Credit: Bert Kommerij (via Flickr)

When I look back into my son’s childhood, there are specific images that flash in my mind – images of his tiny frame playing in his room, his first day at school, him walking into my office with blood all over from a bike accident and smilingly calling it tomato ketchup.

Some sad, some happy, but they are all precious.  But then I regret not remembering every single day of his growing up years. If only I could….

We do remember some things from our past but definitely not every single detail.  This is where Gordon Bell is trying to ring a bell.  He is part of Microsoft’s research team, a principal researcher and is working towards making sure we can remember all the special moments of our lives.  He has worked as a chief engineer and vice president of research and development at Digital Equipment Corp. for 23 long years and later founded the Computer History Museum.

Bell himself wants to capture all the moments of his life and store them on his Dell laptop. He wants to be able to pull up every single picture, every conversation, every email whenever he wants. (more…)

What was meant to be an entertainment center that helps iPhone users download applications is proving to be something Apple did not expect.

Apple is facing unexpected problems with its iPhone application store, which contains more than 50,000 applications and is one of the most popular entertainment and information tools for mobile phones.

BeautyMeter is one of the applications at the iPhone app store.  This photo sharing application is meant for 17 and over, where users have the ability to upload images and rate them on the basis of “hotness.”  The application has a built-in safety mechanism as it requires users to enter their iPhone IDs.  Apple kept this check to ensure no illegal material is uploaded and for ease of tracking if anyone posts anything untoward.

However, in spite of this check, the problem started when kids started uploading images of themselves in the nude and there have been potentially objectionable materials showing up in the past few weeks.  The  latest example that caught the public eye, is that of a 15-year-old girl who uploaded her own nude photo, which stayed up for long enough for 5000 users to rate it.  It was only then brought to Apple’s notice and pulled down.

This was not the sole incident of its kind.  About a week earlier, there was another mobile phone application called “Hottest Girl,” that also showed a photo of a topless woman and was removed from the iPhone app store.

Apple is attracting unnecessary attention due to these happenings.  This has raised several questions about Apple’s ability to control iPhone content and keep its app store clean, which prompted Apple to remove BeautyMeter app from its store. (more…)

Microsoft’s intention to respond to all those that offer online productivity software free for personal use is on the verge of becoming a reality.  It is all set to provide all of its Office software online, just like Google, Zobo, Adobe and others are doing.

This move will benefit both corporate and smaller customers.  While corporate customers will be able to get in on the paid subscriptions and tap into the online services, others can sign up for a service, where their online files will be stored and get help with data backup and security.

The best thing about this is that, everyone will be allowed to use the online versions of different applications, such as Word and PowerPoint without it being necessary to buy the desktop versions.  All they need to do is sign up for the free Windows Live account.

The technical preview engineering milestone for Office 2010 has been announced, and this allows thousands of people, mostly software engineering partners, to test drive the software by downloading it.  The beta version of the software is expected to be released by the year-end and the final version may be shipped in the first half of 2010.

Results of several technical previews reveal that improvements have been made to the office suite, such as the Ribbon being the default interface OneNote, Outlook and all other Office applications.  Not only is Ribbon made default but it has also been tweaked a bit. (more…)