TechBlogger

Windows Live, intended to be a landing page for social activity and Microsoft’s cloud-connected apps, is rolling out a host of redesigns and upgrades today, but none so exciting (to our eyes, anyways) as the anticipated jump of the SkyDrive online storage service to 25GB capacity. As the Digital Inspiration blog points out, SkyDrive seems to be a central part of the Redmond giant’s web ambitions, so it’s not likely to go away or shrink. Aside from the raw upload/download capabilities, having a SkyDrive account gives you a few other cool abilities, which we’ll detail below.

No-sign-up-needed sharing: If you’ve used most any Microsoft service, you know their features are often linked to a drive to get more people signed into their apps and networks. Not so with SkyDrive, which offers a nice little checkbox for sending sharing links to any email address without requiring a Live sign-in.

Lots of tools for photos: Tag yourself or friends Facebook-style in your photos, launch elegant pic-on-black-background slideshows from folders of pictures (your own or shared) that works on any browser (but supposedly better with Silverlight installed), order prints, and SkyDrive’s thumbnails are nicely big and clear. Here’s how photos are handled in SkyDrive’s file browser:

Grab entire folders as single .zip files: This simple, helpful compression feature isn’t entirely common amongst file-sharing/storage services. You can also drop photos right into your Live Photo Gallery, if that’s how your roll.

Easy sharing and updates on contacts’ files: Windows Live allows you to keep updated with what your friends on Live, Facebook, and LinkedIn are up to, and SkyDrive is no different. Your main SkyDrive page will let you know if any of your contacts have opened up a file for public sharing, and you can organize contacts into categories for easy group sharing—so everyone, for example, in “Project Team” can be sent your latest report at once, with one click.

Mount SkyDrive on your desktop with Gladinet: As we detailed earlier this week, Gladinet’s free Cloud Desktop beta allows you mount and access SkyDrive (and Picasa, Google Docs, and Amazon’s S3) as if it were a plain network folder. Drag-and-drop access to 25GB of go-anywhere cloud space is surely a nifty thing.

Still lacking—50MB file size limit: Amongst SkyDrive’s online storage peers, 50MB isn’t quite eye-opening, especially for a service that wants to be the hub of a burgeoning online network. Still, for photos, documents, and even most zipped-up MP3 albums, it’s decent enough.

SkyDrive requires a sign-up with Windows Live for storing and sharing files. What do you think of the newly-expanded SkyDrive? Share your review in the comments.

Original post by Kevin Purdy

mask.of.sanity writes “Outraged aussies will hold simultaneous protests across Australia in opposition to the government’s plans for mandatory ISP internet content filtering. The plan will introduce nation-wide filtered internet using blacklists operated by a government agency, away from public scrutiny. Politicians and ISPs will join protesters in the streets to voice their opposition to the government’s plan, which has ploughed ahead, despite intense criticism that the technology will crippled internet speeds and infringe on free speech. Opponents said the most accurate filter chosen by the government will incorrectly block up to 10,000 Web pages out of 1 million.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by CmdrTaco

mask.of.sanity writes “Outraged aussies will hold simultaneous protests across Australia in opposition to the government’s plans for mandatory ISP internet content filtering. The plan will introduce nation-wide filtered internet using blacklists operated by a government agency, away from public scrunity. Politicians and ISPs will join protesters in the streets to voice their opposition to the government’s plan, which has ploughed-ahead, despite intense criticism that the technology will crippled internet speeds and infringe on free speech.Opponents said the most accurate filter chosen by the government will incorrectly block up to 10,000 Web pages out of 1 million.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by CmdrTaco

Windows only: Photology steps away from tag based searching and allows you to search through your pictures with a variety of filters. There are filter functions for colors, dates, times of day, photo orientation, exposure, text of captions/file names/folders, and even filters for things like plants, sky, faces, beaches, flowers, snow, sunset and water. The simpler filters like the color picker are a bit more accurate than the more advanced ones like clouds. In the screenshot above I had searched for the color blue and snow. Photology kicked out a ton of blue skied and snowy wallpapers I had saved earlier in the holiday season but it also returned a picture of Wonder Woman standing on a cloud. In the defense of Photology clouds and snowbanks are quite similar. Filters can be stacked, so if you need to find a picture from October, predominantly yellow, and taken in the morning you can use all three filters. In addition to helping you search through your photos, Photology has tools for photo adjustments like color correction, red eye removal, cropping, etc. You can also upload your pictures from the application to a site hosted by Enoetic, the parent company of Photology. Pictures will be stored there for 7 days to share with friends. For a more permanent upload, you can also use Photology to upload to Flickr. Photology is freeware, Windows only, requires .Net 3.0+ framework. Thanks GisellaPot!

Original post by Jason Fitzpatrick

BARCELONA/SEOUL (Reuters) - Cell phone makers LG Electronics and Research in Motion warned on sales and profit growth on Wednesday, the latest sign a consumer spending spree on expensive gadgets has dried up amid economic gloom.

Original post by Kevin Purdy

Smivs writes “Logitech has hailed as a major landmark the production of their one billionth computer mouse. The news comes at a time when analysts claim the days of the mouse are numbered. “It’s rare in human history that a billionth of anything has been shipped by one company,” said Logitech’s general manager Rory Dooley. “Look at any other industry and it has never happened. This is a significant milestone.” The computer mouse will achieve a milestone of its own next week when it turns 40. It was 9 December 1968 when Douglas C. Engelbart and his group of researchers at Stanford University put the first mouse through its paces.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by CmdrTaco

Smivs writes “Logitech has hailed as a major landmark the production of their one billionth computer mouse. The news comes at a time when analysts claim the days of the mouse are numbered. “It’s rare in human history that a billionth of anything has been shipped by one company,” said Logitech’s general manager Rory Dooley. “Look at any other industry and it has never happened. This is a significant milestone.” The computer mouse will achieve a milestone of its own next week when it turns 40. It was 9 December 1968 when Douglas C. Engelbart and his group of researchers at Stanford University put the first mouse through its paces.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Original post by CmdrTaco

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Researchers using closed-circuit televisions to create an illusion have made volunteers virtually swap bodies, even making women believe they were in a man’s body and vice-versa.

Original post by Adam Pash

ZAGREB (Reuters) - Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader asked his interior ministry Wednesday to investigate any possible abuse of police authority after a number of Web activists were detained.

Original post by Kevin Purdy

A new top-level-domain, .TEL, is due to be available for registration today that lets individuals and companies create a web home for contact information. Phone numbers, email addresses, social network pages, and other relevant info are stored at the domain-name level rather than on static pages, so updating your .tel information can be a quick, universal way to change any of those digits. For those without personal web sites, it could be a nice way to build a simple web presence, as you can also set up search-able key words for your domain. Those with their own sites, or presence on a lot of social sites, can simply point to a .tel address, rather than try and keep your contact data up on every single page. Wondering what your .tel would look like? Try it out on Telnic’s .tel simulator.

Original post by Kevin Purdy