Announcement

Rules were made to be broken; that whole 55 MPH thing happens to be my favorite. Western Digital had larger aspirations; the kinds that considered milestones. Reaching the 750GB per platter mark is definitely in the milestone category and that is what Western Digital is releasing today. On the surface 750GB per platter doesn’t really sound all that impressive unless you are really into the whole storage technology scene. Those on the outside will be more excited to hear about the milestone this way; 3TB hard drives that upon launch cost just a little over 200 USD. Do I have your attention now? ...

Google Docs adds a feature that’s already available in Gmail: you can now upload images using drag and drop. Open a new document and drag an image from your desktop or from a file manager. This feature only works in the latest versions of Firefox, Chrome and Safari because it requires HTML5’s File API. Unfortunately, you can’t upload multiple images and Google Docs doesn’t show a placeholder image or a progress bar. ...

Mozilla Labs: The “Chromeless” project experiments with the idea of removing the current browser user interface and replacing it with a flexible platform which allows for the creation of new browser UI using standard Web technologies such as HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Introduction Have you ever had an idea to improve the user interface of your browser? Have you ever actually gone and tried to make that idea a reality? If you have, you would have probably used technologies like XUL and XPCOM. Much of the user interface (browser chrome) of Firefox is implemented in XUL, which uses a lot of Web-based technologies such as the DOM and JavaScript. Firefox is put together in a way that seasoned developers are able implement features with amazing efficiency, but at the same time, the browser interface in XUL represents a barrier for potential contributors. What if the parts of the browser that are most interesting to contributors were implemented in standard Web technologies such as HTML, CSS and JavaScript? What kinds of wild-eyed experimentation would we see if a new conception of browser UI could be prototyped in about the same time it takes to write a web page? ...

Facebook continues its quest to revamp its popular Photos feature with the launch of the number one most requested feature of them all: drag-and-drop organizing. Demonstrated in the video above, drag-and-drop organizing is exactly as it sounds; users can now drag and drop albums and photos into any order they desire. Today’s launch follows last month’s upgrade of Facebook Photos, which brought high resolution photo uploads and an in-line photo viewer to the News Feed. ...

Google is set to expand into television production by joining forces with Sony to release new TV sets that allow viewers to browse the Internet. The high-definition sets, which were unveiled in New York, will have LCD screens ranging from 24 inches to 46 inches and a remote control system that comes with the standard QWERTY keyboard to enter search requests, send emails or make comments on the Web whilst simultaneously whilst watching television. ...

The New Acrobat X is finally here! What can it do for education? Here is a quick list of new and improved features: New user interface The Interface tool pane brings top user needs out front Customizable Tool Bar Tools Pane reveals most useful tools to improve productivity Tools and Tasks are easier to access HUD display provides more real estate for viewing __ Amazing document repurposing New export options allow for Word and Excel options including headers, footers, and worksheets New scanning engine improves accuracy and file size Efficient tagging and reflow ensure viewing and access on a variety of screens __ ...

While NVidia’s big news may have been its upcoming budget-range GeForce GT 430 1GB cards which leaked out earlier this month, it seems that the company has been hiding another secret: the GeForce GT 440 range. Quietly detailed on the company’s website, the NVidia GeForce GT 440 range of cards is designed to offer OEMs a DirectX 11-compatible card for adding in to their mid-range machines. According to the reference specifications, the GT440 cards feature a 594MHz graphics clock, 1,189MHz processor clock, and either 800 or 900MHz memory clock, along with 144 CUDA cores. Interestingly, NVidia will be offering at least two different models: a budget-friendly version featuring 1.5GB of GDDR3, or a high-end model with 3GB of GDDR3. ...

Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, has announced on their blog that the site will soon be offering new features and controls. The features include New Facebook Groups, a Dashboard for Applications, and the ability to Download Your Information. #1 — Why the “new” Groups? According to Zuckerberg, people frequently tell them: “I’d share this thing, but I don’t want to bother 250 people. Or my grandmother. Or my boss.” Now we thought that’s what Friends Lists are for… but then, even Zuckerberg has admitted that Friends Lists are too difficult for most people to effectively manage. So this “completely overhauled, brand new version of Groups” is really mostly the same old Groups that we’ve been using since early 2009, with some PR spin. ...

Very soon, the first build of Opera 11 will be released, and with it will come the long-awaited support for browser extensions. Yesterday at Up North Web, Opera Software’s global press day in Oslo, Norway, it was confirmed that Opera 11 will support browser extensions, the plug-ins that users can incrementally add to their browser to customize the experience. All of Opera’s competitors: Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, and now Safari, each offer their own extension architecture already. ...

Microsoft and Facebook Wednesday unveiled some new search tools for Bing which integrate data from a user’s circle of friends into Bing’s search results. In the Bing blog on Wednesday, Microsoft Senior Vice President of online services Satya Nadella said 50% of users consider their friends’ opinions when making a decision online. Bing is trying to capitalize on this by incorporating the “likes” of a user’s friend list into search results. ...