If you hadn’t heard, AOL will be splitting from Time Warner and will once again become an independent company. This will be occurring on December 10, 2009. ICQ happens to be an AOL property currently.

Know that ICQ has a huge presence basically everywhere but the United States. It is widely used in Russia and China and has somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 to 50 million users. This is something that would be attractive to capitalize on for many internet companies looking to expand their user base.

AOL has internet properties in 40 countries (I bet you never knew they stretched so far) and they are sure to sell off a whole bunch of those – ICQ being one of them.

Will ICQ be snapped up by an American company like Google or Microsoft? Highly unlikely. Microsoft already has a huge worldwide presence with Live (formerly MSN) and Google has Google Talk and Gmail which is also worldwide.

What will most likely happen is that  a non-U.S. internet company will make the purchase.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

ICQ For Sale, Only 300 Million (What A Deal!)

That being the case, MSN’s upcoming changes are sure to get noticed. The logo changes both with the butterfly and font, the blue background is (finally) gone and said honestly the overall experience of using it is a whole lot better. Heck, you might even find it useful because we all know the current MSN just plain sucks.

Why does the current MSN.com suck? Because the design coddles to a bygone era where web designers were deathly afraid of making anybody scroll for anything, hence the stupid tiny text on the current MSN. There’s this ridiculous belief that if anybody has to scroll down for any content on your web site, you lose. This is only true if your content sucks. Scrolling down is not evil, never has been and never will be. If you’ve got something worth reading, the reader will happily scroll; there is nothing wrong with that.

What makes the new MSN.com a notable improvement?

Color coded organization:

This is a big deal and it’s not easy to pull off design-wise, but the new MSN makes it work. And when hovering over menus, a nice dotted border appears with menu choices below.

Tabs:

The blue "Games" in the screen shot above is an example of a tab in the new MSN interface. These are located in several areas and yes, they work well. Like with the top menu, some (but not all) tabs will have different colors compared to others.

Social connectivity:

Oh yes, it has it. The old-school Web 1.0 portal finally jumps into the modern age with Facebook and Twitter connectivity right from the same page. This is a really big deal because it gives people a reason to use MSN as their home page other than for just looks and information.

The beauty of the way it works is that the new MSN doesn’t shove you elsewhere, such as a "my.[web-service-here].com" just to get this feature. It’s on the home page right where it should be. That counts and counts huge. And YES, you can post status updates right from there as well for Facebook or Twitter. I tested it myself.

Microsoft said a few years back that they were going to put a huge effort into making their offerings modern. This started with Windows Live, then Bing and now MSN. I never thought I’d ever see MSN get out of Internet Stone Age, but it looks like it finally will – and do so in a way that truly will wow you and prove to be useful at the same time.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

The Soon-To-Be New MSN.com

Everybody knows that in order to get the computer, you have to subscribe to the ISP. And of course this never applies to the "basic" internet plan. You’ll almost always have to go with the mid-to-premium plan.

In some instances, getting the computer requires you to jump thru a lot of hoops, such as is the case with Sprint. Where they nail you with first is the mail-in rebate. As you know, once you mail that sucker in, you’re the sucker because yet another company has your mailing address to send junk mail to. And then comes the fact that the broadband modem is embedded in the netbook, so you can’t move the service from the netbook to another computer whatsoever.

Very crappy. This is not a "deal" at all.

There was a time not-so long ago when certain ISPs tried to hock supposedly "free" computers, so this idea is nothing new. Back then the PC you received was annoying slow, riddled with built-in spyware/malware and did nothing but make your computer experience nothing short of a nightmare. The modern variant of this is the netbook, but instead of spyware/malware, they lock you in with ISP-specific proprietary hardware.

Note that not all ISPs who offer free netbooks are shady. Some do deliver on their promise and you do legitimately get a new netbook with no hassle or any up front cost for the computer. But I’d still recommend buying a computer outright instead of receiving anything via an ISP "deal."

This is yet another one of those instances where you have to read the fine print, because if you don’t, well.. you know what happens.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

Beware Of Netbook "Deals" By ISPs

In order for this to be enforced, signs must be posted. In addition, to be fined (which is $200 per infraction), the cell phone must be to your ear and your vehicle must be in motion. This means hands-free devices are acceptable and/or if you’re stopped, that’s okay also.

There are few instances I can cite where a bill is written correctly the first time; this is one of them. It’s fair, and the fact Texas is giving its cities and towns the choice of whether to enforce it is even better.

Big kudos to the Lone Star State for this one. Job well done.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

Texas Bans Cell Phones In School Zones

Yahoo! has made it very clear these days (and their CEO even said so) that they are not a search company, so now Y! is all about content.

This is part of the reason why Y! has been making major changes over the past few years – mostly in the form of cutting the chaff from the wheat, so to speak. Yahoo! 360 is gone, Geocities will be gone in October, Yahoo! Live the short-lived broadcasting service (like Ustream/BlogTV/etc.) closed in ‘08, Jumpcut, another Y! property, is gone, and so on. And there are plenty more.

Y! has been dropping a whole lot of hammers, no question. They want to concentrate on things that will make them grow as a company, and search is definitely not one of them.

At this point I personally do not have faith in the Y! brand due to the fact they can’t seem to find a winner with anything new they produce. And instead of taking their existing services and improving upon them, they get dropped instead. For those of us that actually used those services, we as the users get screwed in the end because any effort we put into using it was for nothing. This is not exactly what we’d call a confidence booster in the Y! brand.

There are seven things from Y! that I know people use, that being mail, messenger, games, Flickr, maps, personals and answers – all of which have tenure. None of this stuff is new. In fact most of it is ancient, internet-wise.

Do you know anybody that uses OMG? Or real estate? Or Shine? Or Buzz? Or Green? If you said, "No, and um.. I’ve never heard of those Y! services", that wouldn’t surprise me a bit. The problem is that this new stuff is what Y! wants you to use. But the sad part is that had you not read it here, you most likely didn’t know they existed.

In comparison, when Google offers a new service, they let you know about it. The same is true for Microsoft. When something new comes around in the Windows Live system, you’re informed. Both these companies put a good effort into letting the masses know of the good/cool/interesting things they make. But as for Yahoo? Not so much. That’s a problem and hopefully one they will fix.

Is Yahoo’s decision to offload the search to Microsoft a good thing, or is this the beginning (or the continuation) of the end for Yahoo?

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

Yahoo! Search Is No More?

The latest client offering on the Windows platform is AIM 7 Beta 2.

Short review:

It’s awesome. If you use AIM, get it.

Long review:

This is best given in points.

• If you run multiple computers at home, you can run it on each computer at the same time. Previously I was only able to do this with AIM Lite.
• Following in the footsteps of AIM Express, messages from those not on your contact list will prompt a window asking if you want to chat with them or not. Previously this wasn’t there.
• Linked accounts work great. In addition, you can have them all set to invisible on login instead of having to set each individually.
• The interface is a whole lot cleaner and a lot less "cartoony" (something Yahoo and Windows Live suffer from in abundance).
• "Me" tab makes it super-easy to manage blocked users in just two clicks (you had to really dig for this previously).
• Integrates with Facebook and Twitter easily with new "Lifestream" tab.
• Integrates with Delicious and YouTube.
• Runs light and doesn’t eat up memory.
• I tested on my XP laptop and Win 7 PC. Runs great on both.

AIM 7 is full of awesome stuff. If you use AIM, you will really like this client.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

AIM 7 Beta 2

The moment this went into effect there were people right on top of this:

Note the second comment above. Let it not be said that all YouTube "community members" are dumb. If you still want to see the profanity, you can.

Just uncheck the box for "Hide profanity in comments" by clicking "Options" next to Text Comments and it’s a done deal.

Why you would want to see the profanity crap I have no idea. But rest assured, YouTube is not outright denying you from seeing it, because that would be true censorship.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

How To Turn Off Profanity Filtering In YouTube Text Comments

NewEgg now offers free Windows 7 coupons with certain Vista license purchases.

The cost now? $109.99. With free shipping. This is something that wasn’t available last week, but now it is.

This is $90 less than buying Windows 7 Home Premium which starts at $200.

You wanted a better price? You got it.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

Windows Vista OS Purchase Includes Free 7 Upgrade Coupon

Defined:

Microsoft Hohm is a free web based application (running on the Windows Azure platform) that enables consumers to better understand their energy usage by utilizing advanced analytics licensed from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the U.S. Department of Energy to provide home owners with personalized energy-saving recommendations.

See this video for a better explanation (warning: it’s 23 minutes long but worth the watch).

This is good stuff, especially if you’re looking to cut energy costs.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

Use Microsoft To Save On Energy Bills

This software is only available to people running a legal copy of Windows. This is fine. My copies of XP are all legal as is my Windows 7.

After jumping thru several hoops trying to download this thing, I sign in with my Windows Live ID (required), fill out a registration form (required), validate my email address (required), and THEN…

The red box says:

The invitation you are using belongs to another registered account. If you believe you received this message in error, please try using another Windows Live ID/Passport account or contact mchelp@microsoft.com for additional assistance.

What?

Geez, thanks Microsoft. Now I can’t even try your software.

So if you want to try out Microsoft Essentials, if you can get past the registration process, you did better than me.

Post from: PCMech. Helping Normal People Get Their Geek On And Live The Digital Lifestyle.

Security Essentials From Microsoft Would Be Great…