This is my current desktop. I’m using the Criterion skin for WindowBlinds which can be found on WinCustomize. I’m also using Fences to organize some frequently used shortcuts.

All this is on Windows Vista.

http://www.stardock.com/products/fences/

http://www.wincustomize.com

I was up early this morning to download it from the App Store, and get some initial impressions of it. First up, the app is well design and did not feel rushed in any way. Many apps seem lacking when released, but Bento seems like time was taken to develop and this is one of the most polished apps I have seen on a release. Although Bento on the desktop isn’t required, you will be holding yourself back if you don’t get it. The wireless syncing is quick and easy, and allows an almost seamless integration between the two apps.

First thing you will notice is the coverflow-like interface, which allows you to navigate through the 25 built-in templates, or browse through your list of databases. Libraries can also be viewed in list view as well. Creating a new library is as simple as selecting one of the templates, or creating a new library from scratch. Either way, all the fields are editable and adding or customizing fields can be done with just a couple of taps.

I use Bento for several personal and small business projects, and even today I had a meeting where I used Bento to pull up some information from one of my databases. I have only had this a short time, but it’s usefulness has already paid off. I have no reservations about calling this a must-have app for the iPhone/iPod Touch, it’s just that good.

Bento is available in the App Store for $4.99, definitely a great bargain.

iTunes link

For Desktop:

Bento 2

LittleSnapper has a slick and easy to use interface with a dial-like control.  The menu gives you access to LittleSnapper’s functions.  The first one is ‘Take a Photo’, which gives you control over the iPhone’s camera, allowing you to take and manage images directly from the camera.  Next up it has ‘Snap Webpage’ where you can browse a website and take snaps of it, much like it’s desktop counterpart.  The other menu items take you to the photo gallery, a link to your QuickSnapper page, and a manage account area.

Taking photos with the iPhone’s camera is pretty standard, but LittleSnapper does add the option of uploading to QuickSnapper, which is their image sharing service.  The same goes for capturing images of website with the browser window, which is a good and quick way to capture something from a specific website.  One feature that does stand out is the ability to take an image and place it on Twitter using an iPhone Twitter client.  However, they only currently offer three choices, leaving out one of the most popular available, Twittelator.

Performance was good, but there isn’t much this app offers that you can’t already do with the iPhone or iPod Touch.  You can take screenshots with the current iPhone OS, and there are many ways to get them uploaded to a choice of photo services on the web.  It’s integration with QuickSnapper is one feature that obviously stands out, and I would like to see further integration in future updates, mainly a more iPhone friendly interface with QuickSnapper itself.  LittleSnapper does make taking and uploading images quite easy, and its price of $2.99 is definitely a bargain for an app of this quality. 

While it doesn’t offer anything too groundbreaking or different, it is a solid app that I would recommend, especially for people who already use the desktop version.

iTunes link

“AMD (NYSE: AMD) today introduced the ATI Radeon™ HD 4890 graphics card, driven by the world’s most powerful graphics processor¹. The newest addition to the award-winning ATI Radeon™ HD 4000 series boasts a whopping 1.36 TeraFLOPs of compute power, superior GDDR5 memory, and super-high engine clock speeds capable of nearly 1GHz. The advanced design of the ATI Radeon HD 4890 delivers the best game experience in its class, including the latest ground-breaking DirectX® 10.1 titles. In addition, with the introduction of the ATI Radeon HD 4890, AMD continues to enhance its “Dragon” desktop platform technology, designed to provide exceptional value to OEMs, channel partners, and do-it-yourself (DIY) consumers.

“The ATI Radeon HD 4890 graphics card represents the AMD sweet spot strategy reloaded,” said Rick Bergman, senior vice president and general manager, Graphics Products Group, AMD. “With last year’s launch of the ATI Radeon™ HD 4850 and ATI Radeon™ HD 4870 products, we gave gamers great performance and an incredible value proposition. Today, we’re doing it again. ATI Radeon HD 4890 graphics cards are incredible performers, priced to sell in all major markets worldwide.”

The ATI Radeon HD 4890 graphics card continues AMD’s proud tradition of technology leadership with support for the latest DirectX 10.1 games, including Ubisoft’s Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X.™, Electronic Art’s BattleForge™ and SEGA’s Stormrise™ released last month, as well as GSC Gameworld’s S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Clear Sky. When compared to DirectX 10 game play, DirectX 10.1 games have proven to deliver higher game performance and an improved visual experience. “

Desktop for this month. This is the Tronnix WindowBlinds skin on Vista.

Some of the key features of the 3.0 OS are:

• Cut and Paste. This was a long awaited feature, and apparently taking their time seems to have paid off with a slick interface for copy/paste, including the ability to copy web content.
• Expanded Landscape View.  Finally the ability to compose e-mail in landscape mode is here.  I send and receive e-mail on my iPhone a lot, and this will make it much more easier.  Landscape mode will also be available for most of the other core applications as well.
• Note Sync.  I don’t have a lot of detailed info on this aside that it is there. 
• MMS.  Not really big on my priority list, but it will be nice to have the ability to send pictures via text.
• Voice memos.  There are several apps available in the App Store that performs this function, but I’m glad it will be part of the core system.
• Spotlight.  A valued feature on OS X has made its way to the iPhone, and with the huge amount of data the iPhones are working with, a way to search for things will be welcomed.

This is not all the new features coming, but these are the ones that seem to have attracted the most attention.  Its obvious the 3.0 update satisfies many of the long standing complaints that people have had since the initial launch, and upon first look, it appears this will be a solid update for iPhone users.  There was no indication of any type of hardware revision coming, and the point was made that most of the features will work on the 1st generation iPhone, but a few features will not.

Once it’s released this summer, I will do a full review, so keep an eye out for that.

We have been using Twitter to communicate to our fans and customers, and it has been a huge success so far.   Zoomba has taken the time to create a Twitter “directory” of sorts for Stardock and the community.

Link: Impulse Twitter Network

This is a screenshot from my Netbook. This is the Aqueous XP WindowBlinds skin with matching ObjectDock Plus background.

Link: http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/02/25/feedback-and-engineering-windows-7.aspx

In the first few weeks of the Windows 7 beta we had over one million people install and use Windows 7.  That’s an astounding number for any beta test and while we know it has been fun for many folks, it has been a lot of work for us–but work that helps to raise the quality of Windows 7.  When you use the beta you are automatically enrolled in our Customer Experience Improvement Program (anonymous feedback and telemetry, which is voluntary and opt-in in the RTM release).  Just by using Windows 7 as a beta tester you are helping to improve the product–you are providing feedback that we are acting on in a systematic manner.

Head over to Neowin to see more details of some of the changes in Windows 7.

Link: Windows 7: Changes since beta for the RC