Continue reading »]]> For the past few months, the internet has been abuzz with news of some controversial -many would say dangerous- pieces of legislation:  The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA). If you are not yet familiar with these proposed pieces of Orwellian control, you can read the full text of the Stop Online Piracy Act here.

Today, January 18th, 2011, SoftwareMedia.com and Software News Daily have joined hundreds if not thousands of websites (including Google, Wikipedia, Mozilla, Tumblr, and many others) in the National Internet Blackout Day, one of the largest online protests the world has ever seen.

You too can do your part to help tell Congress that We The People oppose SOPA and PIPA, by signing Google’s Online Petition.

Protect the freedom of information – say NO to SOPA and PIPA!

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HD Camcorders, Graphics Tablets, LCD Monitors and More!

SoftwareMedia.com has for more than 14 years, been your one-stop software shop, offering all of the top, name-brand software products from Adobe, Microsoft, Corel (and dozens of other manufacturers) for rock-bottom prices. Now, after years of selling only software, we are proud to offer our customers a carefully selected assortment of discount computer hardware and consumer electronics.

Our selection of awesome discount gadgetry ranges from computer keyboards and monitors to graphics tablets, SD cards, GPS devices and even High Definition digital camcorders. Many of our hardware and electronics products are also available in bundle packs, which pair the best software to match your new gizmos.

With the madness of the holiday shopping season fast approaching, SoftwareMedia.com is here once again to be your one stop software and electronics shop, with awesome deals on items like:

Toshiba Camileo H30 HD Digital Camcorder - a state-of-the-art digital camcorder that shoots in stunning 1080p, and takes 10 MegaPixel still photos. Complete with a brilliant 3-inch LCD touchscreen, image stabilization, macro-focus and many other features often found only in the higher-end prosumer cameras. Perfect for the budding film-maker in your life.

Genius EasyPen i405 Tablet – a powerful graphics tablet that allows you to freely express yourself on your computer by simply touching the pen tip to the tablet. The 4” x 5.5” working area with the cordless pen is great for Windows and MAC users to write, draw, sketch or sign emails. Bundle it with Corel Painter 12 and save even more!

V7 19-Inch Widescreen LCD Monitor – this monitor offers bright, vivid images with fast screen response, high contrast ratio, and wide viewing angles with long-life panels. Whether it’s for desktop publishing, web browsing, playing games, watching movies, or standard office usage, V7 LCD monitors are the ideal choice.

You can find these and many more awesome deals on software, computer hardware and electronics at SoftwareMedia.com!

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Since 1982 Cougar Mountain Software has provided business accounting software and hardware solutions to more than 20,000 retail, wholesale, nonprofit, and service-based businesses throughout the world.

Cougar Mountain Software employs accounting and business experts for their product development, sales, support, and training staff, many with accounting degrees. For 29 years these teams have worked together to build and enhance accounting applications based on feedback and requests from businesses across many industries. Through accounting expertise and customer input, Cougar Mountain Software has designed a robust, scalable, and user-friendly accounting solution, meeting the needs of small to large businesses.

Cougar Mountain Software was recently given the highest ranking in its class for the DENALI product line by CPA Practice Advisor.

Product Highlight

DENALI is a fully integrated module system scalable to meet the accounting and business needs of small to large companies.

Primary Accounting and Financial Modules Include:

• Accounts Payable
• Accounts Receivable
• Bank Reconciliation
• Budget Management
• Donor Tracking (Nonprofit)
• General Ledger
• Fixed Assets
• Inventory Control
• Payroll
• Point of Sale
• Purchase Order

For more information, visit Cougar Mountain Software on the web at www.cougarmtn.com

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Continue reading »]]> In March, Autodesk released its 2012 product line, including AutoCAD 2012 LT. We understand that some people are hesitant to immediately upgrade to a new version of a software product before they really get a chance to see some of the new features, improvements and upgrades that have been made to the program. So, we have put together a little video overview of some of the cool new features in AutoCAD 2012 LT. We think you’ll be as amazed about the advancements made to this version as we were!

 

Right now, you can buy AutoCAD LT 2012 at mega-low prices and qualify for a $300 mail in rebate!

For all of the latest software tutorials, free software guides, licensing overviews and product tours, check out our YouTube page! Our subscribers have access to all of our news and videos, plus exclusive promo codes, discounts and free software giveaways!

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Not too long ago, iPhone OS 4.0 beta 4 was released! I’m not sure if this is old news — I admit, I’m a bit out of the loop…

But tethering! That has to be somewhat fresh news… iPhone OS 4.0 beta has a tethering option! iPhone user? Not excited? Yeah, I wasn’t very excited either when I read about it on Engadget, Boy Genius Report and Gizmodo. Why? I had no idea what tethering was until just a few minutes ago. What was all this hype over tethering!

Contrary to what I initially thought (it’s nowhere near a virtual game of iPhone tetherball), “tethering” is the use of a mobile device as a makeshift modem to connect another device to the internet. The connection is usually made through Bluetooth or a (USB, perhaps) cable. About.com gave the best breakdown I came across in my ADD-limited timespan spent looking up the term. Tethering is particularly useful when you have no other means to connect to the internet. It also may save a bit of dough if you already have an unlimited data plan — no need for a broadband or wireless access card when you can tether off your unlimited data plan. And it may also be more secure than surfing from a public wi-fi hotspot. When I think of tethering, I think of a cell phone… and a wireless card… meshed together. If that confuses you more, I apologize… Anyway, apparently, tethering is highly anticipated.

Now, that I know what tethering is… I’d say I’m more excited… uh… well, for those iPhone users (which I am not — I oddly live in the stone age when it comes to upgrading my tech; I blame this on lack of funds).

To set up tethering — navigate over to your settings to see the new option. A pop-up will ask if you want to set up tethering on this account, just go to the website and follow the directions. There’s a quick video of someone doing this below, for those… more visual learners.

If you aren’t seeing the option to set up tethering, just reset your network settings. Once you’ve got it set up, feel free to share your experiences, frustrations, likes, dislikes, and all that jazz.

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Continue reading »]]> An article in the Sydney Morning Herald recently caught my attention… Two million internet addicts. As folks that don’t readily reveal their age say, I remember the time… when internet wasn’t even part of my life. Although, I have no clue what I did in place of surfing the net in those days… Playing outside, watching television or talking on a land-line connected phone with a friend (remember those days when we cell phones weren’t as prevalent?), perhaps?

Now, there’s isn’t a given day where I don’t check my email, stalk my friends on Facebook, track the weather (for biking preparedness), chat with other online addicts friends or just surf the web at least once. Okay, granted, working online and writing a blog doesn’t help…  But, when I see half my friends on their smart phone obsessively replying every constant ding from a new email or text message… or when any vacation I take with friends or family entails at least one person bringing their laptop… or when I dine at a restaurant and see the entire table next to me typing away on their data-capable phones rather than actually conversing with each other… I start to wonder. Is the Internet more of a hindrance than it is helpful? We were just fine without it before, but does that mean we could do it again?

The internet has definitely become the stem of many controversial issues — take Australian censorship or the ethical usage of Internet regarding patients for example. What we thought was already a small world (after all), has been made even smaller and more accessible through the world wide web. Email. Instant message. VoIP. Streaming media. Technology has evolved and zipped light years past the days of the Pony Express and Morse code.

Of course, with the good, comes the bad — there’s always that balance, right? Internet has caused a rise in negligence and violence. The Sydney Morning Herald notes a couple of instances:

Last month, a couple let their three-month-old starve while they raised a virtual child in an online game, spending most of their days at an internet cafe instead of caring for their newborn, police said.

That baby died of malnutrition. Oh, and hold on, there’s another one:

In February, a 22-year-old bludgeoned his mother to death for “nagging” him about playing internet games, police said. He then played games online for hours, paying with his mother’s credit card, a police statement said.

In South Korea, where these two instances occurred, more than 90% of households have broadband internet access. In addition, 24-hour internet cafes are abundant in Asia. As an alternative to staying the night at a hotel, much of the younger population partying late hours in Japan opt to spend the night at a 24-hour internet cafe until the train systems start back up in the morning. In Taiwan, internet cafes have become a popular hangouts — even ranging from cheap, affordable facilities to ritzy, expensive surroundings. Dr. Kim Tae-hoon, a psychiatrist who treats teenagers for internet addiction says, “In South Korea, it’s easier for citizens to play online games than to invest in their offline personal relations through face-to-face conversations.” He continues by noting, “People are becoming growingly numb to human interaction.”

The University of Maryland conducted a study asking 200 students to give up all media (Internet, cellphones, television, music, etc.) for one day. Is it surprising that, according to the New York Times, they found “many showed signs of withdrawal, craving and anxiety along with an inability to function well without their media and social links” after just 24 hours? One student confesses, “I clearly am addicted and the dependency is sickening.”

Although the American Psychiatric Association has yet to recognize Internet addiction as a disorder, South Korea has already decided to take action against the estimated 2 million people classified to be an addict. The South Korean government will be “restricting access to popular online games, and is sending counselors to elementary schools to teach children about healthy internet usage.”

The United States’ first in-patient treatment center for Internet addiction opened for business last summer near Redmond, Washington. The center, called reSTART, gives various examples of students who have become largely in debt or even dropped out of college due to internet addiction. But erm… the $14,000 price tag for treatment could be cause for self-help in of itself — or perhaps another reason to continue on(line)?

Stanford University’s School of Medicine estimates that one in eight Americans show at least one sign of internet overuse. A Huffington Post article by therapist Lisa Haisha, even takes internet addiction one step further by examining specifics, Facebook addiction. “Since the term Internet Addiction is broad, some psychologists have identified and classified sub-categories of Internet addiction,” says Haisha.

Director of I Will Center, a government-funded counseling center in South Korea, Park Hye-kyung says, “It’s a little ironic that what was invented to make our lives better has come to make it worse for some.” Could you do without Internet? Has it harmed your way of living more so than helped it? I’m stuck; I have no idea…What do SND readers think?

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Continue reading »]]> It’s not any sort of secret that Apple unveiled the new 4th generation iPhone operating system today. This will be the new OS powering iPhones, iPods and the recently released iPad. Of course, like all things Apple, this is just the tease… the developer preview as some call it… iPhone OS 4 won’t ship out until at least this summer and not until fall for the iPad.

So what’s the biggest new feature that OS 4 has and none of the others have? Multi-tasking. “We’re not the first to this party, but we’re gonna be the best. Just like cut and paste,” says Steve Jobs. Yeah, what does that mean, exactly? I wondered the same thing when I tried to get the scoop from a friend (unfortunately, I was unable to check out the event as it occurred).

Multi-tasking, cut to the skinny of it, brings in better capabilities to run multiple programs. The iPhone OS 4 utilizes a dock for applications that are running. This makes it easy to jump from program to program… multi-task. Jobs speaks of an example:

I’m gonna launch mail, this has a URL — so I jump to safari — so I want to go back to mail… I double click the home button and a window raises that shows me all the apps that are running. Now I want to go to ebay — I go right to where I left off in the apps, now I want to play a game — now I want to play a game, Tap Tap Revenge, it keeps me where I was. Again, the game stops, let me go back and look at mail. And again, I can go home anytime I want. Boom I’m home. Make sense? Really simple UI, puts all the apps at the bottom that are running…

Other capabilities in regards to multi-tasking include:

• running Pandora in the background (music won’t stop when you switch apps)
• VoIP for Skype-ing (stay logged on, even while using other apps)
• Push notifications now will be “Local notifications” (no longer need to use Apple servers)
• Task completion (continue a task, such as uploading photos to Flickr, in the background while doing other things)
• Fast app switching (save the current state you are at with one app, switch to another, return to the same state for previous app)

Moving on… so what other cool features were mentioned in the preview today? Here are a couple of my picks…

Folders
Rather than flipping through page onto page for an individual application you are looking to launch… consolidate a logically grouped bunch of applications into a folder — less flipping through pages. Will, say, 2,000 apps be enough? OS 4 allows you to have over 2,000 apps on your iPhone now…

Unified Inbox
All your mail in one place, with the addition of multiple Exchange accounts. ‘Nuff said (sorry to sound thug-like, but the occasion called for it…)!

If you are interested in reading more, Engadget has a live blog from the events held earlier today; they also have a video preview. The Business Insider has a quick and simple slide show explaining the seven features highlighted by Apple. Or if you are just looking to recap every single moment of today’s iPhone OS 4 developer preview, watch the entire event at Apple.

Oh, yes, developers can download the SDK (software developer kit) version of iPhone OS 4 already. Check that out here: iPhone Dev Center.

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Continue reading »]]> Michael and Kevin hit me with a few links today that mention Adobe‘s April 12th launch of Creative Suite 5. I’ll admit, I’m stoked (my wallet may not be, but I am)!! I’m even more stoked after seeing sneak peek for the Content-Aware Fill tool in Photoshop CS5 — keep reading to see what I’m talking about…

It’s all been very exciting here at SoftwareMedia.com — some of us looking at it as a great marketing opportunity and others of us just projecting our Adobe Creative Suite nerd-self. However, before you start checking your bank statements to make sure you’ve got the cash to shell out for this new edition, CS5.org reminds us…

Before you get too excited, let’s get one thing straight: This is the unveiling, or basically an introduction to the public. Adobe is going so far as to call it a “launch” day but you will not be able to buy the software that day. Adobe has not announced a release day yet, but October 2010 makes sense to me (just a guess).

Never fear. Even before the April 12th launch, Adobe has an incredible… jaw-dropping… eye-popping… mind-blowing… earth-shattering…. uh okay, it’s just insane MAGIC before your eyes. Check out this video demonstration of the Content-Aware Fill tool in the soon-to-come Photoshop CS5:

What did I tell you? MAGIC! Make sure to head over to the launch site so you can join the launch event with Adobe in April.

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Continue reading »]]> Google announced today that they have stopped censoring their search services on Google China. Google says…

Figuring out how to make good on our promise to stop censoring search on Google.cn has been hard. We want as many people in the world as possible to have access to our services, including users in mainland China, yet the Chinese government has been crystal clear throughout our discussions that self-censorship is a non-negotiable legal requirement. We believe this new approach of providing uncensored search in simplified Chinese from Google.com.hk is a sensible solution to the challenges we’ve faced — it’s entirely legal and will meaningfully increase access to information for people in China.

What does China have to say about it? Well, Xinhua, the official press of the People’s Republic of China, has a very brief comment on the matter…

Not too long after that comment, Xinhua got a bit more defensive and issued this brief article…

Could China be censoring Google by blocking the redirect anyway? It’s possible. SND readers, what do you think? Share your thoughts!

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Microsoft gave a “platform preview” for Internet Explorer 9 this morning at the Mix10 conference in Vegas, a tech conference for web designers and developers. There are still many stages to go before IE9 hits beta — the address bar is missing, browsing buttons and security features are not there yet either. Since “this build is simply a first look at the work Microsoft has done so far and is ready to share with its developer community,” Microsoft announced, it still “loads and renders Web pages using the Internet Explorer 9 platform.”  Feel free to check it out for yourself at the test drive site or, to get you started, here are the highlights:

• Heavy focus on HTML5 support — IE general manager Dean Hachmovitch says, “Done right, HTML5 apps will feel more like real apps than Web pages.”
• New Javascript engine, “Chakra” — ZDNet tells us this new engine is “built to take advantage of two cores” due to the demands of heftier HTML5 apps
• Accelerated HTML and graphics rendering
• Support for Vista and higher — no Windows XP support…

IE9 appears to be promising. Molly Holzschlag, a web standards advocate, says it’s going to  “kick butt.” If you are interested in a play by play from this morning’s presentation, Ina Fried at CNET’s Beyond Binary has a live blog of the event.

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