Windows only: Microsoft Office plug-in OfficeTab adds tabbed document support to Excel, Word, and PowerPoint—one can only wonder why Microsoft doesn’t include this feature by default.
Author Archives: Terren
Snow Leopard Has Hidden Antivirus Talents [Rumor]
Well, this is int-er-est-ing: Early testers have come across what looks like a new antivirus function within Snow Leopard. Or to put it another way, Macs don’t need antivirus! Wait.
The new feature behaves like a cross between a traditional antivirus tool and the “Are you sure you want to open this?” warnings already present in Leopard. I doubt it’s doing any real-time heuristic scanning and it’s definitely not running as a visible app in the OS, but if it’s checking .PKG and .DMG files for malware before you run or mount them, well, that sounds an awful lot like what your average Symantec, AVG or Kapersky product is intended to do.
The first report came from the Intego blog, (they make Mac antivirus software) and it’s been corroborated by Snow Leopard testers over at the MacRumors forums. We’ll try to test this one out as best we can, but it’s looking like Apple may have slipped this ever-so-slightly unflattering feature into their new OS under the radar. [The Mac Security Blog, MacRumors]
Futurama Returning with Full Original Cast After All [Futurama]
How did we miss this news?! Thanks to the mighty power of nerd outrage, Futurama will be returning to TV with all of its original voices intact rather than with soundalikes.
Here’s the letter that was sent to anyone who harassed casting director Scott Muller:
Dear Futurama Fan,
Thank you for voicing your strong support for Futurama and the original voice cast. We appreciate the time you took to fire off a thoughtful and/or concerned and/or homicidal e-mail message to our casting director, Scott Muller. (Rest assured, not a single one of these e-mails reached the actual decision-makers at 20th Century Fox Television. For future reference, please note that Scott Muller is in fact one of Futurama’s biggest fans, and was instrumental in bringing about the return of the cast. Please hoist a bottle of Olde Fortran for Scott!)
Speaking of the cast returning… good news, everyone! The cast is returning! All of our series regulars are back in action for Season 6. Billy West, Katey Sagal, John DiMaggio, Maurice LaMarche, Tress MacNeille, Lauren Tom, Phil LaMarr, and David Herman are all on board and have already begun delivering their customary virtuoso performances. The all-new Futurama episodes are slated to air on Comedy Central beginning in June, 2010.
We are extremely grateful for the outpouring of support for the series. Your loyalty over the years has kept the show going through its original four seasons on FOX, its subsequent reincarnations on Adult Swim and DVD, and now its Bendiferous return to life on Comedy Central. See you in the (near) future!
Sincerely,
David X. Cohen & Matt Groening
The deal was sealed about 3 weeks ago, but somehow we missed it because of our myopic, obsessive focus on gadgets and only gadgets. Who won that election everyone was talking about last fall, anyways? [Thanks, Ivan!]
Own Your Domain Name & Aggregate All of Your Social Accounts with Chi.mp
Editor’s Note: Chi.mp is a free service, and we really like it, but this shouldn’t be considered an official How-To Geek endorsement.
Would you love to own your personal domain name, be able to blog, create photo albums, and aggregate all of your social accounts in one place? As impossible as it may sound, you can have all of that goodness in one place with Chi.mp (Content Hub & Identity Management Platform).
About Little Bit About Chi.mp
You may be asking yourself “What makes Chi.mp special?” or “What do I get with an account?”. What you get is:
- Your own personal domain name free with your website
- Blog posting
- Photo albums
- Aggregation of all of your social accounts
- Contact book and management system
- Multiple profiles with customizable privacy settings for each
- Detailed personal profile building (amount of detail based on personal preferences)
- Personal VCard
- Choice of preset or custom themes
- No ads
- The entire service is free
It is extremely easy to get started with Chi.mp…simply enter the domain name that you would like to use in the form to see if it is available. If it is available, you can immediately start the simple registration/setup process for your new site. No waiting periods and definitely no hassle!
Chi.mp is very straightforward in what your rights are and what you can expect from them. Notice that your personal data, information, and contacts are treated with respect. Another nice feature is that you are not forced to have advertising on your site unless you specifically desire it (that is very wonderful!).
Set up the profile (or profiles) that work best for you. Chi.mp starts with a default set of three…Public, Work and Friends. Use what you need and create as many additional ones as you need or desire. You can set different levels of privacy for each particular profile that you have.
Note: The privacy settings are also available for your contacts.
Once You Have an Account
After you get your personal domain registered and start working on your new site, you will see the following message on the Dashboard page (default page when you log in to your account). This really does work as an all purpose type of website for you (terrific!).
Here is a quick look at the menu toolbar that will at the top of your site while you are logged in. Each of these areas have a sub-menu toolbar to navigate through more options and settings for your site. Sub-menus are displayed below this menu toolbar.
Aggregating Your Social Accounts
Chi.mp allows you to aggregate the feeds from all of your favorite social services into a single stream on the main page. Adding new feeds is very easy to do. Notice the “Add a Feed” option on the right side…you just might be surprised by what you can actually add in (very nice!).
Here is what your services window will look like once you have added some services to your site. Notice the nice split between current services and the services that are available for you to add in. Current services also include icons to help differentiate between them.
Blogging and Photo Albums
If you would like to add blog posts to your site, this is what you will see. There is a very nice excerpt option that you can use to create “teasers” for your posts (nice!). The post toolbar has a nice selection of commands available and even includes superscript and subscript commands.
Note: If you wish, you will be able to view your blog posts separately (i.e. http://your-name.mp/blog/)
Want to create a new photo album? This is what you will see when creating one. You can easily select the profiles that blog posts and photo albums are viewable/available for.
Themes
You can have a lot of fun customizing how your site looks…choose between picture backgrounds, solid color backgrounds, or use a custom theme.
Here is an example of what a front page looks like with a picture background theme…
And an example of a front page with a solid color background theme.
Conclusion
Even though Chi.mp is still in the beta stage, it is already showing a phenomenal amount of potential as a way to centralize all of you internet activities. This is one web-service that is definitely worth taking a look at!
Links
Getting started with Chi.mp Webpage
Check out Asian Angel and Mysticgeek’s sites below and join us for social networking, blogs and more!
Similar Articles | Featured Wiki Articles |
|
|
Latest Software Reviews | Quick Linux Tips |
Geek Arcade | Popular Forum Threads |
Balsillie sets Sept. 14 deadline for Coyotes deal
Canadian billionaire Jim Balsillie has put together a revised proposal to purchase the bankrupt Phoenix Coyotes.
This Is What a Helicopter Firing High-Speed Rockets Looks Like [Image Cache]
Here’s something you don’t see every day: a Mi-24 helicopter firing off dozens of rockets at once. This one is Macedonian, and is from a “training exercise.” All bow before the might of the Macedonian army! [Big Picture]
Mysterious Android MID poses for yet more pics, reads Engadget
![](http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2009/08/090824-androidmid-01.jpg)
Read – Wallet MID gets closer to release, US launch possible
Read – Even more photos of unknown Android MID appear
Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds, Tablet PCs
Mysterious Android MID poses for yet more pics, reads Engadget originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 24 Aug 2009 13:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Your View: Who should be Canada’s captain?
Who should wear the ‘C’ for Canada’s Olympic men’s hockey team? Vote in the poll, post your comment and have your say.
Import Facebook Phone Numbers into Your Google Contacts [Contacts]
Android users, iPhone users (anyone using Google Sync, in fact), and Google Contacts users in general with Facebook friends who list their phone number in their profiles will love this:
Brad Fitzpatrick offers a Greasemonkey script that exports those phone numbers to AddressBookr and offers to add/merge them into your Google Contacts. Even though this was posted last November, I just gave it a test run and it worked like a charm. Thanks, Nick!
Smarterware is Lifehacker editor emeritus Gina Trapani’s new home away from ‘hacker. To get all of the latest from Smarterware, be sure to subscribe to the Smarterware RSS feed. For more, check out Gina’s weekly Smarterware feature here on Lifehacker.
Never Ride Piggyback On a Mascot
Basic Training: Make a Bed With Hospital Corners
The (modern) American Beauty [Possibly NSFW]
Punt hits Cowboys Stadium Big Screen
Zune HD applications confirmed
It's been debated for some time as to whether or not the Zune HD will feature apps, similar to its competitor, Apple's iPod touch; many people expected the more logical solution, that it would, though it had yet to be confirmed by Microsoft itself. A video has surfaced, as Zunited reported, showing a Zune HD sporting an 'Apps' menu, and a Microsoft representative saying that it would, indeed, have the capability. Having Microsoft include this with the Zune is nothing but a good thing; it opens up a new marketplace for developers to push their products on, as well as providing another competitor for Apple's App Store.
Enhanced Gmail Plug-in for BlackBerrys arrives, but only syncs one way
![](http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2009/07/7-06-09bbgmail2.jpg)
Lackluster Gmail support has been a real pain point for BlackBerry users, and we’ve really been hoping that this new “Enhanced Gmail Plug-in” would solve all that. It’s out as of today, and we’ve certainly gotten some improvements, like support for archiving messages, marking spam and managing labels / stars. Unfortunately, these new management features are only live synced one way, from the phone to the Gmail server, so many of the actions that take place desktop side won’t be reflected on the phone once that particular message has been picked up by the BlackBerry Internet Service. There’s also the small problem of installing the thing: we haven’t been successful so far on two different BlackBerries, and you have to make sure to uninstall the existing Gmail Plug-in. Meanwhile, in BlackBerry Enterprise Server land, the Google Apps Connector has now gone live, which means Google Apps users get push Gmail and what seems to be much tighter Exchange-style syncing. Let us know if you get either of these things working with your particular setup.
[Via Boy Genius Report]
Read – Enhanced Gmail Plug-in now available
Read – Google Apps Connector for BES now available
Filed under: Cellphones
Enhanced Gmail Plug-in for BlackBerrys arrives, but only syncs one way originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 22 Aug 2009 15:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Mexican Bumblebee Camaro
Orioles Game “Streaker”
TSN Top 10 Hockey Goalie Bloopers
Rescue Helicopter’s Treacherous Landing
How to Fix Annoying YouTube Jumpiness in Firefox [Annoyances]
Ever notice an annoying, persistent lag every ten seconds or so when you’re watching a YouTube (or other) video in Firefox? Reader Bernard Sandberg has, and he’s written in with a smart about:config that solves the problem for him.
Although Bernard’s talking specifically about YouTube, this tweak should help fix any similar jumpiness in Firefox.
Many users, myself included, visit YouTube on an almost daily basis. Ever since Firefox version 2.0 implemented the session restore function, when you are watching a video on YouTube (perhaps on other video sites as well, I haven’t really tested that), you may notice a tiny freeze-up of the video every 10 seconds or so. This happens because the session restore is by default set to save all open tabs every 10 seconds. This is especially noticeable if you happen to have a lot of tabs open at once.
The quick fix for this problem, at least for my own sake, is to increase the time between each of the saves performed by session restore. By opening about:config in your Firefox address bar, then typing browser.sessionstore.interval in the filter box, you’ll see a value of 10000, which is in milliseconds. (Meaning your session is saved every 10 seconds.) I changed this to 300000, or every 5 minutes, as I don’t have the urgent need for tab restoration. If you feel like being more on the safe side, try increasing it to something a bit lower, say 120000, or every 2 minutes.
We did a bit of research, and it looks like Bernard’s not alone with his solution. I’ve experienced this problem plenty in Firefox, so it’s great to see a relatively simple solution, even if it does mean sacrificing a bit in the way of up-to-the-minute session saving. If you give it a try, let’s hear if it does the trick for you in the comments (assuming you’ve experienced this problem in the first place).