Daily Tech and Gadget

Windows 7’s first major Service Pack is hitting public beta next month. Don’t expect a ton of new features; it’s a combo of existing updates that you already have, save for new Remote Desktop support. But if you haven’t upgraded to 7 yet, you might as well wait until this SP is out and final before hopping on board. [ Windows Blog via Engadget ] More » Windows 7 – Microsoft Windows – Operating system – Windows – Microsoft

Before you start getting excited for something along the lines of Vista’s famed SP1 , you should know that the Windows 7 Service Pack 1 that Microsoft plans to release shortly is merely a combination of existing updates, outside of the new Remote Desktop to support new Windows Server 2008 SP1 features . Still, that’s not exactly a bad thing: Windows 7 doesn’t require same sort of service pack “rescue” Vista did, and Microsoft’s hope is that a feature-stable, combined update could promote some enterprise holdouts to finally take the plunge. The public beta of SP1 will be released at the end of July, with the final version to presumably be released soon after. Windows 7 Service Pack 1 public beta due next month originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 08 Jun 2010 12:43:00 EDT

Windows/Mac: Apple’s new Safari 5 browser isn’t quite an adventurous leap forward, but it is a solid update focused on speed, readable pages, speed, better tabbed browsing, speed, future extension support, and, oh, yeah, speed. More » Apple – Safari – Safari 5 – Web browser – Google

Windows 7 only: Freeware utility Windows 7 Folder Background Changer adds a background image to Windows Explorer, and even allows you to customize each folder with a separate picture. More » Windows Explorer – Windows 7 – Windows – Microsoft Windows – Freeware

If you’re working in a locked-down environment and unable to use Revo Uninstaller or a similar wipe-it-clean uninstaller, you can still get more from Windows’ default “Uninstall a Program” tool by improving its sorting and data reporting. More » Microsoft Windows – Operating system – Windows – Revo Uninstaller – Shareware

Entelligence is a column by technology strategist and author Michael Gartenberg, a man whose desire for a delicious cup of coffee and a quality New York bagel is dwarfed only by his passion for tech. In these articles, he’ll explore where our industry is and where it’s going — on both micro and macro levels — with the unique wit and insight only he can provide. The buzzword of last week was “market cap.” To those unfamiliar, market cap is the total value of outstanding shares of a company, and on May 26th at around 3PM Eastern, Apple’s market value reached $225.1 billion , surpassing Microsoft’s $222.3 billion.

Yesterday, Adobe announced that a zero-day exploit exists in Flash 10.0.45.2 and earlier, as well as Adobe Reader and Acrobat 9.x. The company website explains: …(CVE-2010-1297) could cause a crash and potentially allow an attacker to take control of the affected system. There are reports that this vulnerability is being actively exploited in the wild against both Adobe Flash Player, and Adobe Reader and Acrobat. The zero-day exploit, without question, is the mother of all vulnerabilities

Citing a renewed focus on security thanks in part to a recent series of cyber attacks originating in China, The Financial Times is reporting that Google is abandoning support for Microsoft’s Windows. Citing several anonymous employees of the search giant, the FT said that as recent as January, new Google employees were permitted to run Windows on their laptops, but the use of the OS on desktops was strictly forbidden. The continued use of a Windows machine is said to require authorization from high ups, and any employee that requests a Windows rig will need approval from the CIO. At the moment, authorized OSes are said to include Linux and Apple’s OS X. But for all of the talk of security concerns, the FT’s sources allege that the move also has as much to do with Google’s desires to ween its employees off of competing products as it prepares to launch its Chrome OS

Thumb drives are a standard part of any PC repair toolkit, but once you’ve used them on a suspect PC, you should always scan them for viruses. Here’s how to scan for viruses directly from the AutoPlay dialog. More » AutoPlay – Microsoft Windows – Windows – Operating system – Shareware

Windows only: Media Center Studio allows you to create your own custom themes for Windows Media Center, allowing you to create a cooler, more customized WMC look more akin to what you’d expect from popular media center, XBMC . More »

The Android-powered Vision isn’t HTC’s only possible user agent-borne leak from this week. Now comes word of two potential Windows Phone 7 devices , the HuaShan and T5588 HengShan. The former has a 480 x 800 screen (no obvious relation to the Mondrian spotted yet) while the latter sports the more typical 320 x 480. Beyond that and an apparent lack of physical keyboards, we’re kind of in the dark here — assuming this turns out to be legit, but those names popped up previously on a roadmap with a 4.3-inch / 3.4-inch screen size, respectively

Windows/Mac/Linux (Adobe AIR): The marquee features added to social network aggregator TweetDeck are Google Buzz and Foursquare support, plus scheduled updates. What’s actually useful, though, are the global filters that weed out oversharing, spam, and other annoyances. More » TweetDeck – Google – Twitter – Adobe AIR – Google Buzz

Windows only: Portable application TriX changes text case, extracts URLs, exports data to Notepad or Word, or even searches Google using the current clipboard text—all from a simple hotkey-accessible dialog. More »

Microsoft lost a lot of fans with Windows Vista, but this year’s American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) report shows that customer satisfaction with Microsoft is at an all-time high, thanks to Windows 7. More »

Windows: If you want to squeeze all the use out of Office 2010 before you’re required to pony up for a license, free utility Trial Extender will extend the free trial period up to 6 months, no command-line work required. More »