istartedsomething

It was in 2002, Google launched its internal enterprise searching solution, the Google Search Appliance and the Google Mini.

Today, Google brought these products into the land that few US corporations recognise as a developed country, Australia.

It never fails to surprise me how many global IT companies simply neglect providing content or services relevant to Australia. Google Maps only discovered Australia had roads a month ago, although still failing to deliver acceptable satellite images to most metropolitan area. And don’t get me started on Live Local maps. And it doesn’t end there, its not hard to find products or services that isn’t usable in Australia for a few years after its initial launch.

Don’t neglect Australia.

ninemsn, is an Australian internet portal. Formed in 1997 costing $50 million as a joint venture between MSN, the ‘internet services’ provider by Microsoft and Publishing and Broadcasting Limited, the parent media company of Channel Nine, a leading television network in Australia founded by the late Kerry Packer. It hurts me to know that 7.69 million people visit the website each month looking really really hard for news, information and services.

This is what it looked like in 2003. This is what it looked like in 2005.

I’ve always wondered how much content there is on the front page. So I took the liberty of highlighting the stuff that wasn’t content, which was easier than finding what was.

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The best way to experience the Vista betas, or any operating system for that matter is to dual-boot. Dual-booting offers you next to maximum performance, whilst maintaining the best compatibility with your existing operating system to either continuing using, or to assist in the migration to the new OS.

Microsoft has made it relatively easy to dual-boot Windows Vista with your existing XP installation. Here’s a quick guide outlining the basic steps you need to undertake to get to a working Vista desktop environment.
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Adopted from Frank Arrigo. Presumably born in China, quite young, 3″ tall, loves holding a stylus, smiles a lot, big feet, has several tattoos, doesn’t like talking, leaves no mess, great at providing stress relief.

This is a screencast of Office Word 2007. It takes you through a scenario of editing a document through to publishing it. Features explored include: live zoom, live style preview, cover page, quick formatting, context spelling, picture tools, SmartArt, keyboard navigation, watermarking, academic referencing, reviewing, and native PDF support. There’s also a bug with the full page reading feature with SmartArt objects, you can’t miss it.

Recorded on Toshiba M400 tablet PC with a reduced resolution of 1024×768 for optimal capturing performance. This does not reflect the actual performance of Office Word 2007 or Windows Vista.


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In addition, I missed the demonstration of collapsible tabs and enhanced tooltips, so here are these two features in screenshot format.

Enhanced tooltips are really useful because they allow you to discover more easily, functions you either previously did not know existed or were too afraid to try it.

After the popularity of the first bunch of Vista screencasts, here’s some additional screencasts of Windows Vista that includes: Windows Update, Vista games, parental controls and date/time management.

Again, these were recorded on the Toshiba M400 tablet PC at a reduced resolution of 1024×768 for capturing performance. This does not reflect the actual performance of Vista. Encoded with Quicktime H.264.

Windows Update

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Better management of updates through the Windows Update control panel. Ability to manually request updates and manage existing updates. Also features better restart management that prevents loss of work.

Vista games

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New and improved games bundled with Windows Vista include: Chess Titans, Freecell, Hearts, InkBall, Mahjong Titans, Minesweeper, Purple Place, Solitare and Spider Solitare. Maybe this is what will cause the great depression of 2008 Dvorak has been talking about.

Parental controls

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Better management of allowed and blocked content through time curfews, rating and classifications, application limitations and activity reports. Supports regional ratings and content specifications. Activity reports also feature detailed analysis of computer usage including web surfing history and instant messaging logs.

Date and time

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Better date and time management with the ability to manage multiple timezones.

Be sure to also check out the Office Word 2007 screencast!