Want to know what the next version of Microsoft Office will look like? Then head over to this page here and check out a couple of screenshots of Microsoft Office 2010, due for public beta testing this year.
With the imminent release of Windows 7 come a whole lot of new features and one of them is the ‘SuperBar’, a new kind of taskbar. Now it is possible for anyone using Windows XP to get a similiar feature with a tiny download (180KB).
Just head over to ViGlance at Lee-Soft here and download it. Then you have a very nice looking SuperBar on your XP desktop. I am using it myself on my XP machine at the moment and have not seen any performance issues or any other problems.
Though it may already be unofficially available on torrent trackers like Mininova (just click here) build 7100 (or the Release Candidate - RC - release) will only officially be available for download by the general public on 5th May. You can read more about it at the Windows Team Blog here. If you want to check out some screenshots of Windows 7 RC (build 7100) then you can check out this page here giving 50 screenshots of the latest Windows 7 release. Some more good news regarding Windows 7 is that an XP compatibilty feature will be built in. According to Microsoft this feature should make Windows 7 completely (100%) backwards compatible with older Windows XP software. This is great news for users and businesses still using legacy software, forcing them to stick with Windows XP, whether they wanted to or not.
And finally, if you haven’t seen them, Windows 7 RC has included the most funky, cool wallpapers I have probably ever seen! Really worth checking out! The Flickr photo pool is here and you can download the entire wallpaper pack here.
Using Adobe AIR (which you can read more about at Wikipedia here) Polaris delivers Google Analytics Data to your desktop using the new Google Analytics API. Polaris is still in Beta but apparently works fine so if you are interested check out the Polaris website here. You can get Adobe AIR here.
If you have been using the internet for a long time you will remember Ask Jeeves (read about Ask at Wikipedia here) which was one of the competitors to Google, Yahoo!, AltaVista, WebCrawler and other search engines that have slowly fallen by the wayside as the omni-present Google has slowly (but comprehensively gained control of the Search Engine market).
Ask Jeeves was based on the concept and image of a butler that you asked a question to, but eventually it was re-branded as Ask.com and the butler fell away. Some research has apparently established that 3 years since the reb-randing the ‘Ask Jeeves’ identity is still more well known that the newer ‘Ask.com’. Hence (though currently only in the UK) the Ask Jeeves logo, branding and website is back. It is doubtful whether this will establish Ask as a major competitor in search engine world but you never know.
The Ask Jeeves UK website is here and the other Ask.com homepage is here.
If you have never checked it out, then maybe you should head over to Google Mars and take a look at the official Google site dedicated to providing some very detailed maps of the planet Mars. Though obviously you won’t recognize any of the locations it is still great viewing. The Google Mars website is here and it even allows you to view it in 3D with Google Earth! If you want to find out more about the planet Mars read the Wikipedia entry here.
The environment is a hot topic in this day and age and whilst many hardware manufacturers are (slowly) making changes to the devices they manufacture, those of us with existing, or older hardware often are branded as greedy consumers and destroyers of Mother Earth.
Not so anymore! Edison is a free program that automates the process of energy saving on your PC so that even the novice computer user is able to do their bit for the environmen. Check out the Edison website here.
OutWit Docs for Firefox does only one thing, but it simplifies a process that can often be very difficult, finding the right documents you want online. OutWit Docs will do just that for you, finding text documents, datasheets, PDF files, presentations and more from multiple online sources. Check out the website right here.
Often when you do a project on the computer you will be faced with a task that requires specialized software, which in many cases can be quite expensive. The answer is either to shell out the money and purchase the software you need to get the job done, or to find an alternative on the internet. This can often be difficult, especially if you do not know much about the software you are downloading. That is where AlternativeTo comes in. It is a site dedicated to providing user suggestions of what they use instead of programs like Photoshop, example.
Check out the AlternativeTo website here.
If you use the Open Source and free alternative to Microsoft Office, OpenOffice.org then you will be happy to know that version 3.1 is on the way. RC1 (Release Candidate 1) is already available if you are an early adopter. Find out more about OpenOffice.org at Wikipedia here and if you want to download the RC1 release then the download page is here.
