Google Image search is a very comprehensive search engine to find photos and all kinds of images that have been posted publicly on the Internet. It does offer a few sorting and filtering options and can even find related images to one of the selected images on the results pages. Google Image Swirl takes this concept a step further by solely concentrating on the related images concept. It is currently an experimental service over at Google Labs.

Google Image Swirl starts of like any other Google Image search. The user enters a search phrase in the search form on the page. The script will then display possible matches for that entered search phrase. So far so identical to the standard Google Image search engine.

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Tags: Google, google image, google image swirl, google images, image search, search engine
Categories: Google

Youtube users experience a wide variety of problems and difficulties on the popular video hosting portal. Probably the most common for most users are playback problems while playing Youtube videos. This can be that a youtube video is not loading at all or – and this seems to be more common – that it stops the playback every few seconds which can really destroy the experience. If you search for problems related to Youtube videos you find a lot of solutions. These solutions seem to help some users but there is not a general solution available as of now that would fix the video playback issues for all. There are however a few important things that all users need to consider:

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Tags: flash video, youtube, youtube flash, youtube video, youtube video playback, youtube videos
Categories: Music and Video, troubleshooting

We reviewed the Adobe Reader alternative Sumatra back in the beginning of 2008 and came to the conclusion back then that Sumatra was a lightweight and fast replacement that was ideal for viewing PDF documents. Version 1.0 of Sumatra was released yesterday which actually was one of the two updates that the developer of the pdf reader has published this year. The main changes since our last review are better pdf reading compatibilities, bug fixes, other compatibility fixes and additional features that have been added by the developer or contributors. Contributors you may ask? Sumatra is Open Source and it is therefor possible for others to contribute to the program.

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Tags: adobe pdf, pdf, pdf reader, portable software, sumatra, windows software
Categories: Windows, software

Adobe today released two technology previews for Adobe Flash and Adobe Air. Adobe Flash 10.1 Pre-Release and Adobe Air 2.0 Beta are now both available for download at Adobe Labs. Both applications are available for all supported operating systems (Windows, Mac and Linux) although some of the new features introduced are limited to a specific operating system.

Flash 10.1 introduces several new key features including video hardware acceleration (only available in Flash for Windows), better mobility support including smartphone and other Internet-devices support and additional option for media delivery. Users interested in installing the new Flash Player version should note that it is not the final release but a community preview which is mainly aimed at developers.

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Tags: adobe, adobe air, adobe beta, adobe flash, air 2, flash 10
Categories: Adobe

Destroy Flickr is the second Adobe Air application that provides Flickr users with capabilities to manager Flickr from the computer desktop. It was one of the recommended applications in the comments of the Zflick Flickr photo viewer review. Destroy Flickr can only be used by Flickr users to manage their own uploaded photos. This limits the reach of the application quite a bit, the remaining functionality has been perfectly brought to the desktop on the other hand.

The user needs to authenticate the application at the first startup after entering the Flickr username or email address. The process is painless and should take less than a minute to complete. It does involve logging into Flickr with the default web browser to allow Destroy Flickr access to the user data.

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Tags: adobe air, destroy flickr, flickr, flickr application, windows software
Categories: software

Ports are what connects your computer to the outside world. This can either be in a network or the Internet. Open ports are required for many things like connecting to websites, downloading files, chatting or uploading photos to Flickr or Facebook. Most ports are only open when they are needed by an application. Problems can arise if ports are open all the time as these can be used by malicious users and automated scripts to attack the computer system.

It is therefor recommended to regularly check the open ports for computer security reasons. We reviewed CurrPorts (see: Who is connected to your PC right now) a while ago. It is a portable Nirsoft application that will display the open ports along with information needed to conclude if the open ports are needed or not.

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Tags: computer security, connections, my ports, ports, windows software
Categories: Windows, software

The beta of Microsoft’s upcoming Office suite Microsoft Office 2010 has been finished and already been made available to MSDN and Technet subscribers. This leaves the general public who is also highly interested in this new beta with second row seats for now although it is rumored that public Office 2010 beta downloads will be activated by Microsoft in this week.

One indicator that this is the case is the Microsoft Office 2010 Beta Download page which is already listing download buttons for the three Microsoft Office editions Office Home and Business 2010 beta, Office Professional 2010 beta and Office Professional Plus 2010 beta. The links are unfortunately not live yet leading to a “The Office 2010 beta will come soon” page instead.

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Tags: Microsoft Office 2010 Beta, Microsoft Office 2010 Beta Download, office, office 2010, office 2010 beta download
Categories: Microsoft, Windows, software