Cooliris 1.5 for iPhone

It's nice to have friends :D Last night I got an e-mail from the CoolIris team. You know I'm a big fan of their product. So they launched a new version for the iPhone. With a new redesigned interface and tons of new features. Here are some of them:

* My Social, a brand new feature with complete Twitter integration so you can re-tweet, follow, and view public/friend timelines
* Search Bing, our News and Entertainment channels, or even Twitter for cool content
* Favorite entire feeds and Wall views to save searches for future viewing
* Search filter options for all search providers



For the full feature list and description, visit their blog. And for a DEMO of the program watch this. Hope you enjoy their product, and if you have any questions you can ask me, or ask the cooliris team directly @ cooliris.com

Security for Vista sp1 / Win 7

In case you don't have either of those operating systems and you're in no way planning to use them then you don't need to read this.
But if you do ..well here's the story.
Along with the first service pack for Vista Microsoft also launched a new set of APIs for developers to use. One of these APIs is used for communication between your Antivirus/Antispyware software and the operating system. Most software developers had implemented and used the older version of the API, but with the release of the new set and service pack 1 they would have to change to the new ones.

Now ..Microsoft gave developers an original 18 month grace period in which both the old and the new APIs would work, but that period ends. ( btw grace period started when you installed SP1 on your machine) Well in september the grace period will ends and yu may start receiving warnings about it.

What it all actually means?
Don't worry your antivirus software will still work, the only difference is that Windows won't know that. Windows will just tell you that " is on but is reporting its status to Windows Security Center in a format that is no longer supported. Use the program's automatic updating feature, or contact the program manufacturer for an updated version". ( screenshot below)

What can you do?
1) nothing because it;s all the same
2) Update your antivirus software as most companies have already implemented the new set of APIs and everything will get back to normal.

Hotspot Shield and other stuff

Seems this is a double-post day so enjoy it.
First of all .. a little something about myself : I love to watch The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report. Two very interesting, funny and most of the times intelligent shows that relax and entertain me. Since I don't have Comedy Central here, I used to download the shows off torrents, but then I discovered I could watch whole episodes on Comedy Central's website. Which was excellent. Well, 2 days ago they introduced a new commercial thingy, from which they make some money, but it also means that you can't watch the show unless you live in specific regions aka the US and Canada. The way they check your location is via your IP. So thanks to someone's comment I tried Hotspot Shield a little program that creates a VPN and basically masks your IP and protects in/out-going data. By using this tiny little program you can now watch those shows and browse more securely.

Second because Vista SP2 was released to manufacturing yesterday, Windows Update now features a new update ..for the updater itself. It's exactly the same thing that happened before the release of SP1, so as to have a smoother install when the service pack gets here. So go ahead and install that . The update is KB955430.

PicLens Again

Edit : PicLens is the former name, the product is now called directly Cooliris :P. Sorry, my bad.

    Luna from Cooliris was nice enough to drop me a line tonight and mention a few words about the new updated version of PicLens. For those of you who are new, PicLens is a nice little add-on for Firefox that transforms any gallery-type site into a really enjoyable experience. So this is what she said. 

    Today, we are especially excited to announce two major developments. First, we are pleased to introduce a greatly enhanced shopping feature. You can now shop online through the sleek and time-saving Cooliris interface on Amazon, Macy's, eLuxury, Beauty.com, Nordstrom, Apple iTunes, Wal-Mart, KB Toys and more! 

    We are also thrilled to announce a new partnership with Kodak Gallery, the largest photo sharing community on the web. They are now officially enabled with Cooliris so you can enjoy your photos on Kodak Gallery in Cooliris style. Sharing and browsing photos on Kodak Gallery just became easier and more visually appealing for everyone!

    So everything sounds just great! ( with the small exception that Opera  still doesn;t support this). By the way this is their official site and you can download PicLens from here.

   Thanks a lot Luna, and good night to all  from Geeky.
 

Quick Update on Vista

I mentioned two posts ago ( approx) that I'll keep you posted on what happens when the grace period for Vista SP1 expires. Well that happened a few days ago and here's what happened.

-> first ..and this was immediate , actually a few hours before it expired , my background turned black. But that was fixed by simply ..resetting the background :)). It might just go black again once I reboot but it really doesn't bother me. Also someone mentioned that Aero will be disabled. Well it;s hasn't so far, it's working just fine. Later edit: it reverts to black after some time ..or after runing a full screen app.

-> second the system keeps telling me ..from time to time let's say once every 30 minutes that I may be a victim of sofware counterfiting. It's not only that I'm a victim, I'm an addict of counterfited software :)) 

-> third thing, when you boot up , after logging in, a screen appears that tells you to register now, and the register later button becomes active after about 15 seconds.

-> this is a curios one: from time to time when i use my cpu for more than just listening to music or refreshing my desktop ..let's say when a play a demanding game, it stalls for a few seconds and then goes back to normal . That has happened a few times and i know for a fact it has never happened before. Now this was not mentioned anywhere in the effects sp1 might have, nor have i heard of anyone having such issues. It might just be that my hard drive is kinda old and maybe it's just failing. Not sure on this one.

-> another curios one: updates still work. Two days after my license expired I downloaded and installed the latest definitions for Win Defender. I really wasn't expecting this.  I read somwhere that usual updates will not be delivered anymore but critical ones will. MS is socially obliged to deliver the critical updates to all machines even if they say they won't/don't/whatever. Right now this seems to be the case.

So to sum up , if you don't mind ocassional small popups ( they really don't bother me and they aren't even on top of other applications) and the fact that you have no background, you can get all the benefits of the SP1 without worrying of anything bad happening ...for now at least.  Whichever way this develops I'll keep you posted. And for any experiences or questions please be sure to leave a comment.

Vista Service Pack 1

      

      Yes it’s true , it’s TRUE , it’s HERE. The new Vista SP1 is here. On March the 18th Nick White from MS announced its release on Windows Update. I found out about it that night. OK, so what did Microsoft promise about the SP? They said it would improve reliability, stability, efficiency, driver compatibilities, and other such issues. What does the SP do? Well mainly what it’s supposed to.

      After about half an hour ( that’s how long the update took) and 2 restarts I had SP1 up and running. I took a look at my win version , and wow major change from build 6000 to build 6001. Good sign, means the sp worked. Second change, you can now actually select which drive you want to defragment ( no I’m serious you couldn’t on the original release of Vista). I’m messing around here but that’s because I haven’t noticed any major changes. The system does seem more stable with certain aspects, and it looks as though there’s somewhat less CPU usage, but I also noticed about 10-15 % increase in RAM usage. MS said that the service pack would bring a 50% increase in file copying speed. Of course that 50% is only possible because with the service pack they fixed some sloppy scripting they had done in the original release. Plus I did a few tests with different files and personally I would estimate the increase at about 15-20% but maybe that’s just me.

      Compatibility with different drivers was indeed improved ( I only got 1 BSOD ever since I installed the SP and that’s with a very curious driver). Unfortunately Vista is hardware scripted, meaning that it is designed for specific hardware much like Mac OS is, thus making possible many compatibility issues. Hopefully by now most manufacturers have learned to test everything with both Vista and XP ( though this should have been going on for the last 1 year and a half) and such issues can be avoided. The problem persists with older hardware that doesn’t have support any longer but that’s a different story.

      So if you have a genuine Vista install you can install the SP and have all the wonderful benefits mentioned above. But what if you don’t ? There were two main hack for vista that made it possible for everybody to enjoy it without paying. One of them was tricking the activation timer into thinking you had 999 days to activate and then just rewind it again. The second method developed by Paradox was to fool Windows by emulating a specific BIOS and then use a specific key code. This would make Windows appear as if had been preinstalled by manufacturers and required no activation. Every update worked, no issues with anything, it would easily pass registration and had no problem with WGA. Well the SP1 takes care of both these methods rendering them useless for the time being. And I did a little snooping around but until now I haven’t found any way to bypass this. So if you didn’t have a genuine install, and you installed SP1 you probably now have 15 or less days to activate.
      The good part is that there is no more “reduced functionality mode” that Vista had. After the 15 days are up you’ll just have a black background, and continuous remarks from WGA that you may be using counterfeit software. That’s all. I’m curious what would happen if you uninstalled the sp after those 15 days. The old hacks might still work. I actually will try that on another computer just for the fun of it.

For the original info on the release of SP1 you can check out this link.

For a list of some of the updates ( but not all) contained in the SP you can check out this link ( I wouldn’t download anything from there, get the original if you want Sp1, it’s free) . If you want a full list you can probably find it somewhere on the MS site.

Questions, suggestions be sure to leave a comment.

Cheers, Geeky.