Sprint announces a New 3G/4G wireless Wi-Fi router

LAS VEGAS--Sprint Nextel introduced a 3G/4G wireless router Wednesday night called the Sprint Overdrive that will allow subscribers to share their wireless broadband connection among Wi-Fi devices.

Sprint 3G/4G Overdrive wireless router

(Credit: Sprint Nextel)

The Overdrive router, made by Sierra Wireless, uses Sprint's 4G Wimax network, where it's available, to allow customers to access the Internet and then it shares that bandwidth among Wi-Fi-enabled devices. Where 4G service isn't available, the router connects to the Internet using Sprint's 3G EV-DO wireless network. Subscribers can connect up to five Wi-Fi-enabled devices, such as laptops, cameras, game consoles and other Wi-Fi-enabled devices.

Sprint, which showed off the new device at an event the night before the Consumer Electronics Show kicks off here, claims that the 4G wireless network provides enough bandwidth to allow users to easily wirelessly stream high-definition video and music, play games on consoles like the Microsoft Xbox and surf the Web all at the same time.

Windows 7 has lots of 'GodModes' (exclusive)

Those intrigued by the "God Mode" In Windows 7 may be interested to know that there are many other similar shortcuts hidden within the operating system.

Intended for developers as a shortcut to various internal settings, such features have been around since Vista and even before, according to the head of Microsoft's Windows division, who tells CNET that the so-called GodMode settings folder uncovered by bloggers is just one of many undocumented developer features included in Windows.

In an e-mail interview, Steven Sinofsky, Windows division president, said several similar undocumented features provide direct access to all kinds of settings, from choosing a location to managing power settings to identifying biometric sensors.

As with the all-encompassing GodMode uncovered by bloggers, these other settings can be accessed directly by creating a new folder with any name (GodMode or otherwise) and then including a certain text string. Sinofsky noted more than a dozen strings create particular settings folders, in addition to the overarching GodMode folder option.

Sinofsky and others say the term GodMode was coined by bloggers; it was not something the company used internally to refer to the settings folders. Although Microsoft maintains many such undocumented developer commands to access such settings, all are replicated by the operating system's Control Panel settings.

Such undocumented means of accessing various settings have occurred in previous versions of Windows, and the GodMode identified by bloggers was also present in Windows Vista. Some users of the 64-bit version of Vista, however, say invoking the GodMode folder caused their machines to crash. Microsoft says it has yet to reproduce that problem, though several readers have said they have encountered problems.

It seems that the folks in Redmond have gotten a kick out of all the attention that the Godmode has gotten and have decided to have fun with it. Sinofsky sent a list of other commands that also create special folders (see list below).

Given the Vista issues, though, I would try these only on a Windows 7 machine, ideally a test machine. To make it work, create a new folder with any name, then a period, then one of the text strings below.

For example, the first one could be a folder named "thankscnet.{00C6D95F-329C-409a-81D7-C46C66EA7F33}" (use everything inside quotes--but not the quotes themselves).

Here's the list of strings:

{00C6D95F-329C-409a-81D7-C46C66EA7F33}
{0142e4d0-fb7a-11dc-ba4a-000ffe7ab428}
{025A5937-A6BE-4686-A844-36FE4BEC8B6D}
{05d7b0f4-2121-4eff-bf6b-ed3f69b894d9}
{1206F5F1-0569-412C-8FEC-3204630DFB70}
{15eae92e-f17a-4431-9f28-805e482dafd4}
{17cd9488-1228-4b2f-88ce-4298e93e0966}
{1D2680C9-0E2A-469d-B787-065558BC7D43}
{1FA9085F-25A2-489B-85D4-86326EEDCD87}
{208D2C60-3AEA-1069-A2D7-08002B30309D}
{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}
{2227A280-3AEA-1069-A2DE-08002B30309D}
{241D7C96-F8BF-4F85-B01F-E2B043341A4B}
{4026492F-2F69-46B8-B9BF-5654FC07E423}
{62D8ED13-C9D0-4CE8-A914-47DD628FB1B0}
{78F3955E-3B90-4184-BD14-5397C15F1EFC}

And, as a reminder, to create the Godmode folder itself, use this string:

{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

Microsoft sets Office 2010 pricing

Microsoft sets Office 2010 pricing

Microsoft has announced pricing for Office 2010, with the biggest change being the fact that buyers can pay less by forgoing the full boxed copy in favor of a card with only a product key code.

Office 2010, which is now in public beta testing and due in final form later this year, will come in four retail versions--Home and Student, Home and Business, Professional, and an academic version of Office Professional. Of note, the product key cards are good for only one PC, while the boxed copies are good for installation on two PCs, with the exception of Home and Student, which is licensed for use on up to three machines.

Office Professional, which includes Word 2010, Excel 2010, PowerPoint 2010, OneNote 2010, Outlook 2010, Publisher 2010, Access 2010, premium technical support, and the browser-based Office Web Apps, is priced at $499 for the full boxed copy or $349 for the product key card. The academic version of Office Professional for students and educators will sell for $99 and will be available at campus bookstores and through certain retailers.

Office Home and Student is priced at $149 for the boxed version and $119 for the product key card and includes Word 2010, Excel 2010, PowerPoint 2010, OneNote 2010, and the Office Web Apps. It is available in a Family Pack, allowing use on three PCs in one home.

The new home option, Office Home and Business, which adds Outlook to the mix and is licensed for business use, is offered at $279 for the boxed form or $199 for the product key card.

Microsoft also noted that it has now reached more than 2 million downloads of the beta version of Office 2010.

"To get a better appreciation for that number, it's a rate of more than 40,000 downloads per day," Office General Manager Rachel Bondi said Tuesday in a blog posting. "That's approximately twice the number of people who run the Boston Marathon each year, or the entire population of Olympia, WA, or Annapolis, MD, downloading the Office 2010 beta every day!"

Office 2010 to arrive in June

Microsoft Office 2010 will arrive in June 2010 according to the company, nearly three and a half years after the prior version the software, Office 2007, was released to customers.

The web has been buzzing with rumors of the application's release date, but it wasn't until yesterday that a release schedule was confirmed by Redmond.

The big news with this release remains that Office 2010 will come in both a standard, installable version and a free, web-based version with a smaller set of features meant to compete with the growing number of web-based productivity applications, such as Google Apps. At launch, the online suite will include lightweight versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote, all accessible via the Windows Live online service.

Corporate customers will also be able to host a private version of the web-based software suite on their own servers, complete with customizable features.

As for the offline version of Office 2010, the updated software is set to include integrated photo and video editing features -- areas where Microsoft has historically been utterly rotten -- all usable from the confines of existing Office documents. Office environments will also be able to have multiple users collaborating on a single document from multiple locations.

PC World digested the new Office's additional features, including a more consistent vision for the Ribbon and more reliable printing technology, earlier this year
.

Fun with Windows 7 "God Mode"

Who doesn't want to be a deity? Especially a deity of Microsoft Windows, joining Bill Gates and Paul Allen in an unholy pantheon of digital excess?

Well, I can't quite make that happen, but I can at least show you how to get a little more control over Windows 7, through the use of a trick which a little shortcut known as "God Mode" or "GodMode."

The setup method is simple, if bizarre: Make a new folder in Windows 7 (anywhere) and give it this name exactly:

GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

Now open that folder. Instead of an empty directory you'll find a control panel interface giving you instant access to dozens of tweaks you can make to your operating system environment. It's a little like the old TweakUI, an essential add-on for Windows XP, and it gives power users a quicker and easier way to make more than 100 common customizations to their system, from tweaking the way User Account Control works to running an antivirus application to even changing how frequently the cursor blinks.

It's actually pretty handy, and the beauty is that you can put the GodMode folder anywhere (or have multiple copies) and it will work exactly the same way. Be warned however that some users are reporting instability on 64-bit Windows 7 installations. (I'm running it on a 32-bit edition of Windows 7 Ultimate and it's working great.)

Check it out

How Facebook Works

Facebook has more than 350 million active users. Digest that for a second. Can you imagine how many servers would be required working in a distributed fashion with redundancy to handle 350 million users? Well to answer my own question, Facebook has more than 30,000 servers and adds about 10,000 new servers every 18 months. Even more staggering, Facebook manages more than 25 terabytes of data per day in logging data. Can you imagine backing up that much data?

With 350+ million users, squeezing every CPU cycle, optimizing every byte read and written, optimizing every line of code, and making sure to use the latest & fastest RAM is critical. Benchmarking is definitely key here. Well, Om Malik @Gigaom has a fascinating article today on how Facebook squeezes the most from their servers by using a home-grown proprietary benchmarking utility called Dyno.