Wictor Wilen

There has been a lot of discussions around the net on the non-customizable and non-removable Windows Vista startup sound. Robert Scoble has a post that explains why the Vista team decided to design it like that. My personal opinion, like Roberts, is that I would like to decide for myself if I wan’t a startup sound when I turn my computer on. For example; at home I have Windows XP Media Center which would benefit from having that sound, it lets me calibrate the volume before I put on a movie and it makes me aware of when the machine is up and running.

To kill some spare time I decided to create a plugin for Windows Live Writer that is named Acronyms Plugin for Windows Live Writer. It’s a small and simple plugin that let you search for the meaning of an acronym and insert into you post. You have to option to insert the acronym with the description inline or as a tooltip. When using the tooltip option the acronym will be inserted with a

Tim Heuer has written a really nice Flickr plugin for Windows Live Writer, flickr4writer. Go check it out and/or contribute with expertise or ideas. I’d like to see an Upload to Flickr feature of flickr4writer in the next release.

I spend a lot of time using mainly two applications; Microsoft Visual Studio (2003 and 2005) and Microsoft Office (2007). Microsoft Office 2007 introduces a new user interface that simplifies the usage a lot. I am a devoted reader to Jensen Harris Office User Interface blog and it has taught me a lot and given me influences on how user interfaces should be built and I try to take his advices in account.

The posts are everywhere that Internet Explorer 7 RC1 is out, and I’m not late to test it out. The download of 15 Mb was fast and the installation was easy; it did uninstall the previous beta of IE7, rebooted and installed the RC1. The first think I noticed was that I think it is still a slow-starter, when you open it as the first application after the first boot (it may be my hogging Dell Inspirion 9100?)

This is just me testing my own implementation of MetaWeblog API made in C# and ASP.NET 2.0. This post is created using the Windows Live Writer (beta) which of course did not work directly. I had to do some special fixes to get the MetaWeblog API to work according to the specifications I read through. I’ll get back about that another day. Now I got to go home to put my daughter to bed.

According to Lawrence Liu Microsoft will release a a demo with Microsoft Office Server System 2007 for Virtual Server as a .VMC and a virtual harddisk for Microsoft Certified Partners as a part of the Techinical demonstration toolkit during the next 4-6 weeks. This is great, I guess that it will contain the latest build, and gives us a good opportunity to test and show the new functionlity of MOSS without having to set up new servers or VM’s.

Finally an update to the beta of Windows Desktop Search 3.0. The user interface is back, looking like the 2.6 version, and it works really nice. Looks like the problems with Outlook 2007 and One Note 2007 Beta 2 is gone and it consumes less memory. This update is required for the Microsoft Office 2007 Beta 2 Techincal Refresh release that will be upon us soon.

The incredible Jensen Harris gives you all the details on how to use Fitt’s Law to improve the user interface of your application in the post Giving You Fitts. The article gives you a good insight on how to create a great interface using a mathematical approach instead of just lettting a art/creative director making the job. It explains why the northwest corner (as Jensen told us it should be named) has changed so dramatically.