With Microsoft Vista’s consumer launch just around the corner; some interesting stories are starting to push through about what’s next?

First comes Windows Code Name: Fiji; or what others might call Vista SP1 or Vista R2. Fiji includes most of the promised Vista features that were cut out of the initial release to expedite delivery. These include WinFS, a more powerful sidebar, tight integration with Windows Live, built in playback for HD DVD, the original (and gorgeous) UI that was promised for Vista and possibly a Garage Band clone codenamed Monaco.

Next comes Vienna; the next generation Microsoft OS which is rumored to have a complete rethought UI (think no start menu), speech recognition, and the possible end for drives and folders (WinFS baby!). This could be the OS to make up for the conspicuous absence of flying cars and jetpacks.

Finally and on a more tangible note, Ford will announce Microsoft software in their 2007 vehicles. Having MP3, integrated browsing capabilities should make traffic a bit easier to bear I suppose.
Fiji and Vienna (via Engadget) | Ford cars (via MarketWatch)

Want to watch the finals in the comfort of your home but still angry at ART’s monopoly on sports?

Then SopCast is for you.

SopCast, based on P2P technology, allows you to watch streaming television or other media on your PC via the Internet. It has 3 modes, official channels which are supported by sopcast.org, user channels, and test channels.

The software is available for free download on the SopCast site.
Don’t forget that you’ll need a lot of bandwidth
[It works best with a 1Mbps connection, but a 512 Kb would do; if you don't mind the picture freezing every 10 minutes or so]

We’ve got some good news if you’ve been seeking an invite, and some bad news if you’ve been biddin on them at ebay. Microsoft just opened the doors to the general public to test their beta. I’ve been using it for quite a while now and aside from the recent disappointing interface change; it’s been very stable and the sharing folder very useful, read my review here.

Your online world gets better when everything works simply and effortlessly together. That’s the basic idea behind Windows Live. So the things you care about - your friends, the latest information, your e-mails, powerful search, your PC files, everything – comes together in one place. This is a brand new Internet experience designed to put you in control. And this is just the beginning – you’ll see many more new services in the coming months.

Grab your copy form here, and let us know what you think of it

I’ve been keeping this post in my drafts for quite sometime till rumors are confirmed. Writely has been aqcuired by Google. Earlier on a friend of mine and a co-blogger wrote about the death of MS Office on toot’s blog. While I disagree with that and frimly believe the death of MS Office takes a whole lot more than an AJAX application like writely. I find it quite interesting how Google is now going out of its way to compete with Microsoft. Was Live.com too much of a threat?

If you don’t have a writely account and want to get one just because it’s a Google product, you no longer can. I presume Writely will get a face lift and get converted from ASPX to PHP or something open source before Google allows registrations again.

To be clear, Writely is still in beta, and it’s far from perfect. Upholding our great user experience means everything to us, so we’re not accepting new registrations until we’ve moved Writely to Google’s software architecture. If you’re interested in giving us a try, we hope you’ll get on the waitlist so we can let you know when you’ll be able to try out Writely.

Check Out Arrington’s Post

Are you a clumsy person like myself, constantly messing up your camera settings and end up with black and white/sepia photos? (you don’t accidentally drop iPods from a 3rd floor balcony too, do you?). Do you look at your granparents old black & white photos and wonder how they’d look like in color? Or perhaps you’re about to redecorate your flat and wonder how those new colors you chose for the walls match your furniture. If you answered yes to any of those questions and don’t have/want to use photoshop then this tutorial is for you.

Art geeks and photoshop gurus would shrug their shoulders or cry foul at such a thought, but many of us don’t have access to photoshop or lack the training or patience to use it. (note: If you’re an art geek you might be interested in Roba’s Photoshop version).

For this tutorial/software review, we’re going to use a software called “Recolored”. Recolored is brush stroke based recolorization software that mixes sophisticated algorithms and users brush strokes to colorize objects. It works on both colored and greyscale images, is quite inexpensive and very simple to use. Before you continue you will need to download the 21 days trail version.

For this tutorial we’re going to be using a friend’s flat photograph, it looks quite boring with loads of grey and white everywhere.

Step 1: Convert the image to grayscale by selecting image > greyscale in recolored
Although recolored works with colored photos, I found the best results can be acheived with greyscale photos

Step 2: Colorize Walls / Furniture Using Brush & Pen Tool

I selected a shade of orange for the wall on the left and white for the one ahead.

Clicking on the Recolorize button shows you how it would look like

Looks good, let’s colorize the furniture (I know some of you might disagree with my choice of colors, but I did this in a hurry and didn’t think it through)

Recolorize for to get the final.

Much more interesting, don’t you think?

It only took three steps and less than 3 minutes to recolorize the entire room. There are downsides to using Recolored though

• You can’t colorize part of the image only, somehow the color manages to spread to the rest of the image
• There’s no visible history like photoshop, you will have to go through undos and redos, and i can’t seem to find a way to select a brush stroke and delete it. I had to over color segments of the photo (as you can see in the carpet segment), there’s an erase tool, but if found recoloring faster.
• It just doesn’t work with detailed photos. You won’t get good results if you’re trying to recolor a garden for instance. It takes loads of time to get it right and it won’t look perfect. Recolored is good for simple photos like a face shot, or a flat, etc.
• Last but not least, you will have to guess the colors for those old grandpa photos.

On the upside, it’s very easy to use, The built in color pallett makes it easy to pick colors for skin, lips, sky, etc. It’s inexpensive and has a 21 days version.
[Download It]

If you found this article useful digg it

SIPphone annouced Area775 today. A new VOIP service that allows you to pick a free DID number that can be called from any landline, mobile phone or computer connected to the internet. Users can take advantage of a free U.S. telephone number in the 775 area code or pay $3.95 per month and select a different U.S. area code.

Interesting concept. I wonder what Skype’s next move will be. Skype in for free?

Note: You will be asked for a credit card number. Charges will only be made if you utilize their dual ring call service
Digg It

Earlier on Microsoft released a public beta of Internet Explorer 7.0 with web developers as the main target. At a first glance you can see the long wait was worth it. IE7 is better in terms of aesthetics, functionality and performance. It loads much faster than IE 6 and Firefox 1.5. Some might argue that IE loads much faster than Firefox since it’s a part of windows; which is a myth disproved by Opera’s performance. (to date opera is the fastest graphical browser)

Aesthetics
First thing that drew my attention (prior to even loading IE 7) is the logo change (new one on the left). I personally find think the new one is better, but I’m not graphics expert.

Upon opening the browser you will notice a change to the interface.

The simplicity is mind blowing, some might argue this looks like FF, I personally think it looks more like Opera. The menu bar is hidden by default (still accessible via shortcuts / tools > toolbar > classic menu), the location of the bar is peculiar. When enabled the menu will be shown under the address bar, which needs a little bit of getting used to. I won’t place much importance on this as I think the average user doesn’t actually need the menu bar.

Another thing that caught my attention was the use of Mozilla’s RSS icon, apparently the guys at Microsoft visited Mozilla offices and agreed that a unified RSS icon is in the user’s best interest, as opposed to the originally proposed icons found here.

The button placement is well thought of, placing the ones you need most to the left side and the ones you would use less on the right.

Tabbed Browsing At Last!
We finally have what we’ve been wanting for years. Although Tabbed Browsing has been available for IE 6 for a while now (through MSN Search Bar or 3rd Party Plugings). Worth noting that Netcaptor were the first to introduce Tabbed Browsing back in 1997, while Opera developed it back in 1995 and introduced it in Opera 4 in 2000, Avant Browser and Maxthon also had this feature long before FireFox arrived in 2004.

Quicktabs
This is probably my favorite feature. Quicktabs (accessible via ctrl+q, or the third icon from the left) is a preview feature that allows you to see what’s on your tabs, very handy, this is similar to Firefox’s foXpose extension.

Web Standards Compliance & CSS Fixes

Gone are the days IE would render stuff like this.

According to the IE blog Microsoft intends to fully comply with web standards, CSS 2 in particular (CSS 2.1 once it’s recommended) . DHTML rendering noticabely improved. The only site I visited today which didn’t render properly was http://uk.msn.com/

I presume it would work out fine with most hacked and non-hacked CSS code. I didn’t thoroughly test this, so this is just a presumption; you can read more on this on the IE Blog

I would appreciate your feedback on this.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication)
For those of you who don’t know what RSS is, I suggest you check the wikipedia entry
RSS functionality in IE 7 is superb. It allows for OPML import and export meaning that Microsoft won’t lock you in and force you to use their platform. It allows for enclosures which can potentially make it a great Podcasts aggregator. And according to this video it seems to be cross application. It allows communications with other applications using the RSS API, basically this means if you add an RSS feed to your IE7 and you have another application that utilizes IE7’s RSS API it will be added their too.

IE7 automatically formats RSS feeds in a nice readable formats, it even highlights changes since last check, very useful! I did have a problem with Jordan Planet’s RSS feed, their ATOM feed worked fine though.

You can check Dave Winer’s opinion on IE7’s RSS

ClearType & Zooming
IE7 utilizes ClearType which makes webpages more readable especially on LCD Screens. The zooming feature is very useful but quite jittery when used on machines with no graphics acceleration.

ClearType Screenshot

Magnifying Screenshot

Multi Engine Search Bar
The title says it all. Search providers can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/searchguide/default_new.mspx notably missing are Google’s Logo next to their link Technorati & Wikipedia (I’m sure it will have Encarta at some point)! I hope these will be added soon.

Security
Now before we go on with this one I want to emphasise that security is an ongoing job, anyone who claims their product is 100% secure is just being arrogant. Microsoft had it’s downs, but so did all other rivals, including Firefox which had 26 security vulnerabilities 6 of which were marked as Highly Critical!

Microsoft is doing a great job at securing IE 7 here are a few pointers

• ActiveX controls are disabled by default in Internet Explorer Version 7. The ActiveX Input TYPE=FILE control no longer submits a fully-qualified path; it now submits only a filename. The ActiveX control for XEnroll certificate enrollment was removed from Windows Vista and replaced with a new control.
• Antiphishing Filter Built In Cyota Inc, Internet Identity and MarkMonitor will regularly supply information to Microsoft on thousands of confirmed phishiping websites to help ensure the URL reputation service is running with the latest information on known attackers (more at: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/11/17/494040.aspx )
• Safer Protocol Defaults: Weaker SSLv2 protocol are disabled, TLSv1 protocol are enabled. Hence IE users will negotiate HTTPS connections using SSLv3 or TLSv1; you will not notice any difference in the user experience, it’s a silent improvement in security.

You can find more at http://msdn.microsoft.com/ie/releasenotes/default.aspx

Better AJAX Support
IE7 support a scriptable native version of XMLHTTP. This can be instantiated using the same syntax across different browsers. The addition of XMLHttpRequest is very nice, but for really advanced AJAX applications to run without ActiveX alerts XMLDocument and XSLDocument are needed as well.

International Domain Names with no Add ons
So you can finally use those non-latin domains you’ve registered (example arabic domains) http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/12/19/505564.aspx

Oh and I forgot…. PRINTING
What’s Missing/What’s Wrong!

Missing:

• The absence of a download manager and ability to pause downloads. (Note: IE6 & 7 do resume downloads if the server supports it, provided that you do not try downloading until the connection is resumed)
• XMLHttpRequest is only half of the AJAX toolkit!
• We still have that awkward find popup screen with no highlighting capability
• Viewing source code displays the source in an unformatted colorless notepad!
• Ability to rearrange the tabs in toolbar is missing
• IE7 Still Lacks the Shift + Enter for sites that end with .net (if anyone knows of a key for that or .org please let me know)
• Like I said before it doesn’t have wikipedia or technorati in search options which is a bit of a disappointment.
• Themes! I cannot stress this enough, loads of people end up downloading spyware/adware just because they want to customize their IE experience.

Bugs So Far:

• Inability to open drupal RSS 2.0 feeds
• One site rendering funny (http://uk.msn.com/)
• Blogger editor doesn’t display what you’re typing!
• Incompatible with MSN Messenger Produced Chat Logs (Same with MSN Messenger Live)
• I didn’t experience this myself but I heard some people had trouble uninstalling

Downside of all this:

• You need to have a genuine version of windows in order to test drive IE 7.0
• You still have to reboot after installing IE, but I guess that’s because it’s part of windows.
• Available for I32 bit platform on Windows XP only. WinXP 64 and 2003 Server editions coming soon

Title says it all

Download Here

Note: You need a valid copy of windows in order to install.. review coming soon

[Via The IE Blog] [Check Channel 9 Interview]

So awaiting in my inbox today was an invitation to test Windows Live Messenger (WLM from now on). Just when MSN started to become a verb in certain regions of the world, at least mine anyway. Microsoft decides to change the name into Windows Live Messenger. The program still installs on “C:\Program Files\MSN Messenger”. The name also suggests it won’t be available for other platforms. Naming aside I’m not that impressed.

Click to expand

Design:
By default the top bar is hideous shade of bright orange, which can be changed with a few mouse clicks; I’ve changed mine into blue as you can see from the screenshots. What annoyed me most is that Groups & Contacts kept on expanding when I hovered them, thankfully the later can be disabled from the options menu, and the first can avoided by moving your mouse outside of the MSN box. There’s no way to hide your tabs unless you declare your computer as a shared computer which in turn won’t save your messages / contact list / login information.

Features:
Here’s a list of the few notable features of WLM.

• Better Contact Management [screenshot here]
  You can now add your contact into a group immediately, those who sort their contacts by group will benefit from this feature, you will no longer have to add a user then drag them into the appropriate group afterwards. You can also attach contact information to any user on your list, there will be immediately synchronized with your hotmail or Live Mail contacts. Surprisingly adding a birth date to a contact doesn’t immediately reflect on your calendar, but then again this is just a beta.
• File Sharing [screenshot here]
  This is rather amusing, WLM was unable to recognize my antivirus software (”Windows OneCare”) and offered me a free Antivirus Software which turned out to be Windows OneCare again! Now with file sharing you create folders for each contact and files into them, files will be automatically synchronized with them, very useful if say you’re working on the same files / projects. As always .exe, .pif, etc are blocked to prevent sharing virus infected files.
• Offline Messaging
  Name says it all, you can now send instant messages to your offline contacts and they’ll receive them once they get online. This feature is nothing new it was built into ICQ back in 1998!
• Search Contacts Box
  This is quite useful for those who manage huge lists, or if you want to send a message to an offline contact. You can type in part of the name/email address of any contact you have on your list and your list will be narrowed down to them.

How to Get It

• Legal Way: is to either wait for the final version, or request to beta test it on www.live.com
• Not So Legal Way: Download MSN Messenger 8 off Microsoft, then use MSN Proxy patch
  

It seems a new player is jumping into the VoIP bandwagon almost everyday now. Skype, Gizmo, OpenWengo, Google Talk, you name it. Clearly Skype is the market leader. By offering free PC-2-PC VoIP calls and dirt cheap SkypeOut service Skype managed to create a ripple effect all across the internet, but cheap is not free.

Enter VOIP Stunt

Hideous interface aside; it seems VOIP stunt is offering free calling to landlines in 36 countries, including Australia, Austria, Ireland, Spain and the United Kingdom (Canada and the United States are on the list as well). Sweet? It gets even better! The software promises no adware, malware, or spyware, which is a major plus, but I still attach my standard privacy policy warning.

I still haven’t tested the service due to bandwidth congestion at the office, so I can’t really recommend it (I might review it later on) but feel free to Try It