is going with the user experience and the design of the graphical user interface in Windows 7. Sill, one good piece of news for Windows users is that Julie Larson-Green is on the job. She is after all responsible for the design innovations included into the Office 2007 System, namely the Ribbon/Fluent graphical user interface.

According to the company, the "Windows and Windows Live UX Research team, a partner with other product development disciplines, we ensure that Windows, Windows Live, and Internet Explorer ship successful and outstanding user experiences to hundreds of millions of customers. Big challenges and success at a world-wide scale are achievable."

Source: news.softpedia.com

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First look at Nvidia’s new GeForce 9-series laptop graphics cards

Nvidia recently revealed that their G92 GPU will soon be released in its mobile guise, but so far the company has been very tight-lipped over the details. However, Justin of Xotic PC, a US-based gaming PC and laptop manufacturer, has just posted 3DMark scores and the specs of the new GeForce 9800M GT graphics card on the notebookreview.com forums.

The screenshots do leave room for speculation on some points however. As you can see in this screenshot, GPU-Z tells us that the GeForce 8800M GTX card was based on the G92 GPU design whereas the GeForce 9800M GT uses a new GPU design called '060B'. This name doesn't follow Nvidia's typical codename naming convention so could indicate anything from an error with GPU-Z to the GeForce 9800M GT being a totally new and unknown design.

GPU-Z also reports that the 9800M GT only has 6 ROPs, a full 10 ROPs less than the GeForce 8800M GTX. ROPs are usually laid out in sets of four, making 6 a peculiar number. This could either be caused by GPU-Z reading the amount of ROPs in the GeForce 9800M GT incorrectly or it could be reading 6 sets of 4 ROPs, making a total of 24.

Clock speeds remain the same as with the GeForce 8800M GTX, with a 500MHz core, 799Mhz (1.598Ghz effective) memory and the stream processors running at 1.250GHz. The hardware produced results of 9,682 3DMark06 points, with 3DMark Vantage hitting P4130 in the test system which used an Intel Core 2 Xtreme X9100 mobile CPU.

Kobalt Computers' Neil Richards has also played with the new laptop GPU and told us, “What I can confirm for definite is that the performance of the 9800M GT is marginally better than an 8800M GTX, and £130 ex VAT cheaper”. That the 9800M GT will knock the previously reigning 8800M GTX from its pedestal and cost less can only be a good thing for mobile gaming, bringing down the often high cost associated with gaming on the go.

The launch of the mobile 9-series coincides with Intel’s launch of the new Centrino 2 yesterday, so the next generation of gaming laptops are just round the corner. Centrino 2 is the long-awaited update to the incredibly successful Centrino platform, and brings new 45nm Penryn processors (including the new Xtreme X9100), 802.11/n Wi-Fi, optional DDR3 memory support and Wi-MAX to laptops. We expect to have laptops based on all this new technology in the next two weeks.
More images for this article:

3dMark Vantage on an Nvidia GeForce 9800M GT

 

 

 

3dMark06 on an Nvidia GeForce 9800M GT

 

 

 

Kobalt Nexus 3 gaming laptop

 

 

 

Continue Reading : custompc.co.uk

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Web Photo Album V1.2

Web Photo Album offers the easiest way to create photo galleries for the web. We made it ultimately user friendly and highly usable to ensure that even new users will be able to create a web album in a couple of clicks. Web Photo Album is the only photo album generator that lets you view the result immediately in real time. This means you can see how your album looks as soon as you've added images to it without waiting for the program to generate the album.

With Web Photo Album you can easily share your photo albums on our free online photo sharing service. No additional hosting is required. Sharing your albums is as easy as hitting the Publish button in the program toolbar!

• The latest version of Web Photo Album (Photo! Web Album from now on) is now available from this site. Photo! Web Album offers even more user friendly environment for album creation and includes new cool galleries for you to enjoy. The latest versions of this and other software are also available on site, where you can share your photo albums easily.

Click here for full features list.

Download : Web Photo Album V1.2

Source : vicman.net

 

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Download Mozilla Firefox 3.0.1

Firefox 3.0.1 fixed several issues found in Firefox 3.

• Fixed several security issues.
• Fixed several stability issues.
• Fixed an issue where the phishing and malware database did not update on first launch.
• Under certain circumstances, Firefox 3.0 did not properly save the SSL certificate exceptions list.
• Updated the internal Public Suffix list.
• In certain cases, installing Firefox 2 in the same directory in which Firefox 3 has been installed resulted in Firefox 2 being unstable. This issue was fixed as part of Firefox 2.0.0.15.
• Fixed an issue where, when printing a selected region of content from the middle of a page, some of the output was missing (bug 433373).
• Fixed a Linux issues where, for users on a PPP connection (dialup or DSL) Firefox always started in "Offline" mode (bug 424626).

Download : Mozilla Firefox 3.0.1

Source : mozilla.com

 

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Windows will be killed by virtual appliances: VMware exec

Large commercial operating systems, including Microsoft Windows, will no longer exist within five to ten years, according to a senior VMware executive. Instead there will only be very thin open source operating systems supporting virtual appliances.

According to Paul Harapin, managing director for Australia and New Zealand at VMware, Windows and other large operating systems are already starting to be replaced by virtual appliances running on thin layers of Linux.

"When you go to Cisco and say you want a router and a firewall, they provide you with an appliance," says Harapin.

"Inside that appliance is probably a bootstrapped Linux operating system that they manage themselves, there's memory and all sorts of devices. If something goes wrong with that appliance, you don't open up the router and try to determine whether it's an OS problem or a memory problem, you simply call Cisco and tell them that's there's a problem with your appliance."

Paul Harapin claims that this scenario is the forerunner of what is to come in the computing environment.
"What that means is they don't need you to buy a large commercial operating system from Microsoft or anybody else," he says.

"They use their own open source OS, a very thin layer of operating system. They take out all the unnecessary components that are in a large commercial OS because they're customising the OS to optimise the use of their applications. They essentially package that up as an appliance, a running server or a running application, and they send it to you. If you're running a VMware infrastructure, you just drop that on and there's your server up and running.

"If there's a problem, there's no operating system that you need to worry about because you simply call the software (application) vendor up, tell them there's a problem with their VM, and they'll snapshot the VM, patch it and send it back to you. So it's an appliance but it just has no hardware around it."

source: itwire.com

 

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