Windows 7 already beating Vista in Performance Test.
Many people have heard that Windows 7 is going to be coming in the next couple of years and the beta is coming out soon (though there are leaks.) From the start Vista has been a slow and fat resource hog that has not been accepted as well as Microsoft would like.
In the IT / Technology world most everyone is striving to make thing faster and better; as you will see in this article by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes of ZDNet explains Windows 7 looks very promising.
Couple of High points in the test:
- Faster boot times
- Better performance in 3 out of the 4 benchmarks he did.
He does state that this is a prebeta and performance could change, but he also says that compared to the vista beta, this is much better.
I’m excited 
Wordpress 2.7 – Love It!
Just uploaded 2.7 and I love it! back-end looks awesome. I am using the QuickPress feature right now. Looks great! I will give my full review later.
I have been playing with 2.7 for a little bit now, I have not read the release notes yet but so far so good. First thing most everyone will notice is the admin panel. The design of the back/admin panel is great, very refreshing. Drop down menus that are js, give a very smooth feel to using the navigation. Plugins seems a bit different is shows you recently activated that have been deactivated.
For the couple of ours I have used it, I have no complaints, and I would suggest this upgrade to everyone.
Image adding is nice, you can click on the image when your posting and resize it with %
Wordpress.org really did a great job!
Open Source Tuesday – “Linux”
Intro
After thinking of what to blog about today, I decided to do a theme for Tuesday’s and make it Open Source Tuesdays. If you do not know what Open Source is and would like to know more about it go to Opensource.org. Basically Open Source are free programs developed by a group of people that think all software should be open to the public. One of (if not) the largest community that makes and develops Open Source software is the Linux community. So I figured I would first talk about Linux, and what is it? how do you use it? and is it right for me?
Linux – What is it?
Honestly I could write all about it and what it does and how its made but other people have done that a ton of times so here are a couple of links.
That should be all you really would want to know about linux. But in a nut shell Linux is mainly used as a replacement OS (Operating System) for windows or mac. So instead of using Windows XP or Mac, you could use a Distro of Linux. What is a Distro? A distro is like a Brand or Flavor. Some people like chocolate ice cream some people like vanilla. Personally I like Kubuntu, its very easy and user friendly. Kubuntu is part of the Ubuntu family. The K and Kubuntu stands for KDE which is a desktop environment. I know your probably thinking what is that!?!? Its basically how your windows look, and how your menus are setup.
Bustaname – Best domain name tool Ever!
Over the past year I have been using this wonderful tool to find and create domain names. Today I thought I would blog about it and show how it works.
What is it? and How does it work?
Bustaname.com is basically a tool used to find domain names that are still available for purchase. An example of this is: Your company name is Happy Joe’s Pancake House and your looking for a domain name that is best suited for your company.
Your search would look something like this:
as you can see it takes all the different words and tries the different combination’s of them, some will not make sense and that is probably why they are still available. If you do a three word search you will find that JoesPancakes.com is available and that would probably be the best fit. So you click Buy and you can either buy it on the site with a number of different registrars or use one that you like.
Adrive – 50GB of Storage Online Free
ADrive.com – 50GB of Free Online Storage! Sound Good? I think so.
To be honest I have never heard of this company before today, I just saw some one else talking about it on the web and thought I would give it a try. They offer 50GB of storage for free, but only you can access the files. I has an option to share files but I have not tested that yet. From what I have seen so far, the free account would be great for students that dont want to lose their stuff or for people that would just like to have a backup of files in a different place (not a bad idea.)
What I have seen so far
So far it looks great, its all ajax driven for a nice sleek 2.0 feel, seems a bit sluggish on some refreshes but that could be my Internet connection (WiFi.) Files are not sent over https but over http, but it does ask for you to accept a cert, so dont really know how secure the Uploading is. They allow subfolders and allow multi-select, so you can click browse and select 5+ files at a time, very cool.
Other Plans they offer
They offer a few different plans that cost money but for online storage its a great price. The $7/month plan offers a couple of nice additions, SSL for security, 24/7 support, no ads, diverse backups and some other things. Though its still only 50GB, still not bad, 100GB starts at $13.95/month and you can go all the way to 1TB for $131.95
So for now if anyone else would like to give it a try I would suggest it. I’ll keep you up to date on how my trail of it goes.
Technorati Tags: adrive, online storage, useful sites
Scribefire – Blog client for Firefox
First off I would like to tell you all that, if your not using Firefox your missing out on one of the best Internet browsers ever!
That being said, Firefox has the ability to use add-ons that will help with doing everyday tasks. One task (well not really a task) that I like to do is work on websites and blogs. That’s where Scribefire comes in.
ScribeFire
Scribefire is a nice tool for editing blogs with in firefox. You can browse the web, look up site and still have scribefire at the bottom so when you find what your looking for, you can write what you need to or pull the pictures you want with out switching windows (I love that!)
HDRi (High dynamic range imaging)
Over the past week I have been learning about HDR Imaging (High dynamic range imaging) and find that the effects are great. There are many different tools that you can use to do this. The one that I prefer is photomatix, its about $100 but works awesome.
What is an HDR Image?
HDR Imaging is a way to take multiple exposures and combined them to make a more dynamic image. Couple of examples of before and afters
As you can see the change in the picture is very extreme.
This image shows that you take a number of shots at different lighting and use a program to combined them.
You can find out more at wikipedia
ICANN is going to Open a CANN-o-Worms!
ICANN: “Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers”
Has released this
“Biggest Expansion to Internet in Forty Years Approved for Implementation
26 June 2008
Paris, France: The Board of ICANN today approved a recommendation that could see a whole range of new names introduced to the Internet’s addressing system.
“The Board today accepted a recommendation from its global stakeholders that it is possible to implement many new names to the Internet, paving the way for an expansion of domain name choice and opportunity” said Dr Paul Twomey, President and CEO of ICANN.
A final version of the implementation plan must be approved by the ICANN Board before the new process is launched. It is intended that the final version will be published in early 2009.
“The potential here is huge. It represents a whole new way for people to express themselves on the Net,” said Dr Twomey. “It’s a massive increase in the ‘real estate’ of the Internet.”
Presently, users have a limited range of 21 top level domains to choose from — names that we are all familiar with like .com, .org, .info.”
My take on this
Seems like this could have allot of good and bad effects to the internet and to Domain markets. I think I should start with the Good though my gut wants to start with the bad.
Some Good
- Create more suffix’s making it easier to find great smaller domain name (example: jd7.blog, jd.mac, jd.geek)
- Creating less demand for .com .net and .org so more companies wanting to use good names with not have to pay $10k for a domain. And less people (like myself) will use suffix that are not intended to be personal. .org is for organizations not really for personal use.
- May bring prices down because the supply is higher (supply and demand)
The Bad
- Many patental lawsuits: “Trademarks will not be automatically reserved.”
- Very Confusing for the average users
- More Phishing sites (suffix’s like .comm and .nett will most likely show up.) paypal.comm will most likely confuse people.
- More squatters with show up. buying all great domains name with different suffix’s like google.search and Microsoft. …
- Prices for .com .net .org and others will most likely go up allot, because they will be more in demand.
Like I said before there will be some good and bad to come of this, I just really hope ICANN thinks this through allot before the release in Q2 2009.
Let me know what you think on this subject, is it good or bad?
VirtualBox
VirtualBox.org
One of my co-workers told me about a product called Virtual box about 2months ago, I first looked at the site but never used or tested it. Since then I got a Mac Book Pro and wanted to run windows on it as well but didn’t not want to pay for Parallels. I have been wanting to test out vbox on the Mac and finally got to last week.
Requirements:
- Will work on almost any Desktop Platforms (Linux, Windows, OS X, Solaris… )
- Very Small footprint. ~23MB, compared to VMware being 170MB+ Download.
- The more RAM you have the better off you will be.
- 2Ghz CPU is recommended depending on what the guest OS is.
- Disk Space, the more the better but I recommend 10GB for a XP install.
One of the best features is shown in the screen shot below.
Its called Seamless Mode, you can run Mac OS X apps and windows apps next to each other (or which ever host and guest you are running.) Right now I have Mac OS X host on a Macbook Pro with XP as the guest. For most of the Guest OS’s there is a guest additions for drivers and to make it work seamless. All and all the full install of Virtualbox, guest os (XP), and the additions took less than an hour.
Current Uses
I am using this to test out XP installs and updates like SP3, IE8, and Branded IE7. One of the other great features you can use it making Snapshots of the current install and revert back to the time you made the snapshot. It even has the windows and programs running at that time.
I will post more on this great tool later, as I use it and find problems and/or limitations but so far so good!
Yard work…
So this weekend I planned to work on the yard and get everything looking nice to start the summer off right. Couple of things I wanted to get done was plant the tree better in the front yard, work on the edging, mow, fertilize, and setup the sprinklers. I first headed out to Lowe’s to get the fertilizer and some stuff for the tree. I don’t understand why everything that your trying to find is not in the most common sense place to put it. Trying to find would steaks for the tree, you would think it would be with the trees or with the wood, nope its way in the back of the garden dept, as far away from the trees as you can get. Sigh! One nice thing was that the fertilizer was right next to it. So then I start to wonder (for all the guys out there, you know what I mean) looking for what ever looks new and shiny. Didn’t really find to much or at least it wasn’t in the place where I was looking.
So after a little wondering I leave Lowe’s and head back to the house after loading the car up. Got home and started working on the Tree, we got a Cherry that comes up to about my waist, its small but it already looks great. I steak the tree in with the wood and twine I got, and put some more tree soil making sure to make the bowl shape so the water stays better. Then mowed the yawd and did the trimming, while I was doing the trimming I noticed that the gates were all messed up so I pulled them off and set them aside on the house. The fence was given to us for free so I don’t mind making some repairs (beats building a whole new fence.) After the trimming was done, I got the fertilizer out of my car and started filling up the hand spreader and did the whole yard, hope it helps, I need to get the grass fuller.
All and all I spent 4 plus hours working on the yard and got really really burnt. I am a (shall we say) really white boy, I don’t tan, I just burn and peal. I think the house really looks great now, my family and I have been living in it now for over 2 years, I have only been married for 3 years. Here is a Picture of the house now after I did all the work.
