Panasonic to Bring Blu-ray Disc Burners to Europe

Panasonic will soon begin selling Blu-ray Disc-based video recorders in Europe, it said Thursday at the IFA electronics show in Berlin. The company put its first Blu-ray Disc burners on sale several years ago in Japan but the planned launch of the products in France later this year marks the first time they will be available in Europe.

Using the recorders, consumers will be able to record high-definition TV programs to Blu-ray Disc without losing quality. The only other options available are to record at standard definition to DVD or VHS tape or in high-definition to hard-disk drive, although the latter makes saving favorite programs difficult because of the limited amount of disc space available [...]

Microsoft warns of IE8 lock-in with XP SP3

Microsoft yesterday warned users of Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) that they won't be able to uninstall either the service pack or Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) under some circumstances. The warning was reminiscent of one Microsoft made in May, when Windows XP SP3 had just been made available for downloading. At the time, the company told users they wouldn't be able to downgrade from IE7 to the older IE6 browser without uninstalling the service pack.

In a post to the IE blog today, Jane Maliouta, a Microsoft program manager, spelled out the newest situation, which affects users who downloaded and installed IE8 Beta 1 prior to updating Windows XP to SP3. If those users then upgrade IE8 to Beta 2 , which Microsoft unveiled today, they will be stuck with both IE8 and Windows XP SP3. A warning dialog will appear to alert users. "If you chose to continue, Windows XP SP3 and IE8 Beta2 will become permanent," Maliouta said. "You will still be able to upgrade to later IE8 builds as they become available, but you won't be able to uninstall them."

Photosynth: Multi-Dimensional Digital Imaging

Recently Microsoft released the final version of its long-in-beta web app called Photosynth.

Photosynth gives users the ability to view and create 3D Panoramas and virtual tours. Basically it takes a collection of regular photographs and reconstructs the scene or object in a 3-D environment.

Photosynth is potent mixture of two independent breakthroughs: the ability to reconstruct the scene or object from a bunch of flat photographs, and the technology to bring that experience to virtually anyone over the Internet.

The Photosynth viewer allows user to zoom in/out, view in 3D/2D and circle through next and previous frames. Below you can see some screenshots of 3D panoramas of Taj Mahal, Smith Tower and the Sphinx.

View Taj Mahal

View Smith Tower

View Sphinx

Apart from providing a library of 3D Panoramas for users to explore, Photosynth lets users create their own Synth and upload them for others to view in 3D.

It is a Microsoft Labs product so don’t expect it to bug-you-not. To get started with viewing or creating your own 3D Panoramas, hop on to Photosynth and enjoy the tour.

It is currently available only to Windows users.

American Airlines launches in-flight Wi-Fi

American Airlines passengers will now have Wi-Fi access on some flights.

The airline said Wednesday that it has finally launched its in-flight Internet access service via Wi-Fi on 15 of its 767-200 airplanes. The service, called Gogo, will be offered on nonstop flights between New York and San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles, and New York and Miami. The cost is $12.95 per flight. Passengers will be able to sign up when they boot up their browsers.

The airline will be restricting the use of voice over IP services, such as Skype, and it will still restrict the use of cell phones in flight.

Gogo is a service offered by Aircell, which is also providing Wi-Fi access to Delta Air Lines planes. Earlier this month, Delta said it was outfitting all of its domestic fleet with Wi-Fi by the middle of next year. Virgin America, which is also using Aircell's Gogo service, will launch its service by the end of the year, the company has said.

And JetBlue Airways is testing its Wi-Fi access on routes between San Francisco and New York. Southwest Airlines and Alaska Airlines are also testing in-flight Wi-Fi. And others such as United Airlines are considering offering Wi-Fi, but it hasn't announced tests or a commercial launch.

Aircell's pricing is uniform across all the airlines that use it. The company charges $9.95 for flights of three hours or less. And it's $12.95 for all flights over three hours. Initially, American Airlines will only be offering Wi-Fi on coast-to-coast flights.

SyncToy v2.0 - Free PowerToy for Microsoft Windows

Computing now a days, has become very ubiquitous with the help of different computers such as laptops, mobile phones, desktop machines etcetera. To enable resource sharing between these devices is the real essence of distributed computing, thus, synchronization plays an important role in copying, moving, renaming and deleting files between folders and computers as quickly as possible.

Microsoft introduces it's SyncToy v2.0 that allows you to store and manage your files created by digital cameras, e-mail, cell phones, portable media players, camcorders, PDAs, and laptops.

This PowerToy of Microsoft is quite easy to use, highly customizable program that helps users to do the heavy lifting involved with the copying, moving, and synchronization of different directories. SyncToy manages multiple set of folders simultaneously it can combine files from two folders in one case, and mimic renames and deletes in another case. Unlike other applications, SyncToy actually keeps track of renames to files and will make sure those changes get carried over to the synchronized folder.

With the help of customers' feedback, Microsoft has incorporated a lot of features in SyncToy v2.0. As this software is not a part of Microsoft Windows so you might not be able to get any kind of help from Microsoft Technical Support, so you can use SyncToy forums, where you can find out everything related to that.

Storage Feature Pack for Windows to arrive soon

Without making users wait for the next major Windows release, Microsoft throws Feature Packs to get them new features. As the name suggests, Feature packs are the delivery vehicle for new, between-release, features.

The new feature pack for storage which will be announced soon by Microsoft contains 3 technologies.

• Active Storage Platform - With the help of this feature, you will be able to restrict access to portable devices (such as a USB Flash Device) via a certificate or password authentication based on the IEEE 1667 standard specification.
• Image Mastering API update for Blu-Ray media - It will help in burning the blu-ray optical media in a master fashion.
• Smart Card Driver - It will provide support for new form factors, such as ICCD/CCID.

Windows Feature Pack for Storage will be available for the following operating systems: Windows XP SP2+, Windows Vista, Windows Vista SP1, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2003 SP1+.

This storage feature pack won't be the first one for Microsoft as it has released couple of them based on different necessities. Like an optical feature pack, the Windows Vista Feature Pack for Wireless and the Windows Media Center TV Pack.

Create and Share your own cartoons with GoAnimate

Think you can create the next Swat Kats? Got a creative desire and a talent for cartoons, animation or drawing? Try GoAnimate. GoAnimate is an animation studio embedded in browser. It lets you build multi-scene animations, with complete support for music, transitions, and user-uploaded page elements. As compared to other cartoon making sites, it has a more complete set of features for tailoring any animation to your liking. This new site might help you get your creative juices flowing by letting you add scenes to your animations just as you'd do for a video clip.

GoAnimate's tools are as easy to use for anyone who has a story to tell, whether he's an artist or not. Like most video editing applications GoAnimate centers around a time line. Everything is drag and drop, so you can pick out characters, props, backgrounds and special effects and simple put them on the canvas where you see fit. You can even place a photograph of your face over a character for an added comedic touch. Each "scene" can be edited to last as long as you want, and you can drag finished scenes around the time line to re-order them. Have a look at this how-to for an impressive demo.

“Essentially you’re erecting a video shoot, and just placing these actors on stage and asking them to perform for you”, said Alvin Hung, founder and CEO GoAnimate.

Animations are shareable across a variety of social networking and social bookmarking sites, as well as embeddable, though I’m quite surprised to see YouTube missing from the distribution “share” list.

Web-based animation sites for user-generated content like Aniboom, MyToons etcetera are growing in popularity, but GoAnimate is more oriented towards creation side. While simple to use, this tool is not without its shortcomings. For example, you can't set up several characters movements or actions. It means you are unable to attach more than speech bubbles with a delay. The tool also feels a little confined on larger screens as it doesn't scale to match the extra width.

However, bringing such nice creation tools to the average web user is one of the most appealing trends we're observing across a number of flash-based spaces, along with games and multimedia content-sharing. As such media becomes further integrated into the social media, it will help in making more money and will encourage even more feature development to simplify the creation and sharing process.

pptPlex - arrange and zoom your PowerPoint presentations

Project pptPlex is a research prototype developed by Microsoft Office Labs as an exploration of an alternative method of presenting Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007 slides. This plug-in allows you to arrange slides on a canvas then zoom between the slides during the presentation. You can move around the canvas and show groups of slides, individual slides, or even zoom in to show a particular section of a slide.

Toshiba's low-cost road to high definition

After losing the high-definition DVD format war to Sony's latest news about Sony Blu-ray, Toshiba Latest News about Toshiba is digging in around the standard definition DVD market. The company has launched a new upscaling DVD player, the XD-E500, which promises to bring standard DVD quality closer to high-definition (HD) than ever before. The company has even launched a new Web site to help show consumers about the new player and a new upscaling technology that runs on it.

Toshiba's new US$150 XD-E500 features Toshiba's new eXtended Detail Enhancement (XDE) technology, which not only provides upconversion from 480i/p up to 1080p, but also offers three user-selectable picture enhancement modes to help refine the video quality, according to the company [...]

Intel takes film production to the Web with Facebook

Intel has announced a collaborative project to produce an animated short film for theatrical release. The Mass Animation project will be produced and directed by Yair Landau, former vice chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment and president of Sony Pictures Digital.

Landau, who described the endeavour as the “future of creative collaboration”, explained that Mass Animation combined “original computer-generated animated storytelling with social networking in a powerful, new way”.

Indeed, both established and aspiring animators will work together to create the film via a specially designed Facebook application.

According to Michael Hoefflinger, general manager of Intel's partner marketing group, the social-networking site helped “large numbers of people around the globe collaborate on a single creative endeavour”

Microsoft Office 2007 Tips and Tricks

Watch experts dish on your favorite Office products. You can view webcasts, video tips, podcasts, and more from experts who can deliver tips, tricks, and training to your computer. Jump right in with these free materials, including live webcasts and a unique e-mail program.

Check out the large library of tips and tricks by visiting this link.

Official Windows 7 blog is now live

Windows 7 Engineering blog has finally gone live now. Its authors include Steven Sinofsky is in charge of the Windows and Windows Live Engineering Group and Jon DeVaan heads the Windows Core Operating System Division. There have been 2 posts on the blog and they don’t include any useful info.


So far Microsoft has been very tight lipped over Windows 7 and what were likely to expect from Vista’s successor. There have been a few hints with the leaking of Windows 7 M1 build in January Microsoft also said there will be some sessions at this years PDC Event covering Windows 7.

Windows Live Wave 3: Messenger v9

Looks like its open-season on Wave 3 now, with Inky over at Mess.be getting his hands on the Wave 3 Milestone 1 installer for Windows Live Messenger. While Inky may be obsessed with version numbers and about screens, we’re more interested in what’s going on in terms of new integration across services. Its now been 9 months since the launch of Messenger 8.5, Mail and Photo Gallery as part of Wave 2, but as this is only a first milestone, there’ll be other internal updates before a version gets released to the public. That said, there’s still some positive signs that the eventual Messenger v9 release is going to be good.

View: LiveSide for Screenshots and more info

8th ITCN Asia 2008 begins at Expo Center, Karachi

A three-day ITCN Asia 2008 exhibition opened on Monday at Expo Center. Approximately 110 foreign delegates and 125 exhibitors including 35 exhibitors from 22 countries are taking part in the exhibition, organised by E Commerce Gateway and Jamal's Yellow Pages. The Federal IT Ministry is also providing support to the organisers. Some 47,000 visitors have been registered for the exhibition.

Pakistan Software Export Board (PSEB) has supported the organisers in arranging the world-wide participation from Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, Dubai and other countries in the event. It has also set up a pavilion to help software export.

Participating companies are Euroasia exhibition services co., Ltd, Eurone (Hk) co., Ltd, Shenzhen Donjn communication tech co., Ltd, Starking Technology Corp, Synway Information Engineering Co, Ltd etc Federal IT secretary Hifz-ur-Rehman, City Nazim Syed Mustafa Kamal and Sindh IT Minister Raza Haroon attended at the inaugural ceremony.

SQL Server 2008 RTM now available on TechNet Plus

The availaibility of SQL Server 2008 RTM has been announced as a part of TechNet Plus subscription downloads. TechNet Plus subscribers can now get SQL Server 2008 and evaluate it without time limits.

SQL Server 2008 provides a trusted, productive, and intelligent data platform that enables you to run your most demanding mission critical applications, reduce time and cost of development and management of applications, and deliver actionable insight to your entire organization. These downloads are available on a worldwide basis. The related links are as follows:

Edition	Language	Download Location
SQL Server 2008 Enterprise (x86, x64, ia64)	English	TechNet Subscriber Downloads TechNet Top Subscriber Downloads
SQL Server 2008 Standard (x86, x64)	English	TechNet Subscriber Downloads TechNet Top Subscriber Downloads
SQL Server 2008 Web (x86, x64)	English	TechNet Subscriber Downloads TechNet Top Subscriber Downloads
SQL Server 2008 Workgroup (x86, x64)	English	TechNet Subscriber Downloads TechNet Top Subscriber Downloads

How to boost traffic to your website

Want to increase your odds of people finding your Web site on the Internet?

Well then, you'd better optimize your site so it ranks high in the listings presented by top search engines such as Google and Yahoo, say experts.

This "search engine optimization" is critical, considering that more than 150 million people in the United States regularly use search engines to look up information online, according to Tim McAtee of Warren, R.I.-based MarketingSherpa. Of those users, 60 percent to 70 percent look only at the first page of results, he says.

"The goal of search engine optimization is to get your site as high in the search rankings as you can," explains Julie Gross Gelfand of Harrison Leifer DiMarco, a Rockville Centre, N.Y., marketing and public relations firm that assists companies with optimization. "The ones on the first page get the most traffic."

So how do you propel your Web site toward the top [...]

Microsoft Sphere - The new surface

As you're already familiar with Microsoft Surface, Microsoft Sphere is the current R & D product that Microsoft is developing. Multi-touch, natural interaction are few in the top good features.

Please have a look, and give your feedback here? What do you think, is it just for research? or can it be bought into the retail like Microsoft Surface was into AT&T stores.

Dell to compete with iPOD, again?

It seems that Dell is going to make another run at the music player business. Last year, year Dell acquired a little music software outfit called Zing which in 2006 was demonstrating a concept design that essentially put Wi-Fi streaming inside a portable player, thus giving it the ability to, among other things, play Sirius streams.

One of our favorite things is to listen streams from Last.fm and Padora and Sirius streams aren't on the iTunes App Store. The good thing about Dell that it may work with Rhapsody, which isn't a bad service at all and also to include streaming capabilities, or might launch it's own music service.

If it supports MP3 music files, as it presumably would, it would support music sold on Rhapsody, Amazon, eMusic and whoever else has decided to go the MP3 route. The problem, will of course, come down to marketing and positioning aganst Apple, and we all know how that tends to work out.

It could be a trial balloon meant to test market potential. It’s not like Dell doesn’t have on its plate, though CEO Michael Dell is promising a “big second half” of the year. A music player won’t get Dell there, that much is certain.

Sun released JavaFX preview

JavaFX is the RIA technology from Sun. Sun is behind others in the RIA space, including Adobe and Microsoft, but is looking to make up for lost time through its expertise in the Java community.


Sun Microsystems is rolling out the preview release of JavaFX, its rich client platform for building RIAs (rich Internet applications). Sun made the announcement July 31 and made the JavaFX Preview release available here.

The JavaFX Preview release provides Web scripters, designers and Java developers with a preview of the runtime and tools needed to create RIAs on the Java platform. Developers can download the JavaFX Preview release, explore the code samples and tutorials, start writing JavaFX applications and provide their feedback to Sun , said Jacob Lehrbaum, senior product line manager of JavaFX for Sun.