I don’t intend to write here about common search engines like google.com or Yahoo! Search or whatever, what I will try to do is present some interesting services out there that do something similar.

First we will talk about Live.com from Microsoft. The service is quite new and frankly i was surprised by the relevance of the searches. I tried with one of my usual nicknames and it found 2 pages full of relevant links about my activity on the web (forums, blogs and such), then i tried some slang words and it did quite well with that to. You can even use it to find information about your favorite team, match results, statistics, players statistics, logos, etc. Another interesting addition is the stock information search, a example I found is ‘amgn dna celg genz gild quote’ and since I’m not really into stock I’ll just leave it be, but try it and you will see the nice output the search engine comes with.

But this is just the beginning, Read the rest of this entry »

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Since yesterday, if you are planning to update your Office 2007 installation via web, or if you want to download additional plug-ins or templates, you will have to use the original (e.g not patched, cracked or hacked) version of the package. Microsoft now requires Office activation to permit the downloads of additional resources for the suite in question.

OGA (Office Genuine Protection)’s director, Ashim Jaidka said that “Vista’s Software Protection Platform wasn’t ready at the time we needed to make a decision about anti-piracy in Office 2007’s development”, so they developed an alternative of windows Genuine Protection (WPA) and implemented it into the Office 2007 suite.

This is one of the many Microsoft actions against piracy, but like every time, they should expect equal responses from hacker communities.

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For all the bloggers out there that use WordPress to power their blogs, version 2.0.5 is out and upgrade is strongly recommended as it includes some security fixes. The official announcement is available here, the changes can be found here.

Download WordPress 2.0.5

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Mike Shaver, co-founder of the Mozilla project, gave the opening keynote at the fifth annual Free Software and Open Source Symposium in Toronto. He used this occasion to launch a public invitation for all those interested to join and help the development of Mozilla, “a lot comes in small pieces from a lot of people,” he says. Shaver was at Netscape in 1998 when Mozilla was created and has been a key part of the Mozilla story for the past eight years and he believes that no matter how small the help given, Mozilla cam benefit from it.

Shaver thinks that all who want to contribute, all those with limited time and/or skill have this chance and their work is important in developing new versions and patches for Mozilla. He stressed over and over again during the speach that all those who wish to grow and learn in the same time contributing to Mozilla can do so as a part of the Open Source project that Mozilla is.

“Think about what is the thing that I do best,” Shaver told the audience. “Whatever it is, that’s my X factor, my superpower. Think about how you can you use that.“

Now personally I am a big fan of open source just for this point of view, to be able to do what you like in your own time and with the things you know and be able to use this in a bigger project so that all can benefit from it. This is the best thing at open source, wonderful community always ready to help you grow and experiment. Have fun with open source!

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Widgets are small programs, integrated into an Engine, provided by Yahoo!. The project is not new, but I just discovered it, and I must say that I’m pretty pleased with it.

I downloaded the Widget Engine, installed it, and started to fiddle around with the widgets provided in the pack.

The first one I played with was the Yahoo! Maps widget. It looks nice, but honestly, I had no use for it. Another one I checked was Yahoo! Mail Checker. It’s pretty useful, on the condition that you don’t use Yahoo! Messenger. All it does is show when you last checked your e-mail, and how many new messages you have. As I said, useful, but not if you use Y! Messenger. Yahoo! Notepad was the next on my list, but I didn’t spend much time with it. It’s just an ordinary notepad, with the extra feature that you can check your notes from any computer connected to the Internet. As I use only one PC, I had no use for it.

It might seem that the whole engine isn’t worth the trouble. Well, it is. The final widget I tested was the whole reason I installed the pack. It’s called Yahoo! Weather and I think that it’s just what I needed. I have to leave home every weekday at about 6:30 AM, and I really needed something different than the local news to show me the weather, and this is just what I needed. It shows you the forecast for the next 4 days, also the current temperature and other information, such as Humidity, Air pressure, or wind speed.

Another cool thing is that there are thousands of other Widgets available for you to download and enjoy. Whereas some are just fun to watch, others are useful and, in some cases, indispensable.

You can download the Engine here, and choose other Widgets here.

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As stated in a previous related post, RC2 was supposed to be the final release before the final version and history has proven that so many times before. We were all surprised when a post-RC2 version of Windows Vista was available from download. The build 5840 version of “Codename: Longhorn”’s release was not confirmed by Microsoft at this point, therefore we can only tag it as a “leak of information” from inside.

English name: Windows Vista.5840.16384.061018-1900.x86
Resources type: ISO
Edition: RC2 5840.16384.061018-1900
Release time: On October 19, 2006
Manufacture release: Microsoft

The Redmond company has postponed going RTM with Vista until 8th of November, due a certain bug in the updating system that was preventing some users from updating Windows XP to Vista.

See this link for details related to the download. It might be slower than a 80 years old grandma crossing the street ;)

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Nowadays, being a surfer and not having a blog makes you an uncool person. And this is proven. We’re news editors. We have a blog. We’re cool. See? ;)

A blog is a website where entries are made in journal style and displayed in a reverse chronological order. Blogs are often created for discussions over a common subject. For example, this blog is created for IT&C news, articles and reviews. They can be personal (such as diaries) or like communities (discussion blogs).

Blog stands for “web log”. In its essence, the blog evolved from the so-called online diaries, where people used to write about their lives.

There are different types of blogs, starting from the classical weblog (blog), and passing through video blogs (vlogs), linklogs, photoblogs, mobile blogs (moblogs), blogs that discuss a certain subject only (e.g politics, music…) which are called blawgs and many more. Some people blog for fun, to share opinions with others, but some people blog for money.

We blog for fun, as stated in ciops’ introductory post, in case someone wonders.
Happy blogging, everyone.

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