7 posts tagged “software”
The Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 update, pushed through the Windows Update service to all recent editions of Windows in February 2009, installs the Microsoft .NET Framework Assistant Firefox extension without asking your permission.
This update adds to Firefox one of the most dangerous vulnerabilities present in all versions of Internet Explorer: the ability for websites to easily and quietly install software on your PC. Since this design flaw is one of the reasons you may have originally chosen to abandon IE in favor of a safer browser like Firefox, you may wish to remove this extension with all due haste.
In addition to all that, it's not compatible with Firefox 3.5 so it's been disabled and they haven't bothered doing an update. Even worse, the extension has prevented users from uninstalling it so it just sits there looking stupid. It's possible to uninstall this junk after some lengthy registry editing, instructions here. I don't understand how any company, be it Microsoft or Apple or anyone else, to think it's okay to install junk on your computer without asking and then make it a nightmare to get rid of it by manually editing the system.
Set up Synergy for some cross platform Keyboard/Mouse sharing so I have the iMac sitting next to my two other panels.
I don't know how I ever survived without Evernote, I used to dump a bunch of files to my desktop, random stuff gathered mostly from the Internet, not knowing exactly where to file all this stuff. Now, I simply dump it all into Evernote and let its auto-indexing do the work so when I'm looking for something, all I need to do is search and it will find as I type. It'll even use OCR to search text within photographs and images so I can snap a photo of a receipt and find it later by the contents of the photo!
Installed RC1. about:robots. Awsum!
Like iTunes? Use Firefox? Run Windows, Mac and/or Linux? Then you'll probably like Songbird.
Songbird™ is a desktop Web player, a digital jukebox and Web browser mash-up. Like Winamp, it supports extensions and
skinsfeathers. Like Firefox®, it is built from Mozilla®, cross-platform and open source.
This could be good for music discovery, Internet streaming radio and online music stores. I especially like how you can browse for your favourite artists and simply drag and drop tracks from the web right into your library. I'm not sure if that saves the track to your library or just the stream, I'll have to play around with it some more to find out. It's still early in beta development, but should be rolling out in 2008.
Oh... and the obligatory Vox in Songbird screenshot:
Ubuntu Linux aims for 6 month version release schedules with constant updates on a weekly basis. However, Ubuntu's first reported critical bug still remains on the list...
I finally dipped my toes into Windows Vista (not as my primary OS. Yikes, not brave enough for that). At the moment, I haven't installed any peripheral stuff yet. I'm sure I'll run into all sorts of compatibility issues with various third party hardware and software that people have been reporting, but I'm optimistic. It did detect all the hardware on the computer so that's good.
It does have a better networking feature and it's prettier. Security is nice and "allow, allow, allow" hasn't bothered me yet, especially since I do the same on Ubuntu Linux and OS X. I don't like the new Start menu, makes it slow to browse though if you have a lot of applications. The sidebar and gadgets were fun for about 5 minutes but then it got annoying. It didn't do anything particularly useful, took up a huge amount of screen space (can't autohide) and is really just a poor rip off of OS X's Dashboard widgets.
Worth upgrading? There are some nice improvements with Windows Vista, but it feels more like a tuned up version of Windows XP, much the same way that Media Center was. Just small, incremental improvements, but nothing profound. I can't help but feel that Microsoft over-promised and under-delivered on Vista compared to all the wonderful things that were promised with their Longhorn preview. If you're happy with Windows XP, stick with it. If you bought a new computer with Vista stick with that. But I wouldn't go out of my way swapping one with the other. Windows Vienna is targeted for 2009.
By the way, I was just going to hit the save button on this post and noticed that my Vista box just crashed. Then it keeps crashing on the login screen and finally got back in on the third try. *Sigh*
