29/05/2008 by swordfish.

Yahoo has launched a new browser plug-in that allows users to drag and drop photos from their desktop to the photo-sharing site Flickr, among other services.

Dubbed BrowserPlus, the service could be regarded as Yahoo’s equivalent of Google Gears, which extends the functionality of popular web applications off line.

“Yahoo BrowserPlus is software that extends the capabilities of your web browser to make richer web experiences possible,” the company claims. “Different websites can use BrowserPlus to support things like drag and drop from the desktop, easier file uploads, more efficient and secure acquisition of feeds and information, and native desktop notifications.”

Yahoo demonstrated the power of the software with one of its own popular web apps, Flickr. This add on allows users to simply drag and drop photos from their desktop folders into the browser, where basic edits such as cropping, resizing and greyscaling can be applied, before the photos are uploaded into a Flickr account.

BrowserPlus is currently in beta (or ’sneak peak’ mode, to use Yahoo’s parlance) and is available for download here. The software works on both Windows and Mac OS X, with support for Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari.

Source PC Pro

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28/05/2008 by swordfish.

Microsoft plans to add multi-touch interface to Windows 7, top executives announced on Tuesday at The Wall Street Journal’s D: All Things Digital conference in Carlsbad, California.

Chairman Bill Gates and chief executive Steve Ballmer showed the new Windows features as part of their keynote at the event, with Gates adding that the new technology will be available in late 2009.

Microsoft corporate vice president Julie Larson-Green demonstrated the multi-touch technology, painting with several fingers at the same time to show how it can process not just touch, but multiple simultaneous input.

“It’s much faster to do certain tasks than using a mouse,” Larson-Green said. She also showed rotating photos by pinching and rotating, much like Microsoft’s surface or Apple’s iPhone.

Source: ZDNet

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27/05/2008 by swordfish.

Apple has reportedly filed a patent to bring solar power to its range of iPod devices and laptops.

Most portable devices can’t rely on integrated solar power, because the surface area required for the solar panels is far larger than the device itself.

Apple has, however, found a novel way of circumventing this problem by placing the solar panels beneath the LCD screen. This allows the device to absorb the ambient light, whilst reducing the physical footprint of the solar panel itself, according to the patent discovered by the MacRumours website.

The site claims that, if successful, iPods and MacBooks could run without any mains charge. However, that seems wildly optimistic.

Source: PC Pro

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23/05/2008 by swordfish.

The Office of Government Commerce has urged public-sector workers to turn off their PCs overnight to help cut carbon emissions and costs.

The Office of Government Commerce (OGC) is the Treasury office responsible for driving efficiency in public-sector spending. The OGC said switching PCs off during non-work hours could cut carbon emissions by 55,723 tonnes per year across the public sector.

In addition, the practice could save up to £10.2m annually in power costs if all government departments take it up.

The campaign is being led by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and includes a cross-government deal to use the NightWatchman power-management technology from 1E.

NightWatchman automatically shuts PCs down during non-working hours and can monitor daily PC power consumption and carbon emissions.

Source: ZDNet

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22/05/2008 by swordfish.

The BBC has admitted Apple users now consume 13% of iPlayer traffic, despite the fact it still doesn’t offer a version of the application for the platform.

The iPlayer service now serves 21 million programs per month, and is seeing growth of 20% month on month, explained Ashley Highfield, BBC director of future media & technology, speaking at the Google Zeitgeist 2008 forum.

This means that 2.6 million shows per month are now being viewed on Apple computers. He also revealed that one in 10 iPlayer users access the service from an Apple computer, while a further 3% use either an iPhone or iPod touch.

Apple and Linux users must use the on-line streaming service, unlike Windows users who can download programs and view them off-line at their leisure.

Source: PC Pro

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21/05/2008 by swordfish.

According to research from Hornbill Systems and the Service Desk Institute, more IT workers start their career working on the helpdesk, early employment that stands them in good stead for the rest of their working lives.

The two groups jointly commissioned research and found out that many employers are now using psychometric testing to identify which workers were likely to thrive in a corporate environment, before placing them in support positions.

Further, more emphasis is being placed on the social skills of candidates, meaning that employers expect more personal skills from their staff.

In a whitepaper released today they also point to other practices, currently being used to woo and retain good staff. More than fifty seven percent of the firms that responded to a survey said that they were building rewards into their employees contracts, and had already found that staff were staying longer in their positions, and were happy to remain employed at the company for longer.

Source: Yahoo UK & Ireland News

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