Just in case you’re trying to access SharePoint with IE7 and the server kindly keeps telling you to upgrade your Internet Explorer to version 5.5 or higher, here is the solution:
At evolt.org Browser Archive you can download any old Internet Explorer version as standalone application and run it on the very same machine together with your (automatic updated) IE7 installation.
Besides, I really had no idea how many different browsers exist!
Parallels is making it around some news sites today, for mainly two reasons:
After the update of my Parallels installation I found out that in Coherence mode I can drag&drop files between Windows Explorer and Mac OS X Finder even from and to external drives not visible in Windows. Pretty cool, didn’t know it before. I always shut down Windows, added the drives to my Parallels Windows set-up and rebooted Windows again to access them.
Everybody is talking about Virtual Earth 3D and the only thing I get is this installation message. Why is my language not 3D compatible and what if I don’t care if there is no 3D data in my region available? I would be perfectly happy if I could explore New York in Virtual Earth 3D, even in English!
Guess I’ll depend on screenshot-postings for some more time to see what Virtual Earth 3D is about…
It almost took a day to figure out whether Firefox 2.0 is released or not, but now it’s officially announced and Firefox is available for download.
Even people in Redmond noticed that there’s something cooking and sent this cake, un-poisoned.
Microsoft simply has not the corporate image to attack iPod/iTunes. The iPod is a lifestyle product, not a technical product. First of all they should probably change their industrial design team: MS iPod parody. (via engadget)
Jeff Schiller found out that driving directions are drawn using SVG in Windows Live Local. Interesting and great to see but it leads me to one question: what happened to Microsoft’s VML? Are they dropping (or not any longer forcing) their own technology in favor of an open standard?
Btw, I never had a closer look at Windows Live Local (they should probably flag their product announcements with “works now outside of IE too!”, I’m not even trying to access their services without IE anymore because of too bad experiences in the past) and I must admit that I’m pretty surprised. From a cartographic point of view the maps are looking very nice. In my opinion the map design is much better than in the rest of those search engine mapping services. Aren’t they all using the same or similar sources such as Digital Globe, NAVTEQ, TeleAtlas etc.?
Microsoft offers a lot features within Live Local:
Features are good, basically. Too many features are bad. I’m afraid if too many marketing champions get involved in the development of Windows Live Local they will kill the service by a feature overkill. The options I have on the site are already quite versatile. They reach from searching an address, marking and sharing places to visualize traffic information.
I still prefer the “keep it simple” design principle. The worst question a user can ask or think about while accessing your site is: “What can I do here?”. The very basic service or aim of your site must be clear from the beginning. If it’s hidden inside a forest of features then you are having a problem.
Now that seems to be what I was looking for! Since a few weeks I’m thinking about getting a new mobile device. I excluded notebooks from the very beginning because of their size, even sub-notebooks I considered as too big. The device should be small and lightweighted enough to easily fit in my bag, even better in my pocket, like a PDA. But at the same time I wanted all the advantages of a notebook: comfortably read & edit documents with a fair screen resolution and uncomplicated text-input, put programs on it as I like without too many restrictions (e.g. searching for special “portable” program versions). Neither notebooks nor any available PDA or smart phone fit my needs. I never would’ve thought that it’ll be so hard to find such a small and usable mobile device.
I think there is a good chance that I’ll get one of those new Ultra-Mobile PCs, if the pricing will be ok, approx. EUR 800,- seems quite reasonable to me. As far as I know, only after reading a few reports on various IT news sites, it seems to be possible to edit documents (e.g. notes, presentations, emails, etc.) in a convenient Tablet-PC like way or using this nifty thumb-based text input system. Microsoft already renamed their Origami thing into Ultra-Mobile PC and offer a modified Tablet-PC-Edition of Windows XP as operating system. Of course I would prefer something like a Mac OS X running them, but one can’t have everything.
An essential feature is that I can install my GIS software (ok, confession, since I’m using ESRI ArcGIS it wouldn’t be possible on Mac OS X), which I constantly need, on those devices. Having those applications and geodata with me would be sometimes very usefull in meetings. Even more exciting is that some of the new devices from Asus come with GPS on-board. So I can put my maps on it, let me guide to my desired locations and track all the way within my GIS. Seriously, I see portable navigation as a very prospering market. So IMHO they’re heading into the right direction by adding GPS to those devices.
I doubt that I’m the only one looking for such a device. Without pretending to be an IT market specialist I expect the new Ultra-Mobile PC devices to be a great success. Beside usefull tasks like editing documents, etc. one can put music, videos and other entertaining stuff on it. The screen seems to be capable of displaying videos in a certain quality, so add a good portion of entertainment to the buying reasons.
Update #1:
Watch some CeBit action videos of this gadget at You Tube.