I think it’s only right that we should pay tribute to Eric Michelman and his invention of the mouse wheel. It’s one of those "why didn’t I think of that" slaps to the forehead.
Category: Computers and Internet
-
What Is Life?
I become increasingly uncertain as to where borders and interfaces lie when I read articles such as this. -
Family Tree Applications
I’ve mentioned before that my brother has an interest in genealogy, and is doing his best to trace our family tree. I’ve recently come across a couple of software applications that aid in visualising genealogical data.First up is Family.Show – a rather jazzy application written for the Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) software that is present in Windows Vista. Actually, it’s more of a concept than a full-blown application. It was expressly created to show off the capabilities of WPF, which is does to quite a striking effect. The source code of the application is freely available, if you want to have a go at extending it.Next is a web-based application, available at www.geni.com. The interesting thing about this is that is it a collaborative application. Both my brother and myself (or indeed anyone else we explicitly invite to join us) can work on the same family tree. This collaboration feature is a terrific plus point. It’s meant that we can each work on building up different branches of the family, as well as correcting errors or adding details to each others’ work. Geni is still in beta, but is definitely usable at the moment. The development team have a blog, and there are discussion forums devoted to the application. Worth checking out if you have an interest in drawing up your family tree. -
BrightEarth: Crisis in Darfur
The Google Earth application continues to be a springboard for new ways of presenting information. Declan Butler, in Nature, describes the BrightEarth project, which is using Google Earth to raise awareness of the human tragedy in Darfur. -
Bug Testing
A month ago, I blogged about the ongoing saga of a conflict between Microsoft’s Windows Home Server and the version of CA Anti-Virus 2007 for Windows Vista. Namely, that a Vista computer won’t boot up correctly when both the CA software and the connector software for Windows Home Server are installed on it. The computer just hangs.I see that today the various reports of the issue from different users, and corroborated by yet other users, have been marked by Microsoft in their bug feedback system as "Closed". And the reason given? "Not Reproducible". This is either evidence that people invent reasons to meet their bug-fixing targets, or proof that Microsoft developers live in a different universe to the rest of us mortals. Colour me as not impressed. -
A Failed Experiment?
Jeff Atwood, over at Coding Horror, has a thoughtful analysis of Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service, and why it might be said to show signs of failure. Worth reading. -
I Feel His Pain
As an ex-IT Architect, I know just what the presenter depicted here is going through… Architecture – a passion for me, pointlessness personified for most of my audience. Ah, purgatory, therein lies your sting… -
The Novint Falcon
Another intriguing computer interface device – the Novint Falcon. Otherland is on its way. I just wish that game designers thought about something other than killing people though. -
Clippy Reincarnated?
Some of you will probably remember Clippy – that obnoxious anthropomorphised cartoon paperclip that came with earlier versions of Microsoft Office. Thankfully, it has now been laid to rest in the latest version of Office. But don’t breathe too easily – the next generation of these assistants has just made her debut on MSN Messenger. -
Monkey Think, Monkey Do
Emotiv Systems demonstrated a prototype of a new computer peripheral recently. It purportedly allows the wearer to think about actions, and for those actions to be acted upon by the computer. Watch the video to get a sense of this. I can’t help but feel that a) the learning/training time is going to be fairly long and b) the response time as evidenced from the video (presumably carried out by trained personnel) is slower than molasses on a cold day. Still, it will be interesting to see what actually arrives on the market. -
The Workaround
Well, after that rant about stupid packaging decisions for Windows Home Server, it comes as something of a relief to be able to say that I had one piece of good luck today. You know that conflict between the Windows Home Server client software and CA’s Anti-Virus 2007 product that I’ve been banging on about? Well, I discovered that there’s a workaround…I was watching a video podcast by Ian Dixon on TheDigitalLifestyle.com when I noticed something curious. He was demonstrating how to restore an individual file from a Windows Home Server backup, and he right-clicked on the file. I spotted that in the pop-up menu there was an entry for CA’s Anti-Virus. Hang on, thought I, how has he got that running on his machine, when he has also got the Windows Home Server client software running as well?An exchange of emails brought the answer… and for those of you wanting to have the workaround, here it is…- Change the startup of the “Windows Home Server Connection Service” service [sic] from “Automatic” to “Manual”
- Remove the Windows Home Server tray application (WHStray.exe) from the list of programs that are started when Vista boots up. You can do this from the Software Explorer in Windows Defender or, alternatively, just delete the link to the application in C:ProgramDataMicrosoftWindowsStartMenuProgramsStartup.
Then you should find that Vista will boot normally. Once you’re up and running, then starting the Windows Home Server console will start both the connection servce and the tray application for you. There you have it…
-
Windows Home Server Packaging
While I’m still waiting for Microsoft to come up with a fix for the conflict between their software and CA’s anti-virus product, I thought I’d mention another oddity about the Windows Home Server software.
Microsoft are saying that one of the selling points for this product will be the fact that your home computers and your Windows Home Server will be remotely accessible from anywhere on the internet. They’ve gone on record with this. Indeed, when I connect to my Windows Home Server over the internet, once I’ve logged in, this is the welcome screen that I see:
See those “Connect remotely to any of the computers in your home” and the “Access any home computer” claims? Sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? Just one slight problem. It’s not true…
What happens when you click on the “Computers” tab in the welcome screen is that you’ll get a screen rather like this:
Look carefully – you’ll see that the computer called Monet has two entries – one when it’s running Windows XP Professional, and one when it’s running Windows Vista Home Premium Edition. And look, the Vista Home Premium Edition entry is marked as “Not Supported”. What’s that all about? Well, let’s click the helpful text just below that reads: Why can’t I connect to some computers? Then this screen will pop up:
Er, hello? Microsoft are telling me that the only operating systems that support Remote Access via Windows Home Server are Windows XP Professional, Vista Ultimate, Vista Business or Vista Enterprise?
Let me get this straight, the Windows Home Server product, the one that is supposed to be for ordinary mortals, not geeks, the one that is supposed to give you remote access to any computer in your home, won’t actually do this if you have Windows XP Home, Vista Home Basic or Vista Home Premium installed on your home computers? You actually have to have XP Professional, Vista Ultimate, Vista Business or, gawd help us, Vista Enterprise installed on your goddam home computers?
I’ve heard some nonsense in my time, but this takes some beating. The whole raison d’etre of Windows Home Server is being torpedoed by a product packaging decision… how stupid is that?
Well, of course most homes will have XP Home, Vista Home Basic or Vista Home Premium. Only geeks buy XP Professional or Vista Ultimate… What really irritates me is that I had Windows XP Professional at home on all our systems, but wanted to move to Vista Home Premium in an attempt to be less geeky. More fool me, I suppose.
I should just add, taking a deep breath after this rant, that I’m not the only beta-tester of Windows Home Server who has gone “What?” at this packaging decision. I see that this issue is now marked as “Closed(Postponed)” on the feedback site, and it could just be that the final version of Windows Home Server will emerge with Remote Access to all your home computers enabled – just as Microsoft is currently claiming, when you don’t read the fine print, that is. Let’s hope so, otherwise Windows Home Server starts to lose a lot of its attraction for me.
Update, November 2007: Well, the final release still doesn’t support remote access to “any home computer”, despite Microsoft still seeming to imply this (unless you read the fine print). I’m not impressed.
-
Let It Out…
… and Vote.Apparently, some kind soul has nominated my blog to the Let It Out campaign run by Kleenex. You can even vote for my blog, should you feel particularly kindly disposed to do so. I feel rather like Groucho Marx, who famously said that he wouldn’t want to belong to any club that would have him as a member… However, I have no shame. So vote for me… -
Twiddling Thumbs Again
Last month, I mentioned in Do I Need Windows Vista? that a number of my hardware devices would either never have software drivers for Vista, or that the manufacturers were still working on them. Six weeks later, what’s the current situation?My soundcards – I have two, one is a Creative Technology Audigy 2, the other is an E-MU 1820M professional audio and MIDI interface. Currently, the Audigy sort of works – it can handle stereo playback, but the 5.1 surround sound capability continues not to function, and the Creative control panel application falls over on a continual basis. Last month, Creative only had Beta drivers released for Vista, but now their "final" drivers have been released (version 2.12.0002), with no discernable improvement whatsoever that I can see. I wrote last month that Creative’s customer discussion forum for Vista issues was glowing white-hot, being filled with angry comments from dissatisfied customers. It’s currently rapidly heading towards total meltdown as far as I can see. Really, Creative’s software quality is a total joke, and judging from the reactions of the forum moderators, they clearly haven’t a clue about customer service either.Turning away for the moment from that disaster, what’s happening on the E-MU front? Well, there’s still no sign of Vista drivers, but at least E-MU has now posted an expected delivery schedule for their software drivers and applications. I see that I can expect to wait a further month for beta versions of the software, and until Q3 for the final versions. Given that early versions of Vista were available to hardware and software developers over a year ago, and that the final version was available three months ago, to see that my E-MU hardware won’t have final software until nearly a year after Vista was released is disappointing to say the least. I’m also disappointed to see that one of my predictions of last month has come true: E-MU will not be releasing Vista versions of their Emulator-X application, I will have to upgrade to Emulator-X2 if I want to get a Vista version. Sigh.The one little ray of sunshine is that, while Steinberg have discontinued their Midex 8 interface, it does appear to work using the Windows XP drivers on the 32-bit version of Vista. It does not work on the 64-bit version of Vista, apparently, so that’s a road that I can’t go down in the future.So now I twiddle my thumbs until E-MU release beta versions of their software. I have to say that I’m also not particularly confident that the beta software will work to any degree. You see, E-MU is now part of the Creative Technology company, and I’ve noticed that the quality of the software seems commensurate with that. Aren’t computers fun? -
Sidebar Gadgets
One of the toys introduced with Windows Vista is the Sidebar – a place where small applications (called "Gadgets") can live and run. I use it to hold a couple of weather and news gadgets, plus a photo gadget that shows photos that I have taken in the garden.
There’s a thriving community out there writing gadgets. As might be expected, their usefulness is often in the eye of the beholder. For example, here’s one for the Harry Potter fans: a countdown clock to the publication of the last book in the series. -
Twiddling Thumbs
I’ve mentioned before that I’m currently testing a beta version of Microsoft’s Windows Home Server product, and that I had a showstopper of an issue on my Vista machine – after installation of the Windows Home Server client software, Vista won’t start – it just locks up.Two weeks ago, the cause was identified – it’s a conflict between CA’s Anti-Virus 2007 product and the Windows Home Server client software. I wrote then that Microsoft were aware of the problem, and that a fix was on the way. I’m beginning to wonder if I might have been jumping the gun. I’ve been following the issue on Microsoft’s feedback forum for beta testers, and some of the responses I’m seeing from the Microsoft side make me wonder whether they’ve really understood what we’ve been telling them.It seems as though Microsoft thinks that we’re talking about their Live OneCare product and its anti-virus capability. Er, no, guys. Read my lips: it’s a conflict between CA’s Anti-Virus 2007 and your Windows Home Server client software. -
The Digital Universe
Via Preoccupations, I learn that there’s a new study been published on the ever-increasing amount of digital information published worldwide and its impact thereof. It estimates that by 2010 we’ll be drowning in 988 exabytes (988 billion gigabytes) of the stuff. It’s sobering to realise that in just 2006 alone, the study estimates that the amount of digital information created, captured, and replicated was 1,288 x 1018 bits. In computer parlance, that’s 161 exabytes or 161 billion gigabytes … This is about 3 million times the information in all the books ever written.Equally sobering is the observation that the lifetime of digital information is very short, so long-term preservation of real information is a definite challenge. -
Denounce
Denounce – not a verb, in this case, but a combined Blog reader and Podcast player application. Well, to be strictly accurate – it’s more of a conceptual application, built to show off some of the new capabilities of the user interface of Microsoft’s Vista. It’s not functionally complete, and it’s buggy; but it does succeed in showing some of the new ways of interacting with your PC.
-
Turning The Pages
I’ve mentioned the British Library’s Turning The Pages application before. If you haven’t seen it for yourself, or are unable to run it on your computer, then here’s a short video that shows it off, and gives the background to the initiative. For the best quality, download the video and then play it, rather than watch the online streamed version.
Geoff Coupe's Blog 