Livin' the life...

Welcome to the world of surprising patent lawsuits. A Texas judge ruled Tuesday that Microsoft cannot sell Word – yes, Microsoft Word, the cornerstone of Microsoft Office – in the United States.

Toronto-based i4i Inc won an injunction against Microsoft regarding the company’s XML patents. In the words of i4i, the injunction “prohibits Microsoft from selling or importing to the United States any Microsoft Word products that have the capability of opening .XML, .DOCX or DOCM files (XML files) containing custom XML”. Microsoft has been given 60 days to comply, reports Seattle PI. 

...

Needless to say, Microsoft won’t pull Word off the market. The company has said it plans to appeal, and i4i actually sells XML products for Word, making that company reliant on the ecosystem. An agreement will be reached: probably one involving Microsoft signing a big check. (Full story)

That will likely be a very “big check”!

The open source VLC video player has finally reached version 1.0 after more than a decade of development. The popular media player delivers an extraordinary set of features and can play nearly anything. (Full story)

VLC is truly an amazing program, and it is freely available to everyone. *Hats off to VLC!

Google has taken direct aim at Microsoft’s core personal computer software business, with the announcement of a PC operating system to rival Windows.

The system, based on Google’s Chrome web browser, is designed for all classes of PCs, “from small netbooks to full-sized desktop systems”, and will be available in machines from “multiple” PC makers in the second half of next year, the company said.

Google also promised that the new software would solve many of the frustrations felt by users of Windows-based PCs, from slow start-up times to threats from computer viruses. ...

Google said the Chrome OS would first appear on netbooks in the second half of 2010, and that it was announcing the software now because it had already started discussions with hardware makers that wanted to use it in some their machines.

The new software, based on the so-called kernel, or core, of the open-source Linux operating system, had been designed to run Web-based applications such as those developed by Google itself, the company said, making it the first PC operating system developed from scratch for the internet age. (Full story)

This should be fun..

Veteran games developer 3D Realms has closed down because of a lack of funds.

Founded in 1987, the firm popularised the concept of shareware gaming and published the seminal Duke Nukem and Wolfenstein 3D first-person shooters.

The company was working on a follow-up title, Duke Nukem Forever, which after being in development for 12 years has become the object of industry derision.  (Full story)

No Duke Nukem Forever.. ? :-(

Like a thief in the night... IE8 has been released. There has been very little hype, and marketing. Unlike with IE7, I actually had to be told by word-of-mouth, that it had been released. No big ads on Yahoo!, no huge publicity stunts, nothing. I wonder why it’s been that secret. Is it... worth the download? Worth the switch from IE7? Comparable to the now somewhat bulky FF3? As sleek as Google Chrome? Hmm? ... I wonder! Interested in finding out, check the office IE8 site.

Very useful article - 10+ Best Firefox Addons for Security and Privacy !

Extensions undoubtedly have helped to make Firefox the browser of choice for millions of people out there. Well, it seems that Google has caught onto this, and now, coming soon are Google Chrome extensions. I must admit, I don’t really use Chrome, but I’m quite eager to see what extensions they come up with. After all, Google is very well known for its innovative mentality!

Check out more on the Chrome Extensions story here.

5 Great Microsoft Web Services You Probably Don't Use - is a pretty useful article from PCWorld that looks at 5 of Microsoft's better services online. These include Windows Windows Live SkyDrive, Live Sync, Live Mesh, Microsoft Office Live Workspace and Microsoft's Virtual Earth 3D. I suggest you especially take a peek at SkyDrive and Microsoft Office Live Workspace. Enjoy!

Skype 4.0 is out and to me, it seems pretty sweet. They did what seems to be a complete overhaul of the old interface so it may take a few seconds for the keen among you, to get used to. Currently I'm testing out the video quality, but I doubt it will disappoint. Skype has always been my no. 1 choice for voice or video calls (Skype, NOT Microsoft's MSN, I say!). If you are a fellow "skypeR", I advise you to get the new version!

Two days ago I blogged about the security flaw found in IE - a flaw so 'serious' that experts were suggesting people switch to different browsers until it was fixed! Well today I'm posting a link to the fix for that flaw. Some instructions to download the fix can be found here. Happy surfing!

Why “Open Source” misses the point of Free Software - good article by Richard Stallman for anyone who's still a bit unclear of the difference.

Users of Microsoft's Internet Explorer are being urged by experts to switch to a rival until a serious security flaw has been fixed.

The flaw in Microsoft's Internet Explorer could allow criminals to take control of people's computers and steal their passwords, internet experts say.

Microsoft urged people to be vigilant while it investigated and prepared an emergency patch to resolve it.

Internet Explorer is used by the vast majority of the world's computer users. (Source)

Eek?

Whether they HAVE (because of google & ms) to or they want to (as one of the biggest portals online), Yahoo! keep on 'innovating'. Today I'm here to let you know about Zimbra, "next-generation [free, open source] email application" for the desktop (Source). In this right, it's similar to MS Outlook, and Mozilla Thunderbird, but Zimbra boasts more robust features, especially its ability to handle multi-gigabyte storage. Additionally there is an in-built calendar and tagging of mails is supported. One of the best things in my opinion is its use of AJAX to make things all the more streamlined and user friendly.

My only reservation about Zimbra is Yahoo!'s logic behind it. Sure another desktop email client is great, and its especially great that it's FREE, however what's the sense if people who use the FREE Yahoo! mail can't use it? Oh, right, I forgot to say, Zimbra "Works for all POP/IMAP email accounts (work, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail Plus, AOL and more)" (Source). As Yahoo! mail users would know, "Mail Plus" costs £! £11.99/year to be exact. Maybe, Zimbra is a push for persons to sign up for the Mail Plus, who knows... But, all I'm saying is that it would have been nice if Yahoo! had found some sneaky way to pull mail from free accounts into Zimbra, to accommodate its many, many free subscribers.. but alas.. no dice.

On Monday, Microsoft launched Oxite, an open-source blogging platform.

However, the software maker was quick to underline that the product is aimed at developers and not intended to directly compete with popular blogging software such as WordPress or Movable Type.

Microsoft posted the Oxite code on its CodePlex Web site on Friday and made an official announcement on Monday. The software, described as an alpha release, is available under the Microsoft Public License, one of Microsoft's OSI-certified open-source licenses.

Oxite is a standards-compliant, extensible content-management system designed to support either blogs or larger Web sites, Microsoft said. The platform includes support for features such as pingbacks, trackbacks, anonymous or authenticated commenting, gravatars (globally recognized avatars), and RSS feeds at any page level, the company said.

Users can create and edit a set of pages on a site, add customized HTML into pages, and support multiple blogs on a single site.

Oxite is also able to integrate with Microsoft developer software such as ASP.Net MVC, Visual Studio Team Suite, and Background Services Architecture. The project began as a way of demonstrating the capabilities of ASP.Net MVC to developers, Microsoft said. (Source)

hmm.. Something to tinker with!

Google pushing Chrome via Youtube - really, it was only a matter of time... I also note that G1 is advertised on Google.com as well.

If FlickrDown works as it says it does, this is definitely going to be a useful app.

This small Windows application provides a simple way to pull down a large portion of your Flickr photos at a time. You just give it your Flickr credentials, pick which sets of photos you want to download and it does the rest--putting them in tightly organized file folders on your local machine. Sure you could just download the original of each shot from Flickr's pages, but that doesn't scale.

The app requires at least version 2.0 of Microsoft's .NET runtime, which you might already have installed if you're a user of Paint.NET. Also worth noting is that the tool cannot pull down any videos you've uploaded. If you want to do that you should check out a tool called Orbit++. (Source)

For you persons who've uploaded hundreds of photos to Flickr, then suffered a pc crash, you can easily use this to archive those photos on your pc after your reinstall.

With just a few days left before the newest version of the hugely popular Ubuntu i.e. Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex), hits the streets, I've found a list of Linux music players that are rather handy. Check them out here - 15 Linux Music Players. My preferred options are Songbird and Rhythmbox. Enjoy!

Just a few more days now... (cool graphic that countdowns automatically!)

"Apologies - our website is struggling to cope with the unprecedented
demand for the new release 3.0 of OpenOffice.org. The technical teams are
trying to come up with a solution.

Thank you for your patience.
OpenOffice.org download"

This was the message on OpenOffice.org at 12:41am Tuesday October 14th GMT. Just because of this - after all, a few hundred people don't bring a site like this to its knees - I'm quite interested to see what the new release is like. Anyway, it's a free office package, *woopie* for that!

The first mobile telephone using Google's Android software has been unveiled.

The T-Mobile G1 handset will be available in the UK in time for Christmas.

The first device to run the search giant's operating system will feature a touch screen as well as a Qwerty keyboard.

It will be available for free on T-Mobile tariffs of over £40 a month and includes unlimited net browsing.

Other features include a three megapixel camera, a 'one click' contextual search and a browser that users can zoom in on by tapping the screen.

The handset will be wi-fi and 3G enabled and has built-in support for YouTube.

Users will also have access the so-called Android Market, where they will be able to download a variety of applications. (Source)

A few months, no.. weeks ago we got the Google Chrome web browser, now, Google presents Android. The "online Microsoft" I think is a good name for Google these days! You can check out a video that shows the software in action at BBC here.

Based on that video, the G1 handset looks pretty cool. I especially like the Qwerty keyboard compared to the keyboard available on the iphone. Regarding the zooming however, the iphone wins hands down - pinching and tapping is MUCH more gq!

If you're using Google Chrome, Lifehacker's Power User's Guide to Google Chrome should prove somewhat interesting. Enjoy!

Since I got back yesterday, I tried logging in to MSN messenger but unfortunately I was getting the error below..

We were unable to sign you in to the Messenger at this time. Please try again later. To let us try and troubleshoot the problem, click the Troubleshoot button.
Error code: 80048820
Extended error code: 80048416

I tried troubleshooting, and one or two other things but nothing seemed to work! Anyway, this morning, with my strength and patience renewed, I searched the official messenger site and found a fix that seemed to work rather perfectly.. hence the need for this post!

The fix can be found in this article: Error 80048820: You can't sign in to Windows Live Messenger, and the step that worked for me was Check your Windows Internet Explorer proxy settings (i.e. Start IE -> Tools menu -> Internet Options -> Connections tab -> LAN Settings -> Clear the Automatically detect settings check box -> Click OK, and then click OK again).

Yes that's right.. Google now has a browser, and of course it's freely available. Below I've included an excerpt of a very interesting article discussing Chrome..

As of this morning, Google still had not launched Chrome Beta, but it promises to be an innovative piece of software. (We’ll turn around a review soon after it’s posted.) On the surface, Chrome will act like a tabbed browsing architecture similar to pretty much every other browser. But it will treat each tab as a separate process, meaning that if one tab hangs or crashes out, it can be terminated without closing the entire Chrome application. Likewise, each tab will be “sandboxed” to prevent it from accessing files on the user’s computer. In essence, Chrome functions much like an operating system, managing resources and each Web page’s access to the computer’s vital functions dynamically. (Source)

Under duress (*eh hem*), I downloaded Chrome a lot sooner than I would have liked, and my review thus far is that it's an ok lightweight browser. I especially like the ability to see tabs hogging memory and to end them as necessary and, the search function in the address bar (albeit not that extensive).

All-in-all, I'll stick to FF, and probably use this as a secondary browser (IE just always seems so heavyweight!).

PS. I recommend this article - How Google's Simple Chrome Could Steer Web's Complex Future: Analysis - it was well written and very informative.

This is more of a note-to-self, but if you use Gnome, check out these nice desktop icon sets.

Microsoft officials have confirmed that the company is to introduce a way for users to surf the Web anonymously.

As part of the upcoming Internet Explorer 8 release, Microsoft is incorporating 'inPrivate' - a mode that will not record visits to the user's history and will not allow sites to place cookies on the user's system. Apple currently offers a similar service with its Safari browser. ...

There have also been questions raised over the helpfulness of the latest release, which could make it harder for police to track Internet users that are viewing harmful or illegal websites. ...

Obviously the new Internet Explorer will have pros and cons but my question to you is: Should the Internet be completely private or should our movements be traceable? (Full story)

This debate should be quite interesting. Although with Safari already supporting this feature, I guess the real concern about it now is that with IE, it'll be 'used' by the masses.

Nice piece of FREEware. I definitely recommend..

Quick Media Converter is a powerful and very complete Free video and audio conversion software. Converts to and from formats including: flv, avi, divx, xvid, mpeg4, ipod, iphone, psp, 3GP, 3G2, AVI, DIVX, XVID, TS, DVD, VCD, MPEG, MPEG2, MP3, WAV, amr, m4a, mp4, vob, mov, h264, h263, wmv, wma. Resizing Cropping and also Web Cam or DV Cam fluxes capture to avi divx . Batch Conversions supported, desktop activity recording. (Source)

Download here.

It's that glorious time once again, i.e. time to learn new software. The software choices are mainly 'required' for my research so it's nothing too fancy. They are:

LaTeX is a high-quality typesetting system; it includes features designed for the production of technical and scientific documentation. LaTeX is the de facto standard for the communication and publication of scientific documents. (Source) [To use LaTeX on Vista, I first installed Basic MiKTeX 2.7, then TeXnicCenter. proTeXt seems like a good option as well but I'm yet to try it.]

Eclipse is an open source community whose projects are focused on building an extensible development platform, runtimes and application frameworks for building, deploying and managing software across the entire software lifecycle. Many people know us, and hopefully love us, as a Java IDE but Eclipse is much more than a Java IDE. (Source) [To use on Vista and Linux, I downloaded and installed Eclipse IDE for Java Developers.]

If you know any good tutorials on any of these, it would be great if you could share, thanks! :-)

You already know about Firefox 3's marquee new features, but now it's time to dig deep and unearth the shortcuts, tweaks, and even Easter eggs that Mozilla marketing doesn't mention. In honor of today's official release of Firefox 3—at 10AM Pacific Time—let's dive in past Firefox 3's most talked-about feature-set into its lesser-known power uses, tricks, and customizations... (Source)

If you're a firefox 3 user, I recommend you view the full article - Power User's Guide to Firefox 3 

Following up from my previous post on this subject, BBC News reports...

Mozilla has officially made history with a new Guinness world record for the largest number of software downloads in a 24-hour period.

The final record breaking 8,002,530 downloads for web browser Firefox 3.0 took place in June.

"The enthusiasm and creativity of Firefox fans was key to making this happen," said marketing head Paul Kim.

Gareth Deaves of Guinness World Records called it "an extremely impressive accomplishment".

The official figure was confirmed after logs from download servers were audited and checked to ensure duplicate and unfinished downloads were not counted. (Source)

Congrats Foxy!

Probably this would go well on Twitter, but for now...

Right now, I'm downloading Firefox 3.0!

Etymology of A Distro..

"On the flipside of things, there is a whole different world of OS names, some are funny, some are insightful, some are romantic, others are cute, some are too small to fill their creators’ huge egos, and finally some are like their proprietary rivals, just boring. So if you ever wondered what your favorite Linux distro means, you will probably find the explanation here. (or BSD, I know they are not the same but I decided to add to the diversity of this article.)" (Ref)

Great article. I have used Ubuntu and Red Hat. What about you?

"Firefox just reached 500,000,000 downloads. This is an absolutely phenomenal milestone for Firefox. It is sort of hard to imagine what that number means. For some perspective, that’s roughly the audience size of 10,000 Rome Colosseums combined. It would be the weight, in kilograms, of 8,500 Boeing 747 airplanes. In dollars, for $500 million you and 15 of your friends can fly to the International Space Station." (Ref)

Congrats!! (Let's try not to focus too much on unique downloads though folks!)

As it seems that every other person has a Gmail account, but few know its real 'power', I find this article quite appropriate and useful!

Check out the 11 Power Tips for Gmail!

Doing this should be really simple but MS, for some reason has chosen to integrate it with Windows Internet Explorer thus making additions of new feeds counter-intuitive at best. Anyway, to get it loading your feeds of choice, browse to the Windows Sidebar and gadgets (overview) page and scroll down to "How does Feed Headlines work?". After a few steps you'll be up-and-running! Enjoy!

PS. Don't forget to add my blog to your Feed list!!

I blogged about this a little while back but unfortunately this was one of the posts that was lost. So.. here is the article again on how to view Postscript files on a pc. (Main programs being Ghostscript and GSview.)

Also, in a comment, Matt had suggested IrfanView as an alternative, so you can check that out as well - http://www.irfanview.com/.

Here's some cause for concern - When You Mix Firefox And IE, You Risk A Critical Zero-Day Flaw. This applies to web people such as myself and especially developers, that have to have Firefox and IE installed to test web sites/apps for compatibility issues. The article is a bit on the techie side but, it's interesting..

Google Earth's is undoubtedly one of the best FREE, MAP products on the market today. When I was heading to Uni in UK, dad and I used it to find the Uni, determine how far Uni was from my accommodation, plot out routes from my flat to town, friend's houses etc.! Truly, Google Earth is just plain COOL! (That's not only the techie in me talking... .. .)

So.. considering all of the above, my suggested article today is How Google Earth Works from the renowned Howstuffworks.com. It goes through some basic functions of the program, some fun stuff and also shows you how to customise it. I recommend this article for anyone planning on taking a trip (even within Barbados!) or just someone who's interested in Cities, technology or maps. One feature that just blows me away is the 3-D Views.. that you MUST check out! The only concern I have though is.. the amount of free information which is now so easily placed in the hands of .. "bad people".. :\ Mazal Tov to us all!

Heys! As you would remember, I had some problems with my PC lately so I had to reinstall a lot of my programs. In continuing with those installations, today I headed to the Mozilla site to reinstall Firebug (.. helps a lot in my JS debugging).

As I browsed though the listing of Add-ons searching for Firebug, I stumbled upon what I consider a pretty cool addition to the FF list of beauties i.e. Cooliris Previews.

I could ramble a bit about it here as I do with most programs however I think that I'll let the official site handle that job. I really don't think I'd do it justice.

Anyway, it has my full recommendation! (until I find something amis ..) Well done Cooliris Team!

Wait... as I read a bit more on the Cooliris site, I noticed the following statement, "We are about to release the IE7 version for Previews." (Ref) ! IE users, be happy! (Darn.. this IE thing messes up the topic of this post.. oh well.. ) 

Well, I've been looking around for my usual 'Monday Morning Funny' but thus far I've been able to get a vid/pic/story which fits the requirements.. I'll keep checking for a bit more though, so noooo need to worry!

This weekend (that just passed) I was head first into getting an old and very limited VB 6 IRC client I found working on the .NET (2.0/3.0) platform. So far progress has been pretty ok, but I definitely admit its going to take serious time to built a worthy client! First, one thing I'll have to do is understand the IRC protocol after that, I'll start to pick apart this code and see exactly how things are handled then... I'll move from there.. This is IRC client is going to be my... 'pet project' for a while. Look forward to more updates! I think it shall roCk!

And no sooner than I was back on IRC guess what...

*** autokilled for [AKILL ID:1165524776K-a] Due to abuse from this host, you are no longer welcome on DALnet. See http://kline.dal.net/exploits/akills.htm for more information. (2006/12/07)

And I don't remember doing anyyyythingg wrong.

Btw, Antonio, that reply was cheeky! :@ .. kicking a man when he's down.. how uncool! You should be ashamed of yourself!

From the beginning I've had some fascination with IRC so since there seems to be interest by others to revive the bajan channel #sponger, my goal was to get me a good IRC client to participate in the madness.

Now, as I consider myself a thoroughly 'legit' user, downloading mIRC (the most popular IRC client) wasn't really an option because after the 30 day evaluation period, the trial version 'expires' and you're _supposed_ to register and pay $20 USD. (A fee I don't intend on paying.)

What were my other options? Well, to find out I headed over to download.com. There I found lots of clients buttt, none that matched what I wanted. I was more looking for a lightweight client that just had the basics, you know.. allowed me to chat in multiple channels easily, do !ping, *slap someone with a large trout (*haha), etc.. So with that source as a bust, I headed this time to my 'pal', google. This source didn't prove too good either as I just found a bunch of suspicious looking proggies... (however... I did find a good open source VB 6 client, if only I could've gotten it converted successfully to VB.NET! )

Cutting to the chase... I happened to mention what I was looking for to a pal of mine - enter Antonio. As a Linux-variant user... his first suggestion was (the Windows version of) B*tchX - the most popular IRC client for Linux users. So me, the trustful guy I am, headed over to the ftp site and 'copped myself' a version. After some initial struggles with the command line interface, I got it to work and now I'm set! Its similar to mIRC but just pure command line.. If you're looking for a free IRC client without all the bells and whistles, I recommend you check it out! Here's the URL and here's the FTP site.

Now this is something I've always wondered about - Can one access GMail/Yahoo! mail via an email client such as Outlook or Thunderbird (a free mail client from Mozilla). To be honest, in doing my own little research in the POP & Forwarding section of Yahoo! mail, I thought it was not possible unless one had the paid service eg. Yahoo! Mail Plus. 

This morning that topic came up again whilst I was chatting with a friend and he indicated to me that it is actually quite possible (thanks Andre!) using Thunderbird! So when I logged on to my pc, I immediately googled it and found what seems to be a really nice article on how to set it up. Admittedly though, I haven't tried it yet but it does seem pretty do-able.

Anyway, here's the article and you can use this link to get Thunderbird. Enjoy!

Sometimes, I really, reallllllly like Open Source... They really hit the nail on its head at times. Two great examples being development of PostgreSQL (an alternative dbms to MySQL) and who can forget, The Red, Fiery Fox.

Interesting, almost all the "IT savvy" folks I know use FF. Also, I remember during my last stint at uni, using FF was the norm (that's right not IE - that was IE 6 though).

Ah Open Source..., I wonder what shall become of you.

So both of the "big guns" in browsers have released new editions. Who's better? Who's worse? What's worth getting? What's worth leaving on the download server? CNET gives its take and what I consider a pretty OK review. Check the link below for more.

CNET PRIZEFIGHT: Internet Explorer 7 vs. Firefox 2

PS. Hopefully soon I'll be linking to another review that's more "close to home" (ie from someone local and who I know is pretty practical) as I'm trying to get Antonio at Tech-Barbados to give his take on both browsers as well.

This morning I came across a rather strange occurrence with Firefox (FF) and I thought I'd share just in case either of you had the same problem. Basically, what was occurring was that whenever I loaded FF 6 tabs would open linking to sites I had opened sometime yesterday. I mean, even if I shut all 6 tabs, one by one, and closed the browser and reopened it, the same 6 tabs would open!

Hoping for a solution, I went though all the settings and even IM-ed a couple of buddies online, everyone, including me was clueless! So by now, I'm getting a bit frantic as to what's going on... so something tells me to just press the Home button. When I did this, I recogised that another 6 of the same tabs (with the sites) loaded again! HMM, soo by mathematical deduction I noticed something must be up with the Home button... because also, when Firefox loads, it opens the 'home page'.

After studying this a bit more I recognised that somehow I had set the Home Page to MANY pages i.e. the 6 URLs that kept loading! Now, I didn't even know that you could set a Home Page, to more than one page, interesting concept really... just may be useful... So just in case this problem ever happens to you, you now know how to fiX it!

OH, by the way, to get a Home Page as more than one page in FF, use "|" as a separator... i.e.: http://www.jasonnurse.com/blog|http://www.google.com/firefox?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-USfficial

NB. I tried this in IE 6, doesn't work. Probably if it does have this functionality at all, it doesn't use that separator.. OR, probably it'll magically appear in IE 7...

Just got a nice IM from SimplyDBee, reminding me how "cool" and accurate Google Earth can be. As a result, I took her lead and loaded the program and after about 2mins found my house (as one can see circled on the left - sky view & vertical layout).

Then it hit me, this will be excellent to give directions! So the next time some one wants to come by, they will be getting a screen shot! In the left there you can see my house with as good a quality as Google Earth currently supports.

If you're among the 10% of Internet users in the world without this prog, I suggest you get it, it's quite innovative and FREE.

In working with asp2 lately, I've made it my business to make sure that I test sites with both Internet Explorer (IE), the world's leading browser and Firefox (FF), what I consider, the fastest growing browser with reference to use. Sad to say, this just gives me headaches. Most of the people who've tried to develop a cross-browser sites would know what I mean.

Now I mean, I understand that different companies may want to render content in what way suits them best but if this is the case what's the purpose of the W3C ?!? Is it not to develop and encourage a clear standards track by which companies can develop programs (or in this case browsers) that all render/deal with content in the same manner?

Also, I thought the difference was between IE and FF only, however, I checked out Opera lately and that too renders a bit differently. Now I mean, all 3 can't be following the standards, two must be playing around, even if only at least a little... I sympathise with Web developers greatly who have to deal with this problem, because I've had to stomach it for a couple days now and I just .