Apple attacks Adobe over iPhone

software | Posted by Sanjiv
Apr 30 2010

After receiving flak for not having the Adobe Flash programme on its iPhone smartphone, Apple is going on the offensive.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs is going on the offensive against Adobe’s Flash technology. He says it’s too buggy, battery-draining and PC-oriented to work on the iPhone and iPad.

In a statement Thursday, Jobs laid out his reasons for excluding Flash – the most popular vehicle for videos and games on the Internet – from Apple’s blockbuster handheld devices.

Apple has been criticized for the omission of Flash, which limits the usefulness of the iPhone. In his rebuttal, Jobs said the most important reason for excluding Flash is that it puts a third party between Apple and software developers. That means developers can take advantage of improvements from Apple only if Adobe chose to upgrade its own software, Jobs wrote.

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The Horrors Of Registry Virus Removal

software | Posted by Sanjiv
Mar 27 2010

Nothing sends a chill up the spine of a knowledgeable virus removal technician more than the words registry virus removal. Registry virus removal is the equivalent of saying that something bad got into the gas in your car and you need to remove the bad thing and keep the gas that is in the car. As you can see registry virus removal is not easy but it is essential for the proper operation of your computer. In other words, if you get a virus in the registry of your computer then you better pray that it can be removed through available registry virus removal techniques or else there will be reformatting to do.

The registry in your computer is where all of the commands that allow your computer to function are kept. Needless to say that most viruses in the world focus their attention on the registry of your computer and that has made registry virus removal a big business for anti virus companies. The problem is that registry virus removal is a very complicated thing because each time you add a program, or change a function, on your computer you wind up changing the registry and after a while salvaging that registry could be almost impossible. Your best defense against registry viruses is to make sure you do three things that are essential to protecting your computer. First is to always have a firewall up and anti virus software running when you use your computer. This will help stop registry viruses from ever getting in. Second is to not download any program or file that your anti virus senses is malicious or seems malicious to you. This is so difficult because you cannot always tell what is malicious or what is not but be vigilant. The third thing is to back your important personal files every week and make sure you have your copies of the software you have loaded on your computer available in case you have to reload them.

So What Is The Solution?

Your only hope is to load a professional anti virus program and then run every registry scanning program they have until the problem is found. Once the problem is found hopefully it can be corrected but many times registry viruses cannot be removed and this really is nothing any anti virus software company can help. It is sort of like why they cannot cure the common cold. They cannot cure the common cold because there are too many bacteria involved in it. In registry viruses there is just too many variables that prevent it from being removed successfully.

Sometimes you can remove your registry virus successfully and then you can go on to protecting your computer for the future. But if you cannot remove it then the only solution after that is reformatting your hard drive and that can get really ugly depending on how good your back ups have been over the months.

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HTML5, Hardware Accelerated: First IE9 Platform Preview Available for Developers

software | Posted by Sanjiv
Mar 18 2010

When we started looking deeply at HTML5, we saw that it will enable a new class of applications. These applications will stress the browser runtime and underlying hardware in ways today’s websites don’t. We quickly realized that doing HTML5 right – our intent from the start – is more about designing our browser’s subsystems around what these new applications will need than it is about a particular set of features. From the beginning, we approached IE9 with the goal of enabling professional-grade, modern HTML5 support on top of modern hardware through Windows.

At the MIX conference today, we demonstrated how the standard web patterns that developers already know and use broadly run better by taking advantage of PC hardware through IE9 on Windows. This blog post provides an overview of what we showed today, across performance, standards, hardware-accelerated HTML5 graphics, and the availability of the IE9 Platform Preview for developers. Read the rest of this entry »

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Windows 7 Interface: The New Taskmaster

Operating System | Posted by Sanjiv
Jan 21 2010

The Windows experience occurs mainly in its Taskbar – especially in the Start menu and System Tray. Vista gave the Start menu a welcome redesign; in Windows 7, the Taskbar and the System Tray get a thorough makeover.

The new Taskbar replaces the old small icons and text labels for running apps with larger, unlabeled icons. If you can keep the icons straight, the new design painlessly reduces Taskbar clutter. If you don’t like it, you can shrink the icons and/or bring the labels back.

In the past, you could get one-click access to programs by dragging their icons to the Quick Launch toolbar. Windows 7 eliminates Quick Launch and folds its capabilities into the Taskbar. Drag an app’s icon from the Start menu or desktop to the Taskbar, and Windows will pin it there, so you can launch the program without rummaging around in the Start menu. You can also organise icons in the Taskbar by moving them to new positions.

To indicate that a particular application on the Taskbar is running, Windows draws a subtle box around its icon – so subtle, in fact, that figuring out whether the app is running can take a moment, especially if its icon sits between two icons for running apps.

In Windows Vista, hovering the mouse pointer over an application’s Taskbar icon produces a thumbnail window view known as a Live Preview. But when you have multiple windows open, you see only one preview at a time. Windows 7′s version of this feature is slicker and more efficient. Hover the pointer on an icon, and thumbnails of the app’s windows glide into position above the Taskbar, so you can quickly find the one you’re looking for. (The process would be even simpler if the thumbnails were larger and easier to decipher.)

Also new in Windows 7′s Taskbar is a feature called Jump Lists. These menus resemble the context-sensitive ones you get when you right-click within various Windows applications, except that you don’t have to be inside an app to use them. Internet Explorer 8′s Jump List, for example, lets you open the browser and load a fresh tab, initiate an InPrivate stealth browsing session, or go directly to any of eight frequently visited web pages. Non-Microsoft apps can offer Jump Lists, too, if their developers follow the guidelines for creating them.

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How to sell more software from your website

Web Design | Posted by Sanjiv
Jan 05 2010

You want to sell more software from your website? How do you make the client truly understand your product and trust it and your company enough to pay the price? Tips on what you should do.

Selling software online is not an easy task. How do you make the client truly understand your product and trust it and your company enough to pay the price? Like it or not, it’s very similar to selling face to face: the first impression may be decisive for the clients’s future actions. Online, the website is your face.

It has to be comprehensible and easy to use. Here are a few tips on how your website should be to sell software better:

  • It has to look professional and attractive at the same time.
    You don’t have to show off your web designer skills. Too many colours, graphics, flash animations or drop-down boxes can only tire the visitors and make them leave faster. Less graphics will also make the site load faster. At the same time, it shouldn’t be dull, so it needs to be somewhere in the middle.
  • Make sure your message comes across loud and clear.
    In order to sell more software, information about software products must be easy to find, easy to follow and the same goes for the order process. Since most information is in the text, make it easy to read. Some coloured backgrounds make the text difficult to read, like purples, orange and reds. On the other hand, dark backgrounds may have a depressing effect on the visitors’ mood. The text colour is very important. Keep in mind that different browsers show colours differently, so don’t go crazy with it. It’s better to use Plain fonts, like Arial, Times New Roman, Verdana and Courier, because they’re easier to read. Fancier fonts may be used for headlines, but not full text. Remember though that sans serif fonts are easier to read on screen.
  • Easy navigation is law.
    Make sure there’s a link to the homepage at the top left of every page, except the homepage itself. Be careful not to have ‘dead end’ from which the visitor can’t find their way back to where they came from. Place the most important links in the top part of each page. Clearly mark read and unread links, preferably using standard colours.
  • Base the site’s hierarchy on your customer’s needs.
    Don’t make them search the entire site before they find information about products, prices and payment methods.
  • Don’t make pages too long.
    A web shouldn’t be more than 2 or 3 normal pages lengths, as no one likes an endless scrolling. If you have information for more than that, divide it into several pages with short information clips on the main index page leading to the second page.
  • Check all the links on your website to make sure they lead to a page.
    Tags from the navigation menu must be representative for what that page is about.
  • Serve friendly error messages.
    Don’t let the visitors see a page with ’404 not found’ written on it. Put your creativity to good use. Error messages may include navigation to documents that do exist, a search box or a contact email address.
  • Have a privacy statement and testimonials.
    Potential clients must feel confident dealing with you. Having a separate page to express your policy towards their email addresses, how you accept orders and gather information, who has access to information and how you use that information will help you sell more software. Also make a separate page for comments from satisfied customers. Offer to include links to the customers’ websites in return for using their comments.
  • Contact information or a link to it should be on every page.
    If customers need additional information about the product, contact information like a phone number and an email address should be easy to find on the website. Let people know the hours and days of operation and the time needed to answer their requests. Give a contact name; it makes people have more faith that someone will actually read their message.
  • Set up a frequently-asked-questions (FAQ) page.
    Base it on real questions your customers had in the past.

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YouTube begins testing lighter ‘feather’ version

Internet Business | Posted by Sanjiv
Dec 04 2009

In a nod to efficiency, YouTube on Thursday began testing a more lightweight version of its video player pages called “feather.”

Feather pages do a number of things to speed up the video-playing process, from defaulting to the standard quality version (instead of high quality or high definition), to removing various on-page features such as being able to control the size and coloring of an embed. The idea is to get the video playing as soon as possible with fewer on-page distractions.

Other efficiencies include limiting the number of loaded comments to just 10, which users are now unable to vote on or respond to. Video replies, real-time sharing, and auto-suggest from YouTube’s search bar have also been cut. However, related videos remain–albeit at a more limited 5 videos compared to YouTube’s usual offering of 21.

Users who want to try out the new interface can do so by opting in to it on YouTube’s TestTube page, which houses experimental, or otherwise not-so-ready-for-primetime features. These include YouTube’s visual warp browser, its live streams product, and comment search tool. Once it’s enabled, it can quickly be disabled from any video page with a little green box that sits on the bottom right-hand corner of the screen.

It’s worth noting the feature does not yet appear to work on all videos just yet. We had the best luck on popular videos, including those from YouTube’s featured section. Also, if you’re a YouTube power user who regularly makes use of things such as video replies and user comments, it’s worth staying on the standard version of the service.

Below you can see a before and after of feather mode on the same video. Click it to enlarge.

Youtube

Youtube

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