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.

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.

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.

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.

So you may or may not know but Spotify, probably the most innovative music service provider is now available in the United States. Spotify works very different that what you  might be familiar with. If you live in the United States you might currently use Pandora or iTunes. Spotify is unlike Pandora where you can’t choose the exact song you want to play and unlike iTunes where you have to pay for each individual song. Spotify works off of a subscription service where you pay a monthly service fee to gain unlimited access to any song in their database at any time and the best part is it’s ad free. Right now you can only get the paid versions or get the free version off of an invite. The paid version starts at $4.99 an goes up to $9.99.

Oh yea did I mention I have invites to use Spotify for free? To get one email me at sel@syssu.com. Hurry up as I only have four left!

UPDATE: I’m out of invites sorry! Congratulations and Enjoy to Alex, Vicki, John, and Hayes. Apparently there is a way to get an account without an invite. Read the “Full Article” to find out more!

Lifehacker has posted an article on how to get an account without an invite. This requiers a bit of work but might be worth it to some of you. Apperently if you follow the steps below you should be able to get the account.

• You need to start with a UK account. To do that, you’ll need to be in the UK—or, at least, appear to be. To do that, visit DaveProxy (or another free, UK-based proxy service) and go to spotify.com. (Note: if you’re using DaveProxy, be prepared to contend with a lot of pop-up ads. Just close them as they come up. They’re harmless.)
• Sign up for an account on the UK site. You’ll need a UK zip code, but just search for McDonald’s in London and you’ll find one without issue.
• Once you have an account, sign out and go to spotify.com like you normally would in the US. You won’t see a place to log in because that’s hidden behind the signup page. Pretend you’re signing up for a premium account and you’ll see a message asking you already have an account and want to log in. You do, so click the associated link and log in.
• Go back to spotify.com and you’ll now see a black box up at the top of the site. It’ll read “continue to spotify.com.” Click on it.
• You’re in, but your account is still UK-based. You’ll see your username displayed up on the top right. Click it and choose “Edit Profile.”
• In the “Country” menu, change “United Kingdom” to “United States” and set your zip code to whatever it actually is. Save your profile when you’re done.
• Download the Spotify app and log in.

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

If you didn’t already know the new iPhone OS starting at iOS 4.2.1 has a cool little feature called AirPrint. With AirPrint you can print from your iOS device to a wifi AirPrint supported printer, but what about the ones that are not? This cool applications for Windows makes it possible to route all your AirPrint jobs to your computer to your printer.

Link: AirPrint To Your PC

If you want to have a way to quickly search your docs, contacts, and emails within Google Apps or even Gmail then this is for you. This free browser add-on works just like a Macs finder or Windows Search, quickly showing you results as you type.

Few Enhancements: Quoted From Cloud Magic
CloudMagic 2.0 also boasts many UI enhancements to make your search better & faster. Few noteworthy changes are – a) tabbed interface for emails, docs & contacts search results & b) full screen mode for integrated search in emails, docs & contacts. You continue to get rich preview of the content inside search results. With CloudMagic 2.0 you can refer to other emails & docs while composing a message without opening different tab or window. Similarly you can refer to any docs or emails while working on docs.

Download Link

Recently I’ve been trying to find a way to Sync all my documents between Google Docs and my Windows Home Server. Reason I want to do this is because I can get access to files from my server more quickly when at home ,and when at a remote site Google makes it a lot easier to update the documents, and finally a third way to backup my documents other than an external hard drive. The problem I have run into is that there is no way to properly sync between Google docs and WHS. I know there is services out there like Memo, Syncplicity, and Officsync but none of these are perfect. For example, I’ve heard if you create a file on your local computer sometimes the sync process can get messed up.

So I found what might be a solution. Dropbox allows you to sync folders between many computers and also uploads the files to their site for backup and remote access. The only problem is I already use Google for everything and like the single login to get access to my documents, calendar, email and everything else.

Before I make the switch to Dropbox I’m going to give at least one of these Google Docs sync software packages a try, and will report back with my ultimate decision and why I chose it.

Technology has came a long way from the first computer. Now you are able to interface with your computer pretty much anywhere with anything. TV has also evolved a long way from just being able to watch it to recording live tv to watching episodes online. Now you have Boxee.

“Boxee“, which is a open-soruce, cross platform social media center that works for Windows, Mac, and Linux. Boxee, a bran of XBMC, takes normal Media Centers and allows you to view, review, and share your media through social networking services. Even though it is still in early development it is a great leap forward to having a “all-in-one” media center allowing you to watch local movies, tv shows and listen to music but also allowing you to grab the same kind of content from the web.

Although it has not been relased yet Boxee is working with D-Link to make the “Boxee Box“. This product will run Boxee for under $200 dollars with all the nice high definition connections.