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Inside Edison Lab of Microsoft’s Redmond Campus with Joshua Topolsky

Sel — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 00:19:01 +0000

Joshua Topolsky is a man who always gets to take a look inside companies workplaces, like the nerds version of MTV Cribs. Recently he recieved the pleasure of getting to see inside the Edison Lab on Microsoft’s Redmond campus. Some of the technology they showed is actually outdated and I have seen for years, but some if it is just amazing.

Microsoft Will Silently Upgrade Everyone To Latest Version Of IE

Sel — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 17:50:44 +0000

YES!! Microsoft has finally decided to take the path of Google Chrome and recently Firefox by automatically pushing the latest version of Internet Explorer to their customers. This is great news if you are a developer or tester. This means you will no longer have to test on older versions of IE. Even though I decided a long time ago that I will not support IE7 and below, I can not officially not have to support anything lower than IE8.

The update will be pushed out to Australia and Brazil customers running Windows XP/Vista/7 on January before being pushed world wide.

Source | TechCrunch

Get Windows 8 Preview Tonight at 8PM

Sel — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 19:04:41 +0000

PC world has posted an article saying Microsoft is going to release Windows 8 preview tonight at 8PM Pacific time. The release will be in a form of an ISO file in either 32bit or 64bit on their developers site. Although I did not see in the article if its going to be a public release, there has already been news reported that Microsoft plans to release a public beta and maybe this is it.

It is also important to note that you will have to do a fresh install if you plan on using this. You should never use any kind of test software such as beta releases on real environments because they can always fail.

Windows 8 Public Beta Release Next Month

Sel — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 02:47:40 +0000

According to WinRumors Microsoft will be making a beta public release of Windows 8 next month. The best part about it is Microsoft has confirmed it will be easy to get. By the way “Public” means everyone gets it. But beware betas do expire so I do not recommend using it on a PC where you hold valuable data.

The software giant is currently preparing a Windows Developer Preview build of Windows 8 to be made available next month. Microsoft’s official BUILD Twitter account revealed on Friday that pre-release bits would not be secret and easy to get hold of.

Microsoft Promises Free Phones to WebOS Developers

Sel — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 02:42:46 +0000

WinRumors reported that a Microsoft official made a tweet offering free phones among other things to WebOS developers. I guess we should all hurry up and become a developer then?

Brandon Watson, Senior Director of Windows Phone 7 development at Microsoft made the offer in a twitter message on Friday. “Any Published WebOS Devs: We’ll give you what you need to be successful on #WindowsPhone, incl. free phones, dev tools, and training, etc.,” said Watson. The offer comes hot on the heels of HP announcing its plans to discontinue its TouchPad and pre phones and halt all further webOS device development.

Microsoft Plans To Fully Support USB 3.0 In WIndows 8

Sel — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 02:33:35 +0000

According to WinRumors, “Microsoft revealed on Monday that it plans to fully support USB 3.0 in Windows 8.”.

USB 3.0 is the latest standard for USB connectivity. USB 3.0 supports transmission speeds of up to 5Gbit/s, 10x faster than USB 2.0 (480 Mbit/s). A number of laptops now support USB 3.0, including models from Sony, Toshiba and Dell.

Mac Software I Use

Sel — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 00:12:14 +0000

Here is a list of some of the most common Mac applications that I use. I think I use just about every one of these at least once a day, and I would hate to not have any of these applications as they are all very important. They start out as simple word processing applications to torrent applications to coding applications. This is also not everything I use.

Adobe Acrobat Pro X ($199)

I use this a lot when I’m creating PDF files but when I’m actually reading them I usually use OSX’s built in previewer that works wonderfully. I know there is a lot of free alternatives out there but I believe the best PDF creator is the one Adobe offers.

Adium by Adium.im (Free)

Adium is my all-in-one messaging client. With this I am able to sign onto all of my messaging clients like IRC, MSN, and AIM without having a separate application for each one.

Airfoil by Rogue Amoeba ($25)

I use Airfoil so I can wirelessly stream all my music that I play on either iTunes or Spotify or Pandora to my surround sound speakers through Apples Airport Extreme.

Google Chrome (Free)

I think everyone knows what Google Chrome is right? This is my favorite browser and I think it is way better than FireFox or Safari. One feature I can not live without is the “Inspect Element”. I use this all the time to help me design and find design flaws.

Coda by Panic ($99)

My favorite source editor when it comes to CSS, PHP, and HTML. Coda is the main reason I use a Mac, and is a must have tool for me to be a web designer. The things I like about it is the CSS editor makes it very easy to edit and create CSS and just the overall workflow and appearance of the applications is great.

Chicken Of The VNC (Free)

Great, open-source VNC viewer for the Mac. I use this to VNC into my remote computers and it has not let me down yet. Very easy and straight forward and I love how it saves your server connections for later use.

Dropbox by Dropbox (Free)

Need a simple way to share files between computers or other people? This is probably the easiest way I have found. I use this as my documents folder so I can easily edit documents between my home computer and then open them up at school on my laptop without having to carry around a thumb drive.

Apple’s iCal (Free)

It defiantly has its flaws, and a lot of them. But you can not beat the easy to use free and most of all built in calendar app by Apple. I use this to schedule appointments and keep track of my daily to-dos (Or don’ts).

iPhoto by Apple ($49)

I use iPhoto to keep track of all my photos, upload my photos to Flickr, and extract my photos from cameras and my iPhone. iPhoto makes it very simple to make simple edits to your photos and also makes it very easy to look at them. I think Windows has yet to create anything as elegant and simple as iPhoto.

Little Snitch by ObDev ($29.95)

Little Snitch keeps track of all my network activity and whenever an authorized program or source wants to access the internet or network it has to get “OKed” by me first.

Microsoft Office ($100)

I used to use Google Docs but I just found too many flaws in it. So now I use Microsoft Office to handle all my documents. I then use DropBox from above to handle the shariiphotollaboration part that I loved about Google Docs.

Parallels ($79.99)

When I need to run an old Windows program or just feel like booting up some BackTrack Linux this is where Parallels comes in. Basically all it is, is some Virtual Machine software for Mac.

Photoshop by Adobe ($199)

I use photoshop to make changes to photos that iPhoto can not do and to create or edit images for sites. Great and a must have for web design. There are free alternatives out there but they are just not as good as Photoshop.

Sparrow Mail App ($9.99)

Sure you can use the built in mail app for the Mac but I just think Sparrow is a lot better and handles Gmail a lot better.

Spotify ($9.99 monthly)

Handles all my music pleasure. I ditched iTunes because it does not have a monthly subscription and that is what I LOVE about Spotify.

The Unarchiver (Free)

I use this to handle any compressed files that Mac built in file compression tool can not open.

Transmission (Free)

This is what I use when messing with torrent files. There is other ones out there just as good like uTorrent. But I enjoy Transmission a lot better.

This Is How I Feel About Sony

Sel — Thu, 12 May 2011 08:09:49 +0000

So I am very frustrated with Sony and its worthless hardware. With that said I went on a “Fuck you Sony” Google rampage search to look for anti-Sony stuff. Well watch this video because this is exactly how millions of people like myself feel.

Also some cool links

- FuckSony.com
- GeoHot (Guy that got sued by Sony)
- Boycott Sony
P.S. I love PlayStation…I hate Sony, its ethics towards business and handling its customers, and its service..

Windows Snap on Mac With iSnap

Sel — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 05:55:16 +0000

I have to give it to Bill Gates and Microsoft when they came up with the idea of window snapping. If you are not familiar with it, what it allows you to do is maximize a window or put two windows side by sad by dragging them to the top or side of your screen. So I was on the search to find out how to do this with Mac, although there is many other ones out there I ran into iSnap which comes in at a great price of only .99 cents.

With the iSnap app, you can organize various windows to fit perfectly on your screen and access them simultaneously.

By clicking and dragging your windows to various sections on your screen, you can optimize productivity with a snap. iSnap offers you 3 different templates to choose for optimal productivity.

BONUS FEATURE:
For a limited time, purchasing iSnap also includes iShake! iShake allows you to grab any window and by shaking it, it automatically minimizes every other window except the one you shook. By shaking again, it will restore all previously minimized windows.

Extras:
Take advantage of keyboard shortcuts that allow you to give your trackpad a break.

Link to product

Update Offline or Multiple Windows Computers with AutoPatcher

Sel — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 22:18:59 +0000

Have you ever wanted to be able to update your computer or multiple computers without having to connect to Microsoft’s update site or download automatic updates? Lets say you are an IT person and you need to push updates to multiple standalone or none network ready computers. With AutoPatcher you can easily accomplish this task, and they just made it compatible with Windows 7!

AutoPatcher is a portable Windows application that will grab the latest Windows updates, and give you the ability to apply those updates to as many computers you want with the downloaded updates it pulled. One of the coolest things about this application is its free too!