GadgetReview

Well, folks, it’s true.  An era has ended.  One of the greatest early guardians of Internet content just got wiped off the face of the web about ten hours ago.

I’m talking about Geocities, folks, the place where everybody who was anybody who knew HTML went for free web hosting.  They too could make a web page about their cat or their dog (Foofie, even–if you saw the White and Nerdy video that makes a lot of sense) or anything like that.

Back in the early days of the Internet, long before blogging and SEO and any modem speed much faster than 14.4 kbps (yeah, K.  As in Kilobyte.), Geocities was the place to go to get a chunk of the world wide web for yourself.  And Yahoo realized this, inevitably buying it for a whopping $3.5 billion bucks.

Of course, these days, Geocities wasn’t as widely used as the blogs and social media of today, so that spelled the end for Geocities.

So long, old friend.  We’ll miss this simple relic of a bygone era, back when the Internet seemed new and potential seemed limitless.

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Sometimes you want nothing more out of life than to be able to step through your computer monitor and go live on that magnificent stretch of beach pictured on your desktop.  Google has sensed your plight, o cubicle dwellers, and offered up something to make it worse: a Google gadget called My Daily Hawaii.

My Daily Hawaii not only shows incredible beaches, but also offers up Hawaii trivia, history, travel tips and more.  If you actually answer the Hawaii trivia right, though, you win a “super cute puppy picture prize”, which actually makes some sense.

Admittedly, if you live in, say, a cold Northern climate, you may well consider My Daily Hawaii to be a huge dose of masochistic glee, but for those of us who just like to look at a sunny beach as a quick pick-me-up in the cold black depths of winter, then this is a great piece for us.

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Hewlett Packard’s just recently introduced a new software gadget designed to help you get a little more green with your daily computing and offers the Power To Change gadget, part of a whole lineup of said energy saving widgets from HP, Google and Microsoft, among others.

This gadget syncs up with various Windows power management features to shut down monitors and turn off unused computers completely throughout the day.  HP will let you download that gadget for free, as well a host of other companies offering a similar gadget.

This is actually a really good idea.  There’s more than a little potential for waste involved with computers, so helping users find a fast and easy way to save a little extra juice.  Once you save a little extra juice one day, saving it every day can really add up to stomething big, which just might be the way to help everybody go a little greener.

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Well, if you’ve been worried about using your various Net-capable gadgets because of the lack of net neutrality law, then worry no longer.  Seems that the FCC is about to adopt net neutrality as a set of general principles soon.

Net neutrality, in case you don’t know, is a standard that requires all internet service providers to treat all information equally in terms of download speed.  For instance, Comcast recently decided to force BitTorrent users to accept vastly slowed download speeds as they gave precedence to other users.  Technically, that’s not illegal, but the FCC did scold Comcast, and now with net neutrality, such actions as Comcast took will be illegal in the future.

So download away, folks–your ISP can’t stop you any more.

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Guess who wants a piece of Amazon’s Kindle market?  As it turns out, a whole a lot of people.

The list is pretty wide and growing by the day, and includes names like News Corp (otherwise known as Fox), Hearst Publishing, and now, Time Magazine wants to change the way you read books and possibly even its own magazine.

At the rate things are going now, it’s not so hard to believe that dead tree publishing will go the way of the dodo within the next 20 years.  After all, who is really that interested in keeping giant cases full of books in their house when all they have to do is put their library down on the nearest end table at night?  Taking a paperback book with view to the grocery store or jury duty or to a doctor’s appointment is a pretty cumbersome task unless you have deep pockets or a handbag,  and you can really only carry one at a time. But imagine the possibilities of being able to take your entire library with you. And why stop at yours? Why not the entire Library of Congress?

Maybe print-based books will have longer than I think they do to live.  But with the sheer amount of competition coming for them, it won’t be an easy fight.

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Europe has a pretty big problem with its gadget vendors these days–roughly half of them, according to a report from the European Union, are under investigation for something.

The worst part is just what that “something” entails, according to reports:  concealing delivery charges, misleading customers about products, and failing to honor the customer’s right to return products within a week as mandated throughout the European Union.

Three hundred and sixty nine websites throughout twenty eight countries are currently under investigation by EU officials, and punishments for wrongdoing vary wildly according to the charges filed.

I don’t know about you folks, but to me, this is horrible news.  When you can’t trust the web stores in any basic level you’re leaving a serious potential for economic devastation.  If no one trusted Amazon any more, or eBay, we’d lose a HUGE portion of revenue.  And with three hundred sixty-nine European websites under investigation, this doesn’t bode well for an economic recovery.

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HP debuted an all new all-in-one wireless printer today with a built-in 4.33-inch touchscreen that can access popular sites, such as Mapquest or Coupons.com, enabling users to print out content without the use of a computer. Web surfing activity is limited to each individual Web-app, which is built specifically for the site and is based on the Linux OS. Users can also convert documents and RSS feeds into Webapps allowing them to print out a greater variety of content. Additionally, apps will be available at HP Apps Studio and the printer will come bundled with apps from USA TODAY, Google, Fandango, Coupons.com, DreamWorks Animation, Nickelodeon, Web Sudoku and Weathernews, Inc.  The HP Photosmart Premium Printer with TouchSmart Web will be available this fall for $399.

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Today Microsoft released the final version of Internet Explorer 8.0. According to initial reports, the new browser has a lot to like and becomes a solid contender in the war of browsers. Some reviewers even go so far as to say it outperforms Firefox when it comes to basic browsing, although they’re quick to note that Firefox’s extensibility still cannot be touched.

Feature highlights include:

• Accelerators. Accelerators make it faster and easier to perform common tasks online by making Web-based services such as ESPN.com, Live Search and Sina available for use directly from the page people are viewing. Users can simply right-click a word or phrase and instantly map, e-mail, or share it.
• Web Slices. Web Slices in Internet Explorer 8 makes favorite information from sites such as Digg, Yahoo! Mail, OneRiot, and eBay instantly available wherever someone goes on the Web
• Visual search suggestions. The Instant Search Box in Internet Explorer 8 enables rich, real-time search from sites such as The New York Times, Amazon.com and Wikipedia, as well as sites from people’s own Favorites and History, complete with visuals and detailed information that saves time

Official press release:

 

REDMOND, Wash. — March 18, 2009 — Today Microsoft Corp. announced the availability of Windows Internet Explorer 8, the new Web browser that offers the best solution for how people use the Web today. It can be downloaded in 25 languages at http://www.microsoft.com/ie8 starting at noon EDT on March 19. Internet Explorer 8 is easier to use, faster and offers leading-edge security features in direct response to people’s increasing concerns about online safety. A new study commissioned by Microsoft and the National Cyber Security Alliance and conducted by Harris Interactive Inc. shows that 91 percent of adults in the U.S. are concerned about online threats in the current economic climate, and 78 percent are more likely to choose a Web browser with built-in security than they were two years ago.

“Customers have made clear what they want in a Web browser — safety, speed and greater ease of use,” said Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft. “With Internet Explorer 8, we are delivering a browser that gets people to the information they need, fast, and provides protection that no other browser can match.”

In response to extensive customer research and input from tens of millions of customer sessions, Microsoft developed Internet Explorer 8 to focus on what matters most to people. The security enhancements offer protection against existing and emerging security threats online. It blocks two to four times more malware attacks than other browsers; cuts down on the time it takes to complete common tasks on the Web such as searching, mapping and sharing, including navigating 15 of the 20 top worldwide sites; and blurs the lines between the services they use daily and the browser used to access the Internet.

Helps Protect People From Online Threats

The new study released today reinforces the importance of safety in browsing, indicating that 78 percent of people are more likely than they were two years ago to choose a browser that includes built-in protection against security threats without them having to go online to download additional programs or browser add-ons. It also showed that 91 percent of adults in the U.S. are concerned about online fraud and identity theft in today’s economic climate, and 37 percent are less likely to shop online because they would have to give their personal information.

Internet Explorer 8 offers the best security protections among leading browsers: a study released today by NSS Labs indicates that Internet Explorer 8 blocks two to four times as many malicious sites as other browsers on the market today.

Makes Common Online Tasks Faster and Easier

In addition to offering improved security and privacy protections, Internet Explorer 8 is one of the fastest browsers on the market today, beating other top browsers in page load time on almost 50 percent of the 25 top comScore Inc. Web sites.* It also helps people save time while using the Web with easy-to-use new features, including the following:

•	Accelerators. Accelerators make it faster and easier to perform common tasks online by making Web-based services such as ESPN.com, Live Search and Sina available for use directly from the page people are viewing. Users can simply right-click a word or phrase and instantly map, e-mail, or share it.
•	Web Slices. Web Slices in Internet Explorer 8 makes favorite information from sites such as Digg, Yahoo! Mail, OneRiot, and eBay instantly available wherever someone goes on the Web.
•	Visual search suggestions. The Instant Search Box in Internet Explorer 8 enables rich, real-time search from sites such as The New York Times, Amazon.com and Wikipedia, as well as sites from people’s own Favorites and History, complete with visuals and detailed information that saves time.

“We are excited about Internet Explorer 8 for several reasons, including its ability to provide our customers with updates to eBay products using Web Slices so they can keep track of their buying activity while surfing the web,” said Matt Ackley, vice president of Internet Marketing and Advertising at eBay.

“The new ESPN Web Slices on Internet Explorer 8 make it easy for sports fans to check on the latest news and sports videos in a new and exciting way,” said Jason Guenther, vice president of technology and product development at ESPN Digital Media. “We have a heritage of leveraging technology to deliver the best sports content to fans, and this is another example of our dedication to that.”

 

[Cnet]

Not sure how I missed this one but Microsoft recently enabled POP3 access for users of Hotmail. What this means is that you can now easily check your hotmail on external non-Microsoft e-mail clients and mobile devices without the messy plugins and workarounds.

Here are the settings:

POP server: pop3.live.com (Port 995)   
POP SSL required? Yes
User name: Your Windows Live ID, for example yourname@hotmail.com
Password: The password you usually use to sign in to Hotmail or Windows Live
SMTP server: smtp.live.com (Port 25 or 587)   
Authentication required? Yes (this matches your POP username and password)
TLS/SSL required? Yes

For more details click here.

[Phonescoop]

My Safari 4 experience rocks so far.  It’s super speedy and based on my 6 hour test drive has no glaring bugs.  Big ups to Apple.  My only gripe are the God awful top tabs.  They make navigating between each tab a cryptic experience to say the least, and I’m constantly clicking into another window.  But – drum roll please – there is a fix.  Close out all Safari windows, upon up Terminal (just search for that in ’spotlight’ if you ain’t familiar) and when it’s open and loaded, copy and paste the following and hit return (note: you need to restart Safari to get it to ‘take’):

defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4TabBarIsOnTop -bool NO

If you wanna restore the top tabs, because your a masochist:

defaults delete com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4TabBarIsOnTop

[Crunchgear]