I watched this week’s announcement of the new Windows Phone 7 Series over the web. It was in Barcelona, and I was stuck here at home digging out from under a mountain of work that piled up after a pleasant vacation. Still, even over the Internet, it was an impressive demo, and the post-announce buzz was uniformly positive. (ZDNet’s coverage includes excellent posts from my compadres Mary Jo Foley, Matthew Miller, and Joel Evans, analysis by Larry Dignan, and a slick image gallery.) After looking at the announcement and thinking over its ramifications, I’ve come up with seven big questions that stand out in my mind.

Is this a complete reset of the Windows Mobile line? And can Microsoft pull it off?

This is a new operating system, a new user interface, and a new set of requirements on hardware makers. What’s left? All in all, this is indeed a complete reset and a pretty spectacular admission that the old Windows Mobile line was years past its sell-by date.

It does invite shuddering comparisons to the XP-to-Vista transition, doesn’t it?

Fortunately, this isn’t as big a leap as it appears. The hardware, the OS, and the new UI have already had a pretty thorough shakedown in the evolution of the Zune hardware, which culminated in the ZuneHD, which is impressive technically even if it hasn’t been a hit sales-wise. For Zune-watchers who wondered why Microsoft was persisting in its seemingly quixotic competition with the iPod juggernaut, you now have your answer: The ZuneHD wasn’t a mere media player, it was a stealth, hidden-in-plain-sight workout of a new hardware platform. Based on the ZuneHD experience, we already know what the UI and hardware can do at a minimum, and there are some pretty impressive new technologies in the Windows Phone 7.

continue… (http://blogs.zdnet.com)

Apple had launched the iPad at a special event at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. Steve Jobs, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Apple announced the prices. The 16 GB iPad with Wi-Fi and 3G costs $629, the 32 GB iPad with Wi-Fi and 3G costs $729 and the 64 GB iPad with Wi-Fi and 3G costs $829.

Lets take a look at some of its features

Mail

In landscape, you get a split-screen view showing both an opened email and the messages in your inbox. To see the opened e-mail only, turn iPad to portrait, and the email automatically rotates and takes the full screen. No matter which orientation you use, you can scroll through your mail, compose a new email using the large, onscreen keyboard, or delete messages with nothing more than a tap and a flick.

A photo can be seen right in the message. You can also save the photos in an e-mail directly to the built in Photos application. And iPad works with all the most popular email providers, including MobileMe, Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, Hotmail, and AOL.

Photos

With its unique software features, iPad has many ways to share your photos. The Photos application displays the photos in an album. You just have to tap the album and the whole album opens for you. From there, you can flip through your pictures, zoom in or out or see them in a slide show.

While charging, you can even use your iPad as a beautiful digital photo frame too!

Video and YouTube

The large, high-resolution screen makes iPad perfect for watching any kind of video. You can enjoy anything from HD movies and TV shows to podcasts and music videos.

The YouTube application organizes videos so they’re easy to see and navigate. When you’re watching in landscape, the video automatically plays in full screen.

iPod

You can browse by album, song, artist, or genre with a simple flick. iPad even displays album art at full size. You can hear the songs with the powerful built-in speaker or with wired or Bluetooth wireless headphones.

iTunes

A tap of the iTunes store icon lets you browse and buy music, TV shows, and podcasts. You can also buy and rent movies.

Maps

You can use your iPads to find your way. You can view maps with the high-resolution satellite images, You get a close with of the street view, topography of a terrain. All applications use Google services. You can also search for a nearby restaurant or landmark and get directions from your current location.

Safari

The large multi-touch screen on iPad lets you see web pages at a size that’s easily readable. One can view the pages one at a time. Whether you’re looking at a page in portrait or landscape the page displayed is big and clear.

App Store

iPad runs almost 140,000 applications from the App Store, ranging everything from games to business apps and much more.

(http://living.oneindia.in)

ChrisWallace

Vintage Blues

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Tribal

Wordpress Coda

Amy & Pink

Scarlett Template

Gamezine

ZinMag Template

Crybook

Photomadness Designer

Press 75

Black Magic Template

Color Paper

Notepad Chaos

Wordpress Gallery

Infinity Free Template

Gumball

Irresistible

Zeelot Template

Extend Free Wp Theme

Handgloves Theme

Tutorial Press

Zenko Wordpress Premium Template

Overstand (Fake Blog)

Facebuddy (fake Facebook)

Home Office Wp

Blogus

Board Walk Theme

Soft Light Template

Digital Farm (inspiredm.com)

Fresh Folio Wordpress

London Template

Post it Theme

Simplified Wordpress Theme

Antisocial Template

Varnish Theme

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Noctis

Vikiworks

Iphone Wordpress Theme

Sketch’d

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Vintage and Blues 2

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My Web Blog

Fear Less Flyer

Creative Design

Long Island

Decayed Wordpress Templates

Wp Platinum

Apollo

Portfolius

Stylez

Convergence

Photographer

In this article we are providing  wallpapers that could fill your desktop with the spirit of Love on this Valentine’s Day.

Designer Pro 1.1.3 (Download v. 1.1.3)

The program is champion at creating sketches, you can create an on-screen preview together with your customer within minutes. The viewer gets a three dimensional impression on how the product will look like. This improves transparency in the production process and customer satisfaction. This version has the following functionality; Use of variable document sizes different base models for the draft (t-shirt, coffee cup, button). It creates files in industry standard SVG format that can later be used e.g. with plotters. Test the application for free with full functionality for 30 days.

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Gimp for x64 Windows 2.6.8 (Download Gimp 2.6.8)

The Gimp is the open source reference in image manipulation. This free application will allow you to retouch, author and edit your photos thanks to a wide set of tools.
Let’s quickly go through what you can do with the Gimp. The painting function has the essential clone, airbrush or pencil tools and a powerful gradient and blend tool. You can also create and save your own brushes and patterns for later use. The program lets you manipulate your photos, adding layers, doing Bezier and polygonal selections or setting text. Load and save animations in a frame-as-layer format and batch process all your photos for quick editing. The multi-windowed interface can be moved around to fit your needs and resized according to your desktop space.
While the Gimp is user friendly, the installation process can result a bit hairy. Because the application works under the GTK Runtime Environment, you will have to install this kit to successfully launch the program. The process is fairly lengthy and some error messages tend to pop up, however if you persist, you will be able to install the Gimp properly on your PC
Despite this fairly hazardous installation process, the Gimp is a program we recommend. Whether you’re out of dough or are looking for a free alternative to Photoshop, the Gimp is excellent image manipulation software with all the tools you’d expect. The friendly interface and expandability make this a program of choice.

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Ashampoo Photo Optimizer 3 3.11 (Download Ashampo 3.11)

All the photo editing you really need. Instantly. Ashampoo Photo Optimizer enables you to touch up your digital photos fast. Everything is so simple you never need to read a manual – after you point and shoot just click and go. Ashampoo Photo Optimizer doesn’t try to replace major graphics programs. It just gives you everything you need when you want results fast. Features at a glance – Instant Optimize function makes dull photos shine – Optimize all your photos with a single click – Select and click red eye removal – One-click image rotation – Convert to black-and-white, sepia and inverted – Easy brightness and contrast sliders – Automatic backup: all edits reversible at any time – Explorer view doubles as a quick image viewer – Start with right-click from Windows Explorer

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Fractal eXtreme 2010 (Download Fractal Extreme for x64)

Fractal eXtreme is a fractal exploration program that used real-time zooming and scrolling to make exploring easier and more intuitive than ever before. Fractal eXtreme uses high-precision math routines to allow zooming to virtually infinite depths, and the 64-bit version can do this deep zooming roughly four times faster than the 32-bit version.

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Inkscape 0.47  (Download Release 0.47)

An Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.

Inkscape supports many advanced SVG features (markers, clones, alpha blending, etc.) and great care is taken in designing a streamlined interface. It is very easy to edit nodes, perform complex path operations, trace bitmaps and much more. We also aim to maintain a thriving user and developer community by using open, community-oriented development.

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Blender 2.49b (Download 2.49b stable)

Blender is a 3D graphics application released as free software under the GNU General Public License.

It can be used for modeling, UV unwrapping, texturing, rigging, water simulations, skinning, animating, rendering, particle and other simulations, non-linear editing, compositing, and creating interactive 3D applications, including games.

Blender is available for a number of operating systems, including Linux, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows. Blender’s features include advanced simulation tools such as rigid body, fluid, cloth and softbody dynamics, modifier-based modeling tools, powerful character animation tools, a node-based material and compositing system and Python for embedded scripting.

Digieffects has launched Atmosphere, a new After Effects plug-in for simulating atmospheric conditions. The plug-in is capable of generating haze and fog effects within videos, while several configuration options allow users to adjust the effects depending on lighting and distance to the camera. Layers that are further away from the camera show a heavier haze/fog effect than the layers that are closer to the camera. This effect is also applied to parts of layers, resulting in greater immersion depending on which areas of the layer are closer to the camera.

Atmosphere is compatible with Mac OS X 10.4 or higher and priced at $50. It also comes bundled with Trapcode Lux for $220, or in the company’s Megasuite that includes all of the Digieffect’s plugins (except for FreeForm AE) and is priced at $800.

From outfits for Lady Gaga to Madonna to Gwyneth Paltrow, see how the late designer put his stamp on pop style

(http://www.ew.com)

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