Geeks are always on the lookout for “what’s next” according to the crowd, Vista is so 2006. Well good news because the next version of Windows is already in development.

Windows Fiji (My guess is that this will turn into a Vista Service Pack)

-The UI will be updated with things that were originally promised for Vista,
along with a more powerful sidebar, which will be more than just a dock for
widgets (a.k.a. gadgets)
continue reading …

now i’m not sure about the security ramifications here .. but if you need something quick and easy this may fit the bill.

JS-Kit is a free service that will add comment functionality to any page you paste it into.

As you might have guessed from the name, it’s a JavaScript solution that automatically fetches the comments for a page from the JS-Kit server when the page loads. Comments are threaded and are posted via Ajax without having to leave or reload the page.

DVD Movie retailer HiDefDVD.com is already seeing a big boost in high definition DVD purchases this holiday season, as the DVD Movie makes a return to the must have category.

The lack of clear leader in the format battle has not stopped consumers from diving into the new hardware.

“The movie studios are being a little smarter this time around. They have chosen to support both formats,” said Mr. Guidolin. In fact, even the founding father of HD-DVD, Warner Brothers, is supporting the rival Blu-ray format. This is good news for consumers. “I think consumers see that there isn’t going to be a clear winner for a long time — if ever. So they are ok being early adopters.”

I’m a big trillian fan and I use it everyday. So I’m excited about the new version from Cerulean. Today they put out a sneak peak of Trillian Astra

Here’s a quick look at some of the features:

Your Astra page can be filled with info about you from URLs you provide from social networking sites and widgets displaying your Flickr stream, songs you are listening to, local weather, etc. Those web pages sync will sync with your desktop client and will support personalization on a visitor by visitor basis - in other words, I can select whether I want to view your music, your weather, your blog’s feed, etc.

Wow … this thing sounds awesome.. I can’t wait.

I’ve been known for being a little stupid in my day and not backup my data… and I paid for it by losing a server.. uh opps … Enter O&O DiskImage, O&O Software has developed a new solution in the field of data backup and security in Windows. Building on the worldwide success of products such as O&O Defrag and the O&O RescueBox, the Berlin-based software developer is looking to offer the most technologically advanced backup solution on the market today.

Traditional backup solutions can only backup individual files and folders, leaving out the entire system structure of a Windows PC. For this reason, such backups do not do much good in the event of a total system crash because, despite the backed up data, Windows will still not be able to start up. For this reason, O&O DiskImage goes the extra mile and creates an exact copy, a disk image, of the entire Windows system.

In the event of a system failure or data loss, it is then possible to restore a created image to the original storage volume, letting users get back to work with their entire system completely intact. The newly restored storage volume looks and feels the same, containing exactly the same data as were present at the time of the backup.

Messageware, the world’s leading provider of productivity and security solutions for Microsoft Office Outlook Web Access, today announced the availability of ActiveSend Personal. Previously available only to enterprises, ActiveSend is now available to individual users desiring greater email efficiency and productivity. It is the first and only consumer productivity software to seamlessly integrate Microsoft Office Outlook Web Access with Microsoft Office and other desktop applications.

“My job requires me to meet with clients all over the world so I spend a lot of time using email outside of the office,” said Francesco Contini, Vice President of Marketing & Group Sales for Quark Expeditions, specialists in polar adventure expeditions. “ActiveSend makes it so much easier to work with Microsoft Office documents from any remote location. The time I saved just in the first week of using it made it more than pay for itself!”

Two versions are available, ActiveSend Personal and ActiveSend Lite. System requirements include Windows 95/98/Me/NT/200/XP and Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher. Users can try ActiveSend free for 15 days, after which they can use ActiveSend Lite free of charge, or purchase ActiveSend Personal for $34.95.

Ergonis Software® today announced the release of PopChar™ X 3.1, an improved version of its highly acclaimed tool for inserting special characters into the text of any application. The new release adds a number of improvements and user-requested enhancements, including support for automatic font detection in Apple’s stylish word processor Pages (v.2.0 or newer).

We are thrilled with the feedback we have received for our recently released version 3.0, which has been completely re-built from ground up. Long-time and new customers alike keep telling us that PopChar is their favorite and most useful tool. With the new version 3.1 we are addressing our customer’s requests and are further improving functionality and usability.

The new release adds a number of improvements and user-requested enhancements, including support for automatic font detection in Apple’s stylish word processor Pages (v.2.0 or newer). Visit Ergonis Software’s website at http://www.ergonis.com/products/popcharx to learn more about specific enhancements and fixes contained in this release and to download a trial copy.