If there’s one thing we’re pretty sure Windows Phone 7 Series will be worse at than its Windows Mobile precursor it’s in the running of various and sundry other operating systems. We’ve seen Android running on seemingly every WinMo handset ever created and more recently Unbuntu has been receiving the mobile treatment. Last month it was on an Xperia X1, now an HTC Touch Pro2 is getting a taste. A modder who goes by the handle sebbo90 is the one responsible for this, running basically the same technique as used earlier on the X1. It looks quite easy: just download a 200MB zip, extract it to your phone, then run an exe within. A few moments later you’ll be in open source heaven, and, from what we can tell looking at the video below, it works remarkably well. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we have to hit up eBay to find a used handset and get hacking.
If you’re looking for a quick and easy way to adjust your monitors without a lot of fussing with multi-step processes the calibration tool at Photo Friday can help you tweak your monitor.
Nothing is a true substitute for hardware calibration but if you’re not working in the print industry or as a professional photographer you don’t need to calibrate your monitor to the physical world you need to calibrate it so that contrast is correct and you can use the monitor without straining your eyes.
Over at the photography site Photo Friday they have a simple calibration image you can use to adjust the brightness and contrast on your monitor to an optimum level. Visit the link below and follow the simple instructions to tweak your screen.
If you like your calibration tools to have a few more sliders, bells, and whistles, check outpreviously reviewed Online Monitor Test. Have a favorite software or hardware tool for monitor calibration? Share them at lifehacker.com.
All 10.5 million blogs on WordPress.com, including TechCrunch, just got more realtime. Any blog hosted on WordPress is now PuSH-enabled, meaning that new posts get pushed out to feed readers such as Google Reader the second they are published. There were WordPress plug-ins that did this before, but now WordPress is doing it automatically for all hosted blogs.
PuSH stands for Pubsubhubbub, a realtime protocol designed to speed up RSSwhich launched at our first Realtime CrunchUp last year. Instead of waiting for your RSS reader to ping the servers for each blog and news site you subscribe to, which can cause a noticeable delay before it actually shows up in your feed reader, it will now be pushed out immediately.
The PuSH protocol does away with the constant polling required by RSS. Another way to speed up RSS is through a different protocol called RSSCloud, which WordPress also supports. There are subtle differences between RSSCloud and PuSH, the most significant being that RSSCloud just notifies your feed reader there is something new, while PuSH actually sends the content with the notification via so-called fat pings.
Google Reader also supports PuSH, so if you use Google Reader, all WordPress blogs will be updated much faster than before. Not that you’d necessarily notice unless you just came from a blog’s site or saw a link on Twitter, Facebook, Buzz or some other stream first. Let us know in comments if you notice any difference to how fast TechCrunch posts appear in Google Reader.
Opera Software today released Opera 10.50, which it touts as “the fastest Web browser thus-far produced for Windows computers” (which, in turn, calls for a comprehensive speed test – anyone?). The desktop browser has also been given a completely new design, adopting some of the style elements Google Chrome users will be familiar with.
Additionally, Opera 10.50 comes with a private browsing feature that enables people to browse for porn surprise gifts for their partners without leaving any traces.
The desktop browser, which is free to use, lands on Windows at a time when Microsoft has just rolling out its ballot screen for European users of the OS, presenting them with a choice in browsers (supposedly random, but not in reality, as we pointed out last week).
The Norwegian software maker calls Opera 10.50 the fastest browser they’ve ever produced, courtesy of a brand new JavaScript engine (Carakan) and a graphics library (Vega). The browser is also said to include improved standards support for HTML5 and CSS3.
For Windows 7 and Vista users, there are some more goodies: Opera now fully supports Aero Glass, Aero Peek and Jump Lists. You can easily access your Speed Dials, tabs and more from the Taskbar.
Opera 10.50 is available for Windows in 42 different languages – Mac and Linux versions are “coming soon”.
More than ever before, people are sharing and storing their photos online. But until recently, you had to edit your photos using client software on your computer. Today, we’re excited to announce that Google has acquired Picnik, one of the first sites to bring photo editing to the cloud. Using Picnik, you can crop, do touch-ups and add cool effects to your photos, all without leaving your web browser.
We’re not announcing any significant changes to Picnik today, though we’ll be working hard on integration and new features. As well, we’d like to continue supporting all existing Picnik partners so that users will continue to be able to add their photos from other photo sharing sites, make edits in the cloud and then save and share to all relevant networks.
We’re very impressed with the Picnik team and the product they’ve created, and we’re excited to welcome them to Google. We’re looking forward to collaborating closely with them to improve the online photo editing experience on the web. In the meantime, we encourage you to head to Picnik, import some of your photos from Picasa Web Albums, Flickr or Facebook and try your hand at photo editing in the cloud!
Remember that polarizing Windows 7 Activation Technologies Update we told you about? You know, the one that helps you to “verify that the copy of Windows 7 that is running on your computer is activated correctly and is genuine?” It’s available for download now through Windows Update, and it’s not particularly easy to spot. The main label simply says “Update for Windows 7,” though we’d be sure to avoid KB971033 if you weren’t up for having this thing looking into your business. Your call, though.
In a move that may actually impact people who’re still using Internet Explorer 6, YouTube has set a date for the last day they’ll support IE6: March 13th. And while that doesn’t mean YouTube videos will stop playing after the 13th, the big warning on YouTube could have a big influence on getting people to upgrade. So what exactly will the impact be on IE6 users?
Stopped support essentially means that some future features on YouTube will be rolled out that won’t work in older browsers.
The view from Whistler Mountain is something everyone should see: a range of rugged mountains, trails of snow, fir trees and placid lakes below. It’s changed since I lived there some years back — there are many more houses, and far better chairlifts — but what remains is the rare feeling of being free, in nature, about to tear into peak snow.
In time for the Games in Vancouver and Whistler, we’re thrilled to be bringing this view to the world through Street View on Google Maps. How were we able to gather imagery at 7,000 feet (2,000 meters)? The Street View team’s constant experimenting yielded a snowmobile decked out with cameras to capture slope-level imagery of several runs on Whistler Blackcomb Mountains. The view from the top of 7th Heaven chairlift on Blackcomb and from the peak of Whistler are among my favourites, as are the top of the Dave Murray downhill, where the men’s alpine skiing events will start, and the Peak 2 Peak gondola. (That’s Whistler’s new feat of engineering which takes skiers and riders from Whistler to Blackcomb.) With the Street View trike, we’ve also covered Whistler Village and Whistler Creekside at the mountains’ bases. There’s more about the snowmobile’s journey and this imagery on the Google Lat Long Blog.
This imagery and many other tools are now ready to ride on our new website with information about the Games, available in 40 languages. We’ve combined up-to-date medal counts, news, event results and event schedules with rich visuals: 3D models and Street View imagery of the competition venues, plus new aerial imagery of the Vancouver-Whistler area. It’s all in aniGoogle gadget, too. The site also connects you with real-time search results for the Games, local experts’ Favourite Places and a special Picasa Web Albums gallery of featured photos from Vancouver — some submitted by users and others from Google News. Whether you’re celebrating at home or in Vancouver, simply add a “wintergames2010” tag to your own photos in Picasa Web Albums, or use “wintergames2010” as the email subject if you’re uploading from your mobile phone, and we’ll feature the best ones.
As an extra treat for enthusiasts, check out the Google homepage from February 12 to 28 for a special doodle each day celebrating the Games. You can also get the most up-to-date medal counts, event results and schedules by doing a simple Google search. I’ll be following [men’s hockey] myself, and rooting for Team Canada.
Posted by Jonathan Lister, Managing Director and Head of Google Canada
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