The changes in the current version of the VLC player, which jumping from version 1.2something to the 2.0 level, are plentiful; and VLC’s download page is full of information concerning the new features the “Twoflower” version contains, including extended support for the Mac environment. While the are too many new additions to include them all, here are some highlights of what “Twoflower” promises:

With faster decoding on multi-core, GPU, and mobile hardware and the ability to open more formats, notably professional, HD and 10bits codecs, 2.0 is a major upgrade for VLC.

Twoflower has a new rendering pipeline for video, with higher quality subtitles, and new video filters to enhance your videos.
It supports many new devices and BluRay Discs (experimental).

Completely reworked Mac and Web interfaces and improvements in the other interfaces make VLC easier than ever to use.

Twoflower fixes several hundreds of bugs, in more than 7000 commits from 160 volunteers.

While that last “feature” is more of an explanation of how things get done at VLC, it’s also important because it focuses on the open nature of the player. It’s completely free to download, and the ability to decode and support so many different media file types comes solely from volunteers.

You can, of course, donate to their cause, but even with that pointed out, it should be noted that, even though it is a free program, there is no nagging ad support that can be cleared if you purchase the full version. Simply put, VLC embodies the definition of “free and powerful software,” in spirit and its execution. Simply put, if you use your home computing device to listen/watch media files and you don’t have VLC installed, you’re only cheating yourself.

Other fixes and new features include:

For Video

Rewritten video output core and modules, allowing subpicture blending in GPU.

Shader support in the OpenGL output, for colorspace conversion, including 10bits.

New video outputs for Windows 7, Android, iOS and OS/2.

New debanding, grain, denoising and anti-flickering filters.

New deinterlacing filter, including an Inverse Telecine algorithm.

There’s more:

Format upgrades

Multi-threaded decoding for H.264, MPEG-4/Xvid and WebM.

Support for 10bits codecs, WMV image and some other codecs.

Rewritten support for images, including jpeg, png, xcf, bmp…

Important changes in RealVideo and Real Format support.

CrystalHD cards and Android OpenMAX support for hardware decoding.

As indicated, Mac users were not left out of the “Twoflower” fun either:

For Mac Users

Completely new, single window interface:

- Available in 2 colors: Lion grey and QTX black.
- Extensions support and better Lion integration.

Support for all QTKit devices through qtcapture and qtsound modules.

Continued support for X 10.5 and PPC users (1080p and ProRes on Dual-G5!).

There’s even a section addressing those who watch anime on VLC:

For Anime Fans

Vastly improved MKV demuxer.

Rewritten linked segments and ordered chapter files support.

Correct support for FLAC, RV and Hi10p in MKV.

Rewritten seeking support in cue files.

Various ASS subtitles improvements.

As indicated, BluRay support has been included in “Twoflower,” although, VLC expresses this is in an experimental phase. Apparently, menus for these movies have been deactivated, but support for BluRay menus will be coming soon. Of course, the lack of BluRay menu support should the least of your worries in relation to VLC.

Simply put, the thing just works, and it works very well. The “Twoflower” era is just another step in the evolution of this powerful and reliable media player.

In the past, when you clicked on a pin, you were taken to a new page to view that pin. To go back to where you were to continue browsing, you had to use the Back button. That landed you back at the top of what could be a very long page, forcing you to find your way back to where you were. Users who learned to shortcut-key a link to a new tab had it easier, but it was still a pain in the butt.

Now, Pinterest uses a lightbox-style feature (a la Google Images) that simply overlays a smaller window, fading the main window into the background temporarily. You can re-pin, comment, like, Tweet, get embed code, etc. from there. Once you are done, simply click off to the side to close the lightbox and return to exactly where you left off.

Pinterest has also made it easier to see where an item was originally pinned from, no matter how many generations of re-pin have happened before it made its way to you. This allows you to find the original pinner, which is a great way to make new connections with people who are actively on the lookout for new content to pin, as opposed to serial re-pinners (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

Here’s a good video overview of the upgrades recorded by someone who appears to either be on speed or trying to finish really quickly so he can take a bathroom break.

YouTube also recently added features so users can share videos to Twitter, Facebook or Google Reader., as well as, Facebook Connect.

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As reported in PC Advisor, Google Chrome’s blog announces the latest beta of Chrome. Google had dropped the beta tag back in December but it is back as well as the beta channel that is designed for feedback. No indication why that happened but they are Google after all and they can do what they want. The greatest change according to Google is its increase in speed.

“The best thing about this new beta is speed – it’s 25 percent faster on our V8 benchmark and 35 percent faster on the Sunspider benchmark than the current stable channel version (of Chrome) and almost twice as fast compared to our original beta version,” said Brian Rakowski, Google product manager.

Google’s philosophy is to give users the changes as they go rather than save them up for a big release. Other features to look for are autofill, autoscroll and the ability to drag tabs for side by side views.

While Google’s blog gave its point of view, the new IE 8 from Microsoft, which will be available at noon today, was reviewed in the WSJ today by Walter S. Mossberg. From a 30,000 foot fly over point of view, the review was that the new features are fantastic but the trouble is speed. On that note he did not let the new IE 8 unseat Mozilla as his favorite browser for Windows but it appears as if the latest version of the most widely used browser has made strides to be better.

Some of these features can’t be matched out of the box by its main rival browsers. For instance, related tabs are color-coded, the search field can show images along with text, you can get instant fly-out maps of place names in Web pages, and you can easily hide your tracks online from the prying eyes of advertisers.

The review is very detailed and looks at improvements in search functions, privacy features and compatibility, which appears to be pretty strong for the most part which will help ease the nerves of designers and developers who wonder what the impact may be on existing sites.

In a kind of informal survey tell us what browser you currently use and if it isn’t one of these two would you be willing to switch for any reason? Also, which is a bigger event today; the release of IE8 or the start of the NCAA tournament?

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I’m seeing a few subtle and not so subtle changes in GMail tonight.

1) Quicker message loading

2) New graphics (the yellow type found in Google Reader) at the top of the screen for loading messages

3) New contacts manager which is very slick and a great upgrade

4) The ability to add an event invitation when composing or replying to messages.

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New version 2.3 offers a wide range of enhancements and new features, including:

• Tagging
• Automatic notification of updated plugins
• Automatic notification when new WP versions are released
• Much better management of posts and draft posts
• Improvements to the built-in text editor
• Automatic site addressing (if your address has ‘www’ in it or not, WP will let people find your site)
• A number of technical changes such as additional SQL database tables, multiple category widgets, better support for languages other than  English and full support for Atom 1.0

See the full list here.

The new feature that most people will probably be the most interested in is tagging. Simply put, tagging  lets you add free-form labels to your posts so you can classify your content more flexibly than only by using more rigid categories.

Dougal Campbell has a good explanation of the differences between categories and tags. Also see Lorelle Van Fossen’s explanation.

I plan to upgrade to 2.3, first on my sandbox before here on the main blog. One reason for doing it this way is to be sure that all my plugins will work with the new version.

If you’re thinking about upgrading, be sure to review the upgrade guidelines from WordPress first. Then follow the upgrade instructions to the letter.

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Move/copy keywords: You can now move and copy keywords from one ad group to another without doing the copy/paste/delete thing. On the Ad Group page under the “Campaigns” tab, you’ll now see a “Move” button which will allow you to move or copy keywords from one ad group to another ad group.” Note that there is still a 1000 keyword limit per ad group.

Streamline keyword selector tool: Yahoo now provides an estimate of the monthly searches on each keyword suggested. This provides more detailed information on the traffic that this keyword may be able to generate. As before, you can select the keywords you wish to add by clicking the box next to the suggestions and clicking “Add Keywords.”

Ad writing help guide: When creating ads, you’ll be able to preview ads that appear in search results for your selected keywords.

Panama is catching up to Google AdWords in features pretty quickly. What has your experience with Panama been so far?

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A report on EE Times cited an internal FAA memo, obtained by a sister publication, that Vista’s requirements go beyond the FAA’s typical desktop configuration.

In March, FAA CIO Dave Bowen put forth the possibility of recommending an alternative to a Vista upgrade path. The report said the FAA could consider migrating people to Linux desktops running Google Apps as an option.

The memo contained a money quote about Microsoft’s likely sales efforts: “We anticipate that this introduction will be accompanied by significant advertising hype and salesperson activity.” The FAA could be just the first of many federal agencies that publicly balk at a potentially expensive Vista upgrade.

Google Analytics allows executives, marketers and Web site owners examine how their users interact with their Web site and help increase online business. The company has done a total redesign on the product and improved the feature set through new email reporting, customizable dashboards, map displays, and plain language descriptions to make information easier to access.

“At Geffen Records, we use Google Analytics to determine what website content is most valuable to music fans so we can craft the most effective marketing strategies," said Aaron Foreman, Head of Digital Media, Geffen Records.

"As an early adopter of the new version of Google Analytics, we are impressed with the richness of the data and its ease of use that provides us with the most important information immediately,” said Lee Hammond, Director of Digital Technology, Geffen Records.

In the new version of Google Analytics, data is organized into combinations of reports, so users can make decisions about site management and Google AdWords campaigns. Google Analytics tracks online marketing campaigns and generates email reports that can be shared with co-workers.

Beginning today new users will have access to the updated version. Current users will be able to access the old version and the new version for 30 days and all historical data will be available in the new version.

“At Google, we’re focused on building powerful tools to help advertisers measure the effectiveness of their marketing dollars and optimize their business," said Paul Muret, Engineering Director, Google.

"The new version of Google Analytics will give advertisers and site owners greater insight into their customers’ needs, thereby increasing advertiser ROI while also improving the e-commerce experience of consumers."

This only applies to the older AdSense accounts out there, ones that still have a non-Google Account login. When visiting AdSense, those venerated ones will be invited to fire up the upgrade wizard and journey to the wonderful land of Google Accounts.

Or, they can come back another time and upgrade then. “You may miss out on some cool new features,” Dobromir Montauk of AdSense Publisher Support advised in his blog post about the upgrade.

There is a little ‘gotcha’ people will want to note if they wish to use a current Google Account to serve as the new AdSense login. The help pages discuss this:

Keep in mind, however, that technical limitations prevent you from choosing a current Google Account that is already associated with an AdWords, AdSense, or Books account.

Montauk referenced this in his post about the forthcoming upgrades. Not every AdSense publisher using an old school login will see the upgrade prompt right away, as Google plans to slowly roll this out to the AdSense users affected by the change.

During Google’s first financial quarter, their AdSense partner network generated $1.35 billion in revenues for the company. Google repaid $1.05 billion of that back to those AdSense publishers in the quarter.