Mark Edgington

On June 12th Apple announced the release of Safari for Windows, in 2 days it had 1 million downloads. But why was it released at all. Allegedly Safari have near 5% of the browser market, not bad considering to date it only runs on a mac. So it could be they viewed the success of Firefox and thought there was room in the market. However, they could have done this before and if you take a look at browsers statistics by w3schools you find the figure is much lower than stated.  With a little more investigation you find that the IPhone (to be released end June) will have developer access using Safari. Now perhaps a release makes more sense, as most developers are on the windows platform and the IPhone will need these to gain momentum after its initial launch. Whatever the reason, it is worth downloading to see if it suits your needs.

Mind 42 have just released a free on-line mind mapping tool, The sign-up is fast and you’ll be mapping in no-time.   It’s easy to use, offering some basic functions, but more are on the way.  A great feature is the ability to collaborate by sharing your maps, coupled with other tools like basecamp (for project management)  and you can have great control and communication around your project, especially if it’s open source and the team is at disparate locations. collaboration.

Microsoft have released a patch that fixes a number of issues around the performance of Outlook 2007.

Microsoft indicated that the problem stemmed from RSS feeds, email, and calendar files all being stored in the same .PSD file which as one might imagine could grow in size rather quickly depending on the user.

I loaded the patch and the performance increase is noticeable. Outlook 2007 does have an update facility, but it is unclear if this will be included, as it is not a security fix, also many people have the facility turned off. So i recommend you get the patch here.

Sony has developed a razor-thin display that bends like paper while showing full-color video. Sony says it has yet to decide on how to commercialize new products using the technology, but a future use may be targeted product package advertising.

Couple the flat and bendable screen with RFID and you have an aware marketing device. Of course prices to produce the screen will have to drop negligible levels, but packaging that can change dependent on the profile of the person walking past it will be sure to set marketeers thinking. Think about it for just a moment, you’ll think of a multitude of uses. Maybe you like to see the fat content of food more prominent than other details. Take it to the next stage and it may not just be the information changing, you could even find you wifes, children’s or even your mothers face looking back at you beckoning you to purchase the product. Linked it in with financial data and you could program your needs, prior to setting out for the shop and just look out for the neon highlighted item on the shelves. Once home the packages could be aware of each other and indicate to you a selection combination will make a tasty meal and even provide the recipe to create it. The combination of awareness and ability to change provide near limitless ideas for uses it will be interesting to see what happens when production costs reach a level to allow these type of ideas to be tried out.