Smarter Geek

The Microsoft Australia Press Shop is currently having a MASIVE sale with 50% OFF ALL BOOKS before the end of financial year (June 30th). To claim you discount for this incredible deal simply use the checkout code EOFYS10 and the discount will automatically be applied to your cart.

If you do live in Australia remember that even after this great deal is over the Microsoft Press Shop will always price match any book you can buy from Amazon (with conversion and shipping) with their Amazon Price Match Promise. I have always found their service to be excellent and the delivery has always been within two days as their warehouse is based locally in Sydney.

If you are having trouble what title you are after then I highly recommend the Configuring Windows 7 Self-Paced Training Kit for MCTS Exam 70-680 by fellow Australia MVP Orin Thomas & Ian McLean. Even if you are not planning to do the exam that this book is written for it is still a great guide for anyone who wants to brush up on what is new in Windows 7.

The other great think I love about MS Press books is they come with a PDF version which you can now copy to your iPad or iPhone and read in iBook’s which recently enabled native PDF support (see below).

Now I am no lawyer however I recently found out that Google Earth cannot be used for anything except for private user. This made me realise that there are MANY organisation that Many may not be aware that they are using organisations currently using the program against the terms and conditions of the program.

I did some digging and as you can see below the usage table for Google Earth clearly states “Personal use” and the Google Earth Pro versions usage is “Consultants and businesses of ALL SIZES, including site-wide installations”. 

Update: On the same page there is also a question that states “If your business is looking to use Google Earth for any external purpose, you will need to licence Google Earth Pro”.

There is also a clause in section 1 of the Google Earth licensing agreement that states “Any animations, movies, prints or screen outputs generated with the Software are for your use only.”.

I think the take away from this is that if you have deployed/installed Google Earth to any of your computers that is used for work then be very careful as you may have broken the licence agreement.

OK… So how does this compare to Bing?

Again I am not a lawyer… but taking a look at the Bing Maps Code of Conduct http://explore.live.com/code-of-conduct?mkt=en-au you are restricted to "use Bing Maps for any bulk printing or downloading of imagery or data” or  “Copy, save, download, distribute, transmit or manipulate the photographic imagery.”. So while there are some restrictions it does not seem to be as restrictive as the Google Earth licence.

Either way if you are using maps from any online service then I would strongly recommend that you fully understand the licensing agreement before using it for any work propose.

Newsweek is reporting that Zombies are attacking people….!!! ARGH!!!!

But seriously… if you go to http://www.newsweek.com and type the Konami Code (up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, b, a, enter) all the articles on the web site change to Zombie related material.

Very funny…. but then again this might be an attempt by someone who is trying to get a message through… Hmm…. Maybe someone should tell Will Smith…

Some video has surfaced of some of the game play of Microsoft Project Natal Kinect.

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5559492/the-post+it-mario-stop-motion-video