Two New Items Worth Mentioning:
It's a Friday night and I'm playing single parent while my wife is out of town. What better time to catch up on blogging (now that the little one is fast asleep).
Google Blogger Adds Image Support
Up to this point, all the images on my blog have been hosted on my personal web site. This was necessary because Blogger lacked native image hosting capabilities. However, thanks to the beauty of RSS feeds (InsideGoogle), this evening I was alerted to the addition of image support on Blogger.com.
Here is a screen shot of this post in-progress with my mouse hovering over the new Add Image icon.
Very cool stuff! This new feature will make blogging with pictures, and screen shots much easier. Thanks Blogger!
MSN Updates Windows Desktop Search... Again
I've been using the MSN Search Toolbar Suite for several months now. In fact, I think its official name recently changed to the MSN Search Toolbar with Windows Desktop Search. Nice and concise, huh?!?! Since this blogging stuff doesn't pay by the word (heck, it doesn't pay at all) I'm going to refer to it as MSN Desktop Search from here on out, ok?
Anyway, MSN Desktop Search is essentially Microsoft's forray into the desktop search market, which is all the rage these days. The big benefit of running this tool on your PC is twofold:
- You can quickly find stuff you've lost
- You get new uber-cool tabs in Internet Explorer
There are plenty of articles on the web that provide a basic overview of MSN Desktop Search - so I will spare you the details. If you are interested, check out this review from Paul Thurrott.
For this post I'm mostly interested in the new Internet Explorer tabbed interface. Tabs aren't new -- Firefox, Opera, and Maxthon users have had tabs for some time now. However, tabs ARE new to IE -- and they are delivered as part of the MSN Desktop Search application. A picture is worth a thousand words...
The addition of tabs to IE was added a few weeks ago in a maintenance release of the MSN Desktop Search application. Being a true geek -- I was probably one of the first to fire up this new feature. However, also being someone who likes well-behaved software -- I was probably one of the first to quickly disable tabs as well. They were just too buggy for everyday use. IE windows would freeze, tabs would lock up or not close at all. I was very dissapointed
So, today I wasn't surprised to see another maintenance release of the MSN Desktop Search application. I was optimistic for this release as I downloaded and installed it. And guess what -- IE tabs are now usable. Check them out for yourself. Go to http://desktop.msn.com and download the MSN Desktop Search application. Take it for a spin and let me know if you think IE tabs are ready for prime time.