According to Microsoft, the Internet Explorer 8 Beta is set to begin when Vista SP1 ships later this year. There is no information on when the exact date would be. However, since mainstream support for XP doesn’t end until April 2009 Microsoft will support IE 8 to Windows XP users.

But in the same way that IE 7 was released, there will be 2 versions: one that is built on the security settings of Vista, and the other one on the settings of XP SP2 or SP3.  More info will be posted when available.

Source: Bink.nu

Is email too boring and blogging too tedious?

Bring in Zimoz. A start-up that is based in San Carlos, CA. USA and Mumbai, India that lets you share rich content with your friends on the fly!

Wait isn’t that what blogs are supposed to be for?

Yes, blogs do allow you to share content with your friends and so does email, but not everyone has the time to maintain blogs and emails are not rich enough. Zimoz is going for a niche market where users who want to share rich content with their friends with minimal time and effort needed to create it.

Why Zimoz?

Apparently they were not happy with a previous name that they had picked so they decided that their pet frogs name Zimoz will do just fine. Interesting name that…

Okay, now to the website and the service itself:

The website is easy on the eyes and is nicely designed. The sign up process is relatively straight forward and is simple to go through, yet the activation email takes ages to get sent through and thus hinders your setup experience. I guess this is to prevent bot accounts, But everything from this point is brilliant – the graphics, the website layout, the fresh and clean interface. Moving on…The whole website seems to run in AJAX, a smooth asynchronies website which loads things quickly and without hassle. Everything loads effortlessly, everything seems to work seamlessly with everything else – it’s a pleasure to navigate through. There are little things you have to keep your eye out for such as the little bits of humour and bits which really add to the experience. Creating the actual postcard itself is easy to use, swish, and has a whole load of tools with drag and drop funtionality work brilliantly. You can add a variety of media such as pictures, text, a banner or clip art, even video to your postcard; my friends are away in Quebec at the moment and they’ve sent me a beautiful video of them around the city, and this really adds to the experience of postcards.

You can do pretty much anything in your postcard – it’s so dynamic and easy to use, even the most novice of users could use it with little or no problem. It’s fair to say this website hasn’t been completely polished off – with a few links here and there which look a bit out of place, and a mixture of rich-text and HTML style text, but that’s only a small amount of the whole experience. You can save, share, delete and publish your postcards, and being careful of kids as well, you can also view and report abuse on other people’s postcards if they are not of a fitting nature to people.

There is a social networking element added. Profile creation is easy on the Zimoz home page, latest public and feaured postcards are displayed. Popular and new members are shown too. The postcards are tagged so you can browse them via tags as well. You can explore new postcards and also comment on them, Comments are in the form of spots. You can leave spots anywhere on the postcard with emotional icons. They can be hidden. You can also reply to postcards with a ‘Add to Trail’ function.

So that is Zimoz for you, a new way of creating you own content on the fly and sending it to your friends easily or sharing it with friends made though Zimoz, oh wait are they called Zimozians?

Zimoz opened in beta around Mid-Feb and currently have 50 - 70K+ views/ month.

Check out our postcard!!

Zimoz - Blogging in Postcards

There is rumor going round internally that Windows Live Mail has been updated. At the moment, Windows Live Mail (and will be soon known as Live Hotmail) is currently down and nobody seems to have access to it. But is rumor true and will we get to see a new milestone of this popular web based email?

You’ll find out soon enough

How many of you have noticed that the Digg Podcasts section does not have a bury option. There are many brilliant podcasts out there but some of them, I just want to ‘Ok, this is lame!’ ‘em.

Well I know it is still in betab but don’t you think Digg Podcasts should have a bury option and be consistent in design and functionality with the rest of the website?

Please Vote below:

Since Microsoft Beta shutdown at the end of October last year after hosting Microsoft Office 2007, Microsoft Connect has been the focal point for all beta programs, being “connections”.

The top ones seem to be:

• Microsoft Expression Blend: for creating new user interfaces for web design or application design
• Microsoft Game Studios Beta Program: if you’re interested in testing games for Microsoft, this is a must.
• Windows Wipe: the new way to report issues and feedback from Windows Vista to the developers and managers.

I recommend Windows Wipe - it sounds a bit corny (it’s not the final name of the product) but it’s going to be somewhat-big