Expect a lot of pictures! (Gosh, this sounds like a personal blog now…)

We’ll try to keep up with the CubePoints support (”like there is any support normally anyway…”), and I promise durinng this short break we’ll try to fix the many bugs currently exist in CubePoints.

Anyway, I’ll see you guys in a week, have fun!

Now, this store does not work like others. In fact, it might not even be considered as a “store” plugin. Here is how it works:

• Post a new post with the following tag: [cps]*Name of your item*|*Amount of points you want to sell it for*|*Link text*[/cps]
• Your user will then click on the link to “purchase an item”. Points will be deducted.
• You will receive an email saying this user bought this item. It will also show in the widget in your Admin Dashboard.
• You can then choose to notify your user how to obtain what he just purchased.

Now for example, you can use this plugin to sell ad space. Put a link like that in a post, and an user interested will click on it. You will be notified that the user bought some ad space, and you will contact him for details/instructions.

Download the file here and put it in /wp-content/plugins/ (do NOT put it in cubepoints folder). And yes, obviously, it requires CubePoints to work.

“Wait, Peter, how is this a “store” then?” Here’s what I’d do. Create a category called “store” and exclude it from any category listing. Create your own theme file (category-*ID*.php in your themes folder) to set up a “grid” display (or a list). Take out all the tags/author/category displays, and it will look like it lists products instead of posts.

PLEASE tell us what you think about this. We will work more towards some more features on CubePoints. Next up: Allow users to buy points with paypal

I woke up this morning and found an Office 2010 Technical Preview invitation waiting for me. I could not stop my excitement and quickly downloaded it. Join me in downloading + installing this wonderful product!

Downloading

Like other Microsoft beta products, I had to go through a series of annoying registration process. Seriously, can’t they just get information from my Live Account? That’s how Google does it and has proved working so far.

A lot of products under the big family “Office 2010” are available for download, including Office Professional (incldes Outlook), Visio, SharePoint, InfoPath and a whole lot others.

Then, after selecting the version I want (32 bit or 64 bit), another MS annoying thing appeared – having to install an ActiveX control (yes, that means only IE can download) to download the files I wanted. I thought the one that they used for downloading Windows 7 was nice, so why did they switched again? Grr.

Download was pretty fast and stable at a rate of 400kb/s.

Installing

The installing interface wasn’t that different from the one of Office 2007. Except, the background is maybe darker than the previous one.

Oh wait, wow, there is an upgrade option!

But of course, I still wanted my Office 2007, so I will do a clean install this time.

The installing process took about 20 mins on my Athlon TK-53 1.6Gx2 + 2GB Ram laptop. Acceptable. After the installation, a reboot was necessary.

Using

Right after reboot, two icons showed up:

When I thought I got a virus or something, I found out that they are part of the Technical Preview. It is a little bug report feature, I guess. How effective is it? Not sure.

The Splash Screen shocked me. The colors at the bottom is animated, and it is much more than just an image.

Honestly, the interface isn’t that much of a change, other than the whole color scheme has changed from blue to grey. 3 Color schemes are included, like Office 2007, and they are light grey, grey, and dark grey.

The biggest change lies in the “Dashboard” (or is there a name for it?) When you click the Blue button next to “Home” on the ribbon, a dark background “dashboard” thing comes out (no longer a dropdown menu). Options are same as those in Office 2007 when you press the same button, but in a much cooler interface

For example, when you print a page, you no longer have to open another window to set the print options:

I figured out I really like this feature. Some options, like “Options” and “Open” and “Save”, however still requires opening a separate window. If I can choose the file I want to open within the Dashboard, it will be much easier to use.

Conclusion

Although there are only a few surprises, they sure are really good surprises. I have yet to test other Office products, so stay tuned for a full review of the Office 2010 Technical Preview!

New changes to this release include:

• Fix for Javascript files
• Introduction of an API system (will improve later on)
• Cron Automatic update now available
• Minor database changes

All users are recommended to update to this latest version since it fixes a critical Javascirpt problem in the previous versions.

For more information on API, please refer to the docs for more details. Need more? Wait for the next release ;)

So what are you waiting for? Download it and install it now!

As you can see in the photo, it offers a much more clear design, and a much more efficient/easy way to access to different videos of the user. More javascript, more user friendliness, and most of all, more flexibility.

Changing your channel from the old one to the new one is easy. I’ll show you how the get and customize the new design.

Getting it

Step 1: Sign in either with an YouTube account or a Google account. Then, go into “Account” on the top right hand corner.

Step 2: Put your mouse over the big “My Account” in the middle, and select “My Channel”

Step 3: Click” Upgrade my channel!” in the middle of the page, and boom! You will now be brought to your new channel with the new channel design!

Customization

On the top of the channel, you should see a bar titled “Edit Channel”.

Under “Settings”, you will be able to set some general options for your channel, such as name, tags, etc.

Under “Theme and Colors”, you will be able to set the colors in the channel. Here is the big thing about the new channel – you will have much more options to customize!

Last but not least, you will be able to customize different modules in your channel, changing layouts, adding or deleting some “boxes”, etc.

If you want to come back again to settings again, go to Account –> My Channel –> Channel Design.

Enjoy!

The basics are this: Head to http://g.ho.st/and sign up for a free account. No software installation needed. Upon logging into your account, the ghost client will launch within your browser. You browser essentially becomes a second “virtual” desktop for you to perform basic tasks like email, web browsing, file sharing, etc.

Now I know some of you are thinking “Is this guy mad? I can do all this stuff with my own desktop! Why in the world would I need a desktop within a desktop?” Ask no further! See although it may not seem useful for home use, imagine being able to log into the same desktop and have access to your files from anywhere in the world, without having to bring anything with you. At school, work, home, on vacation in Siberia, as long as you have access to the internet, you can log into your G.ho.st desktop and continue working where you left off. No need to bring work or schoolwork home! Save it to your g.ho.st drive, and log in later to be productive in the comfort of your own home. No more lugging around laptops and USB drives. The possibilities are endless! Ok maybe not endless, but for a simple guy like myself, I was impressed.

Anyways, the G.ho.st virtual desktop is composed mostly of Flash, allowing excellent user interaction with the desktop environment. One drawback is if you are on a slower PC, the demands of Flash may make it a bit slow for your liking. I tested on a 1.5Ghz CPU/1 GB RAM and there was a noticable hit in performance. Yet the features offered are quite impressive.

With the offer of 15GB of online storage (and an extra 10GBfor entering the promotion code “launch”) who can resist? G.ho.st has teamed up with many partners offering cloud services and has implemented applications like Google Documents, Zoho, and Flickr into the desktop. Some of these services offer the capability to link your current account to your G.ho.st desktop, giving you access to your favorite online services all within your own virtual space! How convenient! Now if only I could get it to pay my bills for me…….

Both of these themes are now in the WP Themes Directory. How cool is that, you ask? Well, in WP 2.8, you can now search for “surreal” or “dark autumn” and install it directly from your admin panel. No FTP required.

Enjoy these themes, and check back regularly for more cool updates!

Step 1: Go on Google and search for “GoDaddy”… then click on it

You’re then going to see something like the image to the right. Click the link highlighted in light yellow. (Make sure it says $6.99 .COM Domains… if it doesn’t, search again until it does)

Step 2: Search for your desired domain and add to cart

Make sure that you see a yellow message just like the one in the image. If you don’t… go back to step 1 and try again

Step 3: Checkout

That’s it. You will notice that it will only cost you $6.99 (+$0.20 ICANN Fee) without any coupons. Checkout, and have fun!

By the way, it is strongly not recommended to get those “Free extras” as they do not provide that much of a benefit.

A new design of the Firefox addons page just went online. The new interface is much more beautiful to look at and somewhat easier to use. Addons can now be viewed in grids, instead of just lists – lets the users see more addons in one page.

Hmm… a new design makes me wonder… is Firefox 3.5 coming soon? Well, Beta 4 released not a long while ago… If Gold isn’t releasing soon, I suspect at least RC is. (Review on software development stage: Alpha –> Beta –> RC (Feature freeze, if no more bugs, release gold) –> Gold (Final))

1. Schoolwork – Jonathan is working on a GCE A-Levels Project, while I am preparing for my finals, which are coming in 2 weeks.
2. More schoolwork
3. And of course, schoolwork…
4. Did I mention schoolwork?

But wait, don’t close the window so fast yet. In the midst of this insane schoolwork business, our interest to develop this site are not gone! (and will never be!)! We are actually planning some updates that will be implemented in the near future:

Feedburner RSS Feeds

We have recently switched from the default RSS to the ones powered by Feedburner. We believe that by using Feedburner’s feeds analysis tool, we can better serve you guys with some more updates! So, subscribe now!

New design

Have you gotten bored of this design yet? We have. Considering that, we are planning on a completely new design just to refresh the looks of TechCube. Any suggestions or things you would really want to see in the new design? Feel free to comment!

Twitter Account

In response to the recently REALLY popular micro-blogging service Twitter, we have launched our Twitter account too. Eh, you know what, I don’t feel like announcing it right now. How about this, the first person to guess the account and follows it gets a prize?

Surprises will come as we officially announce the account, so stay tuned!

Okay fine, we admit, we need help

These works are really heavy on us… especially when we are only two teenagers. We are now going to officially call for help in writing content for TechCube. If you think you can do it, please do email us, and we will tell you about all the details!

In addition, if you own a blog and wish to partner with us, please do not hesitate to let us know and affiliate with us!

What about CubePoints?

Like I just mentioned, we are pretty busy with the schoolwork up recently. However, I can ensure you that once we are out of this mess (which for me, in 2 weeks), we will continue developing CubePoints. We have really been reading all your feature requests in the CubePoints page, and we are trying our very best to squeeze time. But you know, it’s hard.

I can almost guarantee you, a new release will be made before June ends.

And oh, we won ThinkQuest!

Remember there were a time during March when we went absolutely silent? Yup, we were participating in the ThinkQuest Competition, and it turns out that we won the first place in the Age 19 and under division! Thanks to all who have supported us!

I have been searching for ThinkQuest-related blogposts recently, and I have found one that is absolutely inspiring. Thanks to this wonderful review, Ben! It is one of the best (as in, depth of analysis) reviews I have ever read on any one of my sites.

Lastly, any questions?

Please do not stop supporting us! I know it is going to sound extremely cliche to say this, but your support to TechCube is our biggest motivation. Here are a few things to show your support:

1. Subscribe to RSS
2. Help if you can
3. Check back regularly!
4. Ask us any questions you have