Vista Overview

PC Magazine posted a nice Vista overview.

So far I have been using the media center on an Amd 2500xp with 756 (or so) RAM and wasnt very impressed. Sure it looks nice, but not THAT impressive. Also tried readyboost, and though the usb stick's light was constantly flashing it didnt make a bit of difference. Furthermore the harddisk always seems to be busy. And this was just while browsing the web with FireFox (cant stand IE7's interface or lack thereof). So on that particular PC i am back with MCE 2005, which works like a charm :).

And on my main pc, that i use to game / email / surf etc, I am not going to try it for a long time. It's pretty stable with XP sp2 and I havent seen any features on Vista that I care for...

Microsoft missing the podcast boat

Good article over at Geeknews. I have to agree. It's curious why Microsoft has left off any podcast support off the Zune and Windows Media Player 11. Even their new feedreader in IE7 doesnt support automatically downloading RSS enclosures, supposedly for security reasons. And now that podcasting is really taking off, it seems like Microsoft is missing the boat.

tags: microsoft, zune, podcasting

FireFox 2.0

Firefox 2.0 has been released ! I was already running RC3 and without even noticing it went to 2.0 ;). Very nice improvement, I already wrote about it in a previous post. There are also a bunch of new banners and buttons available, like the one below,  to put on your site and/or blog at the affliates page.

Cnet review 

PC Magazine

Yahoo News Link

The power of blogging

Jan Pronk has become a Persona Non Grata in Sudan, thanks to his blog ;). This goes to show how powerful blogging has become, when governments are afraid of the opinions expressed in blogs !

Jan Pronk's blog

Expel UN envoy, Sudan army says

 

Technorati tags: jan pronk, sudan, blogging, human rights

IE7 released

It's now available on yahoo (so you get all the yahoo 'extra's', like the toolbar etc). And it will be availble without it (I hope ;)) from microsoft at the Microsoft IE site. If it's like IE7 in Vista, it's a lot better than IE6 (and it should be), though it has some really odd interface quirks. Firefox has a way more logical interface I think.

Their 2.0 release is right around the corner !

 

Technorati tags: IE7, Microsoft

Windows Live Writer

The new version that can be found at http://windowslivewriter.spaces.live.com/, does support Blogger Beta, using a workaround from http://jcheng.wordpress.com/2006/09/28/blogger-beta-workaround. Though livewriter says it can't retrieve my template. So you can use LiveWriter to post, but it's not as 'WYSYWYG' as it is, when you use say, Wordpress. This is more a Google fault i'd say, for not just using a standard method to allow posting and retrieving posts and categories.

Windows live writer is very nice though, much better than the standard blogger edit window. If you're posting from windows to your blog, you should definately check it out. Especially love the easy way you can now add technorati tags, something that cant be done through the blogger interface, unless you type out the technorati tags, which is a cumbersome process.

Update: A new build (145) now offers correct Blogger Beta support , it even retrieves the correct template.

 

Technorati tags: windows_live_writer, blogger_beta

Organ Sales Thriving in China

Pretty disturbing news from the BBC website. I already heard reports on this subject on the dutch radio, now it seems to be confirmed by several sources. Ofcourse we cant object to any of this, the economic relations with China are more important than some silly human rights.

Technorati tags: China, Human Rights.

Vista revisited

Whether it's stable, easy to use or worth an upgrade might be debatable, but at least it looks pretty ;).

Vista RC1

Pretty extensive review at DrDobb's Journal. This release is quite solid ! Have been playing with it for a short time and it's a whole lot better than what the previous ones I have seen.

Update: Scott Hanzelman's impression of RC1

Technorati Tags: vista

More photos

Published a few new photos I took today on flickr. Thought the one above is one of the best I did so far ;).

Blogger Beta

Logged in today (for creating the post below) and I noticed the Beta link in my dashboard. Picked a new template and fiddled around with the layout editor. It's quite nice actually. You can add custom code, like the technorati and google ads link on the right sidebar. Also you can add RSS feeds from other sides, pick Blogger logos. Basically you add and edit everything since you can just put in text, photos and even javascript code.

So I'd say it's a huge improvement over the older blogger software, this is much easier to customize and it looks good too, some nice AJAX stuff in that layout editor, like the save button that lights up when you made changes that havent been saved !

Ah just after saving this post I noticed there is no longer a 'publishing your blog' thingy, it's posted immediately. Hooray for that !!!

Also you now can label your post, others might call em tags ;). Just to be sure, I'll still add my technorati tags here : Blogger+Beta.

Picasa

Felix

Aug 26, 2006 - 1 Photo

Testing google's photo service with this picture I took using my new camara :). I am also using flickr, as you can see on greendale.tk. This is one of our cats, Felix wondering what I am up to...

Mighty Mouse

Currently I am using a PC and a Mac Mini side by side. Unfortunetely my KVM switch doesnt play nice with the Mac Mini. I had to get a ps/2 to USB convertor to get the keyboard working but the mouse is a no go. So I have two mice sitting on my right side of the desk :). One is a nice Logitech laser mouse, the other one was one of those standard logitech ones. Not bad, but I am missing some buttons and it started to irritate me. I thought that was a good excuse to order a Mighty Mouse for my Mac Mini. I got the one with the cord, the wireless one was 20 euros more and I dont really have the need for a wireless one. I'll quickly sum up the pros and cons, since there are alreay a lot of reviews of this mouse that basically all say the same thing.

Pro:

• Feels good in your hand


• Very precise


• Small 360 scroll button works very well

Con

• Very short cord on the non-wireless mouse, I only just reaches my USB hub


• Side buttons are virually useless, very oddly placed and hard to press

And the software on the cd says it needs 150Mb ?!? What's that all about ?
All in all not a bad purchase, though a bit overpriced, but hey It's An Apple :).

Technorati Tags: Mighty+Mouse, Apple, Mac+Mini.

Writer Zone

The windows live team has released a new application. You can create blog posts from your windows desktop, like w.bloggar or marsedit (for OS/X). It looks very good at the website, I have yet to test it, but it looks very promising.

Writer Zone

Technorati Tags: Windows+Live, Writer+Zone.

Mac Mini Colocation

Found this post at the FreeMacBlog. Apperently they're using Mac Mini's as webservers and they seem to do a good job :). The macmini is powerful enough to be used that way and they take up a lot less space obviously than a 1u rack pc.
The site now also has some tutorial movies about how to set up a macmini to function as a server !







Here is the link to the main site: macminicolo.net.


Technorati Tags: apple, mac+mini

Web 2.0

Found a fun site on web 2.0 at www.web2logo.com. When you click on a logo it takes you to web2list.com, where you see a small review and the logo again.

Passing Moments

Passing Moments
Originally uploaded by thepres6.

While browsing flickr, I found this wonderful photograph. Outstanding shot with the mirror in the water and the wonderful sky !

Here's a link to favorites:

Flickr Favorites

Blogger Beta

As you can read on Blogger Buzz google has released a new version of Blogger with many new interesting features. This article on QuickOnlineTip is nice as well.

Was hoping I could switch over to check out the new features, but No Joy yet ;). If you're really anxious to try it out you can sign up for a new account, but I'll just be patient for the time being !

Technorati tag: Blogger

RIAA Wants to Depose Dead Defendant's Children

That'll teach the darn kids ! Downloading mp3s from the internet ! Not even in Death shall you be safe !

Recoding Industry vs. The People

Technorati tag: RIAA

Windows Vista not ready yet ?

Interesting post on ex-microsoft employee's blog:

http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/.

Too many things are too slow and/or don’t work. I’ve been on the betas of every Windows OS since Windows 3.1 and Vista is starting to feel good, but it doesn’t feel good enough to release to the factory in October. It feels like it needs a good six more months than that, which would mean a mid-year release next year.

I gotta agree with this. I tried the July build that came after the public Beta 2 release from the MSDN network and had quite a few problems. (IE7 constantly crashing being one of them) and the whole felt a bit sluggish on an AMD3500+ with 1Gb. We'll see whether MS will ship it early next year or wait a bit a bit to straighten things out.

Here is another article on windows vista at winsupersite.com.

Technorati tag: Windows+Vista