Wictor Wilen

Microsoft Windows Vista contains Windows Media Center (in Home Premium and Ultimate) which is a great upate from the Windows XP Media Center Edition. Finally the user interface is taking advantage of widescreen and the navigation is faster and smoother. But I think one big thing is still missing in the Media Center interface - editing, sorting and searching pictures using metadata; today you can sort them on date taken! I would find it more useful to search for all images containg images of my family, my vacation in Spain or winter images from our summer house.

Blake Handler has compiled a nice list of 150 free Microsoft Windows applications called Ultimate List of Free Windows Software from Microsoft. I found some nice ones I have not seen before: Mount ISO Files Virtually Virtual WiFi

The Register reports an interesting Dell computer flaw, in which a Dell desktop can be turned of if a mobile phone close to the computer recieves an SMS message - at least it did not start to burn :-)Dell recommends users not to have their mobile phones to close to the computer.

Winternals Software LP is aquired by Microsoft! Winternal (previously known as NTInternals) is most known by their freeware site Sysinternals a site containing numerous awesome and crucial applications to be used with Windows operating systems such as; RegMon, FileMon, Debug Viewer etc. The aquisition is great for Microsoft as they will get their hands on Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell and their knowledge in how to create small, efficient and safe applications. Microsoft really knows how to get the best people and tools…

My company is partners with Microsoft and I am the one responsible for managing the partnership and now and then have to log in to the Microsoft partner site to manage the partnership (check out the status of references, products and MCP’s). Since I have been using Internet Explorer 7 (beta) for a few months I have not been able to use the site with the browser, unless I fire up my test machine with W2K and IE6.

Microsoft Office 2007 will come with a new set of icons. Although they look nice and modern I will have to see them in smaller versions (16x16) to see if they will do. Justin Prine has some opinions and comments on his Flickr photostream.

Ever wondered what JavaScript closures are? Morris Johns has put togehter a nice introduction to the mysterious closures - JavaScript closures for dummies. Make sure to read it before you do any more JavaScripting. Understanding JavaScript closures will make your JS programming more efficient and you can avoid the dreaded memory leaks in Internet Explorer especially when making home brewed Ajax applications. And of course learning this stuff is fun for us developers…

Microsoft Hardware will later this year release a new keyboard - Ultimate Keyboard. The keyboard is a wireless (bluetooth) and ergonomical keyboard with backlight functionality that senses the light in the room and when you use the keyboard. The keyboard are designed for Windows Vista and the Microsoft Live services (Messenger etc). I really like the design and that it is an ergonomical layout of the keys. I use that kind of keyboard at work but at home or when sitting at my laptop my fingers more thatn often slip. The Ultimate Keyboard seems to be working fine when not sitting at a desk - like when you are sitting in you sofa with Windows XP Media Center or soon Windows Vista Ultimate!

Beta 3 is available for Internet Explorer 7. Some nice improvments have been made since beta 2: Ctrl-q does not longer show the tab-thumbnails when using (for example) Outlook Web Access Tab reordering!!! Refresh all functionality for RSS feeds