William Computer Blog

Traditionally, sharing your video or pictures online involve uploading and hosting them to 3rd party sites such as Flickr, YouTube, or Google Video. Uploading large media files often require a lot of time. Most 3rd party sites also limit the number of files or files sizes you can host.

PiXPO is a new way to share your video online directly from your computer with no uploads required. PixPO uses peer-to-web (P2W) technology, allowing you to serve your shared files from your PC to the web. Because files are served directly from your computer, there’s no bandwidth or storage cost. However, your computer needs to be turned on with PiXPO running if you want people to access your shared files at all times.

To get started, you need to download and install PiXPO. The installation is a pretty straight forward process. Once the installation is finished, you will be asked to register for a new PiXPO ID.

Once your PiXPO ID is created, you can start creating channels. PiXPO allows people to categorize their media into channels. To create a new channel, click on the Add channel button. Give your channel a name, description and tags.

Click on Choose files button to add media files into the channel. A new window called “Choose Channel Files” will appear. The left pane of the window contains folder tree view of your hard drives. The right pane contains the content of the folder with media files. Click on the file you wish to share, drag and drop it into the bottom of the panel.

PiXPO 3.0 supports BMP, IFF, JPEG, PCX, PGM, PICT, PNG, PSD, SGI, TGA, TIFF and WMF file types. PiXPO 3.0 also supports RAW and GIF file formats. With regard to audio and video files, PiXPO 3.0 supports AVI (DivX AVI, and others - depending on if you have the correct codecs installed), MPEG (including MP3), Windows Media (audio and video - requires at least Windows Media Player 9) and QuickTime (audio and video - requires QuickTime for Windows).

You can set the privacy of your channel by ticking the “Unlisted channel” which will hide the channel from the public. The only way you can share your channel when it’s invisible is by telling people the permanent URL to your channel.

Now that you’ve created your channels, you can click on the Get Links to get a list of links to your PiXPO Web address that you can copy/paste into your web/email/tell your friends. Alternatively, you can also send an e-mail to your friends directly from PiXPO.

When I first knew about PiXPO, I was worried that if a user’s media files become popular it might slow down/bring down their home internet connection. Do not worry, because files that become popular get cached on PiXPO’s servers so they can be viewed by more than 1 or 2 people at any given time.

Currently, PiXPO only runs on Windows operating system. A Mac version is currently being developed and PixPO API is also expected to be released within the next few months.

Pros:

• No Uploads, fast file can be broadcasted in a few minutes.
• No Limits on number of files or file sizes.

Cons:

• Broadband connection required.
• PC must be turned on at all times.

Links:

• PiXPO
• My Flickr tagged with PiXPO.

Today, I went to the Australia/New Zealand preview of the upcoming Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC) in Sydney. At this ANZ presentation, you will hear about Apple’s business and find out more about WWDC 06. Before I continue, I’d like to announce that the attendees to the WWDC Preview did not get an early peek at Mac OS X (10.5) Leopard. Steve Jobs will be the only person to announce Leopard to the world.

The first speaker at the event was Tess Collins of Apple Developer Relations. She explained how software developers could market and distribute their Apple related products. Some of the marketing technique you can use to promote your products are PR (e.g., media, analysts), events (e.g., Macworld, WWDC, etc), Online (e.g., Mac OS X Downloads page, Macintosh Product Guide, .Mac, 3rd party sites such as versiontracker.com, etc). She also explained how you can distribute your product through Apple’s Retail store / Online store, the product requirement, and packaging requirement.

The second speaker at the event was David Colville. David works as Technical Director of Key Options Technology, who specialise in IT services to the Education and SME markets. Today, David explained the challenges he faced providing Mac-based solutions, and his experience visiting past WWDC events.

The Apple Developer Relations will be touring around Australia and New Zealand throughout the rest of this month. If you happen to be in Australia and New Zealand, you might want to consider coming to this event if you or your company plan to release a software for Mac.

I know someday I will be visiting Macworld or WWDC in San Francisco, just not this year.

Microsoft has decided to release its next operating system, Windows Vista Beta 2 for everyone. Vista Beta 2 was released a few weeks ago for beta testers and MSDN subscribers. Vista Beta 2 is a time-limited software release that will expire on Jun 1, 2007. To get Vista Beta 2, you can either download it from the site or you can order the DVD to be sent to your home or office (shipping payment required).

Windows Vista Beta 2 are available in both 32-bit version and 64-bit version, the ISO files are about 3.5 GB (32-bit version) and 4.4GB (64-bit version). The public release is available in three languages: English, Japanese and German.

Before you install, you need to make sure that your PC is Vista Ready. Apparently, mine is not Vista Ready. However, there is a way you can get Vista to work on a MacBook Pro.

Microsoft’s servers are currently overloaded with people who wants to try the public beta. I tried to download it for the past few hours and failed with these messages:

Thank you for your interest in Windows Vista Beta 2.

We are currently experiencing a high level of demand and cannot process your request at this time.

Please check back later for availability. We apologize for any inconvenience.

I’m gonna try again tommorow.

On 6 June 2006, Google launched a new web-based spreadsheet application called Google Spreadsheets. Google Spreadsheets allows people to create, open, share, edit spreadsheet right from their web browser. It is currently open to a limited number of people, if you’re interested you can take a sneak peek at the tour page and leave your e-mail address to try the product.

Interface

Google Spreadsheets interface looks just like any other spreadsheet software (Excel, Calc). When you open Google Spreadsheets, you will see a blank spreadsheet document and start working immediately.

On the top of Google Spreadsheets, there are four menus: File, Save, New spreadsheet and Open a spreadsheet. Under the file menu, you’ve got a few sub-menus: Save, New, Open, Save as…, Download as .xls, Download as .csv, Get HTML, Upload new version, Rename, Delete, and Close.

Tabs

Above the working area, you’ve got three tabs: Format, Sort and Formulas. On the right side of the tabs there are 5 buttons: Cut, copy, paste, undo and redo.

The format tabs allows you to apply to format your data such as bold, underline, italics, font color, cell color, font family, and font size. You can also change your cell alignment, merge cells, wrap text, insert or delete rows and columns.

The sort tab allows use to “Freeze Rows”, which allows you to select up to 5 rows at the top of the current sheet which will remain at the top. You can also sort your data in an ascending (A - Z) or descending order (Z - A).

According to Google, Google Spreadsheets supports over 200 formula functions. The Formulas tab gives you access to common spreadsheet functions such as: Sum, Count, Average, Min, Max, Product. Clicking on the more link will give you a list of all supported functions.

Worksheet

Just like any other spreadsheet software, the cells are organized in rows and columns. You can resize a column or rows by clicking between the lines between columns (or rows) and drag.

You can select a cell by clicking on the cell, you can also select a range of cells by clicking on the first cell and drag your mouse to the last cell. To select the entire row or column, click on the row or column heading. A select all button is also available.

You can have more than one worksheet on a spreadsheet file. You can add more worksheet by clicking the “Add Sheet” button below the worksheet. Next to the “Add Sheet” button, you can see tabs (with arrows next to it) of available sheets. Clicking on the sheets will switch your current worksheets to the one you click. Clicking on the arrows will allow you to delete or rename the sheet.

Sharing

Google Spreadsheets allows you to edit spreadsheets collaboratively with other people such as your co-worker, friends, family, teams. Once a cell is edited, anyone else viewing or editing the spreadsheet will see the changes in real time.

A chat window is also included in Google Spreadsheets. The chat window allows you to chat with the people who are editing or viewing your spreadsheet.

Conclusion

Google Spreadsheets lets you create spreadsheets free of charge without the need to install anything into their computer. Because it is a web based application, you can also access your spreadsheets anywhere. Your spreadsheet files are stored securely online on Google’s servers, you can also save it into your computer should you need to access it offline.

Google Spreadsheets is fast and act exactly like a Desktop software. It is a good spreadsheet solution especially for Intel Mac since a Universal Binary Microsoft Office is not yet available.

Wanna see some screenshots? Visit my flickr tagged “Google Spreadsheets”.

Mozilla Firefox has been updated to 1.5.0.4, the update provide improvements to the browser’s stability and several security fixes.

The Mozilla Foundation also offer an update to the mail client, Thunderbird. The update also provide improvement to the browser’s stability along with sevel security fixes. For Mac OS X users, Thunderbird 1.5.0.4 is a universal binary, which means you no longer need to use Rosetta to run Thunderbird.

When the MacBook Pro 17-inch and MacBook were announced, Apple included a “right-click” feature on the new notebook. The “right-click” on MacBook Pro works by placing two of your fingers on the trackpad and click.

Unfortunately, Apple didn’t include the right-click feature with the MacBook Pro 15-inch. Some people on OSX86 Project forum has made the new driver available on the net. This new driver will replace your current MacBook Pro 15-inch driver with a new driver from the MacBook Pro 17-inch. An installer is also distributed to restore the driver incase Apple release a new update.

I have tried installing the new driver and it worked on my 15-inch MacBook Pro. Beware, install this at your own risk. I will not be responsible if anything happen to your OS X installation or your MacBook Pro. If you’re not sure, wait for an official release from Apple.

Links:

• Download the driver
• Read the forum thread.