Microsoft New Zealand is making available some free desktop backgrounds for use on your computer. Includes the New Zealand version of Bliss; A special Queen’s Birthday 2005 edition; the world-famous directional sign in Bluff; and the theme pack for Royale.
Preview Desktop Backgrounds before downloading - ‘Royale’ is set to run on Windows XP. A .zip file extractor is required for the ‘Royale’ theme.
Download details: Desktop Backgrounds for Windows
This download is available to Microsoft Windows XP customers running genuine Microsoft Windows.
Monday, June 6, 2005
Microsoft offers free Desktop Backgrounds for Windows
Macromedia Flash Platform like a printing press
Macromedia has announced a new Flash Platform that includes content creation and Web development tools that can interact with a company’s server and be sent to mobile devices. The Flash Platform includes a collection of individual Macromedia Inc. products, many of which have been in the public eye for a long time. Now, they’ve been brought together to form an interactive coalition.
Platform users will have access to the Flash Player; development tool Macromedia Flex; Flash MX 2004 for content creation; the Flash Communication Server for two-way audio and video streaming; FlashCast, which delivers mobile content; and Flash Lite, which is used to run Flash on mobile devices.
Companies have already been putting the Flash Platform to work to create rich media sites. For instance, Purdue University uses Macromedia Breeze to hold virtual office hours and online conferences. Discount clothing store TJ Maxx used it to create a simplified and intuitive shopping cart for its Web site.
The Sherwin-Williams Co. used the Platform to construct its Color Visualizer, an interactive tool that allows customers to try out different paint color combinations on virtual interior and exterior environments. Whitmann-Hart Information Architect Andy Dennee, who worked with Sherwin-Williams to create the color tool, said the new Platform has enabled his team to create a site with rich color, photorealistic images and real-time lighting, something he said wasn’t possible before, using just the HTML paradigm.
Dennee said he sees big things ahead for the platform. “It’s really like the printing press,” he said. “It represents such a significant shift of the experience you can provide to the user - keeping them interested and engaged in the online experience.”
Read the full story on Publish.com: Flash Matures into Full-Fledged Platform
Sunday, June 5, 2005
Google 101 and Advanced Googology
Patrick Crispen of Netsquirrel.com shares some of his excellent techniques for enhancing search results from Google. The PowerPoint presentations and handouts are free to download provided you don’t make any money from these presentations, and give credit where due.
Google 101: Stop Searching and Start FINDING [1.57 MB]
Sick and tired of looking for information about the Civil War and ending up with 1,247,672,286 hits for stuff like sheet metal fasteners or naked pictures of Ernest Borgnine? This presentation is for you! In this one hour presentation you’ll learn the advanced searching tips and techniques that will help you actually FIND what you are looking for on Google.
Google 201: Advanced Googology [3.50 MB]
Ready to take your Googling to the next level? Beyond the world of plusses, minuses, and quotes lies a whole universe of secret Google tips, techniques, and tools. This quick, one-hour workshop introduces you to little known Google features like pipes, stop-word workarounds, full-word wildcards, and query modifiers—features that will instantly make you the envy of your friends and the center of attention at cocktail parties.
If you are a instructor, you will enjoy the presentation on Microsoft Producer 2003 for Microsoft Powerpoint - a free PowerPoint add-in that lets you easily capture, synchronize, and publish audio, video, slides, and images, turning your old PowerPoint slide shows into rich-media presentations that you can easily put on the Internet. Microsoft Producer 2003 is the most exciting thing to happen to PowerPoint in years, and it will forever change the way that you look at PowerPoint slide shows.
Adware is not really Spware
What is the difference detween adware & spyware
Adware - Adware is considered a legitmate alternative offered to consumers who do not wish to pay for software. Generally most or all features of the freeware are enabled but you will be viewing sponsored advertisements while the software is being used. The advertisements usually run in a small section of the software interface or as a pop-up ad box on your desktop. When you stop running the software, the ads should disappear.
In many cases, adware is a legitimate revenue source for companies who offer their software free to users. A perfect example of this would be the popular e-mail program, Eudora. You can choose to purchase Eudora or run the software in sponsored mode. In sponsored mode Eudora will display an ad window in the program and up to three sponsored toolbar links. Eudora adware is not malicious; it reportedly doesn’t track your habits or provide information about you to a third party. This type of adware is simply serving up random paid ads within the program. When you quit the program the ads will stop running on your system.
Spyware - Spyware is considered a malicious program and is similar to a Trojan Horse in that users unwittingly install the product when they install something else. A common way to become a victim of spyware is to download certain peer-to-peer file swapping products that are available today. Once installed, the spyware monitors user activity on the Internet and transmits that information in the background to someone else. Spyware can also gather information about e-mail addresses and even passwords and credit card numbers.
Because spyware exists as independent executable programs, they have the capability to monitor your keystrokes, scan files on the hard drive, snoop other applications, such as chat programs or word processors, install other spyware programs, read cookies, change the default home page on the Web browser, while consistently relaying this information back to the spyware author who will either use it for advertising and marketing purposes or sell the information to another party.
Always read the fine print before downloading software - Licensing agreements that accompany software downloads sometimes warn the user that a spyware program will be installed along with the requested software, but the licensing agreements are not always be read completely by users because the notice of a spyware installation is often couched in obtuse, hard-to-read legal disclaimers.
Secret Yahoo! Labs
Google Labs is no secret but Yahoo! labs are still a secret.
Yahoo! prefers to call it as Yahoo! Next - It’s a showcase of some of Yahoo!’s newest and coolest projects - the cutting edge of what Yahoo!’s doing today and working on for tomorrow!
Almost all the Yahoo! projects that are in Beta stage are listed here like Yahoo! Messenger, YDS, YIQ, Yahoo! Music and My Web.
Yahoo! Next is actually part of Yahoo Research Labs
Friday, June 3, 2005
If your computer freezes, please walk away from it
Come on, it’s not like you’ve never imagined whacking a sledgehammer through a computer that keeps freezing. Workers nowadays are overly reliant on this one piece of very fallible office equipment.
So in the likely event that your computer misbehaves - like taking hostage three weeks worth of work - who can blame you for getting superstressed?
Such workplace stress can proliferate in many ways. Most people in one such study commissioned by Compaq, for example, have seen other workers rage against their computers — swearing at the equipment, for example.
So what can workers do to avoid such stress?
Basic steps include backing up work on a hard disk and taking courses to bolster your computer know-how, Norman said.
In the likely case that you still have problems, Norman suggested walking away from your computer and taking a break. Maybe companies could have rage breaks, providing a punching bag to help workers vent their frustrations?
All companies need to have a backup plan, added Andrew J. DuBrin, a Rochester Institute of Technology management professor. In case DuBrin’s home office computer goes down — which is where he does his research and writing — he has a backup laptop with some of the same capabilities.
After all, he’s not immune to computer mishaps. Last year he battled for weeks with an unruly computer, before finally buying a new one and getting over his fear of learning new software. “It would do the strangest things,” he said. “All of a sudden everything would be highlighted, like I had hit Control Alt. I couldn’t get out of it.
Via Got computer rage? Expert suggests safe ways to vent
The best of Firefox Tricks, Extensions and Websites
Scott Kingery has collected some of the best Firefox Tips and Tricks - The website can be subscribed as an RSS Feed.
I came across a useful Firefox extension similar to AI Roboform called Scribe - It lets you save the field of your form. So if you are on-line and filling out a blog post or a coment to someone elses post you can hit crtl+s and save your comment locally. If something should happen you can do a “File - Open Entry..” and open you saved file right into your form. Handy for Gmail and other web based email programs.
Scott has also listed of some of the best Firefox related websites:
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