TRYMYTECH

Apple announced Mac OS X Lion with considerable fanfare at its Back to the Mac event last October, and now it’s dropped the first developer preview on the world — giving us a chance to sample some of the big cat’s new features and UI concepts. We installed the dev build on one of our MacBook Pros and used it over the weekend, and while we won’t be able to see any huge changes in day-to-day workflow until our favorite apps are updated to take advantage of Lion, we did see plenty of interesting system-level features and additions — and yes, iOS’s influence is all over the place.

Read the full original article at: http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/28/mac-os-x-lion-hands-on-preview/

Coming soon/

Search engine giant Google have this week introduced a refreshed look for its image results. The new layout provides a tiled view of images making it easier to scan large amounts of images at once.

Google announced the new interface in their blog, and detailed all the changes…

 -  Dense tiled layout, designed to make it easy to look at lots of images at once.
 -  Instant scrolling between pages, without letting you get lost in the images.
 -  Thumbnail previews – you simply have to hover over an image.
 -  A new landing page that displays a large image in context, with the website it’s hosted on visible right behind it.

Popular British soap Eastenders is to create a story line which involves burning down part of their set so that the programme can be shown in HD in the near future.

Many more BBC programmes have started being available to enjoy in high definition, however Eastenders has never been transferred to HD because of the fact that the sets are too shabby, and as such would be noticed by hi-def viewers.

As a result the BBC is going to drastic measures to make sure that the hi-def makeover works, by getting rid of one of the most iconic landmarks of the soap - the pub.

This comes as the corporation announce the launch of a new HD channel this autumn – ‘BBC One HD’, which will be a ‘simulcast’ version of BBC One with most main programmes in high definition…

Because of the fact that there is an increasing amount of shows moving to HD the BBC see it necessary to introduce another HD channel as well as ‘BBC HD‘, one which will feature only the HD shows from BBC One.

Pop singer Justin Bieber has become the target of an internet joke. A public vote on the singer’s tour website has being asking visitors which country he should tour next, with no restrictions on the nations that could be voted on…

This has spurred users to nominate North Korea as the country for him to visit, and thanks to the media attention the number votes for this nuclear nation has increased – there are now almost half a million votes to send Bieber to the secretive communist nation.

Given the fact that almost all citizens of North Korea are denied internet access and there are restrictive controls over all media, it is unlikely that any of the votes have actually come from within the country.

The BBC have released preview images of a new BBC News website which is to be launched next week.

The current two-year-old design for the popular news website will be replaced by a new template and layout, with some new integrated features.

The new site appears to make better use of space, particularly on larger screen resolutions. There is also a new navigation menu which now runs along the top of the page as opposed to the side. One feature which will be pushed on news article pages is the sharing to popular social networks. News stories from your local area will also be easier to find than at present…

  
Click on the images to enlarge.

International users who regularly access the BBC News site will continue to see the old website, however the United States and Canada will be pointed to an entirely seperate branded site, with news features from BBC America and BBC Canada TV included.

You can find out more on the new changes by clicking here.