I’ve been an avid user of the Zune since I got my first Zune pass and I’ve been downloading tons of music and getting to know amazing artists all through out via the marketplace. With the release of the Zune HD, the Zune team also updated the software that comes with it and I have nothing but praises so far. (read my zune pass post here for some context)
Well this ain’t a review on Zune HD just because I don’t have one and I don’t think I’ll have one anytime soon. (Darn restrictions! I bet I’m not alone) This is about the Zune 4.0!
The Zune team made a great job of updating the player in so many aspects. I’m always a firm believer that small changes have great impacts and this update just screams it right into my face. There was no major UI change but rather small functional updates that just makes the experience overly enjoyable. From viewing the mix art to the smart DJ, the Zune just has this easy feel to it that it’s actually a joy to fiddle around and get lost.
The first screen introduces a number of new things that you can do. Focusing on the common things that one does on a music player it gives you easy access to the things that you would most likely do. Rather than wasting your time looking for that album, Zune arranges things for you and gives you place holders for your favorite music.
Smart DJ is something new as well. They have this magic algorithm that lines up related music based on the artist that you feed it. Not just that, but it also connects to the Zune Marketplace for you to discover related artists (this I love).
Mixart was changed to be more viewable. I don’t know if the bigger albums have any significance but I do enjoy looking at this more than before.
Hovering over an album now gives you options on what you want to do with it. Unlike before where you only had one option: PLAY
More pics below and most of it speaks for itself. Conclusion afterwards.
Picks for ye
Music for ye
You get the point
something new though
Apps for ye!
Now this is a Zune HD only thing but the best part is YOU, yes YOU can develop your own apps for it. XNA based, I’m still unclear how you can “sell” your app though or how they’re going to distribute an app you submitted. We’ll see in time.
Overall the whole software was vastly improved. Already great on its own, the Zune team revised it with the launch of the Zune HD.
Try it out by going to http://zune.net/en-US/ Just tell them you’re from US and all’s well
Any Zune users out there? Give me feedback!
PS. My iTunes updated the same day as the Zune. dundundundun. Although I still hate it coz it looks like a board full of ads.
Are you a frustrated PowerPoint user? Do you wish there’s a better alternative aside from Keynote? Want to make your presentation better even if you suck at presenting? Well say no more! pptPlex is for you!
Developed by Microsoft Office Labs, pptPlex is a play on how you can extend PowerPoint and how a different way of presenting your slides can affect your whole presentation. This is achieved by deviating from the normal linear way of showing your slides. Whenever you are presenting in PowerPoint it assumes that whatever content you have is just linear, meaning you go from slide one to slide ten just like you are counting. PptPlex deviates from this by giving you the flexibility to jump from one slide to another while still maintaining an overall flow. Check out my short video below
I’m using the slides made by my friend Sile covering Windows Azure (http://innovativesingapore.com/blogs/mic/archive/2009/07/28/getting-on-windows-azure-in-3-days-day-1.aspx learn it here). Notice that you make your slides in the normal way, you then go to the pptPlex tab to use its features. From here you can then arrange your slides in sections. Using pptPlex’s slideshow, easily navigate between disconnected slides without having a disconnected experience when presenting.
I found this very useful especially for slides that has a lot of sections. If you need to skip one section you don’t need to move forward a lot. Just unzoom and double click on that section then proceed with your slides. PptPlex shows offs its capabilities with the different backgrounds that it has built-in. From timelines to flowcharts this is where pptPlex really shines.
This can be really helpful for those drill-in slides. Students out there would love this as it provides another dimension to your presentation.
Some cons though as some PowerPoint objects disappear when you use pptPlex. (Inking for one) None the less, if you want to spice up your boring slides, this can just be the thing you are looking for. But always remember not to overuse it. Use it to complement your slides rather than be the center of it. If your presentation is simple enough, then a linear presentation might be the best rather than making a complex zooming in and out type of slides.
So stop reading and give it a shot. Never hurts to try out something new especially on things you present in and out. You might even get a better reception using this one.
Launched early June ‘09, the IIS 7 SEO toolkit is designed for web developers and administrators maintaining huge websites. A module that easily installs to you IIS 7 this toolkit gives you the ability to check your website for inconsistencies regarding SEO.
The toolkit has three main components:
Site Analysis
Sitemaps and Sitemap Indexes
Robots Exclusion
Of the three, I have only used Site Analysis so far. Even though being a third of the toolkit, the Site Analysis alone will give you enough insight into your website with considerable action on your part. If you don’t know anything about SEO, this toolkit will definitely overwhelm you. The Site Analysis will be going through every link in your site and evaluate it based on a number of SEO criteria. A quick analysis of my site would show you how many SEO standards I have already broken. Strange considering my site is small and I try my best to fill up every detail that I can with my Platinum SEO toolkit plugin for WordPress.
Let’s see how a standard Site Analysis would look like.
Running the analysis on my site would give you the initial Site Analysis Report Summary
These are basic SEO knowledge that everybody with a website should know. By the looks of it I’ve been skipping a lot of details when I’m putting up new posts.
You can then drill down to a specific entry to see how many of times you violated it.
The best part is when you don’t know that specific error, you can drill down and it will give you a description so that you won’t make the same mistake again.
And it will even show you where in the code your error is. From here you can then base your next steps to resolve this “problem”. I found this really helpful especially since I assumed everything would work out fine since I’m using WordPress and a number of its plugins. Apparently you still have to check some of the code within. So far I haven’t dissected it and I still rely on the plug-ins as I found this enough for my blogging needs. Obviously, the toolkit is designed for more than just blogs.
More screenshots of the SiteMap and Robots Exclusion
Sitemap
I’m satisfied with WordPress sitemap plug-ins and thus I don’t really care about this one.
Robots exclusion allows you to tell where the crawler should go to. WP has the same feature and I don’t know much about site crawlers yet to care.
Well that’s a quick intro to IIS 7 SEO Toolkit. Given more time I would definitely like to explore how they define the SEO criteria. There’s probably a document for this but as of now I can’t find any within the MS sites.
Again, this tool is not for everybody as not all has access to their IIS but for sure website admins would definitely benefit from this.
For all Windows junkies out there. (and for those loving Mac fans) this is one feature that I’m really excited about. Working with tons of PCs and a lab environment, having one base image for you VHD is quite powerful. This saves time and energy from doing things over and over again. Yea yea, there are existing tools you can use to do this but this one is just better. There’s VMWare, VPC, and other virtualization technologies that you can use but booting from VHD!? Hell yea! (I’m not sure if VMware has something like it though)
This topic has been discussed in several blogs and I’ll be adding to those and linking the ones I found very useful.
Two main steps to get your VHD a bootin:
Prep your image via ImageX
BCDedit to make it show up upon boot.
This is not really a daunting task, the only problem is it would take quite some time. Installing Win 7 via copying the .wim file, Disk Management, getting it prepped via Image X. These steps are quite time consuming but! after you have set it up, you basically have a VHD that you can boot on and install all the stuff you want in it. This is really helpful for me as rather than having to install the common dev tools (Visual Studio, SQL) you would just have to copy your VHD to the host OS and bcdedit (just four lines) your VHD. The amount of time you’ll save is just amazing.
Follow the two blogs and you shouldn’t encounter any major problems. I’m looking at automating the BCDedit but the guid every VHD produces is unique. My simple workaround is just a batch file that has a variable for the guid. Quick and easy.
Are you a frustrated PowerPoint user? Do you wish there’s a better alternative aside from Keynote? Want to make your presentation better even if you suck at presenting? Well say no more! pptPlex is for you!
