"simple in design but powerful in impact"
	Swamii is a new service which scans the web, blogs, television, press, shops (and more) for your interests every day and sends the results by email or on your own personalised start page. Has Google Alerts found its first true rival? The custom-built Swamii Indexing Machine is unique in its ability to search both the online and offline worlds; users select from a variety of categories to search including newspapers, the web, jobs, peer-to-peer networks and upcoming TV shows. Calling the new service "simple in design but powerful in impact", Kalem Fletcher, CEO of Swamii, says.
	<via: Neowin.net>

Internet Explorer 7 RC1 for XP/2003 x86

WYSIWYG Authoring

The first thing to notice about Writer is that it enables true WYSIWYG blog authoring. You can now author your post and know exactly what it will look like before you publish it. Writer knows the styles of your blog such as headings, fonts, colors, background images, paragraph spacing, margins and block quotes and enables you to edit your post using these styles.
Writer also includes other views including HTML source-code editing and web preview mode.
Now you don’t have to waste time going through the process of publishing, refreshing, previewing, and tweaking your post to get it looking the way you want. It’s all right there in Writer as you create your post.

Photo Publishing

Writer makes inserting, customizing, and uploading photos to your blog a snap. You can insert a photo into your post by browsing image thumbnails through the “Insert Picture” dialog or by copying and pasting from a web page. 
Once you’ve inserted the picture, Writer provides contextual editing tools to modify size, text wrapping, borders, and apply graphic effects. Writer also allows you specify a smaller thumbnail to that will link to a larger image for detailed viewing.
Photos can be either uploaded directly to your weblog provider (if they support the newMediaObject API) or to an FTP server.

Map Publishing

Whether you are blogging about a vacation or a political conflict, maps are a great help in engaging the imagination of your readers. You can do this using Writer's ability to insert a Windows Live Local map directly into a post.

Even better is that the map can be customized directly within Writer - including changing the view to show road, aerial or bird's eye detail and by adding pushpins (including custom links and/or photos for each pushpin).

When readers click on the map they get a larger view on the Windows Live Local site.

Writer SDK

Already thinking of other cool stuff you want to insert into your blog? Good!
The Windows Live Writer SDK allows developers to extend the capabilities of Writer to publish additional content types. Examples of content types that can be added include:

1. Images from online photo publishing sites
2. Embedded video or audio players 
3. Product thumbnails and/or links from e-commerce sites
4. Tags from tagging services

We can't wait to see all the things people cook up with the SDK!

Compatibility

Writer is a great client for Windows Live Spaces but also works with other weblogs including Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, WordPress (and many others).
Writer supports RSD (Really Simple Discoverability), the Metaweblog API, and the Movable Type API.
We want Writer to work well with every blogging service out there. If you can’t get Writer to work with your blog, we want to know.

Stay Tuned 

We will continue to post updates and other information on the product to this Space in the coming weeks. Please subscribe to our RSS feed or visit again soon to get the most current information on Windows Live Writer.

J.J. Allaire,
Windows Live Writer

VoIP, IM and Email convergence - get it together with Skylook unified messaging!

Skype™ + Outlook® = Skylook!
New version 1.5 out now.

 

Share exactly what you want
with exactly who you want
No uploads - No email attachments - No limits
Private and secure 

--------------------------

又一个新兴的p2p软件诞生

创新是少数的能够和苹果在播放器市场相体并论的公司，其产品更是以苹果的iPod为首要竞争对象，挑战苹果的权威是世界各个便携播放器产商的必进之路，但这次，创新似乎腰板更直，因为它带来了新产品：Zen Vision M；我们仔细看看其和苹果iPod有那些硬碰硬的地方，最关键的是，我们想听听Engadget读者们的意见，你有什么想说的么：



首先：显示屏上：
苹果iPod Video：2.5寸屏幕（320×240像素），65536色
创新Zen Vision M：2.5寸屏幕（320×240像素），261144色

从屏幕上来看，苹果压根就不是创新对手，千万别用模糊的字词来形容苹果的屏幕依然会不差什么的，在颜色表现，清晰，画面细腻程度上，26万色的屏幕绝对胜过苹果，从这点来看，创新的M有着更好的视觉感受；同时，也提高了成本，这个屏幕也是创新比苹果iPod价格贵的重要因素。



在支持视频格式上：
苹果iPod Video：H.264格式，MPEG-4
创新Zen Vision M：除播放MP3、WMA、WAV等音乐外，还支持MPEG-1/2/4，WMV9，MotionJPEG，DivX 4/5 XviD

苹果显然对自己的规格比较热忱，对于大多数人来说，创新的音乐格式更能满足他们的多方面要求，尤其在亚洲，但苹果支持的格式更有利于商业运作，对于歌曲的收费起到重要作用。



外形尺寸：
苹果iPod Video：61.8×11×103.5mm（30G）
创新Zen Vision M：62×19×104mm （30G）

苹果的体积拥有小巧优势，这个对女性朋友是个优点。



其它：创新拥有FM收音和录音功能，而JOBS认为苹果iPod不需要这些功能。创新的M提供了五种颜色选择，苹果坚持其路线，提供黑白两款。




谈起配套软件，很多人就会认为苹果的iTunes立于不败之地，从这点来说，现在市场上确实无法找到能与iTunes相抗衡的软件，这个或许是创新等其它产商最需要走的一条路。但创新的多格式支持，少了许多音频转换的麻烦。



价格上：
苹果iPod Video：30G容量价格为299美元；国内价格为2800元左右；
创新Zen Vision M：329.99美元。

（via：engadget）