Tag Archive | "Microsoft"

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Cure for Global Warming found?

Posted on 23 December 2009 by sophie

Nathan Myhrvold, from Princeton.edu Microsoft technology chief Nathan Myhrvold believes he has found a cure for Global Warming, and it will only cost $250 million and won’t disrupt the carbon-emitting world as we know it.

Myhrvold proposes we combat climate change by pumping liquid sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere through nozzles in a hose lifted more than 15 miles into the atmosphere with helium-filled balloons. This sulfur cloud will dim the sun in critical areas of the world by just enough to reduce or reverse the effects of global warming. He calls this cloud a “Stratoshield.”

Since sulfur occurs naturally in the environment, he says it will not disrupt our climate in a negative fashion, and will lower temperatures as desired in areas that need to be cooled.

Do you think this could work?

Source: http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2009/10/video_nathan_myhrvold_explains_how_to_save_the_world.html

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Google Apps or Microsoft Office?

Posted on 28 January 2008 by JoCoWash

google-gates.jpgChoosing software to make our lives easier is getting much more complex. Doesn’t make much since, right? Microsoft has always assured us in having an amazing easy suite of applications; Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook, etc. All of a sudden, suites start popping up online everywhere. Internet search-giant Google has come to market with a reliable and low cost suite of web-based tools: word processing, spreadsheets, calendar, e-mail, and more, all packaged as Google Apps. There are then the rest of the gang following behind such as Zoho, ThinkFree, and Corel’s new WordPerfect Lightning; not to mention the handful of open-source applications such as OpenOffice and StarOffice. All of these feature the ability to do word processing, spreadsheets, and more. However, which do you choose? What will give you the most for your money or is less really more?

There are pros and cons to each service, but for the money and feature set, I would choose between Google Apps and Office 2007. Basic versions of Google Apps are free and feature-packed, if you don’t mind limited storage capability and customer support. If you want more, there is always the premium option with most service like these. Premium packages cost all of $50 a year.

Johnson says SF Bay spends about $1,200 a year for Google Apps Premier, a fraction of the roughly $10,000 it would have cost to install software from Microsoft. He says he looked at other Web-based software, but decided Google’s size and reputation makes it the safest bet.”

Google stresses ease of use and downfalls of not using their services: “Sign up and you will never have to face another Microsoft upgrade or crash…” A feature that I like is the ability to access your stuff from any computer with an Internet connection. There are no downloads, backups, or new hardware to deal with.

I have used Google Apps before and love it. It is simple and easy to use. However, being a frequent Office user (Year 2000 and beyond) I have learned and grown accustom to certain keystrokes, tips, tricks, and just so much more comfortable with Office. In addition, if you are not online, Google Apps cannot be used. For a while, I have heard rumors that they are coming out with a desktop application to fix this, but I have yet to see anything yet. Editing Office documents in Google Apps is strictly a cut-and-paste affair. I am not a worrier like some, but I am somewhat concerned with the security. Although stated to be “secure,” I fear anyone is able to read and mess with my documents.

Office is cool, especially Office 2007. I have been using Office since I was in middle school and until this day, find it to be my main application suite. When I purchase a new computer, I also get Office. Office is also available for Mac also, so my Mac is equipped with the Office suite as well. If you gather up your money for the full version of Microsoft Office Professional 2007 and run it on a new PC or Mac with at least two gigs of memory and a 1.8 GHz processor, you will be rewarded with an array of features. The really neat thing I love about Office is the ability to integrate with other software on my system. My calendar information can be incorporated into emails (and vice versa) and I can blog on Word and place some statistics from Excel and send over a fax to Tom. There is just a variety of cool things you can do with Office. Just like Google Apps, there are some cons: It can be hard to find why Office’s extensive feature set is the way it is. In Outlook, your “contacts” are different from your “business contacts.” Outlook “lists” sometimes flow into Business Contact Manager, which is annoying. Microsoft does not support Adobe formats such as PDF and Acrobat. In addition, Office is rather pricey, sometimes costing well over $500! They are little things that cause the biggest frustrations sometimes.

So which one? Which will benefit you mostly? I enjoy using both. Each has something I like more or less, but to put it in a different perspective, if money is not an issue and you need to turn out dazzling presentations and spreadsheets, go with Office 2007. If group effort is important to your business and you don’t need to produce slick documents or do complex financial analysis, try the far less expensive Google Apps.

For some, it is a little easier to make that decision due to the popularity of the products. Not many people have heard much of the “Office” alternatives, so Office is first choice. But when these other applications suites start getting bigger and better – and they will – it’ll be a little harder to choose. If Google plans on being the next Office and something worth choosing over Office in most cases, it is clear that they are going to have to woo the millions of Office user out there. With Google’s strong software development team and their dedication, it will not be too long before the decision between the two giants become crystal clear, only reiterating less is actually more.

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Windows Live Writer Review

Posted on 30 October 2007 by JoCoWash

While geared for Windows Live Spaces users, Live Writer also works with blogs like WordPress, Movable Type, LiveJournal and Blogger. I have never been fond of using blogging tools and always stuck with the WordPress admin panel.Once downloaded and installed, It was easily able to tell I had a WordPress setup and I logged in and downloaded the weblog style. If you use Internet Explorer, there is the option of installing a toolbar that adds blogging functionality, and that is convenient.

When you start Windows Live Writer up for the first time, it will show you a new, blank post ready in WYSIWYG format within your blog style. Live Writer has the basic features you need of any blogging utility from WYSIWYG tools and spell check to inserting maps from Windows Live Local. The post Properties bar is at the bottom so you can add keywords to the post, adjust the time stamp and add URLs to send trackbacks to. On the top right of the window you can select which categories to organize the post into and Windows Live Writer was able to find out which categories this blog had.

Exploring the preferences menu exposes even more features that make Windows Live Writer an awesome tool. You can click on the drop-down arrow for the Publish button and post the draft you are working on to your blog. That way, you can continue blogging from any computer and not risk losing the post if saved locally on your computer. If that is not a big problem for you, you can switch the viewing mode to Web Preview before posting to see what it looks like on your blog. You can also have Windows Live Writer automatically save drafts at intervals of your choice, automatically check spelling before publishing and ping servers you tell it to when posts are published.

Windows Live Write is a beta, so do not get too upset when you find some things are just plain hassles, such as not being able to work on two post at the same time; You’ll have to open another window. Perhaps one of these days, they will fix some of the annoyances. I am sure when you download the product, you’ll notice some of them.

Windows Live Writer has the features and capabilities of a program you would expect to see bundled in the next version of MS Office. Windows Live Writer really creates a well-rounded blogging experience and if you are big on blogging, like me, then this might be a good program to try out.

Windows Live Writer is Free and can be downloaded here.

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Tafiti: Search With Style

Posted on 19 October 2007 by JoCoWash

Tafiti is a research tool that sits on top of Live.com and was developed with Microsoft’s Silverlight technology. Tafiti is a download and works on Windows XP , Vista, Mac and several browsers. Called Tafiti, which means “do research” in Swahili, it is intended to help “people use the Web for research projects that span multiple search queries and sessions by helping visualize, store, and share research results”. It has no problem doing this.When you first log in to the site, you are greeted with a clean screen. A box tells you that you need to install something called Microsoft Silverlight. Once you have done that, however, the interface changes to a magnificent display of colors…usually. When I visit now, there is a Halo 3 theme.You type your search terms on the card, which then goes off to the left hand side of the screen, and your results are listed in what looks like a drawer from a card catalogue filing cabinet. This all happens in real time, so when a search is done, an earth, a RSS Feed, newspaper, picture, and a book circle around for you to choose. Each time you search, another card is created to track previous searches. The search results show up on the pad and you find items you want to see, you can click them to launch them, or drag them into the tabs on the right-hand side. Those tabs can also be “tagged” so that you can remember what they were by hovering over them. The tabs stick around from search to search, so you can save links there as you work on other searches.

There’s also an interesting visualization tool called the “Tree” view. Clicking on that gives you a different view of your search results. It does not work all the time for me, but perhaps it is because my internet is being temperamental. It is all pretty neat though.

I’ll probably stick with Google as my main search tool, but I really like the Tafiti interface. If you are looking to search, and have some fun, this is the search engine for you. It’s a very creative way to look at searching the internet and helping to make your searching more productive and enjoyable! Check out the video demo!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwXPgRvBo2c[/youtube]

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