Vista SP1 available, Picasa on iPhone, Yahoo shortcuts Wordpress plugin, and Google Analytics updates

Posted on December 13, 2007 at 11:53 am

Today’s a pretty happening day when it comes to new features, new software patches, and new programs in the tech world! There have been a couple of cool items announced recently that really kicked up my interest, so I thought I would share some of it with everyone as it will probably effect you in one way or another!

Microsoft Releases Vista SP1 RC for download

Until a day ago, Vista SP1 was only available to private beta testers to use. Today, however, it has been officially released to the public and is freely available to anyone through Windows Update. However, according to recent reports, downloading Vista Service Pack 1 is not very easy as it involves several steps and multiple reboots.

Vista Service Pack 1 has tons and tons of bug fixes and software patches, so it should hopefully make Vista run a lot smoother. Patches are included for things like device driver and software compatibility for third-party USB and firewire devices such as digital cameras, etc.

Firstly, you need to download a script on your Vista machine which will check to make sure it’s up to par for the update. Once the update is finished, there are two pre-requisite updates that must be installed and the computer rebooted after each. Finally after that, you’ll be able to download SP1 onto your computer!

Yahoo Releases Yahoo! Shortcuts Wordpress Plug-in

If you’re a Wordpress blogger, you might be interested in a pretty cool plugin from Yahoo called Shortcuts. It’s meant to help boost your blog post by adding useful content in the form of text pop-ups for selected words. It works just like Kontera or IntelliTxt by converting certain keywords into links that give more information.

The cool thing about this plug-in is that it gives extra information that actually helps! For example, it will automatically find terms in your post related to company names, ticker symbols, locations, news reports, products names, and more. If you have the word Apple in your post, it will convert into a link and scrolling over will provide you the latest stock price of Apple stock! If you write about an iPod, it will show you the latest price for the iPod from Yahoo Shopping.

It also integrates with Flickr and can bring up relevant images directly from there! So if you write about Woodstock, it will highlight that word and possibly bring up Flickr images of tagged as Woodstock! Neat!

Google Picasa now has interface on the iPhone

Another really cool feature that just got announced is the fact that Google’s Picasa Web Albums site will now work on the iPhone automatically. Simply go to http://picasaweb.google.com from your iPhone and you can browse all of your albums easily and look at your pictures as slideshows, etc.

You can also see all of the comments made for the pictures and you can also search your photos or the community photos from the iPhone interface. Also works for the iTouch.

Google Analytics gets updated with compare data points feature

Another interesting feature I just noticed yesterday is in Google Analytics! Apparently you can now compare different data points in the same graph. For example, you can compare data for visits, page views, pages per visit, average time on site, the bounce rate, and more. You can also compare the data against the entire site. Source MarketingPilgrim

And that’s about it! Whew! That’s a lot of new stuff though and very cool! Hopefully, we keep getting more updates at this fast pace as it’s always fun to play around with new software or get more features. Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: vista sp1, yahoo shortcuts, yahoo wordpress plugin, google analytics updates, picasa on iphone, picasa iphone

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2 Responses to “Vista SP1 available, Picasa on iPhone, Yahoo shortcuts Wordpress plugin, and Google Analytics updates”

Nirmal said on : December 13th, 2007 at 10:26 pm

Lots of happenings around the Internet. Good coverage.

akishore said on : December 13th, 2007 at 10:47 pm

Thanks Nirmal, I was looking at all of this cool stuff and thought may as well some it up in a post! Thanks!