Month: July 2012

Everyone wants to be “Social”… at least they do right now. It is “the big thing!” But Office? Social? Okaaay!

New Microsoft Office gets more social

“Announced today, Microsoft’s latest Office suite will try to help users collaborate more easily through social media.

Demoing the new version of Office at a press conference, Kirk Koenigsbauer, a corporate vice president for Office, showed a five-person video chat using Microsoft’s Lync application. In the demo, Koenigsbauer revealed how he could drag and drop someone from his buddy list into the live meeting.

Another participant was able to drop a PowerPoint presentation onto the shared canvas for all to see. Koenigsbauer then showed how users could draw directly on the presentation via a touch-screen device, which then appeared on PowerPoint for other meeting participants.

Since OneNote is integrated into Lync, users can share their notebooks with other people on the conference call and even take and display notes while the meeting progresses.

Microsoft SharePoint is also joining the social-media party, offering a “cleaner, simpler” design that borrows the look and feel of its news stream from the likes of such social networks as Facebook, Twitter, and Yammer. That’s likely not a coincidence given Microsoft’s recent purchase of Yammer.

PowerPoint users can comment on messages in the newsfeed, view conversation threads, and even take advantage of Twitter-like hashtags and @replies

And courtesy of another Microsoft purchase, users can see if other people are available via Skype from any application in the new Office suite and make Skype calls directly from within Outlook.”

Need more power than a Raspberry Pi? Check out this quad-core!

Korean company’s tiny quad-core ARM Linux computer packs a punch at $129

“Little Linux computers have attracted a lot of interest from hobbyists this year. The $35 Raspberry Pi ARM board, which met with huge demand when it launched in February, is a compelling solution for affordable embedded projects. But what if you need more power than the 700MHz ARM11 board can offer?

A Korean hardware manufacturer called Hardkernel is launching a high-end alternative. The company’s new ODROID-X board comes with a Samsung Exynos 4 processor, a quad-core CPU clocked at 1.4GHz. The board also has a quad-core Mali 400 GPU, 1GB of RAM, six USB host ports, an ethernet adapter, headphone and microphone jacks, and an SDHC card slot for storage.

With four times as much RAM as the Raspberry Pi and a much more powerful processor, the Hardkernel board seems like a nice option for more computationally-intensive usage scenarios. The system is still highly compact, measuring at about 3.5 x 3.7 inches.

Because the Hardkernel board is based on the Cortex-A9, which uses the ARMv7 architecture, it is capable of running the latest version of Ubuntu in addition to Android. Ubuntu doesn’t support the Raspberry Pi’s ARM11 architecture (the Raspberry Pi foundation recommends using Fedora on its board).

Of course, users can expect to pay more for the higher specs of Hardkernel board. It is available for $129, which is a lot more than the Raspberry Pi’s hobbyist-friendly $35 price tag. It’s still less than the $183 PandaBoard ES, however, which has a dual-core 1GHz ARM CPU and 1GB of RAM.”

Double the space at the same price! Pretty good. I think they are feeling the competition!

Dropbox Doubles Pro Storage for Same Price

“Dropbox on Tuesday announced an upgrade to its Pro plans that doubles the amount of storage without a price hike.

The company also added a new, 500GB option.

The move upgrades Pro users with 50GB and 100GB accounts to 100GB and 200GB, respectively. The 100GB option costs $9.99 per month or $99 per year, while the 200GB will run you $19.99 per month or $199 per year.

‘We’ve heard from architects with giant drafting files and photographers with huge portfolios,’ Dropbox said. ‘But mostly we hear from families who have more than 100GB of photos, docs and videos.’

Pricing for the 500GB tier was not announced.

The service will automatically update overnight, so existing Dropbox Pro subscribers will wake up tomorrow to a supersized version of their account. The Dropbox pricing page will also be updated tonight to reflect the changes. Dropbox is also offering existing Pro users a three-month Pro 100 trial to share with family and friends.”

Looking for deals on games, check out the limited time sale at Steam!

Steam Sale Kicks Off With Huge PC Game Deals

“The PC game download service Steam has launched its annual summer sale, starting with huge discounts on popular games such as Portal 2 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3.

Every day through July 23, Steam will offer 24-hour discounts on a batch of new PC games. Today’s deals include Modern Warfare 3 ($30 instead of $60), Portal 2 ($5 instead of $15), Terraria ($2.50 instead of $10), and Legend of Grimrock ($6 instead of $15).

In addition to the daily 24-hour deals, Steam will be running ‘Flash Sales’ on shorter time cycles. The deals available at the time of this posting include Mafia II ($7.50 instead of $30) and Deus Ex: Human Revolution ($7.50 instead of $30).

Other games will also be discounted through the sale period. Now is a good time, for example, if you’ve been meaning to try classics such as Counter-Strike ($5) or Left 4 Dead 2 ($10), or the recent critically-acclaimed Walking Dead game ($19). Bundle deals are also available from individual publishers such as THQ, whose 15-game collection is now selling for $50 instead of $311.”

Digg was once the “darling” of bidders and potential buyers, there was a time that it was being considered for sale at $200 Million in 2008 by suitor Google. Now, after alienating its uswers and changing itself so much that no one wanted to use it, it is being sold for a mere 1/2 million.

Once a Social Media Star, Digg Sells for $500,000

“Digg Inc., a social-media pioneer once valued at more than $160 million, is selling for the deeply discounted price of about $500,000, three people familiar with the matter said.

The buyer is New York technology development firm Betaworks, which is attempting to revive a news-sharing site that was outmaneuvered by Facebook Inc. FB -0.52% and Twitter Inc.

Digg confirmed Thursday it sold its brand, website and technology to Betaworks. The price is a pittance for a company that raised $45 million from prominent investors including Facebook investor Greylock Partners, LinkedIn Inc. LNKD +3.40% founder Reid Hoffman, and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen.

Digg received higher offers from bidders that included technology and publishing companies and start-ups but ultimately decided Betaworks had the best plan for reviving its brand, these people said. In May, Washington Post Co. hired 15 members of Digg’s engineering team—more than half of the company’s overall staff—for its SocialCode digital media subsidiary.

Betaworks is acquiring a website that still has a well known brand and sizable audience of more than 7 million visitors per month as of May, according to comScore.

Digg was once one of the most promising start-ups in Silicon Valley. The website was founded in 2004 as a way for consumers to put together their own collections of news and other Internet content, rather than relying on the choices made by newspaper editors.

Digg users would post links on the site’s home page, then others would vote on their choices, determining the prominence of the stories they posted.”