31 July 2009 | Marc Nongmaithem
For as simple as this little tool can be it offers all the functionality you’d expect from a CD and DVD image recording app, and then some. ImgBurn was coded by the creator of DVD Decrypter after being forced to stop development by Macrovision, and is based on the same optical disc burning engine. Although it cannot circumvent copy protections like its late sibling, it offers support for burning a…
31 July 2009 | Marc Nongmaithem
Firefox has come a long way since it spawned from Mozilla five years ago, and has achieved many milestones worthy of celebration. Another one is on the way; with Mozilla announcing that they are nearing a total of one billion downloads. They are excited enough about the prospect of this happening soon that they have announced the opening of a site next week that will cover Firefox’s history and it…
31 July 2009 | Marc Nongmaithem
Wolfenstein Multiplayer Q&A @ IGN.com
31 July 2009 | Marc Nongmaithem
Following its introduction of the Timeline 4000 and 5000-series notebooks, Acer has brought the 8000-line to market. Targeted at business users and general consumers, the Timeline 8000 is available in three display sizes including 13.3”, 14” and 15.6” which all have a resolution of 1,366 x 768.
31 July 2009 | Marc Nongmaithem
In response to the cries of many testers who felt their help and feedback were under-appreciated, Microsoft has reversed a previous decision and announced it would hand out free copies of Windows 7 Ultimate to those who received the earliest builds of the operating system last year. The offer applies to members of the invitation-only Windows 7 Technical Beta Program – meaning users who downloaded …
31 July 2009 | Marc Nongmaithem
Shownotes:
Twitter is working on its self image for newbies. Lots of people hear about the service, go to the website and get confused about the question “What are you doing?” They’ve changed that to “What do you have to say?”
Apple released the MobileMe iDisk App, but they pulled the Google Voice apps. I’m none too happy about that!
Ricoh announced the Zi8. It’s a 1080p Pocket Video camera. It holds up to 32GB of storage, you can edit video and upload to YouTube, it has smart face tracking and promises good low light performance.
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31 July 2009 | Marc Nongmaithem
Anyone who has ever tried to use Gmail as a central hub for their Email has likely fallen prey to one of the service’s annoying flaws: there was no way to use another site’s outgoing SMTP servers to send Email. For the vast majority of people this wasn’t an issue — Gmail was happy to send your Email for you from your Gmail account, along with message indicating that it was being sent “On Behalf Of” your other account. But those three words were still there, serving as a constant thorn in our sides. And to make matters worse, it could also confuse people: they might start sending messages to your Gmail account rather than your primary Email address. Today, you can kiss those “On Behalf Of”’s goodbye, as Gmail has just started allowing users to send their messages from third party SMTP servers.
If the previous paragraph confused you, here’s an explanation: Many people like to use Gmail’s web interface for their Email but don’t have the option of using Google Apps on their mail server, especially when it’s for their work account. Fortunately there’s a work around to this: simply have your work Email account auto-forward all incoming messages to your Gmail account. The option even allows you to send messages and make them look like they’re coming from your work account, rather than you Gmail account, but with one caveat: rather than actually send these messages from your work address, Google includes a message that says the message was sent “On Behalf Of” your address, while still showing the name of the Gmail account it was actually sent from.
It’s true that most people never noticed this (in fact many mail clients don’t show the “On Behalf Of” at all under default settings), and even if they did see it they probably didn’t care in the slightest. But it’s still been a source of annoyance for many of us.
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31 July 2009 | Marc Nongmaithem
We’ve been covering the new web email project MySpace has been working on in stealth mode for the past several month. Now it’s ready to begin a quiet rollout today, in beta, for users around the globe.
Here’s why this matters: Right off the bat, MySpace Mail with a sexy new interface is a major player in the e-mail space based on sheer size alone. With nearly 130 million global users, it will enter the field as the 4th largest email provider in the world, and 2nd largest in the U.S. (see chart). And it’s being built on top of the MySpace Messaging service that plenty of people are already using a lot — it accounts for some 20% of MySpace’s site traffic, we’re told.
Here’s what else is nice: Because MySpace has had so-called vanity URLs since its inception (unlike Facebook, which just rolled out the feature), you can use those as your email address with the new MySpace Mail. So for a page that resides at myspace.com/techcrunch, the email would be techcrunch@myspace.com, for example. And, if you don’t like the vanity URL you currently have, MySpace is giving you the opportunity to change it to something else (assuming it’s available). This would also change your vanity URL for your profile.
So what’s different in this new version? Well, besides the obvious upgrades to the overall look, there’s a new Mail Activity Stream. This basically gives users a real-time view of what people you are having a conversation with, are doing on the site. The new MySpace Mail also allows you to embed photos in one step, and send music and video as attachments.
And like Yahoo Mail, MySpace Mail comes with an unlimited amount of storage space. Contrast that with Google’s popular Gmail, which limits to just over 7 GB (though it is consistently growing).
We’ve talked about MySpace using Gears to do cool things with its messaging service in the past, and this new MySpace Mail will also utilize it to allow for power searching of mail.
So the big question is, how does it compare to what Facebook is offering? Well, as we’ve written before, Facebook mail has a lot of issues. And MySpace isn’t being shy about taking it head-on, noting the differences in the chart below.
As we said, this new MySpace Mail will begin rolling out today in beta, and it will continue to reach users across the globe over the next few weeks. When you first see it on your account, you’ll be greeting by a walk-through screen (pictured above) to set it up for the first time. This is where you’ll be able to choose which address you wish to use.
Here’s the core functionality:
In terms of privacy, here’s what MySpace is saying about the product:
MySpace Mail is safe and reliable. MySpace has always taken a holistic approach to privacy and Mail is no exception. MySpace Mail empowers users to be as open or as private as they choose. Just like traditional mail, users can choose to receive messages from anyone whether they are in the MySpace network or not, while enhanced privacy features enable users to receive mail from only their MySpace ‘friends.’ Leading anti-spam technology and virus scanning ensure a safe, spam-free mail experience.
And here are a ton of screenshots:
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31 July 2009 | Marc Nongmaithem
Over the last few days we’ve seen a lot of attention centered on the new iPhone application from Spotify, the so-called ‘iTunes Killer’ subscription service that lets you plays songs on demand from a library of millions of tracks. We still don’t know if that app is going to make it through Apple’s nebulous approval process, but it’s already got some possible competition: Grooveshark, a streaming music service that lets you stream nearly any song from its web interface, has its own iPhone app ready for release and it’s just about to submit it to Apple. Like Spotify, the application lets you search for any song you want and stream it from the cloud almost instantly.
Now Grooveshark just needs to face the daunting Apple approval process. So will it make it though unscathed? Almost certainly not.
Grooveshark is a great service — the web interface is slick, and you can usually find whatever song you’re looking for in a matter of seconds, free of charge. But it’s also not exactly on solid legal footing. The company is holding true to its comparison to a ‘YouTube for music’, allowing users to upload whatever they want and generally only policing when they receive takedown notices, which doesn’t prevent the bulk of copyrighted songs from making their way onto the site (in its early days YouTube thrived on copyrighted content using a similar strategy) . CEO Sam Tarantino says that Grooveshark is currently hammering out deals with the major record labels to remedy this issue, but EMI changed tactics midway through negotiations and decided to sue the company instead which isn’t helping their efforts.
Still, Tarantino sounds optimistic about the future of the company, even if he isn’t counting on the iPhone app getting approved just yet. The website gets 1.3 million visitors a month, 750,000 of which have registered. The company is finalizing how it will deploy a subscription model (likely in the $5-$15 a month range), which will give it an added boost of legitimacy, and revenue. Until then though, I wouldn’t expect this to pop up in the App Store any time soon.
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31 July 2009 | Marc Nongmaithem
We on the web are a simple folk — especially us males. We need but two things to keep us happy: Explosions and boobs. And thank God someone has finally cut through all the BS, and given us exactly what we want in one brilliant site called yes, Explosions and Boobs.
The site is actually more elaborate than it may seem at first glorious glance. If you click on either the explosion picture or the picture of the boobs, you will get new pictures of explosions and boobs! Brilliant. It’s hours of endless fun waiting to happen. Who needs to sit through an entire Michael Bay movie when you have this?
Just go to it and be amazed. Obviously, it may not be safe for everyone’s place of work. But it’s apparently safe enough for Jim Lanzone, the former CEO of Ask.com to tweet about it. Or maybe not. As Michael tweets in response, “see this is why you got fired as CEO of Ask.com.”
Update: Alright, alright calm down. Lanzone wasn’t really fired as Ask.com CEO. But for those who read it on Twitter and assumed that it must be true, consider this the official debunking.
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