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Archive for March, 2010
The world of social media has come a long way. From a Harvard University dorm room to helping launch Americas first black President there is no denying the force behind Facebook, equally with the British General Election just around the corner, the three main political parties have already created their Facebook fan pages in hope of a similar result. Other powerful platforms such as Twitter and something called YouTube have dominated the social media landscape but what does the future hold? With many predicting 2010 will be the year of location-based services, such as Foursquare, we’ve searched the far corners of the internet globe… not to mention asking our own team of social media prophets to compile a list of what the future holds for social media.
First off, location-based services:
Location-based services (LBS) works with your mobile phones geographical position system (GPS) to allow you to share your location with friends online. This system can be used in a variety of way, such as directing you to your nearest tube station or bank account but one method that has been very successful in the USA and is now proving a hit on these shores, is entertainment based LBS.
Two highlights of this are Fourquare and Gowalla. These two applications allow you to share your location, find friends in your area and even recommend cafes, bars and restaurants. You will even be rewarded for your effort, with many retail chains now offering reward schemes or discounts including Debenhams – where you can get a free coffee.
Checkout: www.foursquare.com http://gowalla.com/
Real-Time Search
Did you notice the last time you logged onto your Facebook account you could view your friends updates as they happen? Well, that’s real-time. To put it simply its publishing content as it happens, in, you guessed it, real-time.
But with the power of Facebook and a not-so-little micro-blogging site called Twitter, the major search engines including Bing are looking to deliver this fresh content to you in real-time search, giving you access to vast amounts of information as it happens.
Social Media: The News Channel
Do you remember that picture Ashton took of Demi in her underwear or the first images of the Hudson River plane rescue? Both these stories broke on Twitter. There is no denying that the social media platform has now become a major news channel.
Today, news networks and publications have adopted micro-blogging with many investing in a dedicated Twitter correspondent whose sole job is to track the trends on Twitter and report on breaking stories.
Don’t have a Twitter account? Check out www.twitter.com and get tweeting!
Augmented Reality
It may sound like we are about to be put in a Matrix style alternative reality but it’s not that drastic. If you flash back to the Terminator films and remember Arnie’s red view through his eyes then you’ve almost got it.
Augmented Reality is a term used for a view of a physical real-world environment whose elements are then overlapped or augmented by virtual computer-generated imagery. Imagine having your Windows phone and wanting to know where your local tube, ATM or bus stop is. Rather than following a traditional map, with augmented reality you can simply lift your phone up, showing the road and the screen would show you where your closest tube station or bus stop is.
Check out: http://www.mobilizy.com/produkte
Internet Explorer 8 is the latest Internet browser offering from Microsoft. Designed to give you the best internet experience, the new browser is optimised for MSN and incorporates a plethora of new features like Web Slices and Accelerators, plus, you can download the nifty new Bing toolbar to further complement your browsing.
The new IE8 will make the web faster, safer and easier than ever before, why? Sit back as we take you through some nifty new technology that makes up the world of The Blue E.
Get a slice of the action
Is your Favourites list as long as your arm? As part of our daily web browsing, most of us visit many different sites, and this can be time consuming. So many websites, so little time!
What if there was a way to view all of the cool bits in one go? Well consider IE8 your fairy godmother, as Web Slices brings it all to you. Web Slices allow you to subscribe to portions of your favourite websites.
With a single click, you can view and interact with the latest updates on those sites you have earmarked, without leaving your current page; catch-up with the latest headlines, check the status of an online auction, view status updates from your social network, or keep tabs on the latest football scores. It will constantly alert you of new content by changing colour or going bold.
Accelerators
What is an Accelerator? The clue is in the name, Accelerators make it faster and easier to connect to a host of popular web services.
Accelerators are built into IE8, so if you’re going out later and need to look up an address, using a price comparison site to shop around, or need language translation services on the fly – you can get going from the off. Each of these tasks are time consuming and require numerous steps from start to finish.
Use Accelerators to let you preview online services just by pointing your mouse at them. Search, map, e-mail, translate, or share content from any web page you’re currently viewing.
Internet Explorer 8 comes specially preinstalled with Accelerators from Bing and MSN Video.
InPrivate
InPrivate Filters and Browsing are a series of security measures designed to make your browsing session safer and keep your data more secure.
Whenever you surf the web some of the information about your visit is automatically sent to the website provider. Filtering helps you control this information and choose which providers (if any) receive information about the places you visit.
IE8 gives you two options; automatic filtering or manual where you can specify websites yourself, both can be toggled on/off with just a few clicks.
InPrivate Browsing helps prevent Internet Explorer from storing data about your browsing session. This includes cookies, temporary Internet files, history, and other data. Toolbars and extensions are disabled by default.
Bing bar
Want to have the latest breaking news, reviews and photos delivered straight to your desktop, then grab the all-new Bing bar.
Download Internet Explorer 8 for Windows 7/Vista 32-bit
Download Internet Explorer 8 for Windows 7/Vista 64-bit
Download Internet Explorer 8 for Windows XP
Internet Explorer 8 Click Clever Click Safe browser helps parents and young people tackle online safety fears
Mar 18
Posted by Blue E Blogger in Uncategorized | 
No Comments
Online safety is a worry for every parent, with this in mind Microsoft joined forces with CEOP (Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre) to launch a customized Internet Explorer 8 browser to promote online safety for families, with a clear and direct route to CEOP via the ‘Click CEOP’ button.
Available for download at www.clickceop.net/ie8 Internet Explorer 8 Click Clever Click Safe provides young people with immediate access to CEOP, the government’s one-stop shop for internet safety, where they can report any concerns they may have and see the most up to date information about staying safe online for the whole family.
Internet Explorer is developing some great add-ons, stay tuned as we update you on the variety of add-ons we are creating to further improve your Internet experience.
Internet Explorer 9 “Platform Preview” Available For Developers
Mar 16
Posted by Blue E Blogger in Uncategorized | 1 Comment
Today, at MIX 10 in Las Vegas, Microsoft has released an early “platform preview” version of Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) to the website developer community ahead of public availability. IE9 will be Microsoft’s fastest browser experience yet, with improved graphics resulting in enhanced performance and applications will load quicker and run seamlessly. Internet Explorer 8 already delivers the best web experience on Windows offering great features, reliability and security and this next version, Internet Explorer 9, will make this even better. Microsoft is committed to rigorous testing and IE9 will be publically available once it has reached the quality bar for widespread release.
It’s been a year since Microsoft released Internet Explorer 8 and to date has blocked 560 million attempted malware downloads, equating to over 3 million blocks daily, making it the number one in malware protection according to NSS Labs and can be downloaded here http://www.microsoft.com/uk/windows/internet-explorer/browse-with-confidence.aspx
For more information on Internet Explorer 9 click here; http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/default.aspx. If you are a developer, please visit http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2009/11/18/an-early-look-at-ie9-for-developers.aspx for more information.
To experience IE 9 during this testing phase, go here: http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/
IE8 SmartScreen has blocked over 560 million attempts to download malware
Mar 15
Posted by Blue E Blogger in Uncategorized | No Comments
At the recent RSA 2010 Security Conference in San Francisco, Microsoft Program Manager Eric Lawrence was struck by how many of the speeches warned about the threat that socially-engineered malware poses to the security of the Internet.
Malware, which is short for malicious software, is designed to infiltrate a computer without the owner’s consent. In recent years it has become a real concern as many people often think they are downloading games or free videos when in fact they are downloading Trojans and viruses. Our data shows that one out of every 250 downloads is the result of a user being tricked into downloading malware to their PC.
Microsoft works tirelessly to stop malware and is proud of the protection the SmartScreen® Filter provides to IE8 users from such attacks.
To quote Eric:
“Since we launched IE8 in March 2009, SmartScreen has blocked over 560 million attempts to download malware, recently averaging over 3 million blocks per day! Hosted in datacenters around the world, SmartScreen’s URL Reputation Service (URS) has evaluated over 250 billion URLs to help keep IE8 users safe from malware. Even more impressively, since IE7’s Phishing Filter was introduced in 2005, the URS has processed over 5.7 trillion reputation requests in order to block malicious web sites. Every day, Microsoft receives around 300 million telemetry reports from IE8 users and processes 4.1 billion URLs looking for malicious websites and files. On the back end, our systems and analysts evaluate over 1 terabyte of binaries every day to help identify sites delivering malware.”
Internet Explorer 8 is the latest version of Internet Explorer and has been designed to provide market leading protection against malware. Older browsers will not have the same level of protection. If your family and friends are not using Internet Explorer 8, please encourage them to upgrade for a safer Internet experience.
For more information visit http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2010/03/05/ie8-smartscreen-filter-protecting-users-at-internet-scale.aspx
Microsoft sends flowers to Internet Explorer 6 funeral
Mar 10
Posted by Matt in Uncategorized | No Comments
March 2010 – Internet Explorer 6 was finally laid to rest at a private funeral held in Denver, Colorado. The Internet Explorer team were in attendance and Microsoft sent flowers as a mark of respect. It is believed that Internet Explorer 6 suffered a ‘”workplace injury” before its untimely demise. See the flowers here.
Microsoft’s bouquet read: “Thanks for the good times IE6, see you all @ MIX when we show a little piece of IE Heaven.
The Internet Explorer Team @ Microsoft.”
For the uninitiated, MIX is a 3 day long conference for the tech community. It is rumoured that a new version of Internet Explorer (9) will be discussed over the course of the event.
The mastermind’s behind the IE6 funeral – Aten Design, offered the following words of condolence and wisdom: “With time’s passing, comes new life, and we encourage people to turn to Internet Explorer 8. Internet Explorer 8 is the modern browser for today’s online world – with rich built-in security and surfing tools that make it easy, fast and safe for customers everywhere.”
The history of Internet Explorer can be likened to a superhero film franchise. Internet Explorer has been ‘rebooted’ several times throughout its long and colourful history, but today we go back to the very beginning.
The Browser Choice update is a software update for Windows that Microsoft is required to distribute in Europe as part of a legal settlement with the European Commission .
The Browser Choice update is designed to inform customers who currently have Internet Explorer set as the default browser on their computers of the other web browsers available to them. The Browser Choice Screen provides customers with an easy way to see what other web browsers are available, to learn about those browsers and to install them if they choose to do so.
If you have your regional settings set to one of the following countries or regions, you’ll get the Browser Choice update through the Windows Update service:
Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland.
For more information click here: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-GB/windows/what-is-the-browser-choice-update.
Multimap have released a new custom IE8 browser with some great mapping add-ons.
Keep up with what matters most, no matter where you are, with Web Slices.
The Multimap Web Slice puts Multimap’s Top 10 maps, breaking news and our latest tools right on your IE8 favourites bar.
With the Multimap Accelerator, you can get an in-place view of a map displayed directly on the page.
The Multimap Accelerator lets you map any address, postcode or location on a web page, just by highlighting the text.
Find out more and download here
