From the official IE blog over at MSDN, Microsoft has announced that they’ll be pushing IE8 out the door via the Automatic Updates feature of Windows XP, and Vista. Users of the archaic IE6 and the soon to be ancient IE7 will get an ‘optional’ welcome screen asking them if they want Microsoft’s new browser hotness.
If you want to keep it retro and roll your old browser, Microsoft will simply nag you forever (as they should) about the new browser as an ‘optional’ update.
The most curious part of this announcement was that Microsoft will be releasing an “blocker” app which will allow system admins, and networking administrators (and other geek folk) to block the automatic roll out of IE8.
I think it’s pretty obvious that this is necessary (and also quite smart thinking by the folks at MS), but I think it speaks volumes to the differences between a small nimble company like Apple and Microsoft. Everyone is wowed by the small guy’s ability to shed the past and blaze a new trail, not ever thinking about the ones that are left behind. Microsoft’s approach is inclusive, and respectful to all the dinosaurs out there running the old stuff.
If you’re like me and you still have a few machines running good ol’ reliable and trustworthy (I keed, I keed) Windows XP than registry tweaks and optimization guides for XP are a very handy thing. Sure Vista is the new hotness, and to be really cutting edge I could publish information on how to tweak the registry of Microsoft’s newest OS. But I’ll play it safe and show you some tips on eeking every last bit of performance out of that old XP machine of yours. Kellys-Korner dot com has one of the best write ups for the Windows registry and it’s many tweaks I’ve seen in a long time. Totalling 399, you’re sure to find something useful in this guide.
Desktop two dot com is another application in a long list of online OS replacements competing to get a piece of this new market. The idea is that instead of your native OS like Windows Vista, Mac OSX or Linux, you’d run Desktoptwo, which is a purely online operating system that runs using Flash and Java.
The pros to this setup are a truly mobile and modular operating environment. Accessible from any web connected PC. The downsides or cons to online operating systems are the fact that they currently depend on an Internet connection (something that isn’t quite everyone yet) and also that it requires an existing operating system to run.
I’m going to repeat that last con so it sets in a little, “you need an existing operating system to run the online operating system”. This is a big con, and until PC’s can be built and deployed with a bios/light OS, online operating systems will remain a niche product reserved for uber geeks and specific users who require an online OS.
Social, Software — Josiah on October 23, 2007 at 1:39 pm
Torrent Freak has the good info on AllPeers which is a free extension for Firefox bringing socialness and BitTorrent to the masses.
Here’s a video snippet which mentions AllPeers (towards the end)
From Wiki…
AllPeers uses open source BitTorrent technology to facilitate file transfer.[1] The extension does not require any ports be opened. AllPeers encrypts its communication using standard protocols like SSL so as to protect the user against 3rd party intervention listening in.[2] AllPeers at the start its beta launch was 200,000 lines of C++ and JavaScript code.
Even though this post from TC is rather rosy, and the response over at CenterNetworks is a little harsh, I’m going to come down right in the middle here and say that texty has a fighting chance … albeit a very small one.
The idea of creating content and being able to embed and manage it using a central system is very interesting. But as CN points out, many lame platforms like MySpace won’t allow embeddable code and as more old media invests in new media we might see that trend increase. If you avoid the MySpace like you should, then texty could work for you and the popularity of embeddable widgets is booming right now.
Texty is a dead simple but useful new internet service that you can use to quickly create and edit content on a web page with zero HTML or programming skills.
Go to the site, start typing text in a WYSIWYG editor, format it and add images. Click a button and get an embed code. Your text will appear in whatever website you add the code to. And if you want to make changes, go back to Texty and edit it. The changes will flow to whatever sites you’ve embedded it on. You can also add comment functionality to a piece of text, and create a RSS feed.
News, Software — Josiah on August 4, 2007 at 9:38 am
iPhone app news gets all the major press, and Gizmodo is hosting a rather popular (on Digg at least) story about the first Native Third-Party iPhone application. Check out the link to the post below for some YouTube video action.
Google Code is hosting the first third-party native application ever for the iPhone. A realfull-fledged iPhone application with a graphic user interface and its own icon in the iPhone home screen. Yes, this is not a Web 2.0 app but the real thing, as you can see in the picture and in the video demonstration after the jump.
I mentioned clipmarks on Twitter a while back and have always thought it would make a great “rapid publishing” tool for full time bloggers. I’m going to give it a shot, and to lead off this experiment is some info on Amazon’s FPS. Not first person shooter but Flexible Payments Service.
I’m not sure yet what it means to bloggers but I’ll be watching.
Amazon Flexible Payments Service (Amazon FPS) – Limited Beta
Amazon Flexible Payments Service (Amazon FPS) is the first payments service designed from the ground up specifically for developers. The set of web services APIs allows the movement of money between any two entities, humans or computers. It is built on top of Amazon’s reliable and scalable payment infrastructure.
My primary computer platform and operating system both at work as a web designer/developer and at home as a web developer and blogger is a PC running XP Pro SP2 (haven’t made the jump to Vista yet). However I do a lot of my blogging on an old G3 iBook running OS 10.2.4 Because of the age of the hardware (built in 2001) I can’t upgrade the OS, but it has exposed me to the world of OS X and given me some respect for ‘the other side’.
Today I found some software that will allow you to record video with your Mac camera, without having to buy the expensive QuickTime Pro software. The application is called iRecord and is available free of charge by Eric Brunstad of Mind Sprockets Software. Here’s the blurb from the very simple and elegant website:
Want to make recordings with your camera? Don’t want to buy QuickTime Pro? iRecord is your solution. Just open iRecord, and video recording is as simple as pressing the red button. Take a quick photo by dragging the picture to your desktop. iRecord is the pure, Mac-way to capture video. Better yet, its free. Donations are requested.
Check out Mind Sprockets other software as well as they offer some handy applications that you may find very useful.
