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Clippy hits the road as Office 365 expands to 38 new countries
Almost five months after its debut, Office 365 is getting 38 new passport stamps. Clippy's hitting such exotic locales as Fiji, the Bahamas and Barbados, and it's even picking up new languages along the way. The subscription-based productivity suite now includes support for Vietnamese, Arabic and Malay. What's more, Redmond is happily accepting five new currencies for payment, too. Brazil, Hong Kong, Mexico, Malaysia and India can all use their native money to pay for the software as a service. Sadly, there's still no word from Microsoft about accepting Bitcoins.
Bringing wireless to the disconnected: internet tales from the South Pacific
"We only have dial-up here. You'd be shocked at the speeds. [Laughs.] But it's okay -- as long as I can send and reply to email, I'm fine with it."Those were the words spoken to me just weeks ago by the absolutely precious owner of Litia Sini Beach Resort on the extreme southeastern tip of Upolu. For those unaware, that's Samoa's most populous island (~135,000 people) -- a sliver of lush, mountainous land dropped almost perfectly in the center of the Pacific Ocean. I chuckled a bit upon hearing it, immediately realizing that I had a connection in the palm of my hand that was 20, 30, perhaps even 40 times quicker than what this business owner was relying on. She paused, as if to collect her thoughts before going into a familiar spiel about the resort's amenities, and then drew my attention to the display of her laptop. "It's still a draft for now, but this is the new tsunami evacuation plan that we're working on. Soon, we'll have this in each fale. It's taking a bit of time to get right, as the drawings are actually done in New Zealand."I nodded my head in understanding, immediately thinking that this must be in reaction to the catastrophic tsunami of September 2009, caused by a magnitude 8.1 submarine earthquake that hit barely 100 miles from the very spot I was sitting. It was the largest quake of 2009. The entire resort was leveled. Dozens upon dozens were killed. And here we were, over two full years later, and the evacuation schematics are still in "draft."
One family, two Find My iPhone adventures
According to the Sydney Morning Herald, an Australian family has recently gone through not one, but two adventures related to stolen iPhones. While on holiday at a Hilton in Fiji, the family's mother, Fiona Donohoe, had her iPhone ripped off by a hotel concierge. In a move worthy of a featured spot on Dumb Criminals, the theft was discovered and the iPhone recovered after the concierge accidentally synced all of his/her own contacts with Donohoe's MobileMe account. After that it was presumably simple to track down the thief, who has been fired from the Fiji Hilton and jailed for six months. Only two weeks later, 13-year-old Tahira Donohoe had her iPhone stolen while at school. She and her father used the Find My iPhone app on his iPad to track the thief's progress along a bus route for a while before deciding to give up the chase and let the police deal with it. They walked into a police station, set the iPad on the counter, and reported a theft in progress. Police caught up with the thief shortly thereafter, and when they were at first unable to find the stolen goods, they asked the Donohoes to ping the phone using Find My iPhone. Once the telltale sonar sound went off, police recovered the phone, arrested the 13-year-old thief after a brief chase, and brought everything in to the station to sort things out. The Donohoes did not press charges against the young thief. The Herald reports that the Donohoes had already replaced the iPhone stolen in Fiji before that phone was recovered, so they now have an extra iPhone. Hopefully they can hang on to all of them from now on. Find My iPhone is available for free from the App Store and does not require a paid MobileMe account if you have an iPhone 4, any iPad, or a fourth-generation iPod touch. Once iCloud launches, the service will presumably be free for all users on all devices. Find My iPhone is hands-down the first app that should be installed on new iOS devices and the first service you should enable.
The real reason why the Media Center TV pack update was OEM only?
One thing we know for sure is that the entire way Microsoft handled the TV Pack (code named Fiji) update was not well received by the enthusiast community. The primary reason for the disgust was the fact that the TV Pack update was OEM only (ie the likes of Dell and HP only), meaning those on the outside looking in felt slighted. The overall feeling seemed to be that Microsoft was once again pandering to the big OEMs -- like in the case of the original MCE or Digital Cable Tuners -- while leaving the build-your-own HTPC crowd on the sidelines. But here we are six months later and to our knowledge no OEMs are actually shipping Windows Media Center PCs with the TV Pack installed and we think we know why. At first we have to admit we had no clue what was going on, but then recently Microsoft proudly announced that unlike Windows Beta's before it, Windows 7 was only going to have one beta before going straight to release candidate 1 (RC1). %Gallery-29109%
The unofficial user guide to the Media Center TV Pack
It's been almost two months since we got our hands on the Media Center TV Pack (aka Fiji) and although CEDIA has come and gone, we haven't really seen much fanfare from Microsoft touting the new update for Media Center -- we haven't even seen as much as a change log or feature list. The good news is that when big companies fail to spell out what's new in an update, usually someone in the community steps up and fills in the gaps. This time around it's PC Mag, which has really done a great job of not only spelling out most of the new features, but the bugs as well. So instead of holding your breath waiting on big blue to clue you in if this update is worth all the fuss, head on over and give it a read.
DirecTV's Media Center Tuner still not on track for this year
It was a pretty big disappointment when we learned that the Windows Media Center TV Pack (code named Fiji) didn't include support for the long awaited DirecTV tuner, and unfortunately this means the smart money is on Windows 7 -- which will probably be out in early 2011 -- but of course this doesn't stop a few assumably uninformed DirecTV CSRs from telling customers it'll be out in November. Although we really have no idea when Microsoft will add native support for DirecTV, we do know it would be highly unusual for Microsoft to release anything without at least a few months of external testing. So with September half way over, it makes it next to impossible to believe we'll see it before the end of 2008. The thing that isn't as clear though, is that for whatever reason, the testers we've spoken to still aren't 100% convinced that the new tuner will require Windows 7, and although it seems like a slim chance, the tuner might just get here before Windows 7 after all, but your guess is as good as ours.
It's time to speak up for automatic commercial skipping in Media Center
Although the skeptic in us still kind of believes Microsoft may have intentionally broke automatic commercial skipping in Vista Media Center -- the developer (Andy) of DVRMSToolBox (the most popular commercial skipping software for Media Center) is no longer under NDA and has spoke out about how the TV Pack breaks his software. The long and the short of it is that the Media Center API that notifies the application that video is playing, no longer works. He sees this as a bug, and although Microsoft is aware of the issue, they have no intention of fixing it -- or even publicly admitting it. So according to Andy, our only hope is that enough people report the issue, it may just be enough to make Microsoft stand up and listen.
Microsoft gets official with the Vista Media Center TV Pack
Although we've known all about the TV Pack (code named Fiji) for some time, Microsoft's Ben Reed posted the official details about it today over at The Green Button. As expected, most of the new stuff is for other international markets, but the few new features for the US have been long awaited. Unfortunately the one detail about the TV Pack that we most wanted to be wrong about is true, the it'll only be available on new PCs from OEMs -- lucky for us you can find it elsewhere. Ben says the OEM requirement was necessary because of the complexity of supporting the new features, but as an enthusiast, we still can't help but feel a little slighted by our friends at Redmond. The most interesting quote in the announcement is the words that were chosen to explain that the TV Pack is indeed missing native DirecTV tuner support which describes it as "subscription-based satellite tuners." This of course make us all the more confident that both DirecTV and Dish support are on their radar -- but who knows, maybe that's just wishful thinking. %Gallery-29109%
Did Microsoft intentionally break commercial skipping in Media Center?
When we finally got the Vista Media Center TV Pack in our hands we were so excited about the new found features, that we didn't even get around to trying our favorite plug-ins until later. But after trying our favorite commercial skipping utility, DVRMSToolBox, some of our enthusiasm died. At first we figured, oh we probably need an update, but instead of finding the latest update on the developer's site, we found this interesting post with a inconvenient work around. The wording of the post only prompted us to ask even more questions, and our friends in the beta group had a few things to say. Evidently the developer of DVRMSToolBox was in the beta as well and has been voicing his concerns to Microsoft ever since RC0 was released, and based on the comments in the beta tester's forum, we have reason to believe that Microsoft may have "broken" it on purpose. Regardless of the actual intent though, it seems that Microsoft has no intention of fixing it the SDK in a way that would once again make commercial skipping possible. And in case you're wondering, this affects all the various commercial skipping plug-ins for Media Center, not just DVRMSToolBox.
Engadget HD gets a first hand look at the Vista TV Pack (aka Fiji)
Still a month away from its official announcement at CEDIA -- Engadget HD got their hands on the final release of the Vista Media Center TV Pack (codename Fiji) and although the most anticipated features are missing, (H.264 and DirecTV) what is there, is well received. So if clear QAM, improved tuner support, and favorites is just what you ordered, then head over and have a look at the update that unfortunately you'll probably never get without buying a new PC.
Hands-on with the Vista Media Center TV Pack
The Microsoft eHome team's favorite beta tester is at it again, and this time they went as far as to share the RTM build of the Vista Media Center TV Pack (aka Fiji) with us -- lucky for us the update isn't language specific. We're not sure why Microsoft is officially holding back the details of this update until CEDIA, but either way all the previous details we shared with you are true. Although there is no H.264 support or DirecTV tuner information to be found, the new stuff we did find we really liked. We really had no idea how great native QAM support could be and this heterogeneous tuner support is much cooler than it sounds.%Gallery-29109%
Windows Media Center TV Pack was released yesterday
Wow, we didn't see this coming, at least not this fast -- just a week after getting a sneak peek at release candidate zero, our friend Brent Evans pointed us to a Microsoft knowledge base article that clearly states "The Windows Media Center TV Pack was released on July 16, 2008." Our sources are now confirming this and unfortunately the earlier leak that this would be an OEM only update seems to be true as the very next line in the KB says "Not all computers that are shipped by hardware vendors in the retail channel have the Windows Media Center TV Pack installed." What we really want to know though, is if we were able to did get our hands on the Windows Media Center TV Pack, could we just upgrade or would we have to re-install Windows? So while we can't wait to check out the new HD features, native QAM support, and heterogeneous tuner support, we can't say we're not disappointed. Read - MS KB955485Read - Geek Tonic
Are there two Vista Media Center updates due this year?
The little birdies that clued us in about the upcoming Vista Media Center update a few days ago are at it again, but this time with some potential good news. When the recent Windows Media Center TV Pack release candidate 0 was released to testers and was missing all of our favorite features, we were quick to assume that this would mean no new features until Windows 7. Well, based on some recent information received by our sources, the reason H.264 was cut was because it was too complex to add -- because of all the dependencies involved -- in time. You see, evidently this tuner update was promised to be released to OEMs by the end of July. Now our sources seem to be optimistic that there is another update in the works, and that it might just include both H.264 and DirecTV tuner support. More about the Windows Media Center TV Pack after the jump.%Gallery-26913%
No DirecTV HD for Vista Media Center until 2010?
It has been three months since we received leaked confirmation that the yet to be officially announced DirecTV HD tuner for Vista Media Center (VMC) was part of an upcoming update code named Fiji (expected in October). The fact that so much time has passed and our sources still haven't actually received a tuner was really starting to bother us. So we got even more concerned when we learned that the first release candidate issued to testers was missing required pieces to make the HDPC-20 possible. Unlike the previous beta releases, RC0 was missing native H.264 support which is vital to both DirecTV support and the latest Hauppauge HD PVR component capture device. Then to add insult to injury, many are now reporting that the update that will be officially called Windows Media Center TV Pack will only be available through OEMs. We're not sure if this means you'll have to download the update from Dell (for example) rather than Windows Update, but we can't see how the update could effectively be restricted to OEM installs. The testers we've talked to have reportedly been told that H.264 and DirecTV support have been pushed to Windows 7, which would mean it'll be 2010 before we see it. More about Fiji after the jump.%Gallery-26913%
Next Vista Media Center leaked -- no DirecTV HD till 2010?
Engadget HD has gotten the latest on the highly anticipated update for Vista Media Center and it doesn't look good. The first release candidate made it into testers hands recently and they weren't happy to see that the most anticipated features -- support for a DirecTV HD tuner and native H.264 support -- got pushed to Windows 7. So head over to Engadget HD for more details (screen shots included).
The Hauppauge HD PVR with component inputs gets delayed
March is almost over and we've just learned from our friend Brent Evans, that the most exciting HD product expected this year is delayed until May or June. What's so exciting about an HD PVR card for a computer? Well, with this USB device you can record anything you want, from wherever you want, using whatever PVR software you want. No longer will you have to wait for DirecTV's HDPC-20, or deal with ATI's CableCARD OEM requirements. You'll be able to slap this USB device into just about any computer and roll your own PVR, just like you could before HD came along and ruined everything. In fact, the only bad thing about this device -- besides the wait and the $250 price tag -- is that it captures the uncompressed HD signal and encodes it in real time with H.264, which opens up an opportunity for a degraded signal. Speaking of H.264, because it's required Vista Media Center isn't supported yet. Many have their hopes up that the Fiji release, that's also due this Summer, will include it. [Via ZatzNotFunny]
Codename Fiji refers to Media Center refresh?
Microsoft is trying its darndest to stay mum about future versions of the Windows Client, since all that talk and expectation for Vista sure didn't treat 'em right. Luckily for us, all that transparency Microsoft has been working on with its corporate bloggers is paying off in little slip-ups here and there, with this one coming from Charlie Owen, the Windows Media Center Product Manager. In a blog post tagged "Fiji," which he has since pulled, Charlie mentions the next version of Media Center being "yet another out of band release" and that "the team is pretty happy about that because it allows us to get back on our (approximate) yearly schedule of delivering goodness to customers." He has since apologized for leading his blog following astray with the info, but that doesn't mean we can't still skim some info from this, including the implication -- which is growing in other circles -- that Fiji is a "shoulda been in Vista" update for Media Center, not the whole OS. As to what will actually end up in such a Media Center update is anyone's guess, but we've all got our own personal wishlists to be sure. Let's start with a few bug fixes, shall we?[Via Chris Lanier's Blog]
Microsoft puts the kibosh on 2009 Vienna rumors
Aw c'mon Microsoft, why you always gotta ruin our fun? We were perfectly content to push around vague rumors of a Windows Vista followup in late 2009 and whatever features it may or may not have, dangling all our hopes and dreams off of a thin and potentially out-of-context quote from Ben Fathi, and now you've gotta come along and disown the guy. According to Kevin Kutz, Director of Windows Client: "The launch of Windows Vista was an incredibly exciting moment for our customers and partners around the world, and the company is focused on the value Windows Vista will bring to people today. We are not giving official guidance to the public yet about the next version of Windows, other than that we're working on it. When we are ready, we will provide updates." Ars Technica conjectures that the original story might've even gotten Ben wrong, and the 2.5 years might be how long it takes for for Vienna to make it out the door after the Fiji service pack. Of course, the word from Mr. Fathi was evidently not "official guidance," so who knows. What we can be certain of is that there are two mistakes Microsoft doesn't want to repeat with this OS: taking forever to release, and drumming up false hopes of any sort of launch date earlier than the actual one.[Thanks, Mike]
Is Vista the end? Ballmer says there's "plenty more where that came from"
All those cool kids with their messy hair and loud rock music like to talk about how Vista is the "end of an era," and from now on the OS will move towards modular updates and internet service-based functionality. But before they get too smug, Steve Ballmer warned on Monday that there's "plenty more where that came from." He sort of dodged the questions about when to expect a service pack, saying "We'll put one out if we need to," but he also mentioned "We've got a very long list of stuff our engineers want to do, a long list of stuff all of the companies here want us to do," and that "There are so many areas where we need innovation." Hard to really tell what he's hinting at -- other than the fact that he obviously wants you to buy his shiny new OS -- but while Fiji does seem destined for our desktops sooner rather than later, it's hard to discount rumors of the tantalizing upgrades and reworkings we're hearing about in Vienna, which would be Microsoft's first big break in Windows backwards compatibility, and could provide much more power to the OS. 'Cause you know how we do: we're doing our Flip 3D thing, tagging our photos and burning those DVDs, and we can't help but wonder, "is this all there is?"
Microsoft fast tracks "Fiji" service pack for Vista
Vista hasn't even completely made it out the door yet, but Microsoft looks to already be hard at work on the inevitable first service pack, code named "Fiji," sending out a call for testers in hopes of rolling out the upgrade by the end of the year. As rumored the first time we got wind of the Fiji moniker, the upgrade will apparently add a number of features to Vista that had to be axed in order to meet this month's launch date, as well as address various "high impact" issues, although Microsoft doesn't seem to be willing to elaborate on exactly what those issues might be or how high their impactedness may rank. Of course, all this pales in comparison to rumored changes coming in that other exotically-named Vista upgrade supposedly in the works, with Vienna promising to turn the OS on its head, doing away with that pesky compatibility for "all applications" and throwing everyone for a loop with a completely new interface. No word yet on a possible service pack for it.[Via The Inquirer]