June 2006 - Posts

0DAY: Messenger Plus! Live Released!

With the release of Windows Live Messenger 8 a few days ago, Patchou has finally released the highy anticipated Plus! Live release. Download a copy today!

Favourite of mine is the Tabbed Chat Windows feature that means that we no longer have MSN Windows cluttering the taskbar... Theres stacks more features just waiting... Then try out all the cool scripts compliments of the testers to take Plus even further!

0DAY/VISTA: Windows Vista build 5456 released, please update your vista installs!

A quick post to mention that Windows Vista build 5456 was released a few days ago, if your running vista download the latest build from MS Connect or your preffered source and update/upgrade/reformat-reinstall/go-nutty-nuts! If you know anything about Windows builds, this is a major new build (thats over 70 builds of Windows since the release of Windows Vista Beta 2 which was build 5384.4!).

Free Image Hosting at www.ImageShack.us  Vista Downloading Kinda fast!

Recall how I mentioned that newer builds of Vista have a toned down UAP system? Well this build is one of those funky builds, along with several fixes to the DWM subsystem(you may even notice its a whole lot faster now:D), regional & timezone fixes and many misc problems reported. Existing product codes for build 5384.4 (atleast it should!).

Other Updates from AeroXP post include:
  • Windows Aero Mouse Icon-set
  • Listview is back after the betatesters devoted the past 8 months toward complaining about it not being there.
  • XBox360 does not work with 5456 as a media center extender
  • UAC has been tweaked to not be as demanding of the user as it was in Beta 2
  • The system clock is no longer butchered by Vista when the timezone is changed.
  • many more bugfixes
Enjoy! Right now because not many are downloading I'm reaching 300-400Kbps on average with peaks at 600Kbps for short periods, so grab it before the entire world cause another round of bandwidth spike because of Vista!

Beta 2 is still ontrack for a May release, however it seems WinFS may have had the axe:-(

Update:
I forgot to mention that this release is *only* for MS Connect Testers or if your apart of the TAP team, MSDN Subscribers and CTP/CPP folks may not get this build showing up. This release is also a staged build:)

0DAY: Opera 9.0 Released!

Far out another 0day release, this time its the beloved Opera browser which has moved to v9.0, still the fastest browser on Windows and with this release I can finally start using it alot more than i have been in the past (it seems to be a lot more compatible). I'm getting tired of having to work-around firefox's issues, its a good browser but having to constantly Kill Process + reopen (SessionSaver helps) every so often is giving me the sheeeeets. If only Opera or IE7 had as many good extensions as FF does now...

PS. This release is HotHTML 3 browser friendly too, from FixPack 1+ Opera, Firefox and IE builds are auto-detected:-) Vista Update: I'm nearly finished the QA areas of FixPack 6 so hopefully early next month I can release the update to make HotHTML 3 fully Vista compliant (beta-2 & RC0 atleast). As its written for the previous generations of Windows(rather the current) there are a few thing's I've had to break to make it work nicely (but I'm addressing those now!)

Download Opera 9.x final!

0DAY: MSN Messenger, i mean Windows Live Messenger 8.0 released!

After over 6 months of public participation (and even longer internally) MSFT have finally gone live with MSN Messenger (oops I mean Windows Live Messenger) v8.0, the official MSFT Download site seems to not work (file non-existent) so heres an alternative download link from the main site.

Its impressive (as always) but i still dont like it eating away ~48Mb of ram (I have about 400 or so contacts of which only 62 are online right now) so I'd hate to think what would happen if *everyone* was there... I love the find contact/number, people change handles too many times so its easier to type their email in and find them... Now just wait till Patchou releases an update to MSN Plus and the Mess.be guys release a patch for the new build and i'm set.


VISTA: Massive bandwidth spikes, should they have used Avalanche instead?

It seems like alot of people are having trouble downloading Vista, the sudden swarm of downloaders overwhelming ISP's and servers (should be costing MSFT a nice bundle too from Akamai) but I feel MSFT could have done a bit better than this.

By better I mean adopt a p2p mechanism of delivery (or even offer this method as an alternative/addition) and by that I dont mean bite the bullet and move to BitTorrent (legal issues will plague that) but go to the Avalanche team that rolled out Whidbey builds a while ago to share the distribution load.

Its a great (in-development) tool that could be used for RCx builds in the future... just a suggestion;-) To learn more about Avalanche and its development, see the official Peer-Assisted Content Distribution page.

VISTA: Windows Vista public release, now you can all go and download it!

Windows Vista is now available for the public to download (no more resorting to p2p for most of you, or bugging me about it - you know who you are:p )

Size wise its the same build testers got a few weeks ago, weighs around 3Gh and you'll have x84 and x64 build images with the option of English, German and Japanese builds. Akamai (also what we use at Vividas) have their own download manager to help you grab the builds. As for unique product keys, Barty's blog has the scoop or follow the MSFT Windows Vista Preview Instructions. So now dont bother reading those articles on Windows Vista, go ahead and download it. In a few days (time permitting) FixPack 6 for HotHTML 3 will go live with fixes for Vista.

Remember its a beta (although its gone through alot of testing) theres still quite a few bugs, I've been running Vista as my main desktop box for a while now but unless your prepared to go through some hard crashes (not too bad these days) its better if you run it off a VM (VMware/VirtualPC) or maybe (maybe!) partition your HD and run it off your existing box (heck try it on a spare/old box and see what happens!)

One thing I *know* everyone will complain, moan, whinge, whine, post-on-slashdot-comments about is the User Account Protection (UAP) stuff... relax.... RCx builds have it toned down.

Office 2007 and PDF support no more...

As you may have already heard, Office 2007 will not provide PDF Support out of the box, to quote Brian Jones:
source: http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/archive/2006/06/02/613702.aspx

About 8 months ago we announced to our MVPs that we would provide PDF publish support natively in the 2007 Office system. We made the move due to overwhelming customer demand for PDF support, and it was received really well. The blog post I made around the announcement was probably one of my most widely read posts of the year.

Unfortunately, it doesn't look like we're going to be able to do the right thing for the customer now. There was a news article in the WSJ today (and now on CNet) indicating that Adobe didn't like that we provided the save to pdf functionality directly in the box, and so they’ve been pushing us to take it out. I'm still trying to figure that one out given that PDF is usually viewed as an open standard and there are other office suites out there that already support PDF output. I don't see us providing functionality that's any different from what others are doing.

It looks like Adobe wanted us to charge our customers extra for the Save as PDF capability, which we just aren't willing to do (especially given that other companies already offer it for free). In order to work around this, it looks like we're going to offer it as a free download instead. At least that way it's still free for Office users, but unfortunately now there is an added hassle in that anyone that wants the functionality is going to have to download it separately.

Its a real shame, its a feature that's been missing for quite a while, and as soon as they implement it it gets thwarted. Hopefully they will endup releasing it as a free addon when Office 2007 RTM's, but if it doesnt, there are alternatives but its nice to have an official one by default. More on the XPS vs PDF can be found on Andy Simonds blog.

Buy a piece of Australia - Queensland infact

Remember the million dollar pixel rage back a few months (several even) ago started by a student? Where you could *own* a piece of your own internet history? Then all the similar-but-not-the-same-and-yet-unique sites popped up offering similar offers or those infamous books on how to get-rich-quick-and-maybe-get-broke-trying?

Well now it seems the greeny folks at Green Globe have done the same, only in true down-under-style giving away a 1 square meter of Australian soil for a low-low price of USD$39.90 (Does that include GST?) but wait theres more!

You also get:
  • A personalized Deed of Grant of Land, which proves ownership.
  • A Certificate of Title, which indicates the exact location of the property.
  • A gift card with your personal message.
And if that wasnt worth it, you'd also be helping restore the natural "sub-tropical forestry that used to cover this part of Queensland"...

Unlike harbouring the biggest load of spam-sites/junk sites (there are some good ones true) that MillionDollarPixel page is, your actually getting something decent... heck if you ever come down under to visit the theme parks you could drop in to your piece of land, maybe setup a tent (1m by 1m) like those toilets on construction sites...

Vista: See Windows Vista and more reviews

MSFT have launched a new site dubbed SeeWindowsVista to show case some of the upcoming Vista features and some cool stuff third-parties are doing with it. Take a look, its one of the few sites (run on Flash 8) that I would recommend, one think I detest/hate/loath is how sites tend to over-use Flash to make sites look "pretty" but not "functional". I'm talking about complete websites written in flash not just a front-banner in flash etc.

If you want a closer (much closer) and intimate look at Vista theres no better read than the recently posted review on Toms Hardware, this covers everything you'd want to know about Vista and its changes, as an addon heres another article on DirectX 10 and the future of gaming some may find interesting. Right back to revision for me...

LINUX: Ubuntu 6.06 Officially Released!


A Quick note while I am revising for Lan Principals *again*, the lovely boys and girls at Ubuntu have released the highly anticipated 6.06 release of Drapper Drake a few hours ago. Mirrors are still being updated but there are several download sites already available