Windows 7 Shamrocks Theme Pack
Microsoft uses the Windows Personalization Gallery to not only let customers running the latest iteration of the Windows client customize their desktops with unique imagery, but also enable companies to do brand advertising on the users’ computers. However, the Redmond company is also feeding national pride with a range of themes featuring local content from countries around the world.
The latest addition to the collection of Windows 7 themes is the Shamrocks themepack, offered just in time for the Saint Patrick’s Day celebration on March 17th.
The Shamrocks theme brings to desktops a few wallpapers that are bound to resonate with Irish nationals more than with other users of Windows 7. As the theme’s label implies, the content features a lot of green and the shamrock, both symbols of Ireland. Saint Patrick’s Day, also referred to as St. Paddy’s Day or even Paddy’s Day, is an annual celebration of Saint Patrick, without a doubt the most prominent patron saint of the island.
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Windows 7 Life Theme
Windows 7 users that have been keeping an eye on Softpedia already know that Microsoft has been releasing a steady flow of personalization content. The latest Windows 7 theme made available by the Redmond company is titled Life, and comes courtesy of the Discovery channel and BBC.
The theme pack in question is available for download, as many others, free of charge via the Windows Personalization Gallery, the company’s central hub for offering themes designed to allow customers to customize their Windows 7 desktops.
“Bizarre, beautiful nature from Discovery Channel,” the short description of the Life theme, which will leave users with a feeling that the images should have been accompanied by more information, reads. Of course, the same is not the case with many themes on the Windows Personalization Gallery, but this specific example feels like it needs the added touch of the Bing wallpaper hotspots.
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Windows 7 RC Self-Destructs
Just in case any of you are still using the free release candidate (RC) version of the operating system, you will start noticing strange goings-in. The trial period has now ended and it begins with warning pop-ups, and unannounced twice-hourly shutdowns; anything you are working on will not be saved. This will continue until June 1st when it goes into ‘non-genuine’ mode, at which point a permanent warning notice appears on the screen, the wallpaper disappears and it will no longer be possible to download updates. Be warned, there are a number of fixes on the Internet that claim to be able to fix Windows 7 Release Candidate’s suicidal tendency but as far as I’m aware none of them work properly and some of them contain viruses or malware.
Lookin Good
LooKInMyPC won’t fix your PC the next time it throws a wobbly, but it might make it easier for you, or someone who knows their way around computers, to track down the fault. When called into action it produces a detailed system profile and diagnostic report about all of the hardware, running services, drivers, updates, startup programs, networks, Internet connections, event logs and a zillion other things about your PC that could prove useful. Save the report when the PC is behaving itself and if things do go awry and help isn’t at hand you can email the report to a knowledgeable friend or tech. You don’t even have to install it on your PC after you’ve downloaded the program you get the option to install it on your hard drive, or on a removable drive or UDB memory stick. Hopefully you’ll never need it (some hope…) but if you do, it’s ready to help.
Black and Blue
Can’t afford a Blackberry? Well, you might just be able to run to a Blueberry @9500, just don’t expect it to be compatible with Blackberry’s email service or apps. Yes, it’s a fake, and a pretty shameless one at that, and it’s not the first time the Malaysian company CSL has had a pop at Research in Motion, the Canadian manufacturer of the genuine article. On paper the spec is quite impressive, it has dual SIM slots, a Micro SD card reader, camera, optical trackpad, a number of ‘Islamic’ features, wi-fi and the cheeky beggars have even fitted it with an analogue TV tuner. It’s priced to sell, at around £120 but there’s not much danger of you getting hold of one in your local high street, at least not above the counter…
Compact Flash 5.0 Promises Petabytes
That’s 144 Petabytes to be precise, and if you want that in good old Gigabytes, that’s around 150994944 of them. Data transfer speeds are said to be in the order of 32Mb per second, but before you get too excited, no such card or storage chip exists, yet… The newly announced spec from the Compact Flash Association is basically a re-vamp of the way data on a memory card can be accessed, using a faster and more efficient 48-bit address, which opens the way for the theoretical 144Pb storage capacity. It’s sounds impressive but it’s worth remembering that 64-bit systems can theoretically address up to 16-Exabytes of data, which is 16384 petabytes, or 16777216 terabytes in old money. It sounds terrifying, but I only have to think back to the late 1970s and my first home-built computer, which had an impressive1 kilobyte of memory A few years later and my first hard disc drive had a massive 10 megabytes of capacity; I remember thinking at the time that it would take years to fill it up…
Bing Translator Evolves with 7 New Languages
The addition of Haitian Creole in the second half of January 2010 was only the precursor for the introduction of no less than seven new languages between the 20+ already supported by Microsoft’s machine translation technology. While the addition of Haitian Creole was done out of critical necessity, as the Redmond company was laboring to support the international relief efforts in Haiti, the new seven languages for which support has been added as of today, March 1st, 2010, are part of the natural evolution of Microsoft Translator/Bing Translator.
“I am happy to announce the addition of seven new languages to our translation service. As always, they will be immediately available for your use through the APIs and all the products that consume the service. Here is the list of languages that have been added in the latest release. In addition there have been several updates to the Haitian Creole language since [January 2010],” explained Vikram Dendi, senior product manager, Microsoft Translator. Read more
Windows 7 RTM ‘Year of the Tiger’ Theme Pack
What better way to celebrate the year of the tiger, than with a theme pack from Microsoft? Users running the Redmond company’s latest iteration of the Windows client can now download a new theme via the Windows Personalization Gallery. A Windows 7 ‘Year of the Tiger’ theme pack is available from the software giant free of charge, and can be integrated seamlessly into the operating system.
The six new background images feature tigers, no big surprise in this regard, obviously, given the leitmotif chosen for the theme.
The year of the tiger draws its origins from the Chinese zodiac involving a total of 12 animals. It is a Chinese tradition to associate years with animal archetypes, in cycles of 12. The tiger is third in row in the enumeration which is repeated once every dozen of years. In addition to the tiger, the Chinese zodiac also contains the following animal symbols: rat, ox, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, rooster, dog and pig. Read more
New Free Microsoft Security Essentials Release
A new release of Microsoft’s free security solution for Windows is now available for download. The Redmond company has made available for download extremely quietly the new version of Microsoft Security Essentials 1.0 on February 17th, 2010. The latest release of MSE, formerly codenamed Morro, is currently up for grabs from the Microsoft Download Center, with no details available from the software giant as to what, if anything was changed with the antivirus.
“Microsoft Security Essentials is a free download from Microsoft that is simple to install, easy to use, and always kept up to date so you can be assured your PC is protected by the latest technology. It’s easy to tell if your PC is secure — when you’re green, you’re good. It’s that simple. Microsoft Security Essentials runs quietly and efficiently in the background so you’re free to use your Windows-based PC the way you want—without interruptions or long computer wait times,” Microsoft noted. Read more
Microsoft Plus Yahoo vs. Google, So It Begins
The Microsoft and Yahoo marriage has been blessed by antitrust regulators both in Europe and over the pond, giving the two companies green light to implement their anti-Google search alliance. On the morning of February 18th, 2010, the U.S. Department of Justice and the European Antitrust Commission have wrapped up their reviews of the Microsoft-Yahoo search agreement. With the alliance between the two giants cleared without restrictions, the duo will now move to implement the deal.
“Although we are just at the beginning of this process, we have reached an exciting milestone,” said Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer. “I believe that together, Microsoft and Yahoo! will promote more choice, better value and greater innovation to our customers as well as to advertisers and publishers.”
Microsoft claims that the search agreement was announced in late July 2009, but the company has been flirting publicly with Yahoo for a total of over two years, but there’s no way of telling just how much time had Ballmer actually spent on this deal ahead of the start of 2008. The debut of February 2008, brought with it an unsolicited offer of $44.6 billion from Microsoft, which at the time was trying to acquire Yahoo. Making sure that the deal fell through was Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang, then occupying the position of CEO. Read more
