So typical of Chicago the weather yesterday was sunny and 70 degrees and today it’s 36 degrees and pouring rain. I guess it’s a day inside!
In other news however, if you are like me, and read www.digg.com frequently, you are probably aware of the controversy surrounding how stories are promoted to the homepage and how spamming works. Well, the latest TWiT episode, Kevin Rose explains all what has happened. Very interesting listen if you are a digg fan.
Onto the news!
IE7 Beta 2 released
Flash forward to this week and Microsoft has shipped IE 7.0 Beta 2. This version isn’t hugely different from the previous two pre-release versions, but the product has been fine-tuned quite a bit and is now quite close to the final version we’ll see later. In fact, Microsoft is so sure of IE 7.0 Beta 2 that they’re actually going to provide free phone support for this version
College bans all users from going to myspace.com
An investigation found that heavy traffic at MySpace.com was eating up too much bandwidth, said August Alfonso, the school’s chief of information and technology. Forty percent of daily Internet traffic at the college involved the site, he said.
Complete web-based office system: ThinkFree
I have to say, this looks damn cool! It is based on JAVA and AJAX. They have a Word, Powerpoint clone, as well as this “webtop” that allows you to store all your documents online. Check it out! ThinkFree gives you a lot considering you don’t need to pay anything for it: A gigabyte of storage, Microsoft Office-compatible editors, a way to share documents and to have access to and the ability to edit them from anywhere. It’s not going to put Microsoft Office out of business, but if you don’t need that Office’s advanced features, this free webware can be a godsend.
Black holes are econmically friendly. Haha
Scientists studying the energy output of black holes have discovered to their surprise that “the conversion of energy by matter falling toward a black hole is much more efficient than nuclear or fossil fuels” - so much so that “if a car was as fuel-efficient as these black holes, it could theoretically travel more than a billion miles on a gallon of gas”.
Awesome look at Firefox 2.0 requirements.
Describes what features will definitely make it, probably make it in, and what version you’ll see that feature in (alpha,beta, release, etc)
Windows WGA protection to target pirates with ANNOYING popups
Playstation 3 will NOT be 100% backward compatible
Awesome view into the new Airbus A380 cockpit. Complicated?
Firefox to take over Internet Explorer
A Windows user’s point of view on switching to Mac OS X. Good read