Apple’s new ebook and web surfing tablet is due for launch on January 26. The device will not be called the iTablet or iBook as had been rumoured – neither names are available as .com domains - and the iBook name has already been used for Apple laptops. iTablet.com is registered to a company in Taiwan, while iBook.com is registered to a company in the Isle of Man.
iSlate.com has been registered by a San Francisco Trade Mark protection company and looks set to be Apple’s site for the new product. Device details are very thin on the ground but one Apple employee is reported to have said that Steve Jobs is extremely happy with the new tablet.
The new device seems likely to feature a 7″ screen but whether it will be a black & white e-ink display or a full-colour OLED display remains to be seen. Expect multi-touch like the iPhone and a similar ’soft’ keyboard.
admin News apple, ebook, ibook, islate, itablet
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.
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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