Last Wednesday Microsoft launched the third update to their IE9 platform, staying true to their word of releasing a preview of the platform every 8 weeks.

The launch shows the IE9 capable of playing HTML 5 video and audio as well. IE9’s speed and support for web standards is significantly improved in comparison to the previous IE versions. It includes the Web Open Font Format (WOFF) and the Canvas bitmap graphics drawing standards.

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 9 Preview

Microsoft’s IE program Manager Rob Mauceri mentioned in a conference call that the update of the IE9 continues the pattern of performance and hardware acceleration improvements that they have announced with regards to IE9. Mauceri reiterated Microsoft’s strive to listen to developers and respond accordingly as well as make sure that their promise to update the preview every eight weeks is pushed through.

To show the support for Canvas, the newest IE offering showed on the IE testing drive website samples that included one built with Amazon, previewing a virtual bookstore where the viewers will be able to open books, read excerpts and reviews as well. It’s pretty good!

What’s more with Microsoft Internet Explorer 9

The Canvas implementation of IE9 is hardware accelerated in the GPU, just like the rest of the graphic and typographical support in IE9. Also the the support for HTML5 video/audio support is showcased through IE’s demo collaboration with IMDB that showcase a variety of video clips shown in HD.

All in all, the preview last Wednesday adds a total of 15 new samples that shows off the browser’s new features and capabilities. Although I feel some of the features mentioned were really very basic, like the font readability.

Christen Krogh, Opera’s chief development officer, said that Microsoft’s newest venture into the browser wars was an “attempt to keep in stride”, they applaud Microsoft’s attempts to keep up and improve their browser’s technology and they believe that this newest Microsoft venture will surely make the web better but reiterates that Microsoft for the moment is only playing a catch up game.

When pressed for answers with regards to the  a public release of the version, Maureci only said that the IE team is focused on building speed and support for standards for IE9 and as such there is no time table  for it and no release date has been decided. Can IE finally be our browser choice? I really don’t know. So far I hate the fact that IE 9 preview download is for Win 7 users only. No Windows XP support is a big let down!

Download IE directly from here. (Win 7 only)

Suppose you want to convert a psp game file into other format such as ISO, then mere renaming the original file wouldn’t convert it. You need to use the application – PSP ISO Compressor, which is a very useful utility for Sony PSP users.

The reasons to convert a game file may very. You might want to upload them online, or maybe you are interesting in reducing the game file size (Converting ISO to CSO), or to reduce the game lags (converting CSO to ISO), PSP ISO Compressor software is just the app you’d ever require.

In short, The PSP ISO Compressor app helps you to convert, compress and uncompress files of ISO, DAX, CSO, and JSO.

Just for your your convenience here are the abilities featured in the PSP ISO compressor:

• Compress ISO to DAX
• Compress ISO to CSO
• Compress ISO to JSO
• Convert DAX to CSO
• Convert DAX to JSO
• Convert CSO to DAX
• Convert CSO to JSO
• Convert JSO to CSO
• Convert JSO to DAX
• Uncompress DAX to ISO
• Uncompress CSO to ISO
• Uncompress JSO to ISO

Download PSP ISO Compressor (Windows only). Installation and using PSP ISO compressor is pretty simple. If you’ve any questions regarding this application then let me know.

Twitter, the 140 character microblogging site has released the twitter blackberry client for download. This is the first official twitter client for blackberry phones bought out by Twitter with Research In Motion.

The official tag to the client has its own set of advantages, although, many would still prefer ubertwitter client over this official twitter client on the blackberry. The reason – this official client doesn’t highlight replies, and you’re unable to edit tweets before RTing it.

On the other hand, the official client comes with an simple interface and doesn’t drain your battery (unlike other tweeting clients), it’s clean and user-friendly. The client carries enough requirements to meet your tweeting habits.

Download Twitter Official Client For Blackberry

Click here to visit the blackberry website for downloading official twitter client (On Pearl, Curve, Storm etc.) and enter the email associated with your blackberry smartphone.

Installing this twitter client is easy and very much similar to how you install others apps on blackberry. You can also download the client from Appworld.

Here is an interesting application for blackberry user that allows you to block unwanted phone calls permanently. This application is Call control which is an phone number blacklisting app for blackberry that maintains the record of cell phone numbers to be blocked as well as block unknown numbers that are not in the address book.

Blacklisting or blocking phone numbers is an great way to maintain privacy and keep away from getting disturbed. Although, their are several fallout of blocking phone calls, but they prove to be very useful at times.

Over View of Call Control Blocker App

Call Control is an commercial blackberry that is available for free for a limited period. Here are some of it’s rich functionalities..

• Black Calls Automatically From unknown callers
• Block those private telemarketers call automatically
• Report anonymous calls and check logs of blocked numbers
• Create a personal blacklist for blocking calls
• Control blacklisting and white list contacts from Address book

Steps to download Call Control Pro For Blackberry Full Version

Note: You don’t have to pay anything. The offer is limited and you can download call blocker pro for free without spending a penny. So, go ahead and give this an try. I will update with post if the offer expires..

Visit Mobi hand which is an online store for purchasing apps. For the app Control Call - Check out this page.

Update: Offer expired. Thanks to the comments! I wonder why do companies come up with such short promotional offers, great marketing trick!

Click on Add Card and then checkout, a page will be displayed with the billed amount being $7.99. In the Enter Gift Certificate or Promotion Code field, enter callcontrolfree and click on Apply Code/Update Cart.

The discount will be applied and the final price would be $0. Register for an account and you will be able to download this free call blocker app for blackberry.

XLSX is a Microsoft file format that represents documents such as spreadsheet, presentation and charts.. this new format can be converted to other formats such as PDF or txt (text) file, but you can also view .XLSX with XLSX viewer programs which are available for free download.

You can open XLSX files in Microsoft office too(which is an commercial product). However, in this article, I am about to share with you some of the best and completely free xlsx reader to read and view xlsx files.

Open Office opens XLSX Files

Openoffice is an excellent application for opening most of the Microsoft documents without paying anything. This freeware open source software opens xlsx files and tons of MS file format variants quickly.

If you come across different text files regularly then give a try at openoffice.

Download OpenOffice XLSX Viewer – Download link

Bytescout XLS viewer

This is an simple XLSX reader that reads some of the standard Microsoft extensions (mentioned below). With bytescout reader you can open xlsx files and read it’s content instantly.

The following are the formats supported by this 447kb freeware program:

• Excel 2003/2007 (*.xls, *.xlsx)
• Open Office Calc (*.ods)
• CSV Comma Separated Values (*.csv)
• TXT tab-delimited values (*.txt)

You can directly download bytescout xls viewer from the link mentioned below to open XLSX files. Works with windows operating system.

Download Byte Scout XLSX Reader – Download link

Online XLSX Viewer

A simple and best solution to view XLSX file is to make use of Google docs. You should have an Google account (who doesn’t have one?) to access Google docs.

Upload your .xlsx file document to Google docs and you can view it instantly. This avoid the need to download any software or XLSX file viewer.

Sharepoint themes can be used on free product such as WSS (Windows SharePoint Services) and on MOSS (Microsoft Office SharePoint Server) which is a commercial and expensive software technology from Microsoft windows.

There are tons of practical uses of using Sharepoint technologies as it includes instant collaboration, management components, sharing workspace so as to host websites.. Under the Sharepoint products there are different technology platform such as Office sharepoint server 2007, Windows Sharepoint service, Groove, Project server and so on..

The default Sharepoint theme can evoke boredom sometimes, so we can change it to some colorful and free-to-download Sharepoint themes. To install such themes, just put the files  into the template/layout folder in the installation directory and browse the theme from Microsoft Sharepoint to activate it.

Sharepoint themes for Download

After browsing through the web for some excellent themes, I found Daniel providing free sharepoint themes on skydrive (download link) but make sure you test these templates on sharepoint testing environment.

Another Sharepoint theme collection comes from Microsoft who have recently provided 10 themes to download that can be found here. The size is around 7mb and contains 10 sharepoint themes which when unzipped can be implemented on your Sharepoint 2007.

Here is an opportunity to download legal music from the Internet in both M4a and Mp3 format for free. Luckily the promotion is brought to you by Microsoft Windows for a limited time, of course.

Thanks to ghacks for the tip, now you can download legal music of latest artists that are popular from Myspace or Reverb nation webpage.

You don’t have to register or sign up to download these legal music songs – Just visit this page or this and select from different artist or sort them according to your needs.

There are various genre’s included such as Alternative, Electronica, Hip Hop, Jazz, Latin, Pop, Rock music songs and there are around 1000 free songs. Another bonus – If you are on MySpace, then add windows in your friend list so that you can receive top 10 featured songs weekly bulletin in your inbox.

There are a good amount of mixed genre music in the page and all the direct downloads are completely free, not only can you download mp3’s for free but also discover new music!

The Pirate Bay which is one of the biggest torrent tracker was recently acquired by a company that runs internet cafe’s around the world – Global Gaming Factory X for an estimated price of 8 million dollars.

Though some of the people predict that there are going to be changes in thepiratebay website such as paid premium user, legal torrent files and much more, here is one torrent file that can be helpful if TPB shuts down or changes in the future.

A anonymous user uploaded all the torrent files of Thepiratebay in one torrent file incase if thepiratebay is closed down.

When you have this torrent files, if at all Pirate bay are changing it’s torrent features then you’ll still be able to download the older files through the .torrent files. As reported by downloadsquad, there are a total of 873,671 torrent files in this particular torrent file.

The file contents are mentioned in the torrent description and it might take a couple of days to completely download this torrent file as it has an healthy 21.3GB size So go ahead and save your piratebay torrent copy on your hard disk now!

Twitter.com microblogging was revamped recently, with growing popularity and a great media coverage to twitter – here are some of the best free twitter icons and collection of free twitter badges that can be downloaded used on your website or blog.

All the icons are free to download and can be used for personal use. I’ll keep you updated once I come across free more icons!

Twitter Icon set

Web treats provides an exhaustive collection of twitter icons that contains beautiful 53 twitter icons that range from twitter subscribe icon to shiny rounded t icons. Get these twitter promo icon set now.

Twitter badges

Erenemre provides free twitter badges that can be used on your website or blog so as to let the visitors follow you on twitter. These 24 sets of twitter icon badges can be downloaded from here.

Twitter Birds icon

4 simple-cute happy twitter birds to display on your website are created by web design, gladly there are PSD version included in the icon set which can be freely downloaded from here.

Installing an specified codec individually every now and then can be cumbersome. Sometimes your media player might not play the required file format, in such cases you can download a collection of codec together that are usually termed as codec packs, these are usually one-time install package which is free – One such available codec is Vista codec pack. 

Just like k-lite codec, Vista Codec pack plays all media format extension and is specially built for Windows Vista system but it also holds good with Windows XP platform. 

Whether it is an audio, video format such as MKV, MP4, MOV, OGG or other formats that you want to play on your Windows vista platform, Vista Codec pack is for you.

It’s free, also available in 32 bit, 64 bit windows form. This Vista Codec pack is from Shark which is of course free to download (size is around 20mb)