Category: News

Big money awaits innovators who can build rockets, sequence genomes, predict people’s movie preferences, harvest energy from the tides, or explore the Moon.

Muitos dos usuários que estão começando a utilizar a nova versão dos aplicativos do Microsoft Office 2007 ainda não repararam nas opções para personalizar seu layout. É possível, através de poucos cliques, alterar totalmente os estilos e cores dos textos, páginas e até mesmo da estrutura dos seus programas. Clique aqui para continuar lendo essa dica.

Paul, TJ, Ginger, Oscar, and Zoey have created one of their finest pieces of multi-media entertainment for your holiday viewing pleasure! These guys just get funnier and funnier! Enjoy!

If you’ve been reading this blog through your aggregator, you (might) see a flurry of posts from me today, after a 3-week seeming absence. It seems like my rebuilt (and hopefully more spam-free) blog was blocking Google Reader and other aggregators like Feedburner, probably due to overzealous security installs on my part. This has been fixed, at least for now. My holiday present to my blog followers was finally figuring this out; I knew it wasn’t working but didn’t have a chance to plumb the depths of WordPress configuration to figure out why. (I’m partly posting this update to verify that new posts will appear promptly… wish me luck!) (Edit: it worked. To paraphrase Tiny Tim, Google bless us, every one.)

Good news! You woke up to find a shiny new computer waiting for you under the tree this year. Whether it’s a Windows PC, Mac, or Linux box, here’s a quick starter guide to getting it running on all cylinders.

Photo remixed with help from Shandi-lee.

We’ve separated this little get-up-and-running guide into sections depending on whether the machine you got is Windows-, Mac-, or Linux-based, so just find the section that makes sense for you and get going.

• Windows Section
• Mac Section
• Linux Section

So You Just Got a New Windows Machine

Get to know Windows 7: Chances are pretty good that this is the first time a lot of people will be using Windows 7—and even if it’s not, take this opportunity to get to know Microsoft’s solid new offering with our Complete Guide to Windows 7. While you’re schooling yourself on Win7, you’ll at the very least want to check out:

• The Master List of New Windows 7 Shortcuts:
  Windows 7 adds loads of great shortcuts for switching between apps, moving windows around your screen, moving them to another monitor altogether, and much more. Here’s a quick-reference master list of the best new Windows 7 shortcuts.
• Windows 7’s Best Underhyped Features:
  It’s these less sexy, but very useful features, that make me think the more I use Windows 7, the less chance I’ll ever use Vista or XP again.
• Set Up and Use XP Mode in Windows 7:
  Windows 7’s new XP Mode lets you seamlessly run virtualized applications alongside your regular Windows 7 applications-so your outdated software will continue to work.
• Turn Your Windows 7 PC Into a Wireless Hotspot:
  Everybody’s got a wireless network at home, but if you’ve ever wanted to get your iPod touch, iPhone, or other wireless device connected, but all you’ve got is a wired network at work, school, or elsewhere, Windows 7 makes this process trivial.
• Master Windows 7 Jump Lists to Boost Your Win7 Productivity:
  For those of you that haven’t yet tried out Windows 7, when you right-click on a taskbar button in Windows 7, a menu slides out with recent documents and application tasks. You can even access it with the left mouse button if you choose. Here’s a rundown of our favorite Jump List boosters.
• Dual-Boot Windows 7 and Ubuntu in Perfect Harmony:
  Windows 7 and Ubuntu, despite their opposing missions, can get along like best pals on a single computer. Here’s how to set up a dual boot system that lets you enjoy the best of both worlds in perfect harmony.

Get rid of the bloat: There’s nothing like a fresh machine. It’s free from an overloaded system tray, bloated application installs, and disorganized file structures, right?

Unfortunately that’s not always the case. A lot of machines ship with a whole lot of pre-installed software that you didn’t ask for and surely don’t want. Our suggestion: Before you go nuts installing the software you really want, download Revo Uninstaller (a tool for getting rid of apps that’s superior to Windows’ default Add or Remove Programs tool) and get rid of all of the software that shipped with your machine that you don’t want or need.

Install your favorite apps in a snap: Now that you’ve cleared out the crap, it’s time to install the applications you really want. We’re huge fans of previously mentioned Ninite, a simple utility that lets you tick off checkboxes of your favorite apps, then downloads them and installs them in the background. That means no more hunting all over the internet to find and download the apps, and no more mindless Next -> Next -> Finish clicking. If you’d like a little help finding the best apps around to fill up your Programs folder, check out the following:

• Lifehacker Pack 2009: Our List of Essential Free Windows Downloads:
  We feature downloads of all kinds every day at Lifehacker. Here, we’ve bundled all the best free downloads for new computer owners, re-installers, would-be geeks, or anyone who wants to save time installing the best stuff out there. This is our 2009 Lifehacker Pack for Windows computers.
• Top 10 Tiny & Awesome Windows Utilities:
  It’s the little things that make a Windows system great—like utilities that use less than 10MB of memory to make your life easier. Here are 10 apps that pack a lot of greatness into very little space.
• 61 Free Apps We’re Most Thankful For:
  As we prepared to stuff our faces with a bountiful Thanksgiving feast, we turned our Thanksgiving spirit to the gobs of free software we love to say thank you to the developers, and to give our computers a feast of their own.
• Top 10 Windows 7 Booster Apps
  Windows 7 is a big improvement over Vista, and a pretty convenient OS in general—but it’s by no means perfect. These 10 downloads improve Windows 7’s looks, functions, and make it easier, safer, and more convenient to upgrade to.

So It’s a Mac, Is It?

Dive into your Mac: Whether this is your first Mac or your first time in Snow Leopard, we’ve got you covered:

• Hack Attack: A guide for switching to a Mac:
  If you’re new to the Mac platform—fresh off the Windows world—this guide to switching explains how to make sense out of all the differences between Windows and OS X, highlighting how to accomplish the same things in OS X you’re already completely familiar with doing in Windows.
• Snow Leopard’s Four Best Improvements (for Civilians):
  Most of Mac OS 10.6’s changes are deep in its underpinnings for developers to put to good use. But what do the rest of us get out of Snow Leopard? Modest, but nice, improvements to the everyday Mac workflow.

Install some killer apps, make a few useful tweaks: Once you’ve got a better understanding of what’s going on with your new computer, you’re ready to go on an application installation binge and do a little tweaking.

• Lifehacker Pack 2009: Our List of Essential Free Mac Downloads
  We’ve featured countless apps of all sorts over the years, but if you just want a quick look at the best free downloads for your Mac, this post’s for you. This is the 2009 Lifehacker Pack for Mac OS X.
• Secrets Updates for Snow Leopard, Still Tweaks Every Dark Corner of OS X:
  If you’re not a big fan of using the Terminal but love hidden features in OS X, Secrets is the preference pane for you. Secrets provides a list of hidden features (and descriptions of each) that can be easily toggled on and off with a simple click of a checkbox.
• Get More Precise Font Smoothing in Snow Leopard
  Among the many changes in OS X 10.6 was a simplification of the font smoothing options to a yes or no toggle. If your monitor text isn’t quite right, here’s a quick Terminal tip to get nitty-gritty control.
• SnowChecker Determines If Your Applications Are Snow-Leopard Compatible
  Free application SnowChecker runs a scan of your installed applications and tells you which may have problems running in Snow Leopard.

Linux-Lovers, This One’s for You

An overview and a few handy Linux tweaks:

• First Look at Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala Beta
  Take a look at the new features in the latest major point release or Ubuntu.
• Make Compiz Run More Smoothly on Linux Desktops
  If you’re running the Compiz window manager on your Linux system—known as “Desktop Effects” in Ubuntu—you might notice it doesn’t slide windows around smoothly, and causes occasional video tearing. Here’s the fix.
• Dual-Boot Windows 7 and Ubuntu in Perfect Harmony
  Windows 7 and Ubuntu, despite their opposing missions, can get along like best pals on a single computer. Here’s how to set up a dual boot system that lets you enjoy the best of both worlds in perfect harmony.

Now let’s get downloading: If you’re a Linux person, you can rest assured that your system is likely running lean and mean right out of the box. (That is, without the bloat of pre-installed crapware some Windows systems start off with.) So let’s get right to the downloading!

• Top 10 Ubuntu Downloads
  From Ubuntu tweaking to desktop customization and productivity boosting launchers, these apps promise to seriously enhance your machine.
• Allmyapps Bulk-Installs Your Favorite Apps, Makes System Rebuilding Less Painful
  One of the most irritating things about reinstalling your operating system is installing all the non-OS applications you love. Allmyapps lets you select all your favorite apps and roll them into a bulk installer to make rebuilding easy.
• Top 10 Cross-Platform Apps that Run on Windows, OS X, Linux, and More
  Whether your important data lives in the cloud, on your laptop, or on a different operating system, you shouldn’t have to use sub-par tools to get at it. These cross-platform apps run on your Linux machine, but will also work when you’ve got to move to a Windows machine for work or wherever you may end up.

Happy holidays to everybody, whatever it is you may or may not be celebrating. Enjoy that new gear, and let us know what else has helped you get up and running in the comments.

Buy This Item: [Click here to buy this item]

Read Original Article

The guys from WME have inspired me to do a driving video comparison of the Omnia2 and the Touchpro2. The video is quiet and is just me driving around holding the devices to show you the camera quality and since I do not have a car kit, its a bit shaky.

Right now in MN we have about 10+ inches of snow on the ground and there is more snowing every second, so this wasn’t very safe. Enjoy

Filed under: Etc., Toys/Games

All of us here at Autoblog would like to wish you a very Merry Christmas. We hope that Santa treated everybody well, and that you all have a great day catching up with family and friends. Have fun and drive safe.

If you’re bored during your travels, we highly recommend you fire up your smartphones and check out additional shots of the latest masterpiece from Lego mastermind Lino M. – the ’66 Ford Galaxie 500 convertible shown above. As you can see, Santa and his Russian mail-order bride, Natasha, roll in style. (We wonder what Mrs. Claus thinks.) Check out the full set of photos of this killer custom Lego build at Lino M.’s Flickr stream.

[Image: Lino M./Flickr]

Merry Christmas from Autoblog! originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 25 Dec 2009 11:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

 
幸福遇見 | 林依晨 (2009)
oh well, i don’t know who she is. but the front & back cover caught my attention instantly. her name is 林依晨 (lin i-chen / ariel lin) a taiwanese actress / singer.

幸福遇見 (xingfu yujian / encounter of happiness) is her debut album with her lovely debut single 甜蜜花園 (tianmi huayuan / sweet garden), followed by the second single 螢火蟲 (yinghuochong / firefly), come to me, and 接近無限的藍 (jiejin wuxian de lan / closer to the unlimited blue). the album contains 10 mandarin pop songs and one korean version of the song 惡作劇 (ezuoju / mischief). the complimentary dvd contains three videos including the famous video 螢火蟲 in two versions; regular version (5:30) and summer story version (10:00). watching her video is blissful just like her album’s title.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

I hope your holiday is filled with good cheer and good food. And I have no doubt that it will be.

This morning, I wanted to share one of my favorite ornaments from this year, my adorable Cupcake Tree Christmas Tree. You can actually recreate the look by placing a cupcake stand on top of a cake plate – preferably a green one. Just don’t forget to get a star to poke into the top cupcake to finish off the look! You can still buy these online and, while it’s a bit late to start adding to your tree today, it’s never to late to put a little present away for yourself for next Christmas.

There ain’t much to go on just yet, but one thing’s for certain: MSI will be unveiling a trio of new machines at CES in just a few weeks. Over on the Wind Top side, it’ll be introducing the all-new AP1920 all-in-one PC, which will measure in at 35mm thick and sport an 18.5-inch display, Atom D510 or D410 CPU and a power-sipping attitude. The nettop lovers will be thrilled to know that a new duo of mini PCs will also get unwrapped, as the Wind Box DC500 and DE220 step in with Intel’s newest Pine Trail processors and a whole slew of companion components that we’re still waiting to hear more on. Hey, we told you it was just a tease.

MSI teases Wind Top AP1920, Wind Box DE220 and DC500 originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 25 Dec 2009 10:14:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Hot Hardware  | Email this | Comments

Buy This Item: [Click here to buy this item]

Article

Honda Performance Development announced yesterday the conclusion of the agreement it had with de Ferran Motorsports for the testing and development of Acura’s sports-car program. Following two motorsports seasons of testing and developing the Acura ARX-01b and ARX-02a for the American Le Mans series, the partnership between the two sides comes to an end.

"Economic pressures have required us to change our plans, so we must regretfully conclude our testing and development agree… (read more)

Merry Christmas, everyone, and a happy new year!

My family and I are lucky enough to be celebrating the holiday season in Aspen this year. We’re playing, resting and relaxing before the new year begins. Before I get back outdoors, mimicking Grok in the snow, I wanted to take a moment to thank everyone for their support this year. Thank you for reading Mark’s Daily Apple, for participating in the forums, for commenting on my articles and for being active participants in this little experiment meant to change lives for the better. I couldn’t do it without you! Happy Holidays!

And here are a few articles that I think are fitting for this holiday season:

Benefits of Benevolence

Spirituality and Health

The Many Uses of Junk Food

Cooking As a Spectator Sport

Choose Your Booze: A Guide to Healthy Drinking

Dear Mark: Low on Willpower

Will Momentary Compromises Derail Your Efforts?

Social Wellness, Or Why Friendship Should Be a Health Priority

80/20 Principle

80/20 Principle Revisited

The Power of Holiday Tradition

10 Active Ways to Celebrate the Holidays

Savoring the Holiday

What Happens to Your Body When… You Carb Binge?

Get Free Health Tips, Recipes and Workouts Delivered to Your Inbox

Related posts:

1. Merry Chrismahanakwanzakah (and Festivus too!)
2. Dear Mark: How to Politely Pass on Dessert
3. The Power of Holiday Tradition

The new bracket winches by haacon are distinguished by a robust design. The winches are zinc plated steel or made of stainless steel. We offer 3 dimensions from 300 kg to 1250 kg load for the zinc plated version and from 250 kg to 1000 kg load for winches made of stainless steel. The open design ensures rope departure irrespective of direction. The rope capacity is from 16 to 28,5 m depending on type.

During my trip to Boston earlier this year, I had the opportunity to visit MIT. At the end of a long day of meetings with various MIT tech masterminds, I made my way to the funny shaped building (see photo right-below) where the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and its director Tim Berners-Lee work. Berners-Lee is of course the man who invented the World Wide Web 20 years ago.

This was my first meeting with the Web’s creator, whose work and philosophy was a direct inspiration for me when I launched ReadWriteWeb back in 2003.¹

Sponsor

Editor’s note: This story is part of a series we call Redux, where we’ll re-publish some of our best posts of 2009. As we look back at the year – and ahead to what next year holds – we think these are the stories that deserve a second glance. It’s not just a best-of list, it’s also a collection of posts that examine the fundamental issues that continue to shape the Web. We hope you enjoy reading them again and we look forward to bringing you more Web products and trends analysis in 2010. Happy holidays from Team ReadWriteWeb!

After shaking hands, I told Tim Berners-Lee that this blog’s name was in part inspired by the first browser, which he developed, called "WorldWideWeb". That was a read/write browser; meaning you could not only browse and read content, but create and edit content too. It was a shame then when Mosaic, a read-only browser, became the first mainstream Web browser in the mid-90s. It wasn’t until the rise of Web 2.0 that the read/write philosophy gained widespread acceptance.² On that note, we launched into the interview…

Note: the interview was published in two parts, with Part 1 on the topic of Linked Data. Part 2 explored other topics and can be found here.

How Linked Data Relates to The Semantic Web

RWW: Earlier this year you gave an inspiring talk at TED about Linked Data. You described Linked Data as a sea change akin to the invention of the WWW itself – i.e. we’ve gone from a Web of documents to a web of data. Can you please explain though how Linked Data relates to the Semantic Web, is it a subset of it?

TBL: They fit in completely, in that the linked data actually uses a small slice of all the various technologies that people have put together and standardized for the Semantic Web.

We started off with the Semantic Web roadmap, which had lots of languages that we wanted to create. [However] the community as a whole got a bit distracted from the idea that actually the most important piece is the interoperability of the data. The fact that things are identified with URIs is the key thing.

The Semantic Web and Linked Data connect because when we’ve got this web of linked data, there are already lots of technologies which exist to do fancy things with it. But it’s time now to concentrate on getting the web of linked data out there.

Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee and ReadWriteWeb founder Richard MacManus

How Linked Data Has Evolved via Grassroots

RWW: Linked Data has had a lot of grassroots support, which you mentioned in your TED speech. This is something Semantic Web technologies, such as RDF, have struggled to get over the years. Has the W3C been pushing the more bottom-up Linked Data world, because of the frustration over lack of take-up of top-down Semantic Web?

TBL: A lot of the initial RDF and OWL projects came out of the academic world; and some of them were projects to show what you could do in a closed world. And the files were zipped up and left on a disc. While they were interesting projects, and while the systems were useful systems, the Semantic Web community maybe missed the point of the ‘web’ bit and focused too much on the ‘semantic’. However the work that’s been done in the Semantic Web, the standards, was really valuable. It’s relatively recently for example that SPARQL [an RDF query language] has been developed.

Somebody drew an analogy the other day: can you imagine trying to promote a world of databases without SQL? Even though it’s not an interoperable protocol, it’s just a query language. So similarly, all that’s been put into RDF, rdfs and OWL is very valuable to the linked data community.

The Linked Data community tend to use a subset of that [Semantic Web technologies], of OWL for example. But they certainly use SPARQL. So you could argue that really it wasn’t ready to be deployed widely.

Linked Data started as a very informal Design Issues note that I put in; it was a grassroots movement from very early on. So yes W3C has been emphasizing the importance of Linked Data. It’s been the Semantic Web Interest Group of course, and various [other Semantic Web] activities, which has been pushing it. But also Linked Data has been seized on – a group of people for example put together DBpedia.³ That wasn’t commissioned, that was that they just thought it would be a really cool idea.

Graph of Linked Data sets on the Web, as at March 2009

Linked Data and Governments

RWW: In a recent Design Issues note, you urge governments to put their data online as Linked Data (although you’d also be happy for governments to just make available the raw data – presumably so that others can then structure it). What do you realistically expect, for example, the U.S. or U.K. governments to do over the next year? And in the near future, do you foresee different governments interconnecting their Linked Data sets?

TBL: One can’t generalize, governments are (like most big organizations) fascinatingly diverse inside them. So you’ll find that there are places inside governments where you get a champion who gets linked data and who’s just written a script and produced some linked data. So in the UK government for example, you’ll find there’s RDFa [in the code of its website] for civil service jobs. So if somebody wants to make a database of all the jobs, they can do that very easily.

There are other cases where the easiest thing for somebody to do is to just put data up in whatever form it’s available. Comma separated values (CSV) files are remarkably popular. They’re exported sometimes from spreadsheets. It’s remarkable how much information is in spreadsheets. Or sometimes pulled out of a database and then put up on the web. It’s not as good, not as useful to the community, as if Linked Data had been put up there and linked. But the first step of actually putting the data out there is the one that nobody else can do.

Data.gov, a catalog of public data, was launched in May by the U.S. government

The way to go is for government departments to go the extra step and convert [their data] into Linked Data. One of the nice things about Linked Data, when they have a pile of it, is that they could run a SPARQL server on it. SPARQL servers are a commodity product, a solution for all of the people who say ‘but actually I wanted to have XML.’ A SPARQL server will generate an XML file [and] allow somebody to write out, effectively, a URL for the XML file.

In fact, I don’t see why SPARQL servers shouldn’t provide CSV files, something which as far as I know isn’t in the standards. But I’d recommend it, certainly in government context, because CSV files are what people have and what people want.

So the message [for government] is to use RDF. Linked Data is the backplane, it’s the thing that you connect to in both directions. As a [web] producer your job is to make sure that you produce Linked Data one way or another. And as a consumer, there are lots of ways to consume that data once it’s out there as Linked Data.

In Part 2 of this interview we discussed: how previously reticent search engines like Google and Yahoo have begun to participate in the Semantic Web in 2009, user interfaces for browsing and using data, what Tim Berners-Lee thinks of new computational engine Wolfram Alpha, how e-commerce vendors are moving into the Linked Data world, and finally how the Internet of Things intersects with the Semantic Web. Read Part 2 here.

Footnotes:

1. The very first sentence written on this blog, on 20 April, 2003, was: "The World Wide Web in 2003 is beginning to fulfill the hopes that Tim Berners-Lee had for it over 10 years ago when he created it."

2. For more on read/write browsers, you can read another early RWW post entitled What became of the Browser/Editor.

3. DBpedia is a community project to extract structured information from Wikipedia; see ReadWriteWeb’s profile of this and similar resources.

Discuss

Filed under: Desktops, Hardware, Peripherals, Odds and ends, Apple

TUAWNothing was stirring, not even these mice originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 25 Dec 2009 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Buy This Item: [Click here to buy this item]

Read Original Article

In a scathing one page response, FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn cut Verizon Wireless to its knees by saying the answers the wireless carrier provided in response to the FCC’s investigation were “unsatisfying and, in some cases, troubling.” The commissioner chided Verizon for the fluctuating rationale behind its early termination fee, which has been expanded to include not only the cost of the device itself but operating and retail costs as well. She pointed out that high voice and data costs already subsidize these business costs and the fees levied, especially those at the end of a contract, are not in the public’s best interest. Clyburn further condemned Verizon by stating that she was “alarmed” by these $1.99 phantom data fees and that Verizon can not just bury its head in the sand and ignore this issue by saying it does not exist. The letter concludes with a stern reprimand reminding Verizon Wireless that they should be “focusing primarily on developing innovative products, maintaining affordable prices, and providing excellent customer service”. Hear that Big Red? Clyburn also promises to discuss this issue in greater depth with her colleagues next year. That water in which Verizon Wireless is standing just got a little bit hotter.

[Via DSL Reports]

Read [PDF]

Buy This Item: [Click here to buy this item]

Read Original Article

Repare na cara do técnico, ele deve estar pensando: “P**a que pariu, bem que minha mãe falava para eu estudar odontologia”