JamLegend

I’m sure many of you are familiar with the game Guitar Hero, this is similar in the idea, but online style complete with social networking features like profiles, commenting, and a easy to use interface.

Xmarks

A browser plugin that enables you to sync bookmarks across computers as well as discover new websites though your bookmarks. Also handy as a bookmark backup tool.

Digsby

This program connects together your online accounts (Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Gmail, Yahoo, AIM, Google Talk, etc.) in one program.

Elance

An online system to hire  (basically outsource) people and manage these connections. The website also handles the money as well which is convenient.

Tripit

It combines all your travel info (which you forward to it by email) in an organized location and provides additional information to help your trip go more smoothly. There is also an iPhone app for Tripit.

Interested to see the rest of the top 100? Go to http://www.webware.com/100/.

Here are a few of them. You can check them all out at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/watchtheads/

Also, Microsoft did the Mojave Experiment where they told people that Mojave was the new Windows, where in fact it was Vista to show people that what they thought Vista was isn’t actually true.

There are also a few other ads with Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates in them which are funny, but I’m not sure they are very good ads:

Palm Pre

The biggest (in my opinion and CNET’s, is the Palm Pre. This iPhone competitor is a touchscreen phone with a slide out QWERTY keyboard and a cool new Palm OS called WebOS. This OS is filled with cool animations, gestures (multi-touch ones), and seems to be very intuitive. Now, I bet you are thinking along the line of: Doesn’t the iPhone have that already? True, but this Palm does have the ability for you to multitask and it has an actual keyboard (the jelly button kind like the one on a Palm Centro). In addition, it does have copy and paste. Multitasking (not just being able to play music in the background like the iPhone) works by having multiple “cards” on your main screen which you can flick back and forth from. And these aren’t just static views, they are live mini-views of the open apps and you can interact with them too.

Other tidbits: the web browser is also very good (comparable to the iPhone’s), the Pre comes with a 3 MP camera, and you can download music through the Amazon Music Store (similar to the G1). There is also GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, a 3.5mm headphone jack (yay!), and 8 GB of internal storage.

No details yet on pricing or release date. But it is supposed to be around the iPhone’s price and released in the first half of 2009. The Pre will be available on Sprint.

Palm Pre Video:

More info:

Palm Pre First Impressions on CNET

Palm Pre Photo Gallery on CNET

Official Palm Pre website

Palm Pre Info on Engadget

The Sony P-Series Lifestyle PC

This not quite netbook like netbook is going along with Sony’s general premium higher end feel for laptops. It has a wide 8 inch screen with a 1600*768 resolution, is less than an inch think, and weights 1.4 pounds. But it has no touchpad, instead, it has a pointing stick. It also has 3G mobile broadband (Verizon), 802.11n wi-fi, GPS, and Bluetooth. The P-Series runs Windows Vista and will retail at $900.

CNET article on the Sony P-Series Lifestyle PC

Engadget Hands-on videos of the Sony P-Series Lifestyle PC

LG Watch Phone

This futuristic watch is also a touchscreen phone. It uses iPhone like gestures to navigate through the TFT capacitive touch screen (1.43 inches diagonally). It looks quite cool though I question its usability as a phone. You would probably need a Bluetooth headset to talk calls since your other option is to take phones with speakerphone. There is also a camera built-in. But the main issue is that you can’t get it (no plans, yet), not unless you are in Europe. The LG Watch phone is scheduled for release later this year and pricing has not yet been released.

Hands-on video of the LG Watch Phone

A CNET article on the LG Watch Phone

So that is basically it for what I though was cool at CES. For more info about it, check out the CES Page at CNET (here) and the articles on CES at Engadget (here). Want to mention another gadget that was at CES that I didn’t mention? Tell the readers in the comments!

Images from CNET and Engadget.

So even though Steve Ballmer promised at CES a public beta of Windows 7 to be released on Friday, we didn’t officially get it. This was from server overloads, errors, and a bunch of other issues with people all trying to get the beta. I would assume the main reason to this is that Microsoft told us it would only give out 2.5 million keys to beta testers (which they have decided against), so people were rushing to grab one. I got the beta on that day from a direct link to the ISO file, but I still didn’t have a product key. But the beta works for 30 days without a key, so I installed it on my Lenovo S10 Netbook. The installation went quite smoothly and right now I’m typing this blog post on Windows 7 (with Windows Live Writer). I did finally get a key from Microsoft, so my beta will work until August 1, 2009.

Overall, I think the OS is quite nice and does bring quite a bit of extra functionality to your computer. The interface does take a bit to get used to with its changes. As I mentioned in my other article about Windows 7 (see here), there are some nice simple features that make the experience with Windows much better. One of these is the Aero Snap feature where you can just move a window to the side an it’ll “snap” to occupy half of the screen. Or at the top, where it will go full screen. This is extremely helpful for using a website to write a report or for multitasking. Another is Aero Peek where you can hover over the bottom right hand corner and see the desktop without actually going to it. This is helpful if you have widgets there.

Some other small improvements include having a little triangle next to start menu items that you can hover over to explore recent documents, websites, and common tasks without opening the application. Also, there is the Action Center where you can manage your system’s security and solve issues that Windows finds.

The OS is definitely faster than both XP and Vista, and keeping mind that Aero is enabled with its transparency and animations, is quite a feat. The system does boot up quite quickly and feels quite stable. The fact that it is Vista’s successor is quite obvious with the similar start menu and feel to it. Though that isn’t a bad thing, those were reasons why Vista was good, the bad was the incompatibility and slowness of it. The compatibility is quite amazing. I just plugged in random devices and the OS quickly detects and installs drivers for it.

Some criticism: The taskbar’s organization. Though I feel it has been improved drastically, I do find having shortcut icons and open windows together a bit annoying, but I think I’ve gotten used to it, since Microsoft does differentiate them by putting the open windows in a box. I’m also still not quite sure why they took out some applications such as Mail and Movie Maker and put it in a separate suit (Windows Live Essentials) and made people download it separately (unless you buy a Dell, which as partnered up with Microsoft to bundle Windows 7 and Essentials together).

If you are interested in downloading and trying out the beta. Here are my tips. If you have XP, you aren’t able to just upgrade up to 7, but if you have Vista SP1, you can. For XP users, you’ll just have to do a clean install on a separate partition or deleting XP (and your files) and installing it on your current partition. I would recommend backing up before installing Windows 7 (for XP users, it is kind of mandatory, otherwise, you’ll lose all your files). Keep in mind that the beta ends on August 1st, 2009, so plan ahead for upgrading to the final version or to reinstall your original OS.

To repartition your hard drive (shrink your current partition, and then make a new one). I would recommend using GParted Live (see here). You can run this from a CD or a USB drive.

For backing up, check this page out.

For the beta FAQ, go here.

For release notes, go here.

For installation instructions, go here.

For an overview of what is new in Windows 7, go here.

Want to dive in to Windows 7? Go to the Windows 7 main page(http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/) to download the beta (NOTE: You need a Live/Hotmail account to do so). I would recommend reading the information on the download page before going ahead. Again, Microsoft is not having that 2.5 million beta keys limit anymore (until January 24th), so don’t worry about not getting a key.

Good luck, if you are going to test out Windows 7. Also, I may post up a video about Windows 7 in the future, so look for that.

Thanks to Wikipedia for having that screenshot of Windows 7, build 7000.

The little taskbar that I have there is what the Windows 7′s taskbar looks like as of Build 6933. It has icons of the programs and pops up previews of the windows when you hover over it, even the tabs (such as of IE, and the various docs on Word). Right clicking on one of these icons results in a Jump List. These give you access to data such as the most recent document, website, and to common tasks like media controls. The system tray has also been optimized to smoothen the experience. The default tray will have four icons, Volume, Power, Network, and Action center. Applications that install system tray icons are hidden by defualt. To the far right, there is a little rectangular box which allows you to access “Peak”. Hovering ofter this will make all windows transparent giving you a clear view of the desk top, a click brings you to the desktop. Learn more about the taskbar on this website.

Windows 7′s New Taskbar (from http://windows7news.com/)

The Start Menu (from arstechnica.com)

“Peeking” (from arstechnica.com)

A few of the typical programs you find on a Windows system have also been updated. The calculator now has in addition to Standard and Scientific mode, Programmer and Statistics mode which are handy for those functions. Paint and Wordpad have also been revamped with the Ribbon taskbar borrowed from Office 2007.

The New Paint (from http://windows7news.com/)

Wikipedia also states that there are “advancements in touch, speech, and handwriting recognition, support for virtual hard disks, improved performance on multi-core processors, improved boot performance, and kernel improvements.” The Control Panel has also been updated with additional icons, “including: Accelerators, ClearType Text Tuner, Display Color Calibration Wizard, Gadgets, Infrared, Recovery, Troubleshooting, Workspaces Center, Location and Other Sensors, Credential Manager, Biometric Devices, System Icons, Windows Solution Center, and Display.”

There are also features called “Aero Snap” and “Aero Shake”. Snap allows you to move your cursor to various points on the screen and the window will snap into a specific shape (full screen, half screen). Shake allows you to “shake” a window which causes all the windows other than that one to minimize and if done again, maximizes them again. See these in the videos below.

A demonstration of “Aero Snap”

A demonstration of Aero Shake

Microsoft has also added a new feature to the Windows Explorer called Libraries which basically is a folder, but rather than the files in the folder are actually in that folder, they are from various locations all put in one area. In other words, it is a way to organize your files independent of the location of the files.

Libraries in Windows 7 (from arstechnica.com)

This is a guide to bring the Vista Interface to your Windows Xp PC. First of all, this involves changing your computer’s system files, so if you aren’t comfortable to do this, then consider a software called Windowblinds (It costs some money but there is a trial version). Then you can find skins at http://www.wincustomize.com.

There are two ways to achieve the look. You can install the Windows Transformation Pack at http://www.windowsxlive.net/?p=361. This will install the whole Windows Vista style. Be warned, you may not get the results you want. Also, you’ll want to make a backup (or at least a System Restore Point) just in case something bad happens.

The other way is a little more manual. You can search for skins (I use deviantart.com and then searched for Windows Vista. I used the skin from the Windows Vista Inspirat Pack RC1.) online and apply them. You’ll also need a uxtheme.dll patch which you can get here: http://www.softpedia.com/progDownload/UXTheme-MultiPatcher-Download-2369.html. The patch will enable you to use third-party skins.

Next, you will need to copy the files to the Windows Directory: (Your Drive):
\Resources\Themes. Then go to Display Properties (Right click on desktop then properties), and apply the theme. If it isn’t there, manually apply it by double clicking the theme file in the Theme’s folder. Now you pc should look like Vista, except for the start button, it is cut off. That’s why there is the handy tool in the pack known as VistaStart, which makes the orb full, if it isn’t placed right, move it! Feel free to try other skins on the internet and the other features in the Windows Vista Inspirat Pack.

Also, you might want to install a sidebar there is one in the Inspirat Pack but you can also use Google Desktop (In Screenshot) or the Desktop Sidebar. Enjoy your new *Windows Vista PC*!

NOTE: I’m not responsible for any damage caused by this procedure. Do this at your own risk!

The HP Touchsmart PC IQ1770 is my favorite computer of CES. It’s similar to Apple iMac (in that it is an all in one) but with a touchscreen monitor. It will be released at the same time as Windows Vista and will cost $1,779. It has a touch activated addition called SmartCenter. It has a calendar, a photo editing application, and a basic weather feed. Included with the calendar is a Post-it(r) styled note application to leave notes (or voice notes) for other members of your family.Otherwise, the TouchSmart PC works very much like a typical modern PC. It includes all of the amenities of a system in its price range, including a slot-loading, LightScribe-capable DVD burner (standard definition), an 8-in-1 media card reader, integrated 802.11 b/g Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, a TV tuner, a Webcam and a microphone on the top edge of the LCD, as well as the usual assortment of video and audio connections.

In MP3s is the Sansa Connect. It has the long awatied feature of wireless downloading and internet radio (Hmm, I guess Starbuck’s wi-fi can come in handy sometimes).The player comes with 4GB of flash memory and offers an SD card slot to add more. The body is sleek and compact, measuring in at 2.05×3.58×0.63 inches, and the bright color screen is ample at 2.2 inches (diagonal). The Connect is due in March and will sport a $249.99 price tag.

In Home Theater is the the LG BH100 and the Phillps Soundbar. The LG BH100 is the previously impossible player. It is the ONE that can play HD-DVD and Blu-ray. The player can deliver up to 1080p output resolution at 24 and 30 frames per second via HDMI, but future-conscious buyers might lament that the HDMI version is just 1.2, not 1.3. The LG also has Blu-ray Java compatibility. All of the standard A/V outputs are present, including 5.1-channel analog audio outputs. Of cource it will still be able to play our traditional DVDs and CDs.

The Phillps Soundbar HTS8100 is a 1.1 virtual surround speaker (one speaker and a subwoofer). But what is different is that it has a built in DVD player (sorry no blu-ray or HD-DVD). It is about 5 inches thick and uses Phillips Ambisound technology. The price tag might scare you though at 1,000 dollars. There is an alternative: the Phillips HTS6600 which is a 2.1 virtual surround and will cost $599. Both will be availible in the second quarter on 2007.

I’ll continue on later, so check back often!