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sarahintampa

tampa girl talks tech

Checking In on My Predictions from Last YearJanuary 8

Last year, I contributed some predications for RWW’s post about what would happen in 2009. How did I do? Let’s take a look..

1. Twitter announces they have a plan to make money. They do.

Well, they didn’t exactly “announce” they had a money-making plan, but the search deals with Bing and Google that launched in fall 2009 helped Twitter turn a small profit.

2. New iPhone is released with video recording capabilities.

Hello, iPhone 3GS.

3. Facebook Connect becomes new de facto way to login to web sites.

It may not have reached “de facto” status just yet, but more than 80,000 websites have implemented Facebook Connect since its general availability in December 2008 according to Facebook

My Facebook Friend Suggestion Became a Friend Request?December 1 2009

I’m not sure if Facebook is trying to pull one over on me or if this is just a bug, but yesterday I noticed that a friend suggestion I had sitting out there was now a friend request. (In this case, I mean a friend that someone had suggested I had, not the algorithmically derived “suggestions” that appear on the homepage).

I’ve been hanging onto this particular friend suggestion for some time, debating on whether or not I should take action since it involves the sort of “not really a friend” type person that I’ve been wondering what happened to, but who’s not someone I actually want to get back in touch with. So instead of doing anything about it, I’ve ignored the suggestion while I tried to decide. Besides, I thought, this person has several mutual friends with me – if they wanted to get back in touch, they could initiate the request, instead of the other way around. Then I could choose to graciously accept or continue to ignore them.

In any event, I noticed yesterday that the friend suggestion had disappeared. And now, in its place, is a friend request. Did this person actually request my friendship? Or is something else going on with Facebook? Assuming it was a legitimate request, that wouldn’t have caused the suggestion’s removal…I should still have the suggestion in addition to the request. Right? At least that’s what I thought would happen. My gut tells me that something else is going on. A bug perhaps or just Facebook getti

New App Links SkyDrive to Windows ExplorerNovember 13 2009

There’s a new application that integrates the Windows Live SkyDrive service into Windows Explorer. Simply called “SkyDrive Explorer,” this software turns your SkyDrive folder into just another location you can access directly from Windows. Once installed, as with local folders, you can drag-and-drop files into your SkyDrive folder or you can copy files hosted in SkyDrive back to your PC.

Using SkyDrive Explorer

After running the downloadable executable, you have to connect to SkyDrive by clicking on the icon that appears in your Windows Explorer window and signing in with your Windows Live ID.

After that’s complete, you can then navigate through your SkyDrive folders and move content around through copy and paste operations. You can also rename or delete groups of objects – something that’s much easier to do from within an Explorer window than on the web. 

A Windows 7 Theme Using Bing Background ImagesOctober 1 2009

The daily background image used on the new search engine Bing.com often features beautiful and stunning images of scenes from around the world. Many people have wanted to use these images as their desktop wallpaper, leading some to go so far as to develop utilities that help you capture the images and save them on your PC. Another popular blogger, Long Zheng of I Started Something, even created an online digital archive which hosts the Bing images from all the localized versions of the Bing.com homepage. Soon thereafter, the MakeUseOf blog provided instructions on how to craft a Windows 7 theme using the RSS feeds from the online archive.

But now there comes the easiest way yet to use Bing’s backgrounds as wallpaper: a Windows 7 theme that’s already been created for you. This time, you don’t have to make the file yourself, you just have to click to install it. The Bing theme, discovered on

Get Windows 7 for $99.99September 30 2009

Looking for a deep discount on Windows 7? Popular online retailer Newegg.com (and Bing Cashback participant) is selling copies of Windows 7 starting at just $99.99 The reason they’re able to sell the OS for so little is because they’re selling the OEM version. That means instead of getting a boxed copy in fancy retail packaging, you typically get just a cardboard sleeve with DVD. However, the most important thing to note is that the OEM copy is tied to one machine, specifically the motherboard of one machine. It’s the perfect choice for those who build their own PCs from scratch, a common practice among tech enthusiasts. If that suits your needs, then an OEM copy can be an affordable way to get a copy of Windows 7.

On Newegg, Windows 7 Home Premium OEM is $99.99, Professional OEM is $134.99, and Ultimate is $174.99.

(via ZDNet)