June 4, 2009
MacBooks’ Multitouch, Buttonless Trackpad Coming to Windows Notebooks
Gadget Lab
Brian X. Chen writes that soon Windows notebooks will also feature a multi-touch, button-less trackpad, which was previously only seen on Apple MacBooks.
“Touchpad manufacturer Synaptics said it plans to make its multi-touch trackpad available for various PCs. The company will be providing the trackpad, dubbed the ClickPad, to computer manufacturers in the third quarter of 2009. What exactly will you be able to do with the ClickPad? Two-finger scrolling, of course, but moving beyond that the ClickPad will offer two-finger pinching for zoom (similar to the iPhone), two-finger pivoting for rotation (for rotating photos, for example), three-finger flick (to go forward or backward a Web page, for example), and three-finger press (with MacBooks, this gesture performs a right-click).”
Bing! Where Microsoft’s products rank on its new search engine
IT World Canada
Shane Schick takes a look at Bing and shares his thoughts on Microsoft’s new search engine.
“ Bing is obviously a consumer product, and perhaps not that relevant for IT managers, but given the amount of product information that is searched online, I thought it might be interesting to look up a few common technologies and services and see where Microsoft’s own wares sat in the results. Bear in mind that Bing is still in the early stages and no doubt the algorithms will be refined, but here’s a sample of what I saw: Virtualization: A Microsoft page called ‘Virtualization: How far will it take you?’ which details the company’s products comes up second, right after the Wikipedia definition. VMware shows up fifth, right after Microsoft partners Dell and Novell. On Google, Microsoft’s page comes well after VMware.”
Microsoft renames netbooks ‘low cost small notebook PCs’
The Register
Austin Modine writes why Microsoft has now termed subnotebooks as “low cost small notebook PCs.”
“(The) term was coined by none other than Microsoft. The company apparently feels compelled to further refine the ‘netbook’ category because newer machines are doing more than just internet browsing.”