Free Office SharePoint Designer 2007
Microsoft has made Office SharePoint Designer 2007 available as a free download as of April 2, 2009. The Redmond company explained that customer feedback catalyzed the move, rather than alternative reasons such as the global economic crisis. By making SharePoint Designer 2007 a free download, the software giant is attempting to mirror the perspective that customers had of the tool, with the vast majority regarding the solution as a natural extension of SharePoint, rather than a standalone product.
“Today we are excited to share with you some news about SharePoint Designer 2007. Starting now (April 2, 2009), SharePoint Designer 2007 will be available as a free download! We want more of you customizing SharePoint and feel that this [is] a good way to put the tool in the hands of more people,” revealed a member of the SharePoint Designer Team. Read more
Free Microsoft Web Tools and Web Hosting
In collaboration with its web hosting partners Microsoft has debuted a new promotion designed to offer customers not only free web hosting but also free web development tools. Provided that customers will be willing to host their websites, and additional content, including Internet-based applications, on the Microsoft web platform, the Redmond company in collaboration with its partners is ready to offer them free hosting for a total of 60 days as well as the Microsoft Expression Web ($299 value) for free and the Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2008 Express Edition.
“This is a good example of our commitment to Interop and more importantly validation of our Software Plus Service strategy for providing customers to building consistent rich applications and with choice of hosting with our partners or in our cloud,” Read more
New soccer MMO announced
Most of the massively multiplayer online games are slowly turning into social networks, offering their players a chance to make more friends, talk with different people from all over the world and have fun at the same time. The most important thing is that this trend can be associated with any type of MMO, including sports titles.
This will be proved by the most recent game from Elephant Entertainment and Sleepy Giant – Goal Or No Goal (GONG!), a soccer simulation that comes with a pretty neat 3 vs 3 multiplayer format. The game also has a few adventure elements for those who wish to do even more than play soccer matches and socialize with new friends. Read more
Human Translations by Google
Although Google did not prepare its users for the launch of a human translation tool, as of yesterday, people could access the homepage of the new Google Translation Center. One day after its early beta launch and the new application has already failed, probably because Google engineers only wanted to offer a preview of their new interesting product.
The Google Translation Center is basically a translation tool, but what it makes it special is that translations are provided by humans, instead of programs. People who want to have their texts translated into one of the 40 languages have to upload them and wait for the documents to be taken off their hands by professional or volunteer users. Read more
Digg for Mobiles Gets Enhanced
In a piece of news that might or might not be Digg-worthy, the mobile version of the popular social networking website has gone through a reconditioning process and is now said to be better than ever. Which means that you can digg and/or bury articles from your handset more efficiently (if there’s any efficiency in “dugging” at all).
However, the refreshed Digg Website is not targeted for all the mobile diggers out there, but only for those who own handsets supporting a “full web browsing experience”. You know, the likes of BlackBerry, Palm Treo (or even Centro), Samsung Omnia, HTC Touch Diamond, Apple’s new iPhone 3G and so on. Read more
Google Lively
Did you ever get into Second Life? Basically, you could consider it a game, but for a lot of people, it’s more than just that. As an example, it’s enough to say that, a few months ago, I read an article about a real world company involved in the real estate business… in Second Life! So, we have real estate brokers arriving at the office, starting the computer, getting into Second Life, and then doing what one real estate broker usually does – selling properties, virtual ones, to be more precise, and earning money, but real money, this time. Now, you are probably wondering what’s the link between all this and Hitsgarden, aren’t you? I’ll get to it right away…
My friends, it’s all about Google! No, it’s not about Google Docs, Google Mail, Blogger or another service/application currently developed by the Californian IT giant that we are all familiar with. For now, this is still a pet in Google’s backyard, but they have decided to show it to the world, although they claim this is only 20 percent done, for now. What is it? Google Lively, of course! Read more
Bird Passes The Word
I don’t know about you but I’m always struggling to think up new passwords for websites and the myriad of other things I need to gain access to these days. As we all know using simple words, such as names and places for passwords is just asking for trouble as they can be easily guessed by someone who knows you, or about you, or cracked using ‘brute force’ dictionary methods, so here’s something else to try. It’s called Password Bird and all you have to do is enter a special name, special word and a special date and from that it creates a good quality random-looking alphanumeric password, but made up from bits of your special words and numbers, which should make it a little easier to remember
New Firefox Quick Off The Mark
Barely a day has elapsed since the new Firefox 3 browser, was released it happened at 6pm UK time on the 17th of June – and at the time of writing it was rapidly approaching 8 million downloads at the rate over 6000 per minute. This is according to the surprisingly inelegant (but fun to watch) download counter on the Mozilla website, which also indicates that more than 270,000 of those downloads were in the UK though it’s probably a lot more by now. If you are a Firefox fan you’ll find the download at http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-rc.html, where it is available in over 45 language versions. Read more
What’s In A Name?
You know how it is, you’ve just invented a brilliant new gizmo, or had an idea for what is bound to be a hugely successful website, but you are stuck for a catchy name. Your future business empire could stand or fall on the title, but you’re stuck, so what do you do? Well, you could do worse than pop along to the Name.Noemata website, where you will find a Random Name Generator, and very good it is too. The trouble is now I have some great names, but no products… No worries , now how many Auroberths do you want, and could I interest you in a couple of Extimacs?
