Yesterday, I saw this awesome teaser for Google Chrome. The innovation and creativity in this clip is just mind-blowing.
Archive for the ‘Review’ Category
Windows 7 on my VAIO Z
15
Nov
Yesterday I upgraded my Windows Vista Business to Windows 7 Ultimate. And I have to say, it made a real difference.
First of all, the waking time has shortened by lots. When I wake my VAIO Z530N laptop from standby, everything is just there; no waking up message, no delay, nothing. And resuming Windows from hibernation is also a lot faster. With Vista, it took about 2 or 3 minutes to actually get the system running. With 7 it is less than a minute.
And top all of that with cool new features lake "shake", "snap", "pin to taskbar", "live taskbar", etc. Paint and WordPad have also been equipped with the new 2010 Ribbon.
All in all, I don’t regret having updated it. The only thing I have a problem with right now, is my built-in MotionEYE webcam, which is not recognized by Windows.
Zoundry Raven: A Blog Client
13
Nov
Hi there.
This is my very first post from a stunning tiny – okay, not so tiny – tool named Zoundry Raven.
System Tray
One cool feature of this program is that it lets you minimize it to your system tray, and post to your blog directly from there.
Media Storage
Right now, I am trying its different features. It’s really cool and even allows you upload your post attachments to a multitude of different upload repositories – like Flickr. It also allows you to define your very own FTP server.
Spell Checking
Also, it has a native spell checker. You only have to select your desired language – if available – and allow it to download the dictionary.
Offline Content
It can manage your posts very well, and also builds a tag cloud based on your posts. While still in beta, it shows a promise of becoming a force to be reckoned with.
Rich Toolset
It also has a toolbar which makes it very much suitable for writing to WordPress weblogs.
Image Editing
It also allows you to seamlessly create thumbnails for any image you insert. A lightbox can be set to be automatically inserted into your posts for these images – however as I already have a lightbox plug-in installed for my blog, I have not put this feature into test.
Here is a preview of its automatic thumbnails:
XHTML Editor
In the XHTML tab at bottom of the screen, you find yourself face-to-face with a neat editor, which in addition to source code highlighting, features an HTML code completion toolbox.
What it lacks …
What it lacks right now is the possibility of writing an excerpt for your post. Also, sometimes it stills shows you that it is still in beta. For example, if your connection goes jerky while it is uploading a picture, it will not complaint, it only adds a messy URL to your images source attribute.
Also, when you send a task to the background, you won’t have it in sight any more, and to make sure it has finished without problems, you have to use the application’s main menu. In this regard, I would prefer something like what Eclipse does with it’s background tasks.
What’s more, as a tool designed for hardcore writers, it should put more use into the keyboard. I really don’t know why these UI engineers are so afraid of giving out a lot of shortcut keys.
Conclusion
Otherwise, I can say I am pretty excited to be posting to my blog like this. However, one thing I’m a little concerned about is the subtle way in which the homepage states the possibility of this utility becoming a shareware. On the "Software" section on Zoundry’s website you can read:
Raven (new and still free!)
It might be a misunderstanding on my part, but hey, I’m kind of paranoid about this stuff!
PS: After restarting the computer, something rather strange happened. Raven wouldn’t start and I had to reinstall it. Right now I’m not inclined to reboot again just to check if this is a real bug or not, but if I find it to happen again, I’ll report the incident here.
Google to become the new phone company?
12
Nov
Seriously. Does one really need to conquer all fronts to become satisfied?
I don’t know, but I don’t think I will be using this one from you, Google.
Have you people ever seriously thought about the consequences of giving so much information about yourself to a single company? Google can monitor my blog posts, it can gather information about my group activities, it saves a history of my searches, it has a list of my friends and associates using Orkut, it archives my personal conversations with my friends, it holds my documents on its servers, and it keeps track of my interests over web by its RSS service. I’m not saying everybody does all that with Google, I’m talking about those Google geeks who are obsessed with everything provided by Google.
Well, I’m not a pessimist and I don’t propose that Google actually spies on people. I’m just saying that with so much information available to one, one would be a fool to not use it. Again, mark what I’m saying, I’m not saying that Google uses this information in a dishonest way or is involved in any underhanded business. What I’m trying to say is that it isn’t a very good idea to keep all your eggs in one basket, that’s all.
All said and done, here is a much more positive article on the subject of Google’s probable phone service: Google Poised to Become Your Phone Company
GNOME Shell: A Sneak Peak
05
Nov
Hi all. This is my last post – hopefully – with my Toshiba Satellite, which is a borrowed laptop. I’ll be getting back my own Vaio-Z laptop tomorrow after about 90 days, and already my fingers are itching to touch its smooth and easy keyboard.
Anyways, as I am going to give this laptop back tomorrow morning, I installed the new Ubuntu release, Karmic Koala on it. It runs very satisfyingly. Of course, I’ve not had the time to really test things in it, but almost everything works out of the box, and the boot time is a real boost. I was skimming through GNOME live, as is my habit, when I saw the article title GNOME Shell. Now, I searched a bit here and there, and found out that it is actually supposed to replace the original GNOME desktop by GNOME 3.0.
To test it under your Ubuntu, you have to install it:
sudo apt-get install gnome-shell
Then, you have to run it as a replacement for the original GNOME desktop:
gnome-shell --replace
After that, you will see something like this:
As you can see, there is now only one panel available, and it’s placed on the top of the screen. There are two main hot spots on the panel:
- On the left side you can see the “Activities” button,
- On the right side you can see the user menu.
Hovering over (or clicking on) the “Activities” button/area will bring up the Overlay view, a full-screen view which will give you some interesting new ways of interacting with your PC. It looks something like this:
On the left side, you have a flat sidebar featuring a search box, an applications’ pane, a places area, and a recently opened files list. On the applications pane, you can use the “More” button to see something like the old Applications menu in the traditional GNOME desktop. On the right side, you can see the “Overview” area which gives you an overview of all your workspaces and all the applications running on them.
All in all, it has a rather neat design and shows promise of a more innovative desktop. However, it is still ways from what Jeremy has proposed. Also, I think the whole top panel is a waste, as it is. I have seen it being put to very good use by the netbook-launcher application which uses it as the common area for the maximized windows’ title bars. Also, with GNOME shell we cannot switch between open windows without the keyboard and without going to the Overlay perspective, which can be amended by placing the icon’s of these application in the top panel.
This shell also features a sidebar, which is very much a work in progress. In fact, I think of it more as a draft of something which might become available in a future not so near.
All said, I like it. It is creative, it is simple, and man, it is cool! And I’ll definitely be looking forward to working with it when GNOME 3.0 is released.