T-Mobile Sidekick in Danger
Well, truth to be told this had to happen at some point. According to the good folks at Engadget, T-Mobile has most probably lost the data of their customers' Sidekick phones. The T-Mobile Sidekick is a device that relies heavily on cloud-computing and simple things such as looking up contacts or reading old text messages are done through servers in the cloud (that is to say, in the Internet). So if these servers fail for some reason, or more extremely (like it happened) lose all the data they contain, then the end user is pretty much screwed.
I hope for the sake of the costumers that the data isn't just lost; I would have also hoped that T-Mobile had off-site, offline backups of all this stuff but that clearly does not seem to be the case. It is also up to our imagination whom to blame for this. Of course that for all the people affected by this problem, T-Mobile will be the one to blame, but whose fault was it in the end? Is it a bug in the servers? Will it happen again? Has it been patched?
Doesn't really matter now but here's the morale of the story: ALWAYS keep backups of your data.
Windows 7 – Adjust Aero Peek Delay
Having recently tried Mac OS X and all of it Exposé and Spaces goodness, I couldn't help but to notice that Aero Peek feels like a complete rip off of the Exposé feature. Don't take me wrong though, it is not a critic. I am of the opinion that progress can only be made if we pick the best bits and pieces out of everything that is out there and put it all into one package. So while Windows still has a long way to go on user experience matters, I see this as a move forward.
Still, Aero Peek came with an annoyance for me: it takes too damn long! Basically, when you activate Exposé on a Mac (either by having a shortcut or by hovering over a hot corner) you instantly get to your desktop and can see what's underneath - with Aero Peek this takes at least one or two seconds which isn't ideal for me by any stretch.
With that in mind, and since there does not seem to be that much documentation about this yet, Microsoft allows you to adjust that delay time with some registry hacking. To adjust the delay, do the following:
- Open regedit (Start -> regedit -> press enter)
- Go to the key HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Explorer \ Advanced
- Once here, create a new DWORD (32 bit) entry with the name DesktopLivePreviewHoverTime and set it to whatever time you'd like in milliseconds. I found that 100 works best for me but I will leave that at your own discretion.
Now I'm back to testing Windows 7 RTM - have a good one!
Windows 7 RTM’ed
Yes, that's correct. Windows 7 was officially released to manufacturing and this version should be available over the course of the next few days.
Here's the comemoration video the guy at Microsoft made to celebrate the launch:
For the whole release schedule, hit up the Windows Team Blog.
Was Windows Vista a mistake? Not really!
With the advent of Microsoft's latest operating system, the Windows 7, many people have come to state that Windows 7 is Windows Vista done right. Well, excuse me tech whizzes but as an IT professional myself, I beg to differ.
Windows Vista was a massive stepping stone in Microsoft's history. It was the first upgrade from the ever so loved Windows XP, that admittedly had its flaws at birth but it grew to become perhaps the most stable operating system that Microsoft had built until then. It is lightweight and to prove that we have the netbook market share that is dominated by Microsoft.
Now, we have to be analytic. What did Vista bring to the table when compared to XP? In a very brief and sketchy approach, it brought cleanliness to the user folders (no one really liked the spaces in 'Documents and Settings'), it brought UAC that albeit poorly-loved, it brought with it a great layer of security, it brought some driver modifications including a redesigned sound-stack and these last two put together with the bloated memory usage, made Vista Microsoft's bastard child.
Well, when you look at it closely, pretty much every Vista driver will work on Windows 7, including the soundcard drivers. UAC is also part of Windows 7 and has been partly redesigned so that it isn't so naggy. Still, my bottom line is that when switching from XP, Microsoft was always going to get complaints. When you add security, people will complain because the system is more restrictive. When you add features that change the way people interface with the computer, people will complain because we have an inertial nature and are typically against change.
However, now that Vista was Microsoft's escape goat for all the changes that simply had to be made, Windows 7 can come in its shinning armour and save the day. Because Windows 7 is so much better than Vista, even though it's actually Vista, just lighter.
Office 2007 SP2 reduces interoperability – tough luck?
Jeremy Allison over at ZDNet has just posted an article where in a nutshell he states that Microsoft broke the interoperability of the ODF format between Office 2007 and other implementations of this format. According to this gentleman, the guys over at Microsoft are mean little bastards because they implemented the ODF standard verbatim. Whoa, whoa, whoa little Timmy!
Last I checked, there was a war going on towards Microsoft because they were mean chauvinistic bastards who insisted on not making Internet Explorer more standards compliant, because the standards were the way to go and anything other than the standards just breaks pages on browsers that implement the standard. I totally agree with this point, but by the same measure, I have to disagree with this ODF quarrel.
With SP2, Microsoft implemented the ODF specification to its fullest. Then there are other implementations like OpenOffice's that have additions to the specification, but that aren't part of the standard! Yet, it is Microsoft that people come out to the streets to criticize, and not the people who engineered a poorly designed standard. Please, don't take me wrong. I am also against OOXML, but that doesn't mean that the alternatives are perfect and perhaps Microsoft is just proving a point amongst narrow-minded people who don't care for a little reasoning.
Want spreadsheets to properly support formulas in ODF? Make it part of the friggin' standard! Don't expect Microsoft to deviate from the standard for interop's sake, especially now when you have before criticized the company for not being standards-compliant.
My bottom-line is: who is to decide whether a standard should be implemented in a strict manner or not? And to which extent should interop efforts be made? All in all, if Microsoft designs interoperability towards OpenOffice, it might just break things with another Office Suite that decided to implement things differently.
The First Flaw in Windows 7
Hold your horses, this isn't a flaw per se. There isn't a massive hole in Windows 7 that allows the execution of malicious code. Instead, there's a legacy feature that has been around ever since Windows 98 (maybe even 95, but that I do not know for sure) that is used by virus writers to fool users into executing their viruses.
The feature I am talking about is the ability to hide the extension for known file types. This comes enabled by default on XP and Vista and it was not addressed in Windows 7. Basically, as Adrian over at ZDNet reports, with this feature enabled, a file with 'double extension' can easily be fooled for its fake extention. For example, a file named Report.txt.exe will automatically have the '.exe' extension hidden, and to the eyes of the less computer-savvy it can easily be mistaken for an innocent Report.txt file. Moreso when the creator of the virus is careful enough to add an innocent notepad icon to the malevolent application.
To be perfectly honest, I agree with Adrian. This is a feature that I disable right after I install Windows. More often than not I find myself having to change the extension of a file, and it's impossible to do so with this feature enabled and without resorting to the command line.
This feature is dangerous and it has been the gateway for many viruses to spread. Adrian also suggests adding some sort of overlay to the icons of executable files that aren't digitally signed - this is an incredibly good idea. Maybe something glarey as the icons of running applications on the new Windows 7 start bar. If properly done, this could be flashey and would cause a good impression on end-users, both visually and safety-wise. Personally, I would remove the feature altogether and leave it off - and please, without the possibility of working around it on the registry - but that's just my two pennies worth of opinion.
Have a good one.
Windows 7 RC out – maybe
Alright ladies and gentlemen, the announcement is out: the first (and hopefully only) Release Candidate of the newest, mind blowing, operating system from the folks at Redmond is out. Or is it really? There's a Microsoft Partners' page announcing the event and I say that that's as reliable as it gets.
According to said page, the RC should be available right now for MSDN and TechNet subscribers but well... it ain't. The same page also announces that a global (and I guess, public) release will be done on May 5th which is actually pretty close in time.
My guess is that we just sit and wait, and that within the day, this RC will be made available on the MSDN downloads page. Or so I hope.
Finally, this release is more coherent with Ed Bott's speculative timeline over at ZDNet which places the Windows 7 RTM release on late August of 2009. At this point, we just wait and see - being a 7 Beta user, I am happy and borderline ecstatic to get a RC release so soon. Way to go, Microsoft!
Courtesy of Neowin.net
MSDN Premium Subscription
Yep, that is right indeed, I have one of such babies. Privileges of being a Microsoft Student Partner huh? It does have its downturns as well though, such as when I go out of my house, there's a massive crowd waiting to get my autograph and to interview me... (not really...)
But that's just it, just wanted to share my shiny new subscriptor card with you readers and have you envy it. Yes, now I have Vista Ultimate for free, and who knows, maybe Windows 7 too, when it gets out... 
My apologies for having gone through a period without posting at all but, my life has been undergoing some maintenance (all for good, I assure you! but won't get into specifics) and therefore I haven't been coming here as often as I would like. This is however going to change and so, expect to see more regular posting from now on.
See you soon!
Windows 7 goes official
That's right, this will after all be the official name of the next Windows version. According to Mike Nash on the Windows Vista blog, Microsoft is sticking with the simple name Windows 7, therefore cutting with the "aspirational monikers" that they have used in the past like Windows XP or Vista.
The same person writes that this is the seventh release of Windows, hence the naming Windows 7.
Another source tells us that a pre-beta version of this new Windows will be distributed at the Professional Developer Conference, set to take place on Los Angeles on October 27th.
Microsoft Dreamway 2008
This Microsoft event is taking place on October 3rd, on Lisbon at the Centro Cultural de Belém, and guess what? That's right, I will be there 
thanks to being an MSP I get to attend the event without having to pay a dime. Neat huh? Can barely wait to see Monke.... I mean, Steve Ballmer on stage with all his energy .
Here's the schedule I picked:
8h30 - Welcome Coffee
9h15 - Dev01 - Software development: The current status and future trends of technological development
10h15 - Coffee Break
10h45 - Dev02 - Creating rich applications using Silverlight 2.0 (2 sessions)
12h45 - Lunch
14h40 - Keynote
Dreamway: Microsoft today and tomorrow, Steve Ballmer
IE8: pushing the web forward, Miguel Caldas
16h00 - ITP04 - SQL Server 2008 as an enterprise grade database platform - How to manage and provide robust, reliable, scalable and innovative solutions
17h00 - Coffee Break
17h30 - Dev09 - Windows Presentation Foundation: How can we take advantage of this technology to improve the user experience
So, yeah, it's my first event of the kind and I'm hoping it will be a great experience to learn 
I'll keep you readers posted on how it goes.
