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New Media News Every Morning

New MSN Site Offers Bing, Social Networks, News and Location

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Big announcement today from MSN, Microsoft’s content network property, as big as their homepage which has just unveiled its new look and feel.  If you’re in the U.S. and you visit MSN from time to time if not on a daily basis, you’ll notice that the website is kind of different right now. Basically, MSN now focuses on four main deliverables – news, social networking, local networking and of course – Bing search.

Actually, the redesign has began as early as November 2009. MSN has been gathering feedback while answering those meaningful ones by way of updates to the site. In fact, they have made 30 updates since November, all courtesy of MSN users who’ve sent their feedback to MSN.

So, what are the new features of the MSN site? Here are the major ones:

It’s all about Bing – Increased Bing search box prominence, new TrendWatch highlighting  the day’s top movers on Twitter, enhanced editorial programming of search-related content, increased prominence of popular searches and testing of search history features

Localization features – Now includes hyper-local tweets, myCities, 3,000 news video clips from 36 local markets delivered in partnership with NBC Local Media and Hearst TV.

Media and News – The homepage now has more media and news items including HD video viewing.

Social Networking – Social networking module of the homepage is now default to Facebook, being the most frequently used, according to MSN.

Basically, MSN is going into the same content-rich homepage design of Yahoo’s content network – something that delivers the goodies to users all in one place. Hopefully, this sparks more interest into the site and converts to more monthly eyeballs for MSN.

Originally posted on March 9, 2010 @ 5:51 pm

Opera 10.50 Released, Brags of Being the Fastest Browser for Windows

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Opera has released the latest version of its web browser for Windows – Opera 10.50, which it claims is the fastest web browser produced so far for Windows. Featuring sleek and refined new design plus some nice features such as private browsing (sounds familiar?), Opera 10.50 is also packed with old features you’ve grown to love with Opera.

Opera 10.50’s new features can be categorized into –  refined browsing experience, faster browsing speed, private browsing, and platform integration.

For its browsing interface, Opera has made some improvements and revisions to provide you with a leaner browsing experience, with special emphasis on your PC’s screen estate. Gone are the Opera menu buttons which were now replaced with traditional menu bar.

With Javascript engine, Carakan and a new graphics library running under the hood, Opera also promises the fastest browser for Windows they made thus-far.

Another new feature of Opera browser for Windows is private browsing. Now, if you’ve used Google Chrome or is still using it right now, it’s similar to Incognito Mode. This means, you can browse sites for as long as you want and you won’t leave a trail or browsing history behind. Opera does private browsing either in a tab or separate window.

Opera 10.50 also integrates well with Windows 7/Vista Aero Glass, Aero Peek and Jump Lists. It also lets you easily access your Speed Dials, tabs and more from the Taskbar.

Of course, the old favorites – Opera Turbo, Opera Unite and Opera Link are still active in Opera 10.50.

Originally posted on March 2, 2010 @ 8:17 am

Opera Mini Browser Arrives on Windows Mobile Phones

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So right after releasing version 10.50 of its web browser for Windows, here comes Opera again with another  announcement  which we would not have expected to happen. Opera Software just released a native version of its Opera Mini 5 beta for Windows Mobile 5- and 6-based phones.

This means that Windows Mobile phones just got a an optimized version of the Opera Mini browser which hopefully would improve the web browsing performance of these phones. What’s interesting about this development is that despite requiring Java, Opera was able to make the Mini browser to run on Windows mobile phones. These phone models happen to be unsupportive of Java technology. But then, Opera managed to bypass this requirements.

Even without Java running, the Opera Mini 5 beta for WinMo phones offers the same browsing experience as the Opera Mini 5 in mobile phones that support Java. So, you’d also get to use Opera’s famous features such as tabbed browsing, password manager, bookmarks and speed dial. These are all built-in to the Windows Mobile OS.

But perhaps what makes this development even more important is the fact this will definitely improve the performance of WinMo phones since Opera is known for compressing data traffic by up to 90%. This translates to a significang improvement to page-loading and speed.  Of course, bottomline of all of this is reduced mobile data cost for users when browsing the web on their Windows Mobile phones.

To download Opera Mini 5 beta on your WinMo phones, visit http://m.opera.com/next.

Originally posted on March 4, 2010 @ 10:19 am

Google Chrome Beta with Translate and New Privacy Option

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So aside from gaining market share, Google Chrome which is currently in beta 4 is also busy improving itself.  It’s latest feature as announced by the Google Chrome blog is a tool for translating a foreign language webpage plus additional privacy settings to make your browsing experience even safer.

Google Chrome Beta’s translate feature now sits  on top of every webpage which are in a language other than your own preferred language setting.  All you need to do is to click on the translate button and Chrome will translate the webpage into your preferred language. This is very useful if you visit a foreign website often. Now, you don’t have to load Google’s translation page – http://translate.google.com on another browser tab, paste the URL of the webpage you want to translate to read the translated text.

If you’re a blogger or writer who source your materials from international sites, specifically those written in languages other than English or your own native language, this feature is also useful. If you noticed when you use Google’s translation tool, the translated webpage takes a new URL. If you copy and paste that on your site and somebody clicks it, the link will return an error page.

With the new Google Chrome feature, the translation happens right on on the browser tab where you load the webpage in foreign language. The URL does not change, so you can copy and paste it to link to your site.

Another new feature of Google Chrome beta is the new privacy settings under the “Privacy” section of Chrome’s Options dialog. This lets you control how browser cookies, images, Javascript, plug-ins and pop-ups are handled on a site-by-site basis. This is in addition to Chrome’s incognito mode which lets you browse websites without leaving a trace of which sites you visited.

With these enhancements, Google is really prepping up its web browser to become a major contender in the web browser market.

Originally posted on March 2, 2010 @ 5:52 pm

TiVo Premiere Will Change the Way You Consume Media Content

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TiVo, a multimedia company popular for providing advanced television services has just launched TiVo Premiere and TiVo Premiere XL Boxes.  Basically what these two boxes do is to provide you with a one box that aims to change the way you consumer various forms of media content.

TiVo Premiere combines cable programming, movies, web videos, and music all in one box  that will unlock the real value of your HDTV set. It is energy efficient and promises to even surpass what the DVRs have done to our media viewing and listening habits.

If you’re multimedia consumer, there’s probably no reason why you would hesitate in getting the TiVo boxes. Well, of course that’s assuming that you are ready to spend $299 or $499 for either of these two TiVo boxes. And these will all happen come April 2010 when the TiVo Premiere and TiVo Premiere XL will be released.

Don’t worry whichever you choose to get, you’d still get the same features such as broadband and broadcast integration, TV Baby Browser, easy to use HD layout, built-in Adobe Flash Player, 45 hours of HD storage or 400 hours of standard definition programming feature.  If you want more recording capacity, you can opt to get the TiVo Premiere XL box instead. This option offers 150 hours of HD or 1350 hours of SD programming.

Are you getting one of these TiVo boxes? Or are you satisfied with your current TV box.

Originally posted on March 3, 2010 @ 10:11 am