Wictor Wilen

My favorite Windows Explorer replacement Total Commander is in beta for version 7.0. Total Commander is a great tool for managing files and folders and totally replaces the Windows Explorer for me since it is so much faster in managing files and folders in just one simple window. Version 7.0 contains mostly a nicer interface but includes some highlights such as: Show the drive names in the tabs Alternating background colors on files and folders Nicer overwrite dialog with thumbnail preview Run as administrator when privileges are insufficient I have been a huge fan of the application since I first discovered it years ago (when it was called Windows Commander). When DOS was the primary interface of the PC I used the ASCII based Norton Commander for DOS.

Yesterday I abandoned my streak of Sony-Ericsson mobile phones which started many years ago. In fact it started when I was studying and working for the summer at one of Ericssons mobile phone assembly lines with the GH-688. Since 1996 I have been using them, except for a short period when my employer forced me to use a Nokia. I was choosing between upgrading my Sony-Ericsson P910i to a Sony-Ericsson P990 or the HTC TyTN. After some consideration I went to the mobile phone store and made a deal with the salesman.

Bredbansbolaget, one of swedens largest broadband provider owned by Telenor, has a remarkable lousy password policy. The password has to be between 5 and 8 characters, and valid characters are a-z, A-Z, 0-9 and _ (underscore). With your username and password you can access your personal information, your e-mail, buy music, videos and lots of stuff and have it all on you internet bill. Having this bad password policy goes against all recommendations nowadays and I think they really should consider changing it. Of course I am aware of that they will have less consumer support of people forgetting their password and things like that, but as a customer - should I feel safe? Guess not!

W3C has announced Proposed Recommendations of XSLT 2.0, XPath 2.0 and XML Query 1.0. It has been seven years since XSLT 1.0 was published and I think it is great that XSLT has been updated. Some features that I find interesting in XSLT 2.0 is: xsl:analyze-string This instruction let’s you match a string to a regular expression xsl:output This instruction now has xhtml as a valid output parameter xsl:perform-sort With this you can create sorted sequences

No big deal, but I thought this was funny… The monthly Microsoft partner toolkit arrived today and it included a Partner Demo Readiness Toolkit with Windows Vista RC1 and Office 2007 beta. Okey, RTM has not been available that long, but at least RC2 or some other intermediate build would have been more appropriate :-)

After years and months and weeks of waiting it was time to finally install Windows Vista RTM. I downloaded the ISO image from MSDN and burned it on a DVD, the download was fast but it took me hours of retries to get my hands on the license key, I guess the license servers was overloaded with requests. After making one of my hard drives ready I started the installation. This will take me an hour or so maximum I thought after reading all about the new and fast installation and of my experiences with installing the release candidates on Virtual PC’s. All went pretty fine, except that it felt soooo slow, until Vista started the installation. It took minutes between the different screens.

My previous post was about the search web site Snap and here is another nice and interesting way to search the net: Quintura - see & find. Quintura uses a nice concept in which you start with a search term and the get a cloud in which you can include or exclude matchings to refine your search, all is done visually so you can see how your cloud evolves when you’re refining your search.

Snap is really nice new search tool, that tries to enrich the search experience. A nice intuituve web interface with previews of the search results. Scott Watermasysk made me aware of the new Snap preview function - Snap Anywhere, that you now can see on this site when hovering a link. I really like all these new and upcoming services that makes your life and website easier…

Bink.nu has the story that Windows Vista RTM is now available for download on MSDN Subscriptions as well as on TechNet. Downloading right now with good speed (500 KB/sec) but the request for the product keys seems to have some problems, probably high demand right now.