A Welsh View

Anatomy of a Tweet

A tweet is more than just 140 characters. This diagram shows what's behind each tweet.

Creative Google Chrome Advert

A creative advert showing the features of the Google Chrome browser.

Five Weird iPhone Apps

Today Apple announced that the iPhone App Store now hosts over 100,000 applications including these five weirder ones. I can't believe the list didn't include  the ones that involve using your tongue.

Welsh ‘Phrase Book’ Launched For iPhone

A new Welsh phrase book, Learn Welsh, has been released for the iPhone. The phrase book is the first of its kind and is divided into twelve themed sections that include greetings, common phrases, food and drink, and travelling.

As well as seeing each word, users can hear a pronunciation. There is also a feature that allows uers to test themselves as they learn.

You can purchase the app here (iTunes Link) for a bargain 59p. (Press release)

Photoshop SpeedUp Optimises Photoshop Startup Time

Photoshop SpeedUp is a little freeware app that allows you to choose what is loaded when you run Photoshop starts. [via]

Windows 7 Interfaces You Nearly Had

Techradar.com has posted some original sketches and screenshots showing how Windows 7 may have looked. According to Steven Sinofsky, Senior Vice President for the Windows and Windows Live Engineering Group, there were over 400 sketches for the desktop experience alone.

Windows 7 Tips and Themes

Have you tried out the beta of Windows 7? I've only used it as a virtual machine but it seems fairly stable, boot quickly and isn't as annoying as Vista. If you have, here are 10 tips and tricks including a few must-knows (be careful with MP3s)

Related: Lifehacker has some information on how to get more themes for Windows 7. It's nice to see one featuring a village in Wales.

Windows 7 Beta 1 Leaked

Slated to be released at CES in January as with most things digital, Windows 7 Beta 1 has been leaked onto the Internet. If you want to try it out for yourself you can get it at the usual places (#) or you read ZDNet's review (w/ screenshots). [via]

Get ZoneAlarm Pro Free

To celebrate its birthday, Checkpoint Software is giving away the pro version of ZoneAlarm absolutely free for 24 hours. To get download the software visit this link before 6am PST tomorrow morning (2pm GMT).

I used to use ZoneAlarm a long long time ago but didn't get on too well with it. I'm sure it has improved since then and it was rated as one of the top five firewalls by the readers of Lifehacker. [via]

Google Earth Released For iPhone and iPod Touch

Google has released a version of Google Earth for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The application takes advantage of the accelerometer and all of the regular iPhone features such as 'pinching' and 'twisting'. The application can also add links to Wikipedia entries and photos from Panoramio.

As I'm using an iPod Touch I can only test the application over a Wi-Fi connection but it is quick. I'm not sure how well it would work over a 3G connection.

You can read more about the application at the official Google Earth blog and download it from the iTunes Apps Store for free here (opens iTunes).

Video: Windows 7 Videos

ThinkNext has posted some screenshots and videos of Windows 7 (M3 Build 6780). At this stage, there is nothing groundbreaking and 'new features' include a lightweight version of Media Player, the integration of the ribbon UI into WordPad, a more complex calculator, a sticky notes application and no Sidebar (at least not in this build). [via]

Master Photoshop In A Week

New to Photoshop? Here's a crash course that shows you how to use the main tools. I think I'll have a go at the Pen tutorial - no matter how often I try to master it, I always fail. [via]

WinXP Pro Pirates To Be Annoyed With Black Desktop

Microsoft has started to introduce an update to WGA (Windows Genuine Advantage) that will nags users of pirated copies of Windows XP Pro until they by a legitimate copy.

Every 60 minutes the desktop background will change to black and a message will appear in the lower right corner informing the user that their copy is not genuine.

If you're like me and you only get to see your desktop when you reboot your machine every few weeks then a black background wouldn't be much of an annoyance.

Microsoft say that this is something that XP users actually want:-

...Our research has clearly shown that customers value the ability of Windows to alert them when they may have software that is not genuine, but they also want the ability to stay up to date with the least effort required on their part. ...

Link

Adobe Lightroom 2 Review

Photographer Thomas Hawk has posted a great in-depth review of the new features in the newly released Adobe Lightroom 2. The software has some great improvements over version 1.2.

Recover Lost Passwords with Free Tools

Lifehacker has a guide to recovering passwords from Windows, Windows applications, Macs, routers and browsers using free tools.

Firefox 3 Aims To Break Software Download Record

Mozilla is aiming to make Firefox 3 a record breaker. It wants the next release of its browser to be the most downloaded piece of software in a single 24-hour period.

Download Day will begin the minute Firefox 3 is generally available and continue for 24 hours. The Download Day website is asking for people to pledge to download the browser and wants people to place Download Day buttons on their websites.

Mozilla are predicting that 1.6m people will download the browser on its launch day sometime in June. [via]

Evolution of Nintendo Characters

The evolution of Nintendo characters (and Sonic the Hedgehog).

Copy and Paste Scattered Files with Piky Basket

Piky is a Windows-only application that acts as a 'basket' that you can drop files in that you want to move.

It runs as an Explorer extension and you simply add files and folders to you basket by right-clicking on them. Then you simply navigate to your destination and empty your basket. How handy is that?

Download [via]

Lifehacker's 2007 Guide To Free Software And Webapps

Lifehacker's guide to the best free software and webapps of 2007.

XP Beats Vista In Performance Tests

In performance tests, Windows XP Service Pack 3 has out performed Windows Vista Service Pack 1.

A benchmarking exercise conducted by Florida-based software development company Devil Mountain Software showed that any improvements that Vista offered were more than outclassed by the venerable XP.

The report shows that Vista, both with and without SP1, was slower than XP with SP3. It took more than 80 seconds to complete the test, compared to XP's 35 seconds.

SP1 made little difference to Vista where as the beta SP3 back for XP made it 10 per cent faster.

I'm hardly surprised. We use Vista Business at Ozum and it's god awful. Applications constantly freeze/crash, I've had numerous BSODs, frequently peripherals such as the mouse and keyboard won't work after coming out of hibernation and it takes an age to transfer files between the PC and a thumb drive.

Every Windows Startup Screen and Sounds

Every (?) Windows startup screen and sound.

Video: Content Aware Image Resizing Demonstration

Wow! [via]

Microsoft Is Running Out Of Windows XP Keys

Microsoft is releasing a new build of Windows XP due to a shrinking pool of product keys. Dubbed SP2c, the build includes no fixes or feature changes and will be made available to OEMs and system builders next month. [via]

7 Tips to Get the Most Out of MS Word

Web Worker Daily has 7 tips to get the most out of Microsoft Word. [via]

IE7Pro - Brings Back Menus In IE7

Hiding menus in IE7 was just a bad idea. I rarely use IE7 but when I do I always find myself trying to click the menus. IE7Pro fixes that by bringing back menus permanently. [via]

Mother Accused Of Having Sex With Adult Son

A woman has been accused of having sex with 28-year-old son. Whilst being investigated for the rape of a 7-year-old girl, who is also believed to have watched the mother and son having sex, police learned that they had been having sex for many years. It doesn't come much sicker than this. I wonder if he kept her under the bed like on that episode of The X-Files?

filehippo.com Update Checker

The filehippo.com Update Checker is a small, free application that scans for installed applications on your computer and then checks if a new version is available on filehippo.com. Any new versions are displayed on a web page with a link to download the application.

Smart Bookmarks Bar For Firefox

The Smart Bookmarks Bar for Firefox makes better use of the bookmarks toolbar by increasing the number of bookmarks to around 50 rather than the dozen or so that you can usually fit on there. [via]

smart2go Free Mobile Maps

smart2Go is a new mobile mapping application from Nokia that's free to download and use. You can use the application to plan routes in almost every country in the world with the maps being displayed in both 2D and 3D. For a fee you can also use it for GPS navigation. You will need a GPS device for this feature but you don't need a data connection to use the application. You can download map loader which will load selected maps onto your phone.

The site says that it is only available for S60 3rd Edition phones but Windows Mobile devices are liste don the download page.

How To Crash An In-Flight Entertainment System

A security expert claims that he can crash an in-flight entertainment system.

Poof...screen of the person next to me goes black. Screens in front of me and behind me go black.

The entire plane entertainment system goes down (and thankfully the cascading system failure didn't spill over to the plane navigation system)!

How To Install OSX 10.4.8 On A Non-Apple Machine

A step-by-step guide to installing OSX 10.4.8 on a normal Intel/AMD machine. As you are not allowed to install OSX on a non-Apple machine, following the guide would be illegal.

Related: Dual boot Vista and OSX. [via]

Giveaway Of The Day

Giveaway of the Day offers a different piece of licensed software ever day for free. Sure you could download a cracked version from The Pirate Bay or get an open source alternative but this is a good way of legitimately getting commercial software for free.

Note: I'm not sure what the quality of the software is like or whether it is free of spyware.

Vista Drivers

If you're planning on upgrading to Windows Vista tomorrow rather than trawling the Net looking for updated drivers, go get them all from one place. [via]

Speed Up Firefox Launch Times

Chrome Cleaner can speed up Firefox launch times by up to 400% by removing duplicate entries from installed-chrome.txt and optionally removing entries that reference non-existent jar files. I never shut down Firefox so I can live with long launch times. [via]

Launchy

One of the new features in Windows Vista is the ability to type the name of an application or file into the Start Menu rather than navigating to it with your mouse. This is far quicker than trawling through the Start Menu particularly if the application has been placed in a folder where you wouldn't expect it to be (e.g. The Sims 2 residing in an EA Games folder).

If you want this ability in Windows XP I suggest installing an application called Launchy. I have been using it for many months and I now use it so much that sometimes when using another computer I expect it to appear when I press Alt + Spacebar. I only use it to launch applications but you can configure it to open files as well.

BitTyrant

BitTyrant is a new Azureus-based BitTorrent client that claims to increase your download performance. Not sure how it works or how well it works but it's gotta be worth a try. It can be a pain sometimes when you are connected to a ton of seeds but get a low download speed.

New York City In Sim City

A Sim City fan is attempting to recreate all of New York City in Sim City 4. The project is already three years in the making and it looks like it will take a good few years more to complete.

Process Scanner

I wanted to post this app a few days back but due to it being posted on sites like Lifehacker, the site was a little overwhelmed. It seems to be up and running ok now.

Process Scanner is a free application that scans all the running processes on your PC and then generates an online report that analyses each of the processes. This is a handy way of quickly determining whether you have anything dodgy running on your system. This is much quicker than typing each of the processes into a search engine.

Free Trial Of 2007 Microsoft Office

Darren Straight has posted some links to 60 day trials of the latest version of Microsoft Office applications. You can download some or all of the applications and try them completely free. It should keep you going until they are released early next year.

WinDirStat

WinDirStat is a free Windows application that graphically represents the data stored on your hard drive(s). The way that the data is represented is much better than some of the other apps that are available that just pie charts. [via]

Opera Mini

Opera Mini 3.0 has been released. Go here for a list of features. Opera have posted a handy emulator which allows you to test out the new browser in your web browser. I was very surprised how well it formatted AWV.

Vista RTM Cracked By Pirates Before Release

It seems that Windows Vista RTM has already been cracked (well sort-of). According to APCMag...

The activation crack is a separate download, and works by replacing the licensing components with components from beta builds. Then using a product key from Beta 1, Beta 2, RC1 or RC2, the Gold version of Vista can be activated online.

In this sense, it’s not a true crack – it’s simply leveraging off compatibilities between the betas and the Gold release. Vista still needs to be activated, and it looks like for the moment, there’s no way around that.

It's impressive how they managed to get a copy so quickly.

Windows Vista Ships

Robert Scoble has posted a link to a Channel 9 video interview with Microsoft's Jim Allchin and says that Vista has shipped. Will you be upgrading when it's released to the public in January?

Aging Tabs

The Aging Tabs Firefox extension keeps an eye on your open Firefox tabs, highlighting your active tab and fading the aging tags that you haven't used in a while. [via]

Gmail Mobile Application

Google has released a downloadable Gmail application for Java-enabled phones. The application is an alterative to the mobile Gmail webiste (http://m.gmail.com) and offers a lot more features.

You can mark mail read or unread, star messages, report spam, archive mail and search messages. The application also has hot keys to speed navigation, supports attachments such as images, PDF's and Word documents and preserves the threaded conversations found in the full Gmail.

You can get the application by accessing http://gmail.com/app from your mobile phone.

If you are going to install the application on a smartphone like the Nokia N80 or N73, make sure you use the 'Services' browser rather than the 'Web' browser. If you access the download page using the Web browser the page will identify your phone as a Symbian 9 device (which is correct) but when you install and run the application you will get a Java error. If you use the Services browser the page will correctly identify the handset and serve a version of the application that will work.

Mobile Crunch has more info. [via]

New Vista & Office Packaging

Microsoft has released new shots of the boxes that Vista and Office 2007 will ship in. The Vista Team Blog has images of the various versions of Vista and Office 2007 which look a lot better than the standard DVD case that most software now comes in.

Designed to be user-friendly, the new packaging is a small, hard, plastic container that’s designed to protect the software inside for life-long use. It provides a convenient and attractive place for you to permanently store both discs and documentation.

The new design will provide the strength, dimensional stability and impact resistance required when packaging software today.

[via]

Firefox 2 Now Available

Hot on the tails of the recently released IE7, here's the final version of Firefox 2. I've been using the Release Candidates on one of my machines for a few weeks and have been impressed. Mozilla have integrated a range of extensions including the very useful session saver and the ability to close individual tabs using a 'cross' icon on each tab. The built in spell checker is also handy.

One feature that I don't like is how the tabs now 'scroll of the screen' rather than staying on the same screen and getting progressively smaller as more tabs are added. Granted, as the tabs become smaller the titles disappeared but I prefer to see all my tabs open in one screen and could usually tell what each of the tabs were by the sites favicon. Maybe the feature can be turned off.

Tesco To Release Software

Supermarket chain Tesco is to continue it's takeover of the UK by releasing software under it's own brand at rock-bottom prices.

The retailer will launch Tesco-branded software in 100 stores this month. An initial range of six products, which will include office software and security suites, will sell for less than £20 each, massively undercutting rivals' prices.

The software launch will be accompanied by the opening of a new website, TescoSoftware.com. The site will offer customer support as well as allowing customers to buy the products.

Microsoft Freebies

My beta testing on Microsoft Small Business Accounting 2007, now called Microsoft Office Accounting 2007, finished recently and I've just received an email saying that I have been successful in receiving my gratuities. As part of the deal I get a copy of Microsoft Office Accounting 2007 (with a 1 year payroll license), Microsoft Office 2007 and £150 in cash. I never realised Microsoft were so generous when it came to beta testing.

Incidentally, it is now available as a public beta and can be downloaded here.

What Slows Windows Down?

PcSpy's extensive test of Windows software reveals the software that slows down your system. Norton Internet Security is no big surprise. [via]