Google Android for Tablets - Honeycomb 3.0

A preview release of Google's new operating system for tablets was released a few weeks back. I'm just hearing about it on some of the podcasts I listen to. lol. So I searched around a bit and this article seems to be the best article on the subject.

Android Central: What's new in Android 3.0 Honeycomb

Pictures are included so you can get an idea of what the new OS will look like. The first tablet running the OS will be the Motorola Xoom, which is rumored to be released February 24. Which is interesting, given that the "preview" release came out 2 weeks ago. Apparently Motorola was the only company to have access to the new OS up until the "preview". Odd for an open source operating system. The price is supposed to be $800. Which seems a bit high for a Wifi only device.

Expect a lot of tablet releases this year. But at the pricing I'm seeing ($700 or $800), expect the iPad to keep its lead for the foreseeable future.

Securing Your Facebook Connection

Dave Taylor has this post explaining how to secure your Facebook connection. If you connect to Facebook from a free Wifi hotspot, its easy for someone to hack into your account if you don't use an encrypted connection. Dave's blog explains how to turn on encryption for your account. Definitely a good idea for any Facebook user.

Murdoch Launches the Daily

While packing up to fly home this morning, I saw the launch for the new "The Daily" online newspaper from News Corp. At launch, TheDaily will only be available for the iPad. Other platforms may be made available at a future date.

The cost. $0.99 a week pay as you go, or $39.95 for sign up for an entire year. This looks like a pretty good pricing system to me. Much cheaper than any print newspaper and a lot cheaper than say the Wall Street Journal ($150 a year for online).

The sections seems to be News, Lifestyle and Entertainment, Sports, and Technology (Games and Apps). Interesting that I didn't see a business section. The would be something I would like.

The actual content looked really rich. Very large and vibrate photos. 360 degree photos. video and audio. In additional there seemed to be all the social media hooks in there. They plan to produce 100 pages of content a day. 7 days a week. The sports section looked killer. Plus you can pick which teams you want to follow.

I think I may give it a try.

PowerPoint Crashes when Typing Anything on a Mac Running Windows 7 and Bootcamp

Problem: PowerPoint Crashes when Typing Anything on a Mac Running Windows 7 and Bootcamp 3.2

This problem is bizarre. About an hour ago, I tried to start working on a PowerPoint presentation I started on Friday. Whenever I type anything PowerPoint 2007 crashes. Everything worked fine on Friday. (Ahhh!!!! Sometimes I really hate computers.) I'm using a MacBook Pro running Windows 7 64bit and Bootcamp 3.2.

Solution:
The bug appears to be with BootCamp 3.2 and Windows 7. My HP laptop has no such problem. Only my Mac.

Thanks to some smart folks on the Apple forums, there seem to be workaround solutions to this bug. The problem seems to be with Windows, Bootcamp, PowerPoint, and the keyboard driver.

PowerPoint 2007
For PowerPoint 2007 on Windows 7....

1. Open Control Panel
2. Press "Change keyboards or other input methods" from "Clock, Language, and Region"
3. Press "Change keyboards..."
4. Press "Add..."
5. Roll down "English (United States)" (if it's not already expanded)
6. Select "US"
7. Press "OK"
8. Press "OK"
9. Press "OK"
10. Close the Control Panel

See Forum Post Here

PowerPoint 2010
Another user performed these steps to fix the problem on PowerPoint 2010.

In PowerPoint 2010..

1. Go to "File", "Options", "Language"
2. Under a the heading "keyboard layout" note the hyperlink which says "not enabled".
3. Click on the hyperlink and select a keyboard layout and the keyboard's language.
4. Once you complete the process it will say "enabled" under the keyboard layout heading.

This should fix the problem.

I can confirm the PowerPoint 2007 fix worked for me. Given the Posts date back to late November it appears this bug has been around a while.

Get Yourself a DropBox in the New Year

Do yourself a favor this new year and get yourself a Dropbox.

What is Dropbox?

Dropbox is a virtual hard drive that lives on your computer and in the cloud. If you download and run the installer, a My Dropbox folder is added to your My Documents directory on Windows. Once created, copy and create files in the folder just like any other folder on your system. Your files are automatically synced to the cloud.

That is interesting, but where is the coolness factor? Well if you only have one machine, it is not that exciting. But if you have more than one machine, an iPhone, and an iPad, things get really cool. With Dropbox installed on each of your computers and devices, the files are automatically synced between each computer and device. This is immensely useful for someone like me with a bunch of devices and computers.

Where can I use Dropbox?

Dropbox can be used on pretty much anything. Installers are available for Windows, Mac, Linux, iPhone, iPad, Android, and Blackberry. By default you get 2GB of disk space for free. For $99 a year, you get 50GB of disk space. Do yourself a favor and check it out.