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Showing posts from September, 2010

Introducing the Google Phone Gallery

Here at Google, we’re thrilled with the global adoption of Android and with the high quality of devices that are coming to market around the world. Since there are so many great phones, we wanted to make the selection process a little easier for people who are in the market for a new one. Today we’re rolling out the Google Phone Gallery -- a showcase of Android-powered devices that deliver the best Google experience today. Check it out at http://www.google.com/phone . All the phones in the gallery include Android Market, Google Search, and other Google Mobile services such as Gmail, Maps, and YouTube. There are tools that make it easy to compare phones side by side: you can filter phones by country, manufacturer, and carrier; view and compare technical specifications and features; and find where each phone is available for sale. We’ll continue adding phones and countries over time, both to round out the gallery and as new phones come to market. Reusable Screen Protecto...

Seabird – A Community-driven Mobile Phone Concept

Since Mozilla Labs launched the Concept Series with an open call for participation we’ve had thousands of people join in, share ideas and develop concepts around Firefox, the Mozilla projects and the Open Web as a whole. In response to our open call Billy May , in early 2009, produced a throw-away concept for an “Open Web Concept Phone” . Working directly off of that community feedback, Billy has since finished the exploration with his concept “Seabird”. The following write-up is by Billy May and explores what an Open Web phone might look like: Concept Series: Seabird Also available in 3D on YouTube (cross-eyed/red-cyan/etc): Overview The Mozilla Seabird, part of the Mozilla Labs’ Concept Series, is an experiment in how users might interact with their mobile content as devices and technology advances. Drawing on insights culled from the Mozilla community through the project’s blog, a focus quickly developed around frustrating physical interactions. While mobile CPUs, ...

Firefox finally gets "paste and go" in FF4 nightly

Other browsers like Chrome and Opera can do it, and they've been doing it for ages. There are add-ons that let Firefox do it, but if it's such a useful feature, why hasn't it been included out-of-the-box? "It" is paste and go, and like sync functionality, it has finally been permanently bolted on to Firefox. In recent nightly builds of Firefox 4, you can right-click to paste a URL and go to it without pressing enter -- or paste and go to search any copied text. To be fair, you could already right-click highlighted text and choose to search with your default engine in Firefox, but the absence of paste and go has often made me wonder "why?" It's yet another feature addition to Firefox 4 , which is racking up quite a lengthy list during its beta phase. As always, you can download the latest nightly build of Firefox 4 from Mozilla or check for updates in Minefield's about screen.

Internet Explorer 9 final will require Windows 7 SP1

Chances are you don't have the Windows 7 SP1 beta installed. You may very well, however, have Internet Explorer 9 -- apart from a handful of hotfixes, no major updates are required to test drive the new browser. However, it's been decided that you're going to need Windows 7 SP1 installed before you can pop in the final version of IE9. Microsoft has yet to announce release dates for either SP1 or IE9, of course, but it's safe to assume that the service pack will arrive first based on the TechNet posting where the SP1 dependency is called out. Why the hook to SP1? Will IE9 leverage some super-secret awesomeness that Microsoft has kept hidden from prying eyes? Probably not. But if you're going to run a shiny new browser, why not run it on the most up-to-date version of your OS that's available? Interestingly (or not), there's no mention of Vista in the post. Of course, Vista users ought to either have installed Vista SP2 by now or upgraded to Wi...

Hotmail update brings Facebook chat, video integration

The last few months have been busy ones for the Hotmail crew, and they're continuing to push new features to their users. The latest round of upgrades includes enhanced folder options, built-in package tracking, embedded video playback, and a rather significant upgrade to Messenger. Hotmail users can now chat with their Facebook friends from the comfort of their inbox -- if I had my druthers, I'd pick Facebook integration instead of AIM in Gmail. As for the package tracking, detailed information will be presented right below any FedEx tracking IDs while DHL and UPS will be linked to the appropriate tracking pages on their respective sites. The massive photo attachment update which rolled out in the U.S. has now gone global, giving all Hotmail users the ability to include up to 10GB of photos per email . [ed note -- do any of you send that many photos in a single message? Cripes!] Two new sites have also been added to Hotmail's built-in playback feature: Just...

Google Scribe

Google launched a very interesting tool that offers suggestions as you type: Google Scribe . It's not exactly the service I anticipated 3 years ago , but Google Scribe works surprisingly well. For example, I started to type " This works sur " and Google suggested " This works surprisingly well ", which is exactly what I wanted to type. Instead of typing 14 characters, I could only type "1" or press Enter to select the first suggestion. "Google Scribe provides text completion service. Using information from what you have already typed in a document, Google Scribe provides related word or phrase completion suggestions. In addition to saving keystrokes, Google Scribe's suggestions indicate correct or popular phrases to use," explains Google . The nice thing about this service is that you don't need to use Google's editor. You can add a bookmarklet to your browser and use Google Scribe in Gmail, Blogger, Google Docs or on any ...

Instant Search in Google Chrome

Google Chrome will add support for instant search, the feature released this week by Google. An early implementation is already available in Chrome Dev Channel and in Chrome Canary build . You can enable this feature by adding the following command-line flag to a Chrome shortcut: --enable-match-preview (in Windows, right-click on the shortcut, select "Properties" and append the flag to the "Target" value). Chrome's flavor of instant search is quite surprising. As you type a query in Chrome's Omnibox, the browser shows a preview of Google's results for that query. This is suboptimal because it doesn't use Google's predictions, which speed up entering a query. Instead of displaying the results for [weather] when you type "w", Chrome only shows the results for [w]. When you select one of the suggestions from the address bar, Chrome previews the results for that query. If Chrome finds a web page that matches your query, it loads tha...

Cocky Soccer Goalie

Google Buzz

Many tech blogs say that Google Buzz is an unsuccessful project and Google will have to abandon it. Google Buzz is not an experimental service like Google Wave, it's an extremely important project for Google's future and it's a key component of Google's social strategy. To see how important is Google Buzz for Google, consider that Buzz wasn't launched in Google Labs. It wasn't even launched as a standalone service: Google Buzz was integrated with Gmail, one of the most popular Google products. Google Buzz is also the only Google service that has a special icon and a special search command on Google's mobile site. In less than 7 months since Buzz's launch, the service already has a powerful API , it's integrated with Google Maps , Google Reader , Picasa Web Albums and it's constantly improving . Google Buzz is actually the service planned in 2007 whose goal was to integrate Google's social applications and become the central place for s...

Bookshelf Designs Unusual And Desirable

Design is everywhere, all the buildings, cars, planes, clothes and even bookshelves are designed by the designers. Such different visual design is  good inspiration source for web and graphic designers because it’s totally different creative  field somehow related of course. This collection will help you to feed your imagination with fresh and creative ideas from furniture design range. Some of the listed examples are very creative and you’ll be surprised that bookshelf could look so impressive and be functional in the same time. 1. T.SHELF 2.  “Krea” bookcase 3.  Saba Italia 4. Twin Shelves 5. The Swollen Wall 6. WisdomTree 7. Cardboard Bookshelf 8. Digitally Fabricated Bookshelf 9. Toboga Bookcase 10. Domino Expo 11. The Laica Bookshelf 12. Bibliotheque Tree 13. MYDNA Twist Bookcase 14. Books on the wall 15. Curly bookshelf 16. Circle 17. Elfa desk 18. “M40″ wardrobe and bookcase 19. Yellow 20. Bookshelf 21. Ideas for the office 22. TOTO ...