Commercial Space Station to be Ready For Guests by 2016
via mashable.com
Now how cool would that be? Now if I can only just find those few million pounds I left laying around somewhere!
Why not start the week with a Lion?
A nice fresh installation of Mac OS X Lion to open the working week. I guess today will be full of “doh I forgot to install that” moments!
Your (not so) friendly email client Gmail Man!
via youtube.com
Interesting video apparently shown by Microsoft at their Global Exchange Sales Conference recently. Its cheesey but so true!
Link courtesy of John Gruber at Daring Fireball
Google Gmail and Calendar get a new look
via techradar.com
A welcome and long overdue update from Google. Both Gmail and Goodle Calendar were starting to look a little dated and getting left behind in terms of UI by other web apps, including other Google Products.
Google+ for instance looks pretty swish with its drag and drop functionality to create circles of friends. Here’s hoping they roll out these UI changes to Google Reader shortly.
Google’s Answer to Facebook has arrived and its called Google+
We’d like to bring the nuance and richness of real-life sharing to software. We want to make Google better by including you, your relationships, and your interests. And so begins the Google+ project:
There has been talk of Google developing its own social network to take on the might of Facebook for over a year now and today they unveiled it. Its name? Google+
Strange choice of name but I bet they have spent millions on it. While the search engine giant is keen not to badge it as a competitor to Facebook, we all know that is the market they are aiming for. Their choice of categorising it as a project rather than a product also shows how difficult they realise the challenge will be and it gives them the option to drop it “quietly” in the future if they wish. Think Google Wave if you want another example of this.
Their focus is clearly on making the discovery of content more social and the sharing of content between networks of friends online. Other functionality such as sparks (chats) and hangouts (looks like chat rooms to me) mean they are trying to generate some kind of community but I think its the link to their search that will give them the best hope of pulling it off.
Twitter to start polluting your timeline
Twitter to Put Promoted Tweets in Your Timeline in Next 2 Months
We’ve already noted reports that Twitter is preparing to up its ad game by placing paid-for tweets right in the middle of your Twitter stream. Now we know the deadline for the change-over. Promoted tweets will start showing up in users’ timelines within the next 8 weeks, according to several sources who have been briefed on the matter.
Here’s hoping they offer a paid for Pro service which allows you to remove these!
Read more at Mashable
Facebook set to open HTML 5 App Store, targeting iOS
Rumours are afoot of a Facebook project, code named Project Spartan which aims to setup its own to HTML5 app store, therefore bypassing Apple’s stranglehold on iOS.
Apple has always been up front that there are two options for developing on iOS, native apps through their App Store, which they reserve the right to review and HTML 5, which doesn’t have the same restrictions.
Personally I’d welcome this project if it appears as more choice is generally a good thing. I suspect the limitations of an HTML 5 experience when compared to a native iOS app, although not massive, will still make the App Store the preferred destination for most punters.
Pain free redundant back-up on the Mac
The way I backup now looks like this:
- Nightly SuperDuper! clones of my laptop to an external drive.
- TimeMachine running to a I have a TimeCapsule.
- All “currently working files” stored in Dropbox.
- Automatic cloud backups of all my irreplaceable documents, photos, music, and application support folders.
via shawnblanc.net
Interesting to read how Shawn Blanc has just gone through exactly the same process that I went through last year and gratifyingly ended up at the same place.
Like him I tried a number of cloud based back-up solutions to compliment my local back-ups, initially going with Backblaze before switching to Arq. I couldn’t be happier and now have a fully automatic and redundant back-up system, combining two cloud based services (Dropbox and Amazon S3) with two local back-ups using Superduper and Time Machine.
There are a few others I also add to the mix as well but I won’t bore with the details. You know what they say? You can never have enough back-ups!
Thinking of starting a business?
If you’re thinking of starting a business then you may want to pop over to Think Vitamin, where they have made their “How to Build a Startup” video course freely available on their site.
In the series Ryan Carson, talks through his experiences of starting companies such as Carsonified and Think Vitamin. The subject matter maybe aimed at Techs primarily but anybody thinking of starting a business will get something out of it
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