Tag: Software
January 22, 2009 by
Jason
Mozilla aims to build a new program designed to harvest end-user data for its open source projects, but especially Firefox. Firefox Test Pilot is currently nothing more than an initiative debuted under the Mozilla Labs umbrella, in order to lay out the concept behind the project, and to attract interest and identify a software engineer to lead the program. According to Aza Raskin, head of user experience at Mozilla Labs, Test Pilot will be used to gather Firefox usage information, feedback that will subsequently be used to evolve the design process of the open source browser.
“Test Pilot is a still-in-concept platform for a new user-testing program for Mozilla that aims to build a 1% representative sample of the Firefox user base for soliciting wide participation and structured feedback for interface and product experiments,” Raskin stated.
One important aspect of the new program is that Mozilla actually envisions building an entire feedback platform, which could scale beyond Firefox, to Thunderbird and Seamonkey, and subsequently to every Mozilla Labs project. Raskin indicated that the Test Pilot, served to users as an extension of Firefox, would first of all require them to answer non-personally-identifiable questions, in order to classify them in accordance with the locale, technical level etc. Read More»
Posted in Firefox | No Comments »
January 05, 2009 by
Jason Just ahead of the public Beta of Windows 7, Microsoft has started recommending security solutions that can be integrated with the next iteration of its Windows client even at this early stage in the platform’s development. The first products designed to protect users running Windows 7 Beta come from Kaspersky and AVG, according to the Redmond company, which have promised to work with ISVs in order to produce security software compatible with Windows Vista’s successor since 2008. In this context, when it comes down to bulletproofing Windows 7, AVG and Kaspersky are ahead of the rest of the security industry with AVG Internet Security 8.0, AVG Anti-Virus 8.0, and the Technical Preview of Kaspersky Anti-Virus for Windows 7, respectively.
“Before you install antivirus software, check to make sure you don’t already have an antivirus product on your computer. If you do, be sure to remove the product you don’t want before you install the new one. It can cause problems on your computer to have two different antivirus products installed at the same time,” a message from Microsoft explains. Read More»
Posted in Software, Windows 7 | No Comments »
December 16, 2008 by
Jason While laboring to produce the first Beta for Windows 7, Microsoft has dealt with issues that have survived past pre-Beta Build 6801. An illustrative example in this regard is associated with the Web Services application programming interface. The software giant revealed that automatic proxy settings retrieval tasks in Windows 7 pre-Beta build 6801 could fail when the Web Services API was involved. Moving forward to the next development milestone of Windows 7, the Redmond company has resolved the problem.
“When using Web Services API on Windows 7 Pre-Beta build 6801.0, you may get the following error in: Failure errorCode=0×803d0015 – Failed to retrieve the automatic proxy settings. The proxy could not process the request,” Nikola Dudar, program manager Visual C++ Team, revealed.
Microsoft delivered Build 6801 of the next iteration of Windows 7 at the Professional Developer Conference 2008 and the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference 2008 at the end of October, namely in early November. The company subsequently indicated that Windows 7 Beta would be made available at the start of 2009. “The root cause of the issue has already been fixed in the Beta builds of Web Services API. It should work just fine with Windows 7 Beta once it is available,” Dudar promised. Read More»
Posted in Windows 7 | No Comments »
November 30, 2008 by
Jason As of November 2008, Microsoft is delivering the first taste of DirectX 11 for Windows 7 for download. A release aimed at developers, The November 2008 DirectX Software Development Kit, brings to the table the successor of Direct3D 10.1, namely Direct3D 11. In the SDK package, the Redmond company is offering a technical preview of Direct3D 11, but also the adjacent components and tools. Backwards compatible, content developed for Direct3D 11 hardware will also be compatible with earlier products supporting Direct3D 10 and 10.1 (in Vista SP1). Via the Windows 7 Developer Guide, Microsoft provides an insight into the new features made available by Direct3D 11.
“Geometry and high-order surfaces can now be tessellated to support scalable, dynamic content in patch and subdivision surface representations. To make good use of the parallel processing power available from multiple CPU cores, multithreading increases the number of potential rendering calls per frame by distributing the application, runtime, and driver calls across multiple cores. In addition, resource creation and management has been optimized for multithreaded use, enabling more efficient dynamic texture management for streaming,” Microsoft revealed. Read More»
Posted in Windows 7 | 2 Comments »
November 21, 2008 by
Jason
It is very common when windows users complain that their computer systems loaded with windows takes ages to get started and takes a hell lot of time to load some applications in the startup. So, in order to get an active running windows which can respond to user actions you need to give some minutes to the computer to load the startup programs first.
Windows users always say there computer were faster in the beginning and used to take very few seconds to get started and running, but with time they say it gets slow and take so much time to get started.
What is the reason behind slow startup on your old computer?
From the time you first start using a computer, you keep installing a various computer software, games and other applications and install various hardware devices drivers many of which create startup entries to run the following. Read More»
Posted in Computer | 2 Comments »
November 20, 2008 by
Jason It’s been estimated that over 60% of all computers have some kind of spyware installed and most of their owners are unaware! If you are tired of your PC running slow and filling your screen with those nasty pop-up then you will want to read the 10 warning signs listed below.
Afterwards check out my “action plan” and what you can do to rid yourself of your spyware infestation.
1. Browser Hijacks – When I used to get a call from a customer saying that their homepage had suddenly changed, without them doing anything, I knew to bring my anti-spyware fighting software. Malicious programmers love to change your browser settings to transfer your homepage to their “client’s” websites.
2. PC is Crashing – Without warning, your PC starts crashing, freezing or locking up, but you haven’t added any new software or updated anything recently.
3. Pop-Ups – You open your browser to visit your favorite blog site then “WHAM!” You are suddenly drowning in pop-ups! Your screen is full of brightly colored lures to porn, gambling or gaming websites. You click on the “Close” or the “X” to shut it down…uh, oh something is downloading to your machine! Read More»
Posted in Computer | 1 Comment »
November 19, 2008 by
Jason Some music fans hide shameful little secrets in their basements, garages, and crawlspaces: pleather carrying cases and shoe boxes filled with audio cassettes the sad jetsam of the digital media revolution. I used to run across my own water-damaged box about once a month while I searched for places to stash the latest haul of diapers from the warehouse store. Whenever I tossed it around, my music tapes rattled in protest, and I felt a little pang of regret that I had let my high school memories slowly degrade on magnetic tape. Before my cassettes joined my black Chucks and suburban teen angst in 80’s slacker heaven, I decided to grant them immortality by converting them into digital media files.
You might have your own fading memories trapped on cassette tapes, but now there is something you can do about it. There are a variety of tools you can use to convert analog recordings to digital sound files external sound cards, encoding software, even USB tape decks. Before you begin, however, you should know that any conversion process you use will take some time and will ultimately sound, well, like an old cassette tape. It doesn’t really make sense to convert a commercially released album that you can easily buy on CD or download as an MP3, but if your old recordings have personal value to you, it might well be worth the effort to convert them. Read More»
Posted in Computer | 2 Comments »
November 18, 2008 by
Jason A few months ago, my PC took over 10 minutes to start up. Now it just takes about a minute. Want to know how I did it? Here’s how:
1. Upgrade Your RAM
Yeah, the most obvious tip but people hardly upgrade it. RAM these days is very cheap, especially if you buy it through Amazon or eBay. When I checked Amazon, the price of 1 GB RAM was around $20-$30.
2. Get Rid of Unneeded Software
Most PCs come shipped with unneeded software. Uninstall all of them. I’m sure there are better alternatives to those software. For example, my PC came shipped from hp with lots of bloatware such as HP Image Zone, Norton AntiVirus 2004, Record Now! CD & DVD Burning software etc. I uninstalled all of them and replaced them with better software like Picasa and Nero.
3. Keep Only One Browser
This is part of the getting rid of unneeded applications but I decided to separate it because so many people have 3, or even 4 browsers installed on their computer. I used to do this; I used to have Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, and Safari. Now I only have Mozilla Firefox. Yes, I even removed Internet Explorer! Read More»
Posted in Computer | 2 Comments »
November 17, 2008 by
Jason At this point in time, Microsoft is only displaying the message “Coming soon,” instead of a list with Windows 7 security software providers. However, the company is looking to change this aspect within the next year. With Windows 7 evolved past Milestone 3 stage, as the pre-Beta Built 6801 bits have been made available to PDC 2008 and WinHEC 2008 participants, and subsequently leaked to torrent websites, Microsoft is laboring to produce the first Beta, and is also looking to ensure that security solutions will be offered to testers with that development milestone.
“Microsoft is actively working with security software independent software vendors (ISVs), so that security software solutions will be available for Windows 7 Beta and Windows 7 RTM,” the software giant revealed.
In terms of antivirus products, the policy of the Redmond company will not be altered by the advent of Windows 7. “We recommend that you install security software to help protect your computer from viruses and other security threats, and that you keep your security software up to date,” Microsoft informed. Read More»
Posted in Windows 7 | No Comments »
November 14, 2008 by
Jason
Since Windows 7 is nothing more than the evolution of Windows Vista, the two operating systems manage to share a consistent volume of resources. In this regard, Microsoft informes that the Vista Bridge Sample Library 1.3, which, in accordance with its label, is designed for Windows Vista, is capable of stretching all the way to Windows 7. Microsoft’s insistence to ensure backward compatibility with Windows Vista is by no means limited to software solutions and hardware products, and also involves the programming model of the platform.
“The Windows Vista Bridge Sample Library (VBSL) is an ongoing effort by the Microsoft SDK team to bridge between the .NET framework and the native Windows API. The VBSL is a class library that makes it much easier for managed developers to access light-up Windows Vista features with no need to worry about the Interop layer,” revealed a Microsoft representative.
Vista Bridge Sample Library 1.3 is designed to take developers beyond the .NET Framework. Vista provides, in fact, a range of features not included in the runtime environment, Read More»
Posted in Windows 7, Windows Vista | 1 Comment »
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