Evidence is mounting that Microsoft has really given a select group of testers/partners an early look at the next version of the Windows Operating System. The other day a member of the Neowin forum posted a brief review of Windows 7 before deleting his comments. And now a Chinese web site has posted what could be real live pictures of Windows 7.
Overall, these shots of Windows 7 (or an artist's fictional rendition thereof) show an operating system that looks a lot like Windows Vista. That's not particularly surprising, since Windows 7 won't be launched for at least another two years. Odds are most of the changes would be under the hood at this point.
The images do show a few difference. For example, you can display hidden items in the system tray through a new pop up window. The Control Panel features some rearranged menus, and the display properties dialog for changing screen resolutions looks pretty awesome. Check out the screenshots after the jump.
When we heard that AOL (this blog's parent company) was coming out with a new version of Desktop for Mac, we were pretty excited to see what they'd been up to since the last release five years ago. Now that we've had a chance to play with it, we like it but think it's still got a ways to go before there's a compelling reason to leave behind whatever browser / IM / email combo you're using now.
Though this new version of Desktop for Mac is still in beta, it seems stable. We tested Desktop on a new generation iMac and a MacBook Pro and it ran just fine on both. System requirements include a PowerPC G4 or greater, OS X 10.4 or higher, and at least 256 MB RAM. Surprisingly, Desktop only needs 60 MB of hard drive space (Firefox alone needs 52 MB).
No Apple hasn't finally given us what we want by releasing an official iPhone SDK so developers can create true apps for the phone, but that doesn't seem to be holding back enterprising hackers. Erica Sadun at our sister site The Unofficial Apple Weblog has released a basic text editor and even a screenshot app for the iPhone, while Gizmodo has MobileTerminal, a command line app that should allow for all kinds of iPhone hackery goodness.
Gizmodo also makes a great point: the code for MobileTerminal is being hosted at Google Code, which could mean a number of things, including:
Apple hasn't fired up the cease & desist engine just yet
They are quietly sanctioning this kind of hacking
They're listening to demand and are working on opening the phone up
While we're likely to never hear word from tight-lipped Apple on an official iPhone SDK until it's actually made available to download, power users and iPhone enthusiasts are sure to take some solace in the fact that iPhone hackers seem to have opened it up quite a bit on their own already. We'll definitely be keeping an eye on what grassroots iPhone apps appear.
It could be the nice pink funky heart of Skitch's logo that draws you in. The heart definitely sets the tone for this sweet image editor that is fun and stupid easy to use. It is Forrest Gump easy.
They aren't kidding when they say you can learn Skitch in 3 minutes, however, you can run into some small roadblocks which can interfere with your whizzing around in the program. We'll get to those a little later.
You can use Skitch to take screen captures, crop and resize photos, draw or annotate photos, sketch, and it works with your iPhoto library.
It also keeps a history of all your Skitch images for easy retrieval. Below is a screenshot of the history menu.
With a click of a button you can post your image to mySkitch, a webservice that works with Skitch to give you 1-click uploading of images for fast and fun image sharing.
Resizing is easy. You just pull the image corners to the pixel size you want. This will work only if the "Export at Original Size" square is not checked.
Also, if you use the pull down menu and actually save your image to your hard drive, Skitch saves it as a .skitch file, which is only useful if you want to send it to another Skitch user. The easy way to save it as a jpg (or .png, .svg, .pdf) is to drag your Skitch image to the desktop.
If you like LOLCATS, Skitch is an easy way to make notes and sketch on your images.
Skitch is available by invitation only and so far, just for Mac users. Sorry PC fans. Word is there is a Windows application in development.
You can register at the plasq.com (creators of Comic Life, Pluzzle, and Sqreensavers) site and invites will be sent out via email.
If you're using Skitch, let us know what you think of it.
Now that VeohTV beta's been out for a few days, we've had a chance to take it for a spin (thanks to our friends at NewTeeVee).
Overall, it does a really nice job of presenting a single full-screen interface for finding and watching online video. You can search multiple sites, including YouTube and Daily Motion for videos of your choice. And there are pre-configured channels for tuning into to popular feeds like Rocketboom.
Best of all, VeohTV does something that we've been waiting for. It gives you a single interface for accessing full screen streaming TV episodes from most of the major networks. ABC is nowhere to be seen, but VeohTV prominently features CBS, NBC, Fox, and the CW, as well as a teensy weensy bit of PBS content.
You'll still have to put up with the ads which the network inserts, but that's only really annoying because it means watching the same commercial four or more times in an hour.
The word on the street these days is that switching to a Mac will give you a bunch of new stuff - all sorts of fun software to play with, a CEO with his own Reality Distortion Field™ and a small, rabid cult following that we don't necessarily recommend you join up with. One thing you lose, however, is that Print Screen key; setting up a Mac desktop or notebook will reveal that the key is nowhere to be found, apparently leaving us out in the cold when it comes to capturing that golden moment on your display.
Fortunately, this isn't the case. In fact, Apple built two great screenshot tools into the Mac OS X software (in other words: they're free, and if you're on a fairly recent Mac, you already have them installed). One is a dedicated app, while another is a handy set of universal keyboard shortcuts that are always right at your service.
HiveLive is an online application designed to keep track of busy lifestyles.
HiveLive is currently in beta form, and offered by invitation only. Which is a real drag, since this could be a useful online application for a ton of people. I have had the chance to play around with HiveLive for a bit, and think it's a pretty useful application. Not a lot is said about this application on the front page other then it's great for families, friends, clubs, small businesses, bands, etc., and that it's an easy way to keep track and share important information.
Through HiveLive you can store notes, bookmarks, account numbers or anything that you want to remember. Storing it on HiveLive gives you have access to it anywhere you have an internet connection. When you send an invitation to other people, you can create Hives of information that you can share between users. These hives can be public or private, only accessible to those that you wish to enter and share information with. It takes a little bit of figuring out how the system works, but it seems pretty useful with its clean and well organized interface.
If you are interested in trying out this tool, Solutionwatch has some invites to give away.
UPDATE: Carlos from HiveLive has been so kind as to make 100 free user accounts available for readers of DownloadSquad. Visit http://hivelive.com/join/downloadsquad to sign up now! Thanks Carlos!
Microsoft has released build 5456 of Windows Vista to its closed testing group, the first test build since the public release of Vista Beta 2 a couple weeks ago, and Windows guru Paul Thurrott has his usual screenshot-packed overview of what's changed in this version. Thurrott wasn't especially pleased with Beta 2's bugs but says build 5456 "makes up a lot of lost ground," and that "it's hard not to view this build and not believe that Microsoft is absolutely back on track." He praises the build's much quicker setup time, networking enhancements, performance improvements ("much speedier than was Beta 2"), and "a new high-resolution mouse pointer." Head over to Paul Thurrott's Windows SuperSite for all of his notes on the release and a pile of new screenshots.
Wired News is running an interesting piece about Flickr's policy which excludes images from being displayed in public areas of the site or global search results if more than half of the uploader's images are "non-photographic images." The rationale seems to be that when people come to Flickr they're looking for photos, not screenshots or other images. The policy has met opposition in particular from (you guessed it) Second Life users, who upload screenshots from the virtual world at a breathtaking rate, as well as illustrators. By primarily uploading non-photographic images, their accounts are flagged NIPSA, or Not in Public Site Areas. Flicrk co-founder Stewart Butterfield says revising the NIPSA policy is "in the top 10 percent" of things to do at Flickr, but there's no indication when a clearer policy will be in place.
The subject of one of Google's many announcements at Wednesday's Google Press Day was Google Notebook, a somewhat mysterious project that Google has described only as "a personal browser tool that lets you clip text, images, and links from the pages you're searching, save clippings to an online notebook, and then share notebooks with others." Google will be launching Google Notebook sometime next week, but today you can see a whole pile of screenshots of the product in this Flickr set. Even from 18 screenshots, though, it's tough to tell exactly how Google Notebook works, but to my eyes it looks basically like an online bookmark system. "Notebooks" seem to be little more than collections of links that you can manage through a web-based interface. In the screenshots the user searches for "gifts for mom" on Google, and then uses a small pop-up in the corner of the results page to save and annotate one of the resulting links. Then the user goes to the Google Notebook site (google.com/gn, but don't bother, it doesn't work) where all of her notebooks are displayed. This looks very Ajaxy, including some pretty transparentdrag-and-drop stuff. Notes can be edited and there seem to be rich-text controls, and of course there are buttons to share or make notebooks private, as well as "New Notebook" and "Add note" buttons. And that, it would seem, is about it. In There doesn't appear to be any tagging functionality or any social aspect a la del.icio.us. In the screenshots the pop-up box only seems to be displayed on Google results pages and I don't see any other indication that this is, say, a Firefox extension. However, this shot shows a URL box, so obviously possible to add URLs that aren't included in search results, just more difficult. A bookmarklet will undoubtedly be created either by Google or some third party to make that easier, but I think very soon we'll see that functionality integrated into Google Toolbar.
Obviously Google Notebook isn't intended to compete with social bookmarking systems like del.icio.us, but while the interface and the snappiness that comes with Google's web apps appeal to me, I don't really see anything Google Notebook can do that I can't already do with del.icio.us (with the possible exception of the ability to rearrange items), and without tagging I can imagine notebooks with many items quickly becoming unmanageable. However, for all I know these screenshots are of an older version of Google Notebook, and what we'll be seeing next week might be something different entirely.
Genuine Windows enthusiast Paul Thurrott keeps us constantly supplied with new info and screenshots
from Redmond, and this week over at his Windows SuperSite he's posted his review and screenshot gallery of the most recent
build of Windows Vista, 5365. This is the last build of Vista before Beta 2, and Thurrott says, "Windows Vista is,
overall, a huge improvement over Windows XP," which has been his opinion all along. However, he expresses a bit of
frustration, saying, "in many ways, the Windows Vista we're going to
get late 2006 fails to match the excitement Microsoft generated," and that "the reality of Windows Vista,
like most things in life, is that there's good and bad. It's not perfect. But it's not a complete dog either." The
screenshots are nothing too different from what we've been seeing, but you can get a peek at a few of Vista's desktop
background and screensavers.
So we've seen a thousand screenshots and feature summaries of Windows Vista, and Microsoft is calling it
"largest upgrade since Windows 95," but how does it really compare to XP? BentUser has a cool article that compares Windows XP with Vista Build 5270 side by side, in
particular the Start menu, the task switcher, My Computer, the Control Panel, and the bundled apps. Whether or not
Vista will be a success is anybody's guess (though if they can make it fast and stable—a big if—I suspect
it will), but regardless Redmond seem to be up to some interesting stuff.
Evidence is mounting that Microsoft has really given a select group of testers/partners an early look at the next version of the Windows Operating System. The other day a member of the Neowin forum posted a brief review of Windows 7 before deleting his comments. And now a Chinese web site has posted what could be real live pictures of Windows 7. 
No Apple hasn't finally given us what we want by releasing an official iPhone SDK so developers can create true apps for the phone, but that doesn't seem to be holding back enterprising hackers. Erica Sadun at our sister site 
The word on the street these days is that switching to a Mac will give you a bunch of new stuff - all sorts of fun software to play with, a CEO with his own 
