If you don’t care about Windows 7 and are focused in on the new Apple update, you can now pre-order 10.6 Snow Leopard from Amazon. Snow Leopard is the refined OS X, making little quirks to the interface and speeding things up.

The upgrade is available for $29 (single license upgrade) and will be shipped sometime in September. If you purchased your Mac anytime after June 8 of this year, you can get a copy of Snow Leopard for $9.95 from Apple.

Amazon pulls no punches, choosing not to list a release date and reminding you that “only Apple OS X Leopard users are eligible for the Snow Leopard upgrade. Tiger & earlier OS users will need to purchase either versions of the upgraded Mac Box Set. Also, Snow Leopard will only run on intel-based Mac computers.”

So if you need to enjoy pre-ordering software at an affordable price (thank you Apple!), then head on over to get your copy of Snow Leopard reserved. And yes, I indulged my inner geek and pre-ordered my own copy.

__

Cheers!

Tweet Michelle @writetechnology, send her technology news at michelle[at]writetech[dot]net, visit her wine blog when you’re thirsty, and drop by her day job.

By Sarah Townsend

Only furthering the argument that the only thing PCs are good for is looking at porn, Microsoft just released a new commercial for Internet Explorer 8, emphasizing the feature that allows you to hide your browser history. It’s not for the weak-stomached.

A little breakfast-time browsing, I see. That’s sick. I have to give it to Microsoft though, this video is extremely share-worthy, only increasing it’s chances of going viral and boosting downloads (if that’s even possible anymore). It has already been Twittered about thousands of times!

____

Sarah Townsend
E-mail: theoneinpink[at]gmail[dot]com
Twitter: theoneinpink
Blogs: TechDarling, The Vibe

by Sarah Townsend

I haven’t used Internet Explorer in oh, about 5 years, and I probably won’t again (ever), but that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy this potentially viral video Microsoft released celebrating the launch of Internet Explorer 8.

This LOL-worthy video campaign takes us on a trip down Internet memory lane and features cameos from B-list comedians, web-celebs, and clips from classic viral vids and websites (hello, Chawlee Bit Me & the Hamster Dance!) Microsoft seems to be relying heavily on the influential power of social media to help promote IE8, and has even setup a website to encourage sharing.

In my opinion, this definitely beats the Bill Gates + Jerry Seinfeld #fail campaign last year. That being said, it doesn’t excuse the fact that the browser has been… le suck compared to Firefox.

Here are the new features that reportedly increase speed and enhance security:

-Accelerators, right-click functionality to map directions, translate words, email your friends and more.
-InPrivate browsing designed to shield your browser history (they say shopping, I say embarrassing Google searches/porn).
-Web Slices, which appears to be a “create your own iGoogle” via your toolbar.
-Search suggestions, self-explanatory yet helpful.
-SmartScreen, filters to protect you from potentially harmful websites.

See more about IE8 here.

Do you think this campaign, or the features, will give IE8 the boost it needs?

___

Sarah Townsend
E-mail: theoneinpink[at]gmail[dot]com
Twitter: theoneinpink
Blogs: The Vibe, TechDarling.com

by Michelle Lentz

My husband is involved in several Fantasy Football leagues. His office league likes to “trash talk” in their own creative way. What does this mean? It means a giant poster of my husband in the downtown office window, with a corresponding sign about how he’ll lose those weekend’s games. (It’s worth mentioning that he won.)

I really could care less about football, but I did learn something from this experience (other than that the poster was hilarious): I learned that I can print a poster from my regular old desk printer.

There’s a catch, of course. The poster is divided into several 8.5 x 11 sheets. However, it makes a pretty good poster as long as you don’t need high-quality single sheet. That’s a job for Kinko’s.

PosteRazor is what my husband’s friend used to the create the poster. PosteRazor takes a raster image and the resulting poster is saved as a multipage PDF document. PosteRazor takes all types of images, including BMP, DDS, GIF, ICO, IFF, JBIG, JPEG/JIF, Kodak PhotoCD, PCX, PBM, PGM, PNG, PPM, PhotoShop PSD, and more. You can set the size of your resulting poster by percentage, number of sheets, or specific size.

It’s a free tool made from Open Source libraries and is available on Sourceforge.net. PosteRazor is available as a Windows, an OSX and a Linux version.

__
Contact Michelle with your news, apps, and events via email, Twitter, Pownce, or FriendFeed. Visit Michelle at Wine-Girl.net and Write Technology.