Archive for the ‘Computers’ Category

Office Casual: Why Monster’s resume templates are easy

Now you can use and submit a resume template designed by Monster.com without leaving your Word program. Doug Thomas shows you Monster’s Easy Submit Resumes.

Office Casual: Why Monster’s resume templates are easy | Tina Wood | Channel 10

Well, it looks like Microsoft still has a bit more stuff in store for CES that didn’t slip out ahead of its big keynote, with it now announcing its new Arc Keyboard that will exclusive to Best Buy (at least initially). Like its Arc Mouse, this one is slim and high on style, and relatively light on any extraneous features, although you will get a 2.4GHz wireless receiver that can be tucked away in the keyboard, and at least a few extra function keys. Look for this one to be available February 21st for $59.95

Microsoft debuts Arc Keyboard, exclusive to Best Buy — Engadget

bigBrains.com presents, the Alienware Aurora Desktop unboxing.  This is the first of 2 videos of this small but powerful desktop. 

YouTube – Alienware Aurora Desktop Unboxing

I’m surprised it’s taken this long, to be honest. Microsoft’s posted a job offer, seeking a Principle Program Manager, who can "bring Xbox LIVE enabled games to Windows Mobile."

Based at their Redmond HQ, the right person for the job will "focus specifically on what makes gaming experiences "LIVE Enabled" through aspects such as avatar integration, social interactions, and multi-screen experiences."

I imagine to do all that, they’ll be needing some top-notch Windows Mobile handsets, and really the Snapdragon-powered HTC HD2 is the only device on the market so far capable of doing it. Not that it at all resembles a device targeted at Xbox gamers. Give me a Zune phone any day of the week. [Microsoft via Engadget and Kotaku]

Microsoft Job Posting Confirms Xbox LIVE Windows Mobile Phones – Xbox live windows mobile – Gizmodo

The dream of owning a keyboard embedded with a full-blown PC running XP on an Atom N270 processor and 5-inch, 800 x 480 pixel touchscreen display/trackpad is nearly upon us. A dream, quite honestly, nobody had prior to seeing the reveal of the 2-pound Eee Keyboard prototype at CES in January. Engadget Chinese has it on authority that this oddball all-in-one will ship in June with specs that should include a 32GB SSD, 802.11n, Bluetooth, HDMI-out, stereo speakers and mic as we saw during our hands-on with the Eee Keyboard back in March. With any luck, ASUS will also be embedding some form of ultra-wideband HDMI as promised in January alongside one of those UWB monitor prototypes they had on display at CeBIT. One thing’s for sure: all will be revealed at Computex in Taipei in just a few weeks.

ASUS Eee Keyboard to launch by end of June

 If you have a PC you don’t have to be envious about the multitouch pad in MacBooks: Now you can replace your mouse with a big ugly thing and do the same magic moves. Wheee.

The SmartTrack Neo is a external USB trackpad that will allow you to use gestures to control your PC: Two fingers for scrolling and panning, victory sign to rotate, pinching to zoom in and out, and three fingers to flick through pages, photos, or whatever.

I like pinching—beyond trackpads—but why would you like to use this instead of using just a—more precise—mouse with the adequate buttons is beyond me.

Gizmodo – SmartTrack Neo Multitouch Pad for PC Lets You Do the Pinching Thing – Filco SmartTrack Neo

The whole netbook craze has definitely spilled over into the desktop market full force. Shuttle is getting into the game with the X50, though there doesn’t appear to be anything unique about it aside from the carrying handle. I’m all for low power desktops since most of us probably don’t need powerful CPUs for regular web surfing, email and IM, but I fail to see the need for a carrying handle. If you’re going to cart a PC around the house, netbooks are quickly growing in size with some touting 12" displays and a battery means you’re not limited to the nearest power outlet. I just don’t see being able to swing a nettop around the house as compelling enough to choose Shuttle over any other nettop out there.

The Shuttle X50 will be available in April 2009 for an around  $539.00

Shuttle Global – Home

Live CDs (and DVDs) are versatile tools, allowing you to boot into an operating system without installing anything to your hard drives. Let’s take a closer look at the five most popular live CDs.

Earlier this week we asked you to tell us which live CD was your favorite. After tallying the votes we’re back to share the top five contenders. The following tools are unique compared to many of our software Hive Fives in that they are entirely independent of the main operating system installed on the computer. Live CDs load into the memory and allow you to use operating systems and accompanying tools without having to perform a permanent installation on the machine.

Knoppix

Knoppix is a Debian-based Linux distribution and one of the first Linux live CDs that was available. While the Knoppix distribution is packed with open-source goodness, one of the most popular uses for Knoppix is recovering files from damaged drives. To that end Knoppix is packed with open-source applications for testing disk integrity, recovering files, reading corrupted drives, and more. There are a total of 2,000 programs packed into the disc covering everything from disc recovery to media playback.

Ultimate Boot CD 4 Windows

The Ultimate Boot CD 4 Windows has a familiar interface. If you’re a Windows user, booting into a copy of Linux to get work done could be disorienting. The Ultimate Boot CD 4 Windows uses your Windows installation discs (only Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 are officially supported) to create a bootable version of Windows contained on a disc. Tons of quality Windows-based tools are included in the custom disc covering everything from backing up and cloning your discs to running diagnostics to partitioning and recovering data. Many of the tools on the disc are tools you may already be somewhat acquainted with, like UltraVNC, Recuva, and CCleaner. If you’re looking for a well packed toolbox that keeps you firmly planted in a comfortable Windows environment, The Ultimate Boot CD 4 Windows is an excellent choice.

Puppy Linux

Puppy Linux belongs to the family of ultra small linux distributions. Weighing in at under 100MB, it can easily be loaded on everything from a CD to a USB drive. The user interface is friendly even for a non-Linux user, and the basic tools you need for partitioning and file recovery are readily available—although it’s just as great for web browsing and basic computing. Puppy Linux also has a rather handy feature: If you burn it to a re-writable CD, you can save your user settings for your next session.

BackTrack

BackTrack isn’t going to help you recover your lost vacation pictures, but it will make sure nobody can get into your network to steal them. Packed with 300 tools covering everything from packet sniffing to hot spot probing to brute force password attacks, BackTrack is live CD designed to facilitate penetration testing of computers and networks. Deployed by a skilled user, BackTrack will leave no corner of your computer and network security un-poked, scanned, prodded, and analyzed. If BackTrack was your friend, he’d be the friend who responded to you bragging about how secure your new house was by throwing a brick through the front window to prove otherwise. (You have weird friends.)

Ubuntu

Ubuntu’s enormous popularity as the mainstream Linux distribution certainly helps bolster its rank among live CDs. Many a new user to Ubuntu has messed around with the operating system using a live CD before using that very same live CD to install the full operating system. Even if you don’t intend to do a full install, just like Puppy Linux you can do all manner of computing tasks without leaving a trace on the computer you’re using. The Ubuntu live CD comes packed with Open Office, Firefox, Pidgin, the BitTorrent client Transmission, and the open source image editor GIMP—a decent stable of tools for using Ubuntu as a portable computing platform.

Hive Five: Five Best Live CDs

Need your remote access to the accounts receivable server restored? Marko Calasan will get right on that, after he wakes up from nappy time and finishes his afternoon sippy cup of juice.

Marko has dethroned little M Lavinashree of India, who at 9 years old (ANCIENT!) was the previous MS certification for tykes record holder. Marko is now being called the "Mozart of Computers" and received a 15-machine computer lab from Macedonian Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski to toy around with.

When he’s not sysadmining it up, Marko practices Thai boxing and is also an avid astronomy and physics enthusiast. The night before the Large Hadron Collider was to be fired up, he couldn’t sleep from the excitement. I love this kid.

The Littlest Sysadmin: 8-Year-Old Macedonian Boy Becomes Youngest Microsoft-Certified IT Professional

Turn your XNA projects into cash with Xbox Live Community Games.
Coming holiday 2008, Xbox Live Community Games will give XNA game developers (that’s YOU!) the opportunity to publish and sell their projects to millions of gamers worldwide via the Xbox Live Marketplace.
Here’s how it works. XNA game developers (again that’s YOU!) submit their titles to http://creators.xna.com for peer review. Once approved the games are then made available for sale on Xbox Live Marketplace for a price point that you set (between 200 and 800 points). You then receive up to 70% of the games total revenue!
So let’s say you create a game that you sell for 200 points (which is approx USD$2.50). The game is then purchased 10,000 times. That’s $25,000 in total revenue of which you stand a chance to receive up to 70% or $17,500!!! WOW!!
More info: http://blogs.msdn.com/xna/ & http://creators.xna.com/

Make Money with Xbox Live Community Games | Nic Fillingham | Channel 10

It was brief but it sure was impressive. With all the hubbub surrounding Intel’s launch of Atom, let’s not forget what’s coming: Moorestown. That fiberglass isn’t yet populated with the CPU, chipset, WiFi, GPS, 3G cellular radio, or memory… but it will be if you can wait until 2010. See it revealed after the break.

Video: Intel reveals Moorestown PC motherboard, possibly world’s smallest – Engadget 

Schtickers.com is a site that provides stock and custom skins for the back of your laptop.  As the name implies, these are stickers, but they are high quality, and to give a professional finish. They have wide variety of stock skins choose from, but the real fun is designing your home. Feel free to order the bigBrains.com laptop skin by clicking on this link.

http://www.schtickers.com/catalog/laptopskins/create/preview.php?id=80247200803110247

Laptop Skin Design

You may have heard a little announcement today – that developers now can develop a (multiplayer!) game once and gamers can play it on a Windows PC, Xbox 360, and Zune. Wait, what?!?! Zune???  Yes, that’s right, the new XNA Game Studio 3.0 available this Spring will have the ability to let devs make Zune games.
For the official FAQ, check out the XNA Creators Club, also check out Gizmodo, engadget, and don’t miss the pictures at JefTek. Cesar at ZuneInsider points out that this is a dev tool announcement, not game title announcements.
For those of you wondering what XNA is, here’s a two part video from Channel 9 (part 1 | part 2).

Write Once – Game Anywhere | Larry Larsen | Channel 10

That is not a typo. Today, the SkyDrive team announced that they are increasing the amount of free storage to five times what it was before, going from 1 GB to 5 GB. With this new release of the service, some other improvements to the site have been made to make the service faster and more reliable too. This new version of SkyDrive, now no longer in beta, is also available in 38 more countries and regions. To see if your region is listed, check out the SkyDrive blog. The SkyDrive service is available from skydrive.live.com.

Skydrive Now 5 GIGS! | Sarah In Tampa | Channel 10

According to these—allegedly "leaked"—photos, the black and aluminum 2.5-pound HP Compaq 2133 UMPC laptop looks like the Asus Eee PC’s cooler cousin.

No price yet, but the wi-fi-enabled HP Compaq 2133 supposedly comes with an 8.9-inch 1,366 x 766 "scratch-resistant" display, ExpressCard/54 slot, integrated webcam, optional solid state flash drive and two-buttons-apart trackpad which looks like it was designed by Satan himself.

Umpc: HP Compaq 2133 UMPC Laptop