Microsoft Office 12 just feel “mac”

Major news site has revealed the next generation office, Microsoft Office 12, which is presented in PDC 2005. The new office used a pretty cool GUI with graphics intensive. Its toolbar is now full of graphics. It got a feel of Windows Vista but it is a little bit feel like “mac”. By looking at the screenshot shown at the first impression, it got something “apple”. Anyway, with the new and innovative design of GUI, some users may not get used to it. But I do think it is good to see the program keeps on imputing new ideas. New look sure to be vital to keep the existing customers.

The Office 12 would also include some new feature like “Super tooltips” that provide help topics to assist users to use the office easily in a new way. There are also some improvement in the “Galleries”.

The first beta would be available in this fall and planned to be released on the second half of 2006 alongside Windows Vista. I am looking forward to seeing this significant changes for Office and hoping to be shocked once it is released.

Neowin reveals Windows Vista Build 5219

According to the report from Neowin, they have just revealed more detail about Windows Vista Build 5219. It all comes from the news of PDC 2005 (Professional Developer Conference). There seems to be more excitement comes from this new build. It comes with more and more great effect. Hope this new Windows would not only bring excitement, but also with the performance.

Click here for videos and screenshot of Windows Vista 5219 from Neowin

7 Versions of Windows Vista will be shipped

According to the report from WindowsITPro, there will be around 7 versions of Windows Vista, the next generation of windows will be shipped. The Windows Vista Ultimate Edition would have the most function one, and the basic edition would be called as “Starter Edition” that comes with limited feature. This Starter Edition will only be sold in emerging markets. There are also Enterprise Edition which aim for the companies. The report also said there are rumours saying Windows Vista would include podcasting application and music downloads.

Windows Vista Starter Edition
1. Sold in emerging markets
2. Cannot run more than 3 applications at the same time
3. Limited Feature
4. Cannot accept any incoming network connections

Windows Vista Home Basic Edition
1. Similar to Windows XP Home Edition
2. Includes all basic features likeSecurity Center, Movie Maker, Firewalls, etc

Windows Vista Home Premium Edition
1. Very similar to Windows XP Media Center Edition
2. Everything from Vista Home Basic
3. but with additional DVD video authoring, HDTV support, DVD ripping feature
4. Mainly for multimedia capabilities

Windows Vista Professional Edition
1. Similar to Windows XP Professional Edition
2. With advanced network feature, like join domain and IIS web server

Windows Vista Small Business Edition
1. Designed for small businesses
2. Include many management tools like Backup and Shadow Copy support, Castle and server-join networking, and PC fax and scanning utility
3. Featured with pre-paid access to the Windows Live! Small Business or Microsoft Office Live! subscription services

Windows Vista Enterprise Edition
1. Target for enterprise
2. Included Virtual PC & the multi-language user interface (MUI)

Windows Vista Ultimate Edition
1. It is said “The best operating system ever offered for a personal PC”
2. Superset of both Vista Home Premium and Vista Pro Edition
3. May include Podcasting application, Game Performance Tweaker, possible free music/movie downloads

Source: WindowsITPro

China Telecom starts to block Skype users

Skype, the internet telephone services is becoming popular in China. Users using it for the free internet phone calls around the world easily.

China Telecom, the main broadband internet services in mainland China, now starts to block its users from using Skype as it affects its long distance calls revenue. Some report also said China Telecom has created a “black list” for those users who use Skype.

China’s internet services has said to block many politically sensitive content, for example like Falun Gong spiritual movement and 1989 event. Its internet services users won’t be able to access certain pages.

Internet should be free from those restrictions, it shouldn’t blocks people’s freedom of choices. People should read what they wanted. That is a very sad situation.

More new web standard support, Firefox 1.5 beta released

Firefox 1.5 beta 1 has been released. The new firefox would fix more bugs and provide more new web standard support. It included more descriptive error mesage and will have a better compatibility for DHTML. It also have drag-n-drop tab possibility with better pop-up blocker. Firefox 1.5 beta 1 is named as Deer Park and available in Mozilla.org homepage. You may also download by clicking here.

Even smaller iPod, iPod Nano, released

Although there are many better MP3 Player with better functionality, Apple iPod is still a fever in youngster’s market. Its design and outlook is considered as trendy and hot.

Today, Apple announced another new iPod series’ product, iPod Nano. Its size is 80% smaller than original iPod and 62% smaller than iPod mini. It comes with 2 storage size, 2GB and 4GB, and the song can be transferred by using iTunes 5 through USB 2.0. Its battery life is 14 hours because using the flash memory instead of micro hard drive. Better then the previous product, iPod shuffle, now iPod Nano does have a color screen and click wheel for people to control their life better.

The price is also not expensive. 4GB iPod Nano is at US$249 and 2GB one is at US$199. It is now available in Apple Store.

Someone has made a joke about iPod. The people made a joke that Apple will release something called iPod flea in the future. The iPod flea will be as small as a flea. It comes with thousands of useless accessories which costs a lot.

No matter what it happends, Apple always release something cool and attractive products. iPod Nano’s price is reasonable and it may cause another heat among the youngsters.

Kazaa ruled to be illegal

Kazaa, the popular file sharing software, has losed in Australia court. The court said Kazaa has not breached copyright itself, but it did encourage the users to do so. This is actually not the first case. The Australia court has followed similar judgement from Grokster’s case in June in US Spreme Court.

Grokster has been held liable for copyright infringement. This time, Kazaa also faced similar judegement. The court said Kazaa should do something, such as keyword filtering, to filter the copyrighted information.

There are raising concern about copyright infrigement in recent days. Many recording and software companies tried to sue for those Peer-to-peer technology for sharing illegal stuff.

There are many other ways to share the music legally on the web. For example, Apple iTunes Music Store is one of the legal music downloads on the web.

But many people would feel that “Internet should all be free”. What if all the peer-to-peer software are sued? I think it would not stop illegal sharing on the web. People would still try to find other way out in order to share the softwares, music, movie within their own community.

PayPal is awful. It blocks donations for New Orleans.

The story starts when SomethingAwful’s Funder Kyanta asks for people’s donation for New Orleans innocent. He uses PayPal as middleman to receive the donation from all over the world. The fund raises at US$3,900 per hour, which is unbelieveable. Finally it raised US$27,695.41 in Red Cross relief funds.

It is a real problem that PayPal doing this. How come it can lock somebody’s account without warning? According to the report, PayPal said, “more than one report of suspicious behavior from your buyers.” It is a huge joke on the internet for PayPal to lock somebody’s account because they can earn so much money.

It is awful to see the fund cannot be passed to the New Orleans immediately. SomethingAwful.com has already sent out the enquiry. But the stupid PayPal website used a standard reply saying that it will be proceed for 2 to 3 business days. SomethingAwful has also tried to follow the steps in order to unfreeze the funds. But it never succeed. It required some tracking records. What it supposed to be? Is that everytime you donate, you need to follow thousands of the stupid procedures to get through?

It is a big question about this so-called common eletronic payment system. It didn’t expect people to donate as much as possible? PayPal got donation tools for users, but is it expecting people to donate few dollars? You cannot donate too much or otherwise the account will be closed? Although, PayPal refund the money to donators, they all lose the conversion fees. No donation at last. PayPal also shuts down all hopes to those in need.

It is disappointed to those who trust PayPal. The system can shut down someone’s account without warning. It can also shut down all your money in the account. Banks will not do that, at least. Today, I chose to remove all my credit card details in PayPal account. It blocks donations. It really makes me angry. I would choose not to use this stupid system that I ever seen.

Let’s care about the Hurricane Katrina incident in US

The Hurricane Katrina in US has already caused huge number of death for the last few weeks. It has been the greatest disaster in the history. Many people lost their family, home, and all the things in a minute. They lost their love and needs your help.

Let’s do whatever we can. Please donate to RedCross today.

Google’s OS?

It has been a long time for Google will release its own operating system. Today, one of the Chinese website released few pictures saying that Google’s OS beta has actually released! At first, it shocked some people. The site said the Google OS would be easily configured and easily to be used. It also reported the OS has been installed on a Pentium 4 2.0GHz with 256MB RAM computer, because of its XML based design, the OS is very user-friendly. Many of the new hardware has also been detected.

Is this mean that Google is going to fight with Microsoft head-to-head in the future?

Well, the so-called Google OS is actually a fake. It DOES NOT EXIST. IT IS A FAKE MADE BY SOMEBODY.

But I do think nothing is impossible. Someone did laugh at people who said Mac OS can run on Intel based PC in the past. Now, you can see that Mac OS now can actually run natively on Intel based CPU.

Nothing is impossible. This time is a joke, may be next time for real.

Google expanding their revenue model to traditional ads

For many websites, they want to hold the correct revenue models so that they can be successful on the web. Google is considered to use the advertising-supported revenue models very well. Their 99% of revenue comes from advertisement during the last 4 years. Google’s Adwords technology now spread over thousands of websites.

Now Google is trying to expand their business by buying advertising pages in traditional magazines. The page will divide 4 or 5 portion. And Google will provide a discount for existing Adwords user to advertise on those pages. This is the first time Google to expand their advertising business on traditional print ads.

Google’s business is growing huge. No matter they provide many services for free, they can still grow. Not many website can earn so much under advertising-supported revenue model, Google is only a few of the success stories.

More or less words?

People are lazy. Nobody would love to read a lengthy passage. Since the world is moving fast, people want to get the information they want fastly and precisely.

For many media in Hong Kong, they understand their readers don’t like words. Most newspapers and magazines are now trying to reduce their words as much as possible. They would choose to illustrate in graphics rather than words.

But in some other country, like US, the magazine are still full of words. For example, like PC Magazine, usually review new products with thousands of words, while in Hong Kong, you will just see two short paragraph with a lot of product photos.

Also, in mainland websites, the site also covered with full of words. You can click Sina China and see how it look like. This site obviously got too much words, which makes people hardly to read anything and away from the site.

Some people would argue that the information got to be in more detail, but some would say they just want the information precisely. Time is precious.

So, what is your choice?

Xanga goes premium

Blogging is nothing new. Many people already got at least one blogging account. There are many blogging services provided for free, the popular one includes: Xanga (http://www.xanga.com), Blogger (http://www.blogger.com) and Blogcity (http://www.blog-city.com).

Most of my friends use Xanga and Blogger. Xanga got 2 types of services, one is free and the other is premium (paid services). The difference is the premium service got more tools and have photo upload function. But Blogger already have photo upload function and its tools seem better than Xanga. Users can choose a template, edit it in detail with HTML code, this function is not available in Xanga free services. And for posting function, Xanga did not allow the user to change the time stamp. It does not have rich text edit tools either. This is not flexible. Xanga have some advanced tools but you need to pay for it. Blogger got more customization tools and functions which let the blogging experience to be better for free.

Today, Xanga has just announced they will open some of the advanced feature to free services users. This includes Xanga Skins, Search function, rich text input, photo upload and more. It seems free users can get the functions like that in Blogger. But still there is still some function that it still not have. For example, the photo upload function have space limitation, the free users can only get 100MB.

But on the other hand, Xanga also got some interesting feature that Blogger do not have. For instance, like the eProps. eProps is like the comment system. When visitors comment about your blog entry, they can choose to give 0 to 2 eProps. It is more then comment system.

Every site got its own useful tools. Every site got its own selling points. It is good to see competition, it makes services improve, and finally users will benefit most.

Friendship is really important

It has been a very long time that I am not at home. I did miss home sometimes, but normally will not. It was because I have a really good time here. Friends are very nice and care with each other. People saying that many other place’s people are generally better than Hong Kongers. I think it may be true. Hong Kongers are moving too fast, don’t have much time to care about each other. Even they got time, they will just spend it with their girlfriends/boyfriends. What is the friendship for? Can’t it be moving slower?

Hmmm, I am not saying that all Hong Kong friends are bad. Some friends are really good. Did I talk too much? Sorry… I really cherish all of you friends, both foreign and Hong Kong one. I know who is really my friend and who is not. I will cherish the friendship with you all for my whole life.