Posts tagged with "web"

mike's picture

Microsoft Surface and Street Views

I’ve seen two cool new technologies in the last 24 hours…just thought I’d share: Microsoft Surface: As much as they get ripped on for not being as cool as Apple, I think this is pretty stinkin’ sweet. It’s basically a really huge touch screen that can be used as tabletops at home, restaurants, kiosks, etc. The site has some pretty cool videos. I’ll be interested to see how popular this becomes and how quickly it can be mainstreamed. Google Maps Street View: If you’ve never used Google Maps or Google Earth, you’re missing out. They’re pretty cool and useful. Yesterday Google Maps got even cooler by adding a “street view” to their maps. With this feature you can actually see what street corners, intersections, etc. look like from the ground (at least in five major cities). Hopefully they can broaden this feature to many more cities in the future. If you want to see it in action go to maps.google.com; then go to New York, NY. Then click “Street View” in the top right corner of the map. You’ll have to zoom in, but there will be a little stick figure that you can drag around. Depending where you drag him and what direction he’s facing you will get actual ground images of the location he’s at….pretty cool!
mike's picture

Yahoo! mail

I have heard several people talk about how cool the new Yahoo! mail interface is, but I hadn’t looked at it until this morning. It is sweet! It blows G-mail out of the water in looks and functionality. No one who reads this probably cares, but if you’re trying to decide between email services, definitely give the new Yahoo! email system a look.
mike's picture

IE7 annoyance

So, our scanner software (HP Director) is not working now that we installed IE7 on our computers. The browser is definitely better than the five year old IE6, but I knew it wouldn’t take long until an annoyance popped up.
mike's picture

end of Microsoft Ofiice?

You may or may not be aware of this, but Google has been putting together some free online services that could pose a significant challenge to Microsoft Office. They are called Writely and Google Spreadsheets. Writely is an online word processing progam, and is Google’s equivalent of Word. In fact you can open, edit, and save files in the Word file format. So, it’s very intercompatible with Microsoft stuff. You can even save files onto their servers or your hard drive. It’s pretty sweet. The only catch I see is that you have to have a “Google account” to login. If you already have a gmail account, you just use that. Otherwise you’ll can either sign up for a Gmail account, or just create a Google account using your current email address here. Google spreadsheets is a spreadsheet program (imagine that), and is Google’s equivalent of Excel. You can open, edit and save files in the Excel file format. Again, it’s very intercompatible with Microsoft stuff. You also have to have a Google account to use this. One thing about these services, is that you have to be connected to the Internet and have a relatively fast connection to use them. So, if you want to be able to edit files without being connected to the Internet, then you will still need something like Microsoft Office. Of course, if you don’t want to fork out the dough to Microsoft, you can try OpenOffice. This software is very similar to Office in almost all regards, and is also free. It too is very intercompatible with Office. I have nothing against Microsoft Office. I use it all the time. Of course, I get it for $10 at the union. I just wanted you all to be aware of other options out there. It will be interesting to see how these services compete with Office as they gain popularity.
mike's picture

Pandora - online music

I saw this on a friend’s blog tonight. It’s a service called “Pandora”. You tell the site what type of music you like, and it generates playlists of similar artists. I haven’t really tested it out, but it seems interesting.

mike's picture

Google eavesdrop

Is it just me or is this a little scary? I love Google, but this seems like it might be going a bit too far in the attempt to learn more about customers.
mike's picture

ie7.com

I found this really amusing… Microsoft has been working for a long time on Internet Explorer 7 to replace their junky piece of crap Internet Explorer 6 web browser. Supposedly the newest version isn’t all that bad, but I think I will still stick with Firefox. The funniest part is that the people who make Firefox, Mozilla, bought the domain name ie7.com. So now when you go to www.ie7.com to get information about Internet Explorer 7, you get a fat Firefox logo in your face ( : I think that’s hilarious.
mike's picture

Firefox

I came across this article explaining how Firefox is making big strides in the competition between web browsers. Most of you know I’m a big geek and could go on and on about the benefits of Firefox. But I’ll restrain myself. I hope that when Internet Explorer 7 comes out it doesn’t push Firefox back down again, but I’m sure it will. I just wanted those of you who were unaware of browsers other than Internet Explorer to know that there are much better and safer options out there. Then again, most people reading this probably already know that.

mike's picture

find the lowest gas prices

MSN has a nice application that they update each night. It displays the gas prices of local gas stations and ranks them by price. I already know where the lowest price in Lafayette is, but I figured I’d share this with our few loyal readers…

For my zip code, the link is:

http://autos.msn.com/everyday/gasstations.aspx?zip=47905&src=QL

In the top right corner of the red box, enter your zip code and you’re good to go…or just replace the “47905″ in the URL with your zip code. Enjoy!