Y! Messenger 9.0

     I forgot to post this but 2 days ago Yahoo Messenger 9.0 finally came out, no longer just a beta. It features everything 8.1 did ( we even came back to the original smileys) , and supposedly there are no more bugs. Also the guys from Yahoo added an interesting new feature called Pingbox. It's an app that can be embedded into your blog/site/thingy and through which people can send direct IMs to you anonymously, but without knowing your ID.  Nothing really extra added as far as I've seen except a few more color skins. 

      If you're new to Y Messenger 9.0 and would like a complete overview you can find it here!

Cheers

Life Without Walls

      Life without walls is a new marketing campaign by Microsoft. After The Mojave Experiment, MS decided it needed more public time, showing off features and apps to the ordinary PC user. And so they came up with this. The first stage were the commercials with Bill and Jerry that you can see below. Though nobody knew what they really were about, they got everyone's attention and the spotlight back on the Redmond company. The second stage came a few days after, and the campaign got it's name from this. Microsoft is countering Apple's adds ( that seem to focus on the negative sides of PC''s rather than the positive aspects of MACs ) and taking the " I'm a PC" stereotype and showing real people out there who really "are" PCs. It's a great new start , getting a lot of attention for Windows ..not just Vista ..but "the whole Windows story" as someone from MS said. I'm really anxious to see the next stage of the campaign, cause it's been so long since these guys came out with something so cool. 

       In other news a few people have been randomly getting BSOD's on Vista based machines with no traceable reason. Anything from issues with the IPv6 driver to CPU temperature being to high. My bet ( though not yet confirmed) might be an update from MS or more likely from some third party wide spread app. Keep you posted on that. 

This is one of the prints of the campaign.

This is one of the Seinfeld/Gates adds, there's 2 more you can find on youtube.

And this is the part that reminds us that certain people ..should be behind walls..padded white walls to be more precise.

By the way for more prints and campaign movies you can check out this site.

oneConnect by Yahoo ( Y! Mess for Iphone)

             I am really not in the mood to write anything right now, so I'll keep this really short. Yahoo came out a few days ago with a new version of Messenger designed for the iPhone. Unfortunately it only works in the US right now, and I think you might get taxed for some services but I can't be sure cause I couldn't find a way to test it on my iPhone even after downloading it from the US App. Store. The app itself has a nice UI , it uses the SMS service for messages ( at least that's the way I saw it) and has a few other features. You can check out an overview of it right  HERE! ( For some reason I can't link to this site so you just copy paste this in your browser : http://www.ymessengerblog.com/blog/2008/09/10/oneconnect-yahoo-messenger-for-the-iphone-and-a-whole-lot-more/ )

           For the rest of you who are not living in the US/ who don't want to get taxed for extra services , I recommend Palringo, which is a very nice, easy to use and ergonomic app that you can download for free at any Apple app store. Nor does it have any hidden charges, and it works with Y mess, MSN, Palringo service, and a few other widespread social networks.

Day to day

         

                  This is the way each and every day of my life starts :P. Neah I'm kidding, but it's a nice little tribute done by a friend whom I thank a lot. I know all you haters of Vista out there will love it. And it's a prelude to an article about the real improvements of Vista that i've been meaning to write for some time now. Might be ready next week. Cheers

Vista Annoyances Resolved

     This may seem to some as a weird thing to do, something like advertising for the competition. But I never started this blog with the intent to make money, or as someone said leave a big mark. Basically I started this blog because I was somewhat bored of all the work I ocasionally do, going to waste. And another reason was to somehow thank and show my respect to many people out there that know what they're talking about, and have helped me many times.

    Now, what am I talking about: Thanks to Chris Flores from MS, Ihave known about THIS ARTICLE, for a few days but I have never had time to read it until now.

    It's a " breath of fresh air" ( if Skype doesn't sue me , Chris might), bringing an unbiased look at Vista's features, Vista vs XP , implementation rates and all those things that are so often blogged/posted/written/talked about around the net and the IT comunnity. It also features a few tweaks for Vista, plus a quite lenghty PDF file with all kinds of tweaks, ticks and explanations. Best part is Koroush Ghazi ( the author) is very coherent and uses very little tech jargon so that every user may understand it. 

   Again the article is HERE, it's a little long but I believe it's a very nice read.

Update on Chrome

       

     Chrome by Google! Came out , had a run with it, wasn't too impressed. The Tab Manager is a nice feature though but the browser uses up quite a lot of memory. Here's a printscreen from a test I did earlier. I ran IE , Opera, Firefox and Chrome, each had 10 tabs , 5 tabs main site of wikipedia, another 5 running a flash powered game. By the way if you still want to download Chrome they changed the link so you can find it HERE. Cheers

Chrome by Google

   

     After wining over the Internet it was only natural for Google to start thinking about their own personal browser, and sure enough they came up with Chrome. The news was leaked 2 days early in Europe, and on the 1st of September the very famous comic strips came out on blogs. You can find them here. ( you need a pdf reader plug-in to view this)

    So what is Chrome?

   Chrome is Google's take on a modern web browser. It's an open source project and it was developed using the WebKit rendering engine. Today the beta came out, but curiously enough it's nowhere to be seen. All "official" Google download links either give an error or redirect you to Google.com . And there's no mention of the browser on their main page, only this blog post.

    Features

   At first glance Chrome is a very simple, very direct browser with a no-bullshit attitude, much like the google search page. It has most features that any modern browser has, such as tabbed browsing ( and they do it similar to Opera making tabs a primary feature), and plug-in support for such plugins as Incognito ( that allows deletes history and cookies when a session ends).               Another thing to be said about the tabs, is that each tab will be an individual process. Yes it is true that this will most likely use up a lot of memory but it will also make the browser more stable and if one tab crashes you won't lose the whole session. And because this is somewhat multitasking the browser will also have an integrated process manager that will allow you to control each process individually. 

     One more feature that's worth mentioning is the new Java Script engine V8, designed by Google so as to offer support to the next generation of webapps that will come. 

     Last thing to mention is about security. Each tab is sandboxed meaning it can't access anything on the local computer, this is a common safety feature and a very useful one. But it's still not very secure because plug-ins such as Flash Player aren't sandboxed ( though i remember certain browsers did this) and you are still somewhat vulnerable until the plug-ins are updated to work with Chrome's security features.

   Ok so here's a screenshot of Chrome, and by the way the official download page once it becomes available again can be found HERE. Cheers