LS-HACKS

LAPTOP HUNTER

Microsoft has released the fifth laptop hunter ad in which Lauren and mom go searching for a PC for her to take to law school.

She says she needs a laptop with speed and battery life for less than $1700. They choose a Dell XPS 13a 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4GB RAM, 320GB HDD, and a $899 price tag.

I don't understand why anyone with 1,700 free dollars would choose a 900 dollar computer (Mac or PC) but you can watch the ad yourself.

Please go to this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5gM4xZvrLQ

Microsoft has released another Laptop Hunters ad in the ongoing video advertisement war between it and Apple.

Thistime we have Sheila, a filmmaker, looking for a computer that can do video editing

She looks at Macs briefly but says the best one underher budget of $2000 has only 2 GBs of RAM.

She ends up buying an HP HDX 16t, surprise!

Heres the link.

Microsoft and Verizon Wireless are in discussion to release an iPhone rival, according to the Wall Street Journal.

"MicrosoftCorp. is in discussions with Verizon Wireless to launch a touch-screenmultimedia cellphone on the carrier's network early next year, in a bidto compete with Apple Inc.'s iPhone, people familiar with the mattersay,"

-Amol Sharma and Nick Wingfield report for The Wall Street Journal.

"Microsoft'sproject, which is code-named 'Pink,' is aiming to produce a phone thatextends the tech giant's Windows Mobile cellphone operating system,adding new software capabilities. It would also likely includeMicrosoft's new Windows Marketplace for Mobile, a mobile applicationstore along the lines of Apple's, these people say,"

-Sharma andWingfield report.

Read More

A new ZuneHD image showing the user interface of the device has been leaked online by WMPowerUser.

They received the following details on the device from a source:
The ZuneHD will have a capacitive, multi-touch OLED screen with a 16:9 aspect ratio and TV out, from what looks to be a HDMI port on the side. The radio will now be HD and the device will support HD media playback, which will be available from the updated Zune Marketplace.

The ZuneHD will also support 3D Xbox games, but it is unclear what form this will take.

The device will come in 16 and 32 GB versions, and will support wireless sync. It will also finally come with a browser that supports multi-touch.

It is believed that the ZuneHD will ship in September and be available to the US, Canada, UK, France, and possibly other European countries.

The image has also been confirmed by the ZUnited Zune Community site.

Read More

Twitter was hit with at least three different worm attacks that started Saturday and continued into Sunday, the micro-blogging service acknowledged as it promised users it would review its coding practices.

"At about 2 a.m. on Saturday, four accounts were created that began spreading a worm on Twitter," company co-founder Biz Stone announced in a blog entry Sunday. "From 7:30 a.m. until 11 a.m. PST, our security team worked on eliminating the vectors that could identify this worm. At that time, about 90 accounts were compromised. We identified and secured these accounts."

That worm, which was widely reported on Saturday and dubbed "StalkDaily," exploited a cross-site scripting vulnerability in the Twitter service to infect user profiles. The original attack relied on tweets that referred to several malicious accounts allegedly created by Mooney; when users viewed those accounts' profiles, their own profiles became infected, and their accounts then sent more spam-style messages to entice friends to the just-infected profiles.

Those messages promoted the StalkDaily site with tweets such as "I love www.StalkDaily.com" and "Dude, www.StalkDaily.com is awesome. What's the fuss?"

Read More...

In the third installment of the Laptop Hunter ads, Lisa and Jackson purchase a PC worth up to $1500.

They were looking for speed, a big hard drive, and a good gaming computer. When looking at the notebooks Lisa says, "Lets go see the Macs. They are kinda popular at this age. Ohhh, these are way more money dude!" "It's a little too small. Maybe we'd rather go PC.", says Jackson.

They end up purchasing a Sony VAIO with a 16.4 inch screen and Blu-ray.

Microsoft has aired its second commercial in which they send out a person with cash to purchase a computer.

This time they send out Giampaolo who is looking for a laptop with power and battery life for $1500. While looking at Mac's he says, "This is sooo sexy... but Macs to me are more about aesthetics then they are about computing power." "I don't want to pay for the brand, I want to pay for the computer"

He ends up choosing a HP for $1099.

You can watch the video below...

The BoyGeniusReport has posted a hands-on video walkthrough of the Palm Pre.

So, check it. There’s something called the Palm Pre. We linked up with our friendly Palm rep, and he gave us a walkthrough of some of the brand new third party applications. Things like Pandora, Sprint TV, Palm’s Classic OS emulator, and Flight View all got shown off on Palm’s sexy Pre hardware. We also got a brief hardware walkthrough too, just for you guys.

Read More

Microsoft will include multi-touch controls with Windows 7 and is launching the Windows Touch Logo program to help consumers understand if a machine is compatible with the new control system.

The Windows Touch Team has posted a very in depth report on the new touch capabilities on the Windows 7 Engineering blog...

Making Windows Touchable
With Windows 7 we have enriched the Windows experience with touch, making touch a first-class way to interact with your PC alongside the mouse and keyboard. We focused on common activities and refined them thoughtfully with touch in mind. You will have the freedom of direct interaction, like being able to reach out and slowly scroll a web page then flick quickly to move through it. With new touch optimized applications from creative software developers you will be able to immerse yourself as you explore you photos, browse the globe, or go after bad guys in your favorite games.

-----
Touch gestures:
Windows 7 has a simple set of touch gestures that work in many existing applications. These include the basics of tap and drag, as well as scroll, right-click, back, forward, zoom, and rotate. More details on how gestures work is described later.

Improved high DPI support:
Windows 7 has improved high dpi support (see High DPI blog post).

Improved window management:
The updated taskbar and windows arranging features go a long way towards making Windows easier to use with touch.
o The taskbar buttons and thumbnails are ideally sized for pressing with touch, and specific behaviors are tuned for touch input.
o Aero Peek has been tuned to work with touch
o Sizing and positioning windows is easy with Aero Snap

Refinements to key experiences:
The top browsing and media activities were refined to provide an optimized touch experience. IE8 includes support for the core touch gestures (scrolling, back, forward, zoom) as well as an optimized address bar that opens by dragging down, and extra spacing in favorites and history lists when opened with touch for easy selection. In Windows Media Player, the transport controls (play, pause, etc) have larger clickable areas even though they still look the same size – so that they are easier to touch.

Touch keyboard:
The on-screen keyboard has been optimized for touch with glow key feedback that’s visible when your finger is covering the letter and multitouch support for natural typing behavior and key combinations. It’s designed for quick usage, like entering a URL.
-----

Read More

Windows 7 Touch Gestures

Western Digital has announced a new, redesigned My Book Network Hardrive. Available in 1TB or 2TB, the My Book Network HD features an automatic and continuous backup for all data on all computers. With its integrated UPnP media server technology, you can stream your files to any DLNA device, such as an Microsoft xBox 360 and a Sony Playstation 3. The My Book comes with a 3 year warranty and is priced at $229.99 USD for the 1TH and $449.99 USD for the 2TB.

Features:
The new My Book World Edition network hard drives feature:

* Automatic, continuous backup for all the computers on your network;
* Simple file recovery for lost or damaged files;
* Centralized storage and sharing for all your family's digital content;
* Best-in-class performance;
* Easy access to all your data from anywhere, anytime;
* Works seamlessly on networks with both Windows and Mac computers;
* Media server capability with DLNA 1.5 and UPnP certification to stream content to XboxBOX 360, Playstation3, wireless digital picture frames and connected audio receivers;
* Centralize and stream music collection to a Mac® or Windows® PC using iTunes software;
* Remote sharing of personal content like photos or documents with family and friends;
* USB 2.0 Utility Port to turn any USB drive into an instant network drive or extra capacity for the My Book World Edition
* Cooler, quieter, eco-friendly design with WD Green Power Drives which run cooler, quieter and consume up to 33 percent less power1;
* Capacity gauge to see at a glance how much space is available on your drive;
* High-speed data transfer with Gigabit Ethernet; and,
* 3-year limited warranty.

Read More

Purchase

Mobile World Congress 2009 took place this week in Barcelona, Spain bringing together the major players of the mobile phone industry. While Apple chose not to attend, a lot of the talk still surrounded Apple's iPhone. Here are a few notes of interest to come out of the conference.

- Apple's iPhone seemed to take center stage during a panel discussion with CEOs from Microsoft, Nokia and AT&T. They criticized Apple's closed vertical ecosystem. Microsoft's Steve Ballmer, specifically, had this to say:

"I agree that no single company can create all the hardware and software," he said. "Openness is central because it's the foundation of choice."

One audience question asked why these panelists were so worried about Apple when the iPhone holds only a small percentage of mobile phone marketshare. AT&T's De la Vega summed up the answer: "Because the other 99.5 percent of the industry is trying to copy the iPhone."

- Apple's investment in supporting upcoming web standards may begin to pay off with a new breed of "offline" web applications. Google demoed a version of GMail that will still work even when Airplane mode is on. Airplane mode effectively takes the iPhone offline, but by using local storage capabilities found in HTML5, users would still be able to browse and manipulate their mail. A YouTube video shows it in action. These sort of offline web applications have been discussed as possibilities in the past given Apple's investment in web-standards. Of course, these apps would work on any HTML5-compliant browser, including Android phones.

- A company called Sygic demonstrated a full featured turn-by-turn GPS application for the iPhone and is planning on submitting it to the App Store despite SDK terms that seem to specifically prohibit such applications.

- Gizmodo took a look at the new Android G2 and liked it with the exception of the typing interface.

Today Microsoft announced its upcoming editions of the Windows 7 operating system.

Microsoft expects that a majority of customers will be best served by two primary editions of Windows 7: Windows 7 Home Premium for consumers, and Windows 7 Professional for businesses.

-----
The first change in Windows 7 was to make sure that editions of Windows 7 are a superset of one another. That is to say, as customers upgrade from one version to the next, they keep all features and functionality from the previous edition. As an example, some business customers using Windows Vista Business wanted the Media Center functionality that is in Windows Vista Home Premium but didn’t receive it in Business edition. Customers won’t have to face that trade-off with Windows 7. With Windows 7 there is a more natural progression from one edition to the next.

With Windows 7 there will be two primary editions: Windows 7 Home Premium, and Windows 7 Professional. We think those two SKUs will meet most customers’ needs.

For our biggest enterprise customers, we'll continue to have an Enterprise edition. This edition will not be available at retail or by OEMs for preinstallation on a new PC.

We know emerging markets have unique needs and we will offer Windows 7 Home Basic, only in emerging markets, for customers looking for an entry-point Windows experience on a full-size value PC.

We’ll also continue to offer Windows Starter edition, which will only be offered pre-installed by an OEM.

And certainly there is also a small set of customers who want everything Windows 7 has to offer. So we will continue to have Windows 7 Ultimate edition to meet that specialized need. Windows 7 Ultimate edition is designed for PC enthusiasts who “want it all” and customers who want the security features such as BitLocker found in Windows 7 Enterprise edition.
-----

Read More