The Microsoft search engine Bing has signed a licensing deal with Wolfram Alpha, allowing Bing to feature results from Wolfram Alpha. It appears that nutrition information will be the first type of results to appear.
The service will be rolled out first in the US and follows the launch of the Wolfram Alpha API, which allows developers to harness the power of the knowledge-based search engine. Wolfram Alpha have also recently launched an iPhone app.
admin News api, bing, search, wolfram alpha
Customers with Windows 7 on pre-order had copies arrive in the post today, 19 October, no doubt benefitting from attempts to avoid the planned UK postal strikes.
The official Windows 7 release date is October 22.
admin News
The BT Vision PVR is a great product and in many ways preferable to a Sky+. One slight disadvantage is that like other Freeview boxes and TVs, it needs occasional retuning when the channel lineup changes. The box will normally prompt you to retune if it spots a change to the Freeview channel line-up.
Just occasionally the retuning process goes wrong and gets stuck at 0% progress. The solution to the problem is quite simple though – switch the box to standby and turn the mains off at the socket (or pull the plug out…)
Leave the box off for 10-15 sec then turn the mains back on. After the box reboots, which takes a few minutes, you can start the retuning process by pressing the ‘BT Vision’ button, going to Settings, selecting TV Settings then Add Channels to TV Guide then finally Scan for Channels.
Happy viewing!
admin News BT, channel, fix, frozen, problem, retune, scan, solution, stuck, vision
Got the message “SAPISVR 5 has encountered a problem and needs to close” and found that neither Windows speech recognition nor your Office programs will work? The problem is caused by your speech recognition user profile having become corrupt. You need to switch to the default profile or another users’ profile to restore system stability. Your profile contains all of your speech training data, so having the file corrupt itself is a bit of a pain.
Here is how to switch away from the corrupt profile:
- Go to the Windows Control Panel (Start/Control Panel) and double-click on the Speech icon
- In the middle of the window is a box listing the speech user profiles, each of which has a tick box next to it
- Select another profile (often the default profile is the only option) and click the ‘Apply’ button at the bottom of the window
You should now find that windows speech recognition is working again, although the computer may need a reboot before it is happy again. You should now go back to Control Panel/Speech, delete the old profile, create a new one and re-train the system to your voice.
admin Hints & tips corrupt, crash, error, problem, profile, sapisvr, speech, Xp
The Thomson DTi6300 PVR can become slow and unresponsive if the available free disk space falls below 15%. This easy to fix by deleting a few programmes.
Sometimes however these boxes can get their disks in a twist, which can result in flaky operation even when there is sufficient free space. In this case, the answer is often to reformat the disk, which can be accomplished by following the steps below.
Thomson DTi6300 disk reformat instructions
Warning – this operation will delete all recordings!
- Select Menu then Set-Up and finally Help
- Press the green remote button to access the Advanced Information menu
- Press the blue button
- Finally press the green button to proceed
The process takes about a minute, after which the box will restart, then go into standby. Hopefully you will then find your box operation has been returned to normal.
admin Hints & tips DTi6300, fault, fix, flaky, format, thomson, Top Up, unreliable