Interesting stuff, and since they have a new application/utility every day, it’s worth going back over and over again. I’ve installed a few games here and there, but today’s giveaway is DiskInternals’ Uneraser (normally $39.95). It’s a full version, and there’s a little online-only unlocker, which doesn’t seem to have any nasty sorta payload (that I can find), so they seem to be legit.
Not bad. Not bad at all.
Geekin’… sorry for folks who were reading me for the warm fuzzies.
So, I’m writing this from a machine that’s running the *REAL* honest-to-goodness Vista Ultimate. Downloaded from MSDN a mere two days ago. I’d played with some of the Betas and Release Candidates, and for the most part kept thinking “Yeah, it’s sorta pretty, but I don’t really NEED any of this stuff.” It’s mostly true, too, ’cause for the most part, I could make my XP machine look like Vista, and could add a sidebar with or without gadgets/widgets, and since Office 2007 runs just fine under XP (so far, except for the new “x” that appears on the end of document extensions – hope that means everything’s a nice recoverable XML format, ’cause that might make it worthwhile for once again having backward compatibility issues).
I’m still wary of MS after the stunt they pulled with Word 97, which claimed to be able to save in Word 95 format, but didn’t… It would save in “RichText” format, which would lose all *sorts* of formatting and chewy goodness. They didn’t fix it until after people started noticing that the document didn’t appear to be the same when saving as previous verison (like Law Firms like to do). Whooopsh.
Outlook is still using the single-file PST/OST format for storage though, which will keep data recovery folks like myself in business for a while (sorry St. Aardvark, your Very Good Idea wasn’t incorporated into this version of Outlook).
But what does it all mean? What’s the point of a new OS, and a new Office? Is anyone actually going to USE the new feature sets in either of them? As a Desktop Engineer (there’s the brave young souls on Helpdesk doing triage, there’s the slightly slower moving, but more dangerous rocket-launcher-carrying Desktop folks, and then there’s the snipers in the unmarked helicopters like myself and my cubemate), there’s a lot of new stuff to learn and implement to allow the Development Teams do their thing, but not be able to completely hoop themselves or the network. We also (due to Sarbanes Oxley rules) have to have a process in place to make sure they’re not pirating stuff from other gaming companies or music houses.
So this new version? Complicates our lives at work. All of our lives. There’ll be the people who will bang their highly-skilled knuckles on their desks until we roll out the new OS, even though half of the applications and pipelines they rely on (and have, in some cases, built themselves) WON’T WORK on the new system. It’ll create more work for them, in the long run. At least pre service pack 1. The one good thing it does that I’ve seen so far that XP couldn’t do?
See more than 2.75GB of RAM. Now maybe you’re reading this on a machine with 128MB or something, but for developers of HiDef gaming “experiences,” or Accounting folks who’re working on spreadsheets for a multi-billion dollar company, the might RAM rules. Being able to put 6GB of ram in a machine and have the OS actually, y’know, USE it, is pretty cool.
…and yes, I know Macs could do that before the cavemen learned how to bang rocks together.
Put that under your mouse and click it.
It was recently pointed out to me that I’d been nominated for the Canadian Blog Awards in the category of Best Sci/Tech Blog. I asked aloud why this was the case, I was reminded of a few of the geekier things I’ve posted about in the last… while or so…
Let’s recap a little (ooh, ooh, a clip show!):
We’ve got programs that makes phones call other phones, taxidermied robotic owls, optical mice and turntables *do* mix, iPods minus the iTunes, awesome bluetooth iPod remote headphones that crack in half three weeks after you get ’em, elderteapots and yell-controlled blenders (both in one post, too!), sites you don’t click on, network drive mapping problems (my MOST popular post ever, sadly), video/audio fragmentation performances, wicked-looking games that never actually get launched ever, me writing about DNS and Active Directory the way some blogs write about food, Google putting yoni in my bible pocket, going on an absolute TEAR regarding LG’s marketing video made in 2001, commenting on Boogaloo Shrimp (from Breakin’ and Breakin2 – Electric Boogaloo) and then having HIM SHOW UP in the comments on my very own blog, hassling the guy who put Princess Leia in the GoldBikini (it’s okay, I work with him), finding secret messages regarding a certain digital audio format in my can of Edwards coffee, our cat smuggling LEDs in her ocular cavities, guys playing a cover of “Total Eclipse of the Heart” while ruining a number of kitchen appliances, fighting with a whole bunch of people online over who gets to spell what with fridge letters, insane robofish, the Rohypnol version of “Who’s On First?”, carrying a midget around as a cryptographic tool, and who could forget “Why a deep focus in my temporal lobe makes me hate Kirk Cameron in specific, and religious zealots in general.”
So, yeah… It’s been a long and weird trip these last three years…
Thanks to whomever nominated me, it’s nice to be reminded why I write any of this stuff down…
For any of the folks out there who use their Blackberry, PalmPilot, Treo, or cel phone (ouch!) to surf Teh Intarwebs, you’ll find that this blog now detects your miniature screenage and adjusts accordingly, throwing out all the pictures and flash-based doohickery.
…and no, it doesn’t look any different from a “real” browser, so don’t ask. Livejournal readers? You’re going to be vaguely confused by this post, so just spin on, Holl.
Want your WordPress-Based blog to do this, too? Tough. Try this link.
After the first welcome page, you do NOT have to click anything…
Bit of a brain bender at first, and then you get used to it pretty quick.
Maybe one day, the next big thing will be the NO-button mouse.
Or “How I went from a long-haired zippy geek to a motivational speaker in just Twelve! Short! Months!”
So, for any of you that know me, you’ll not be surprised that I’m the kinda guy who finds Tony Robbins kinda freaky. Same goes for any of those folks carrying around those manpurse (murse?) Day-Timer things with the removable pages and the pen holder on one side, and the PalmPilot pocket on the other. They just give me the willies. Both the people who push the stuff, and the people who use the stuff. I’ve always thought I’m too much of a cowboy to use any of the “How To Organize Your Life Into Three Coffee Cups and an A-Team Lunchbox” sorts of articles. I remember using Lotus Organizer for a while in ’97/’98, and I felt like I could still maintain some sorta street cred because it was LOTUS (not Microsoft) and it was electronic, not paper. Who was I kidding? Just look at that thing.
Cute, the rest of this post disappeared.
Yaaaaaay…
http://www.joystiq.com/2006/09/02/the-coolest-video-youll-see-this-year/
Someone crammed 1,000 cars into a physics engine. It’s sorta freaky beautiful, and I wanna know what kinda hardware was running that demo (which looks much smoother in the screen that the above pic may lead you to believe).
There’s probably not too many of my readers who’ll remember this application from when it first came out, but Bryce 5.0 is now free for download (the latest version Bryce 5.5 is still about $100).
Wanna make shiny balls that hang in the air, and huge burning planets in the background, like this one?
Get your Bryce on.
{via DownloadSquad, which is like mana from Heaven for a “God of Small Apps” like me}
I don’t know how long they’ll keep it free, but www.hullo.com has released a beta of their foray into the VOIP arena. You can give it all of your phone numbers (I’m just waiting to see if they start spamming me with marketing calls or something), and you can dial out to land lines for free (for now, at least).
The UI isn’t TOO attrocious, either:
One major difference in the way it works though:
BOTH parties are phoned by the system when you place a call.
So, if I’m calling you from Hullo, I punch in your number in the program and hit connect.
My phone rings. I answer.
Your phone rings. You answer.
See what’s different?
The computer doesn’t handle the VOIP traffic – it only deals with the call management. We BOTH get to use our “real” phones.
It also does neat things like let you switch from a call at your desk to a cel without having to do the “let me call you right back” thing.
Very cool. Free, for now.
No more wearing those goofy-looking headsets.
Oh, and the Caller-ID comes from Quebec, so this might not work in all areas, but it is pretty neat for now.
So, I’m playing with the mind-gobblingly well-done new theme [Visitered Little] on my WordPress (go [here] to see it, if you’re reading this via RSS or LiveJournal, or something).
What do you think?
Now I just need to find a picture that I took that I want as wallpaper.
