Month: July 2012

This is their Hotmail replacement. The article is from their Outlook Blog.

Introducing Outlook.com – Modern Email for the Next Billion Mailboxes

“Recently, we talked about how we’ve reimagined cloud services for Windows 8 and Windows Phone. And we described new apps for Windows 8, updates to SkyDrive, and how cloud services power the new Office Preview, We’ve also been hard at work on a mission to reimagine personal email – from the datacenter all the way to the user experience. Today, we’re starting to deliver on that goal with a preview of the new Outlook.com – modern email designed for the next billion mailboxes.

Webmail was first introduced with HoTMaiL in 1996. Back then, it was novel to have a personal email address you could keep for life – one that was totally independent from your business or internet service provider. Eight years later, Google introduced Gmail, which included 1 GB of storage and inbox search. And while Gmail and other webmail services like Hotmail have added some features since then, not much has fundamentally changed in webmail over the last 8 years – though yesterday’s frustrations about the small size of inboxes are now things of the past. At the same time, email is becoming less and less useful as inboxes become cluttered with newsletters and social updates, and people increasingly keep up their personal connections in social networks instead of their email address books. All of this has led many to hope for a better solution so you don’t have to settle for today’s webmail.

We think the time is right to reimagine email. So today, we’re introducing a preview of Outlook.com. We realized that we needed to take a bold step, break from the past and build you a brand new service from the ground up. You already know Outlook via the Outlook desktop application-for PCs and Macs-as the world’s most popular application for reading email, managing a calendar, and connecting to people. And you may have used the Outlook Web App connected to Exchange Server in your organization. Now, in addition to a desktop application and a service for businesses, we’re offering Outlook as a personal email service – Outlook.com.”

This is from the OUYA Kickstarter site:

“We’ve been saying that OUYA will offer all kinds of games.

This morning, we are honored to announce that OUYA is partnering with Square Enix to bring you one of the most beloved franchises in gaming — Final Fantasy. We will kick this off with Final Fantasy III, which will be a launch title on OUYA. This will be the first time gamers outside of Japan can play FFIII on their televisions through a console.

But that’s not the end of it: We’re promising to deliver Final Fantasy III like you’ve never seen it before – Hironobu Sakaguchi’s third installment in the role playing game franchise will be updated to exploit OUYA’s high-definition resolution in glorious graphic detail. For those of you who are new to Final Fantasy, we’ll offer a free demo so you can give it a go!

Previously unreleased in the U.S. until it appeared as a 3D remake for the Nintendo DS in 2006, Final Fantasy III was widely referred to as one of the ‘missing pieces’ in the FF series. OUYA players can now proudly claim this piece of the puzzle.”

In the last Netcast I talked about M$ getting all “social” with it’s new Office, well, now it is getting “cloudy” as well!

SkyDrive features for Office 2013 detailed

“Office 2013 is now available to download in a preview version, so its users already know that the next version of Microsoft’s productivity software suite also has SkyDrive features. Today, Microsoft offered up more details on how its SkyDrive cloud-based storage service will be integrated and used in Office 2013.

In a new post on the Office Next blog, Microsoft points out that saving an Office document to a SkyDrive account should be no different than saving the same file on a PC hard drive. It states, ‘Like other default locations in File Explorer, such as the Documents Library, the SkyDrive experience is accessible from other Windows applications and available offline.’

If you want to read and/or edit an Office file you have created on another PC, you can log into your SkyDrive account and edit that same file you have synced with your home PC with Office Web Apps or even with the current Office 2010 suite. Microsoft states, ‘This is a major advantage of saving to your local hard drive because it gives you access to your documents wherever you sign into Office, and this approach is also a huge improvement over the cloud solutions that force you to stay online to do anything.’

But what if you have a bad online connection while you are traveling, but you still have to edit and sync up your Office documents for a big presentation? Microsoft says that any file uploads to your SkyDrive account are handled asynchronously by Office 2013. It states:

Therefore, if you are working on your document from a coffee shop with a weak WiFi signal, you will be able to continue making changes to the file while uploads are in progress. This ensures that the performance and latency associated with editing Office documents is not affected by the bandwidth, latency or even availability of your network connection.

Office 2013 will also let people know if they are working on files while they are also offline and can even alert Office 2013 users of any changes that have been made to documents that are awaiting an upload to their SkyDrive account.

Microsoft has also made sure that editing any Office 2013 documents will take up as little bandwidth as possible. It states, ‘For example, if you are working on a 50 MB PowerPoint presentation and decide to insert a new bullet point, Office will only upload that single bullet point.'”

OUYA, the Open Source Gaming Console, and very successful Kickstarter project, is gaining steam (no pun intended!) Get it? “Steam” is a big on-line gaming platform? OK, OK.

OUYA secures OnLive partnership, teases controller design as it passes $5.5M on Kickstarter

“OUYA, the wildly successful Kickstarter project that recently passed $5.5M in funding, has just announced a partnership with cloud gaming company OnLive, a service which delivers popular gaming titles on-demand over the Internet. This, at the very least, will guarantee games will be readily available from the start, in addition to OUYA’s plans on working directly with developers.

If you haven’t heard of OnLive yet, you can think of it as the Netflix of on-demand gaming. The service first launched on PCs, Macs an TVs, and then expaned to iOS and Android in December of last year. Here’s a tease from OUYA’s announcement:

According to OnLive, this partnership will bring “hundreds of top-tier games” from 80+ publishers onto the OUYA console — games that will also be playable on a tablet while you’re on the go. Instant demos (lasting up to 30 minutes) will also be available for nearly every game in OnLive’s library, including the likes of Ravaged and Darksiders II.”

Just a note, that we will be skipping our Dr. Bill.TV show this week (and this week only) due to the passing of my Mom, Bonnie Bailey. We are dealing with funeral arrangements, and other necessary things, and trust that you will understand the brief hiatus. Thanks, guys!

(Cross-posted from the Hand Held Hack)
This is an EXCELLENT Android HotSpot “tethering” tool! Try it, you will be impressed! At right, you see it on my DroidX 3G phone.

FoxFi WiFi or Bluetooth HotSpot Application

“FoxFi enables WiFi or Bluetooth Hotspot on your Android phone – no tether plan or rooting required! This is a new Android app with great reviews in Android Market. Bluetooth mode works for all phones. WiFi mode currently works on most Samsung/Motorola/LG phones and new HTC phones with Android 4.0 (HTC One etc). WiFi mode does NOT work on Motorola Droid 1, Motorola Triumph, Samsung Admire, LG Revolution or older HTC phones, use Bluetooth mode instead. Connect your tablets, computers or game console with WPA security. FoxFi usage is covered under your phone’s existing data plan.

FoxFi is much better than other tether software on Android. The advantages are obvious:

• No rooting required, avoid hassle and risk of bricking
• No need to install anything on the computer
• Supports connection from any tablets including iPad, Kindle, Nook etc.
• Supports connection from PS3, XBox, WII etc.
• Supports multiple connections at the same time
• Secured with WPA2. Avoids the security risk of enabling USB debugging.”

Another good reason to move to LibreOffice if you are a small business! Office 2013 won’t run on Windows XP or Vista.

Office 2013 Won’t Run On Windows XP, Vista

“Microsoft’s Office 2013 suite, unveiled Monday by CEO Steve Ballmer at a launch event in San Francisco, is only compatible with PCs, laptops, or tablets running the newest Windows operating systems–either Windows 7 or Windows 8, according to Microsoft.

Systems running Vista, XP, or older versions of Windows won’t be able to run the software, meaning that more than half of all computers currently running Windows would need an upgrade to run Office 2013.

Microsoft earlier this week posted the system requirements for Office 2013 Customer Preview on one of its support sites. Compatible operating systems are limited to Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Server 2008 R2, or Windows Server 2012.

A spokesperson confirmed the requirements are applicable to the final version of Office 2013.”