Month: December 2013

More Reasons to Love the Google Chromecast!

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1) You can watch anything that you can view in your web browser. I have been talking about this feature for a while. But, I am not sure folks “get” this feature even yet! For instance, there are TV shows on CBS, and other TV networks’ web sites, where they have full episodes available to view in your browser. Once you start a show in the Chrome browser window, then you can go “full screen” in the player, and if that is in a tab cast to your TV via Chromecast… guess what? You have a full screen TV show via Chromecast! Want to watch the latest version of RWBY on the Roosterteeth web site, guess what? Full screen on your HDTV in your living room! Now even your web-based shows are available!

2) Watch your own local (on your hard drive) videos. Wait! I thought that you couldn’t do that with the Chromecast! Yes, you can… because anything that you can view in your Chrome browser window, you can watch on your TV screen! So… all you have to do is open a local video file in your Chrome browser using the “Control-O” command in Chrome. It will come up in a player within Chrome, then you can hit the “full screen” button in the lower right corner of the player. (Basically, it is the HTML5 player.) Since Chrome supports file format viewing for such formats as AVI, MP4, M4V, MPEG, OGV, and WEBM videos, you can then watch you own local videos using this hack!

3) Do you want to show your entire PC screen on your HDTV? Maybe you want to show someone how to do something in a training setting? Well, you can! It is an “experimental” feature, but it is available. Just open your Chrome browser, click on the “Cast this tab…” option as usual, then select the drop down menu, and choose to cast your whole screen! As I said, it IS experimental, but, you can do it!

Windows 8.0/8.1 Growth is Slow!

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Windows 8.0 and 8.1 is not exactly “taking off!” Could it be Microsoft’s stupid determination to not have a real Start Button be the reason for it? Well, as I always point out, you should use ClassicShell from classicshell.net.

Windows 7 gains more market share than Windows 8 and 8.1

The Inquirer – “Microsoft’s Windows 7 still holds more market share than Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 combined.

Even more disturbing, for Microsoft, is that Windows 7 has actually gained more market share that the newer versions of Windows.

Statistics provided by Netapplications in its Netmarketshare report for November show that Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 have gained a mere 0.05 percent, with Windows 8 reaching a satanic 6.66 percent.

This is hardly market saturation 13 months after release. Compare that to Windows 7, which despite being over four years old and just 18 months from End of Life still has 46.64 percent of the market. That’s just a tiny increase of 0.22 percent, but it’s a clear demonstration that most most PC users are avoiding Windows 8.

There are of course several possible reasons for this. We know that the PC market is slowing quite significantly. There are a lot of computer shops that might have old machines in stock. When we popped down to our local independent shop, it was selling Windows 7 laptops at hefty discounts.

Then there are those who buy shiny new laptops and are so determined not to use Windows 8 that they buy Windows 7 separately and downgrade manually.

The breakdown is as follows:

Windows 7 46.64 percent
Windows XP 31.22 percent
Windows 8 6.66 percent
Windows Vista 3.57 percent
Windows 8.1 2.64 percent

With Windows XP set to reach full End of Life including security updates in a mere four months, we can’t imagine what Microsoft can do to persuade PC users to upgrade their machines, especially since Windows 8 simply hasn’t caught on.”

Geek Website of the Week: RollApp!

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Do you want to run LibreOffice on your new Google Chromebook? Well, now you can, with ‘RollApp!’ Rollapp is a service that let’s you run ‘heavy’ programs and view them, in an HTML5 enabled browser. IT is actually pretty cool! Instead of virtualizing a whole desktop, it virtualizes the applications themselves!

RollApp Web Site

“What is rollApp?
There are 3 different answers to this question, depending on your point of view

For users
rollApp is a software-on-demand service that instantly delivers existing third-party SW applications to any web-browser equipped device over broadband/3G. Users can find and run online most of the software they need without installing it to their computers or other devices. Think of it as ‘YouTube for applications’ – a place where software authors publish their applications and then anyone can access them using a browser.

For technology professionals
rollApp is an online application virtualization platform. Once a software publisher installs their ‘traditional’ desktop applications to rollApp server, rollApp instantly converts these applications to SaaS/Cloud versions. Then anyone can access rollApp server using regular web-browser and launch the converted applications inside a browser. When executed via a browser, rollApp applications behave the same way as locally installed ones. This works for applications initially developed for any popular platform: Windows, UNIX, MacOS, etc – and regardless of the operating system installed on the client computer/device.

For businesses
rollApp is an application publishing platform that allows end customers to get access to software-on-demand services using freemium model. For software publishers it instantly adds new features to their applications and provides new distribution/revenue channel, for advertisers it brings traditional TV-style advertising model to non-TV devices (desktop computers, laptops, netbooks, smartphones, tablets, etc).”

They show OpenOffice in this demo, but they have LibreOffice available now. Check it out!

They also have a RollApp File Opener, as shown in this video:

Steam Has a Head of… Steam!

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7 million concurrent (all at the same time, for low information folks) sessions! Rock on!

Steam surpasses 7 million concurrent users for the first time

Venture Beat – “Microsoft’s and Sony’s new consoles are the hot items for this holiday season, but the excitement for those boxes isn’t causing any slowdown on the PC side of things.

Game-distribution service Steam just topped 7 million concurrent online customers for the first time in its history. This new record comes in the midst of the annual fall sale that Valve holds for its digital-download platform.

Steam approached the 7-million mark for the past several days, but it peaked at 7.19 million customers around 11 a.m. Pacific time today. In late October, Valve revealed that Steam has 65 million registered accounts. That means that more than one in every 10 Steam members were using the service today. That’s a huge number of engaged gamers.

This new record also represents significant growth over last year. Steam had around 6 million peak concurrent users during its 2012 fall sale. That’s a 17 percent growth in engagement for a platform that was already well established in 2012.

Steam should only continue to grow. Valve announced plans to expand the service out into its own operating system — called SteamOS — based on Linux in the near future. The company will also work with hardware manufacturers to bundle SteamOS on new PCs called Steam Machines.”

Amazon Delivery by Drone?

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If this were April 1st, I would blame an April Fool’s joke! But, it seems that they are serious! Check out the video below, as someone orders from Amazon, then gets dleivery in less than 30 minutes via a drone!

How cool is that?!? Delivery’s would be limited to 10 miles or less from the fulfillment center, but this is wild!

Granted it is 5 years out (and that is really ambitious!) And, the “air traffic control” aspects are daunting. But, as an idea, this is actually pretty cool!

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