New Tech
Star Trek is back and has gone though some degree of cleansing. There is a brand new set of actors but the same great characters. Chris Pine stars as Captain James T. Kirk. The movie is generating a lot of buzz and Star Trek fans worldwide are counting down the seconds. People have resisted bootlegging the movie from bittorrent as a testament to their loyalty to the event that is Star Trek. Merchandising has begun, from cell phones to action figures.
Vine
Microsoft is launching a new product into private beta on Tuesday morning with the aim of keeping friends and family in touch during emergencies. The idea for product, called Microsoft Vine, came to Microsoft GM Public Safety Initiatives Tammy Savage four and half years ago during Hurricane Katrina. Development started a year and a half ago. Vine is designed to keep family and friends in touch when other communication methods are either broken or not particularly efficient. Times of crisis usually involve a breakdown in mobile phone or other key communication infrastructures, and Vine is designed to be as hardy as possible to keep people connected. Vine can be accessed via a desktop client (Windows only for now), text message or email. So what is it? Vine is a tool keep people connected during a crisis, but it’s also used to for more mundane, everyday tasks. My guess is it will hit a sweet spot with the masses. My parents, for example, are going to love this.
Adobe
Adobe Creative Products are great for those who want to make great use of their talents and improve upon them. Truly a remarkable masterpiece. Worth every penny and I am gearing up for a website after this one. Dreamweaver is on top of my list of web tools. Can't wait to start doing the next site!
Windows 7 Preview
Support for themes has been extended in Windows 7. In addition to setting the colors of the window chrome and desktop background, themes in Windows 7 include a sound set, a default screen saver, and desktop slideshow settings. A new control panel interface, accessible through the "Personalize" content menu item on the desktop, has been introduced which provides the ability to customize and switch between themes, as well as download more themes from Microsoft's web site. Support for "theme packs" is included; theme packs are cabinet files with an extension of .themepack, and consist of a .theme as well as any number of image, sound, icon, and mouse cursor files. Windows 7 recognizes this file format and will switch the user's theme to the theme contained inside when opened. A Windows 7 theme can also specify an RSS feed from which new desktop background images can be downloaded. The default theme is titled "Windows 7", which consists of a single desktop background depicting a betta fish, and the same sound set as Windows Vista. Six new "Aero Themes" are included: Architecture, Characters, Landscapes, Nature, Scenes, and an additional country-specific theme that is determined based on the defined locale when the operating system is installed. The Windows 7 Beta includes themes for the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, Japan, South Africa and Australia, and while the theme for the user's home country is the only one displayed in the user interface, the files for all these themes are included in the operating system installation.Each of the themes included with Windows 7 consists of six desktop backgrounds each at 1920x1200 resolution; none of the desktop backgrounds included with Windows Vista are present in Windows 7. The country-specific desktop backgrounds depict both famous places in those countries (such as Stonehenge and the Sydney skyline) as well as country scenes. A number of sound schemes are included, each associated with an included theme: Afternoon, Calligraphy, Characters, Cityscape, Delta, Festival, Garden, Heritage, Landscape, Quirky, Raga, Savanna, and Sonata.
Additional theme packs are available as free downloads from Microsoft's web site.
Desktop Slideshow Windows Explorer now includes a desktop slideshow that changes the desktop background in a designated amount of time. This feature supports pre-downloaded sets of wallpapers and also supports photo RSS feed.
Gadgets Windows Vista introduced Gadgets and a sidebar which provides the ability to anchor Gadgets to the side of the user's desktop. In Windows 7, the sidebar has been removed, while gadgets can still be placed on the desktop. Windows 7 adds a Windows Media Center gadget.
Managing gadgets is more closely integrated with Windows Explorer, but the gadgets themselves continue to operate in a separate sidebar.exe process. The Desktop context menu includes a new "Gadgets" menu option to access the gadget gallery, and a "View" sub-menu option to show or hide gadgets. Hiding gadgets results in the sidebar.exe process being unloaded, which Microsoft says is a power-saving practice. Unlike Windows Vista, all gadgets run in a single process, which saves memory, and the process is not run at all if the user has no gadgets on the desktop.
Tech Noise
The Windows Taskbar has seen its most significant revision since its introduction in Windows 95. The taskbar is 10 pixels taller than in Windows Vista to accommodate touch screen input and a new larger default icon size, though a smaller taskbar size is available. Running applications are denoted by a border frame around the icon, while applications can be pinned to the taskbar, so that shortcuts to them appear when they are not running. Within this border, a color effect (dependent on the predominant RGB value of the icon) that follows the mouse also indicates the opened status of the application. The glass taskbar is also more transparent. Taskbar buttons show only icons, not titles, unless they are set to not combine.
