Windows 7, the latest OS being developed by Microsoft saw its RC (Release candidate) version being released today. If you missed the chance to download the public beta earlier this year and still have not experienced Windows 7, make sure you get your copy of Windows 7 RC this time for sure because its really a very good OS from MS, not like the last blunder called Vista.

To download your copy of Windows 7, go to the download page on Microsoft website, and download the Windows 7 version of your choice (x86 or x64). The RC is right now available in five languages for download, English, German, Japanese, French, and Spanish. The RC will expire on June 1, 2010, that is more than one year of legit and free Windows 7 use.

Microsoft is also very wisely telling the users to not hurry to get their copy of Windows by saying that the operating system will be available for download atleast through July 2009. (must read : How the rush to download the RC crashed even MSDN and TechNet which released RC for MSDN subscribers on May 1 2009. Funny, isnt?)

Microsoft is also not limiting the number of product keys for Windows 7, so you can download safely till July this year.

Also, there are a few things you should know before you go on to install the RC on your PC:

• This is a pre-release version and is expected to be buggy some times. So make sure you keep a backup of your data all the time.
• Starting from March 1, 2010, your Windows 7 pc will start shutting down itself automatically every two hours. You will be notified two weeks before Windows goes into this annoying mode and before Mar 1, you will have to install a legit copy of Windows 7 on your machine.

I hope you will enjoy your stay with Windows 7.

Microsoft has opened its latest version of Windows operating system,the Windows 7 for public Beta testing. If you are interested in testing the latest OS from Microsoft you can download the BETA from this page.

You will need a Windows LIVE Id to be able to download.

You can download both,the 32-bit version as well as the 64-bit version. The downloaded file will be a ISO file,burn it to a DVD and enjoy the Beta.

The Beta will expire on 1^st August 2009.

Many few Google products are able to get “out of Beta” status as it is an undeclared policy of sorts of Google to keep its products in development stage forever. Many say that Google does it so that when anyone asks why is your xyz product not working like it should, they have a ready made answer,”Its still in Beta,why do you expect it to work normally?
Here is what they said on their blog.

All users will get updated to the latest release over the next few days. The version of the latest update is 1.0.154.36.

Note to Dev channel users: The Dev channel release will stay at 0.4.154.33. The current stable release is the same as the current Dev channel release without the Hotmail fix (which hasn’t been tested enough to release to all users). An update is coming next week.

I requested my copy sometime back and forgot to blog about it. Then i was reading Sathya’s blog, where he mentioned about this giveaway by Sun Microsystems. I thought why not share it on my blog as every news is new to some people atleast. A few can always gain from it.

So, to get your free copy of Sun’s OpenSolaris CD all you have to do is, go to this page, and fill up the form.

You can also order Ubuntu via Shipit free of cost. I have so far ordered 7.04 and 7.10 from them and recieved them in reasonable time.

On the surface, we designed a browser window that is streamlined and simple. To most people, it isn’t the browser that matters. It’s only a tool to run the important stuff — the pages, sites and applications that make up the web. Like the classic Google homepage, Google Chrome is clean and fast. It gets out of your way and gets you where you want to go.

Under the hood, we were able to build the foundation of a browser that runs today’s complex web applications much better. By keeping each tab in an isolated “sandbox”, we were able to prevent one tab from crashing another and provide improved protection from rogue sites. We improved speed and responsiveness across the board. We also built a more powerful JavaScript engine, V8, to power the next generation of web applications that aren’t even possible in today’s browsers.

This is just the beginning — Google Chrome is far from done.

Google Chrome even has a comic dedicated to itself.

What is interesting is that Google heavily supports Mozilla Firefox. Google recently also extended its deal with Mozilla to have Google set as the default search engine of Firefox in lieu of some handsome amount.  They cut a deal just a couple of days back of announcing their own browser. Very smart of Google. The deal will now run through 2011. Will Chrome eat Mozilla/Safari/Opera/IE share? Of course it will,after all, its a Google product!

Download Google Chrome Beta from “here“.

Download Google Chrome

Here are a few screen shots depicting some features of the new kid(or should we say the new “biggie”?) on the block.

Google Chrome auto-complete

"incognito" mode for without-a-trace browsing

]]> http://biotech-geek.com/blog2/2008/09/02/google-to-launch-its-open-source-browser-chrome-today/feed/ 4 http://biotech-geek.com/blog2/2008/08/25/blaze-media-pro-aio-answer-for-your-multimedia-needs/ http://biotech-geek.com/blog2/2008/08/25/blaze-media-pro-aio-answer-for-your-multimedia-needs/#comments Mon, 25 Aug 2008 16:16:52 +0000 Mayank http://biotech-geek.com/blog2/?p=404 If you were searching for a powerful, all in one answer to your multimedia needs like playback,ripping,recording,conversions,editing,burning, then you search ends here. You get all these and more in one hell of a package. Blaze Media Pro.

Blaze Media Pro is an all-in-one combining a CD burning software, a DVD burning software , ripping tool, recording,editing,playback,audio and video merge,extraction,video capture, video creation, audio tag editing and many more powerful and useful features in one smart package.

You can extract audio from your video files and store them as audio files.You can extract frames to image files in batch mode. You can create a video from still images.

A plethora of options are available if you are looking for converting your files. if you want to convert your audio files, you can convert files of format CD, MP3, WAV, WMA, OGG, MPEG-4, AIFF, M4A, AAC, AC3, FLAC, and ALAC,  and if you want to convert your videos, two-way conversions among MPEG-1, MPEG-2, AVI, WMV, ASF, Flash (SWF and FLV), iPod, PSP, 3GP, and MOV are there as options. So you can easlily convert DVD to AVI, MPG, WMV.You can also compress your audio files so that you can have more number of them on your MP3 player or mobile phone or your hard disk in case you have limited storage.

Amazing video editing options are available too.It supports editing of formats like AVI (uncompressed), AVI (compressed using any available codec), MPEG-1, MPEG-2, WMV, and ASF.Video editing operations are provided (delete frame, delete selection, crop, resize, rotate, mirror, flip, trim, text overlay, adjust audio volume, etc.). You can use more than 30 effects and color enhancement options to enhance your videos.

Common audi formats like WMA,WAV and MP3 can be embedded or extracted in/from video.

So that gives you complete freedom and options on what you want to do with your multimedia files. You hardly need anything other software. It has everything.

In my opinion Blaze Media Pro is an amazing piece of software and certainly worth a try. I highly recommend it. Do try!

Download the trial from here.

Microsoft is known to shell out OS that power more than 90% of the personal computers across the globe. Everything Microsoft does makes the news. Whenever they announce a new product, huge hype and anticipation builds around the release. Same was the case when Vista was launched in January last year. Everybody was so anxious to see the new ground breaking operating system by the king in the same(OS) market.

Though it dint go down all good with everyone (i think its almost impossible to make “everyone” happy), it won the hearts of many because of its features and ease of use which are key points in evaluating a software.

I used XP for a long time (like everyone else) before switching over to Vista. Actually, at first, i was dual booting XP with Vista as at that time not every software of daily use was compatible with Vista. So even though i loved every bit of my Windows Vista Ultimate Edition, i could not make a full switch to Vista. But as time passed more and more software and hardware became compatible with Vista and today, i cant recall a famous software hardware not compatible with Vista. As a result, i have now switched over to Vista completely.

Vista is available in 6 version viz Windows Vista Starter,Windows Vista Home Basic,Windows Vista Home Premium,Windows Vista Business,Windows Vista Enterprise,Windows Vista Ultimate.

I have been running Windows Vista from almost since its launch now. And i must say so far the journey has been amazing.
Earlier i used to face many annoying problems like BSOD for no reason(duh!), system crash, security problems. All of them when i least wanted them to happen. That was very frustrating for me.But none like that happened with Vista. I can work carefree without any fear of any crash or intrusion or attack.
I loved Vista mainly because of its features, which most of them are, still unique to Vista.

The Vista is the most safe and secure operating system from Microsoft’s stable till date. It offers many safety feature like UAC ( User Account Control), UAC makes it difficult for malware to gain control of the system by restricting privileges. Encryption of files with EFS or Encrypting File System, Bitlocker Drive Encryption for encrypting entire drives. Even the IE 7 that comes natively embedded in the OS is one of the most secure browser if compared without any add ons. IE 7 has phishing filter, can work in “protected mode” which makes it very safe browser. Windows Vista also offers a built-in anti-malware tool in “Windows Defender” which works pretty well.

On the general features list, Vista scores an ace. You name it and Vista has it, and has it better than what you could have imagined. Some of the important features i feel important discussing about are “Instant Search” which is very very effective,time saving, convenient way of finding your files. “Instant Search gets you your search results “as you type” and delivers accurate results. Very impressive i should say. Sidebar is another neat feature added to Vista. Sidebar lets you add useful widgets to your desktop adding increased functionality to your desktop. Very handy feature. Multimedia centred features such as a revamped Windows Media Centre, WIndows Media Player 11, Windows DVD maker, Windows Photo Gallery are all top notch in functionality and performance. You can even set “Parental COntrols” on your machine.

There is even more in store for you if you use “Windows Vista Ultimate version” in form of Windows Ultimate Extras like BitLocker, EFS, Windows Dreamscene (animated desktop background).

One thing for which Vista is so famous and which can not be ignored is AERO interface which stands for Authentic, Energetic, Reflective, and Open. Use AERO once and you will be blown off by the eye candy it has to offer. On XP i used Windows Blinds to make it look cooler, but Vista is already much higher, in premium league when it comes to appearance and eye candy stuff as compared to other OS in the market.

Have a look at AERO interface:

With features like “Ready Boost”, you can use your compatible USB drives as RAM for your Windows Vista powered PC.

As Microsoft has already announced that it will stop officially supporting XP, you will need to eventually upgrade to Vista if you have not done that already.If you are worried about the incompatibility issues, bugs etc then, let me inform you that many of the problems have been fixed in the Vista SP1 release.
If still you face any problems and you run Vista Ultimate or Vista business you can get support from Microsoft under Windows Vista Small Business Assurance Program. You can get free support over phone from July 1 to September 30.
So get your Windows Vista now, if you have not already!

The wait is finally over. The much awaited version 3 of the award winning web browser is finally here. Firefox 3 (final version) was released on 17th June.

There are as many as 15,000 improvements over the previous version. It is safer,faster and smarter than ever before.

Download Firefox 3 from here or you can also download by clicking the firefox icon in the sidebar of this web page.

Features:

• Safer and faster internet:

  Avoid suspicious sites and internet frauds with simple and instant site identification. You will get a full browser screen size warning message when you you visit a web page attempting phishing or trying to inject malware into your PC. Web pages load faster than before.

• The “Awesome(location) Bar”:

This awesome bar is so awesome that nothing in business compares to it. Suppose you visited a website some time ago and want to visit it again but dont/vaguely

remember its name, type in whatever you remember about the site’s name and Firefox will find it for you. Now thats innovation.

It also lets you bookmark by a single clicking the “star” at the end of the bar. If you click the “start” twice, you can save it in desired folder and add a tag it.

• Tag:

You can tag a site with different keywords. Suppose you label 10 sites with keyword “games”. Now when you type games in the location bar, all the ten sites will

be shown. You can also add multiple labels to one site.

• Improved Search:

Search the Web in record time with smart keywords. With a few clicks you can assign keywords to search engines, and then simply enter your key and search words in

the location bar. With this feature, typing “book home building” can search Amazon.com, and take you right to books about home building without ever pausing at the

homepage.

• Better memory management:

The only issue that irks Firefox lovers is the amount of RAM it eats when you use much of its own USP, the add-ons.  The new version promises to be lighter faster in

the same regard.

• Full zoom:

Zoom into any picture on a web page you want seamlessly.

Its not even a week old and look at the response!

Mozilla also organized a Firefox 3 download day to set a world record of the most number of software download in a single day. The response was huge, i mean HUGE. Total downloads exceeded 8 million mark, 8,349,074 to be exact. It got a whopping 4% share in web browser market in just 24 hours of its release.

[Graphic SOURCE]

Total downloads have now reached 14789671 (as on Fri, 20 Jun 2008 19:04:26 GMT) and download per limit at the same time was 1015. Good going.

If you still havent downloaded it, download from here or you can also download by clicking the firefox icon in the sidebar of this web page.