Windows only: Sick of your Windows screensaver coming on in the middle of watching a video or referring to what’s on-screen? Tech site the How-To Geek set up a shortcut to temporarily disable the screensaver (without having to click your way to its settings by hand) using a small utility called FlipSS. Mac users, you can get this same functionality with Caffeine.
Google Earth Forecasts and Displays Current Weather
The recent Google Earth update introduced lots of new layers, but one extremely useful layer that passed under our radar (as it were) at first glance was the addition of a new weather layer. The layer includes radar information, current conditions, and forecasts pulled every 15 minutes from Weather.com and a cloud layer that updates hourly from the Naval Research Laboratory. So if you’re already obsessed with Google Earth for its stargazing and live flight tracking features, now you’ve got one more use for the freeware, cross-platform atlas.
Remote Control a PC with CrossLoop
Tech site the How-To Geek runs down how to remote control a PC using previously posted CrossLoop, free Windows software that makes VNC dead easy. Like Leopard Screen Sharing, CrossLoop puts a friendly front-end on VNC—as well as an encrypted connection between PC’s—for easy remote computing. With CrossLoop there has to be someone on the other end to accept the connection, so it’s best for tech support (versus controlling a headless PC, for example.) For more on getting your hands dirty with VNC, see how to remote control your home Mac or PC with VNC.
Google’s Android OS early look SDK now available
Just like the good folks promised, the early look software development kit for Google‘s soon-to-be huge phone OS has hit the streets… er, internet. From what we can tell, the OS is as comfortable on larger, VGA devices as it is on more traditional smartphone layouts. Oh yeah… and it plays Quake. Here’s what we know the software will support out of the box:
- Touchscreen
- 3G
- Webkit-based browser
- Optimized Java runtime layer (known as Dalvik Virtual Machine)
- Threaded text messaging
- MPEG-4, h.264, MP3, and AAC file formats
- Accelerated 3D graphics
There’s the SDK I was speaking about. Go read the The full article for all the Stuff!!
Google Gets Android Apps Going With a $10 Million Challenge
As promised last week, Google today released the software development kit
for its Android. operating system for mobile phones. In an effort to give developers a little extra incentive to create applications on top of Android, it is also announcing a $10 million challenge
That comes to $5 million. The second $5 million will be reserved for another challenge after handsets have been built. Google is obviously serious about jump-starting Android and the Open Handset Alliance as viable mobile operating system. You don’t see Google giving away $10 million to developers creating OpenSocial apps. Which project do you think is a higher priority?
Oh what I wouldn’t do to be in that little SDK but I do no have the experience I wonder if this will start out some disputes with Apple.
