Code Society

Google opened up invites to 100,000 new users to its upcoming Wave service late yesterday. Unfortunately, I was not one of them, even though I signed up just after their keynote demo.

In any case, you can check out some impressions of the service. A popular “negative” review that has been making its way around the web calls Wave overhyped and states:

This is far far worse than email… It’s far far worse than Twitter… Google’s Wave will crash hard onto the beach of overhype.

I think he’s just trying to rile people up, but it’s good to get the story from all sides. Regardless, it’s something I can see myself using. And I would be using it if only I got an invite!

If you happen to have an invite, please send it my way.

I was playing around with Google Chrome 4 (the dev channel release) to see if anything had changed since I last tried it. A quick peek at their release blog revealed a post on Aug 17 that bookmark synchronization is now a feature! This is one of the reasons I haven’t been able to switch to Chrome from Firefox, so I was pretty excited to see it.

To use it, just follow the instructions on the Chromium blog post. Basically, you just need to be using version 4 (dev channel) of Chrome and launch it with the command-line option “–enable-sync”. Then, the option will appear in the wrench menu. Selecting it pops up a login window where you supply a Google account. The bookmarks will then be synchronized into that account’s special Google Docs section for Chrome bookmarks.

Go ahead and give it a try!

Before you wonder how you can fix a problem of a product in another product that isn’t even out yet, let’s see what the hubbub is about. In Microsoft’s loved and hated Outlook program, the Internet Explorer engine was used to render HTML e-mails up through version 2003. Starting with Outlook 2007, however, Microsoft started using Word to both create and render HTML e-mails.

The decision to do this has a valid argument–content created and rendered in the same program will look identical for consistency. Unfortunately, Word’s support for HTML is deeply lacking compared to IE, causing many previously working e-mail messages to not be rendered correctly when Outlook 2007 was unleashed on the world. Even though there have been many complaints from users, this problem was never fixed as it was a design decision and not a bug.

Fast forward to today and Outlook 2010 is on the horizon. Microsoft has announced that they will continue to use Word as the rendering engine in the new Outlook, meaning there will be poor HTML e-mail support well into the future.

How You Can Help

The only thing we can do right now is to let Microsoft know how consumers feel about this decision. FixOutlook.org is a site dedicated to fighting for change on this issue. There are few possible solutions that Microsoft could implement, including reverting to IE as the rendering engine (unlikely at this point) or to boost Word’s rendering capabilities to be more standards compliant and closer to the level of IE. The site also lets you conveniently tweet a message on twitter to show your support and let others know of the cause. Let’s all make a racket about the issue until they agree to address it!

If you have an AMD/ATi graphics card, you might have noticed that the GPU Scaling options portion of the control panel seems to be grayed out (aka. disabled), if you can even find it hidden deep in the monitor attributes page. It seems that as of a few releases ago (though I’m not sure when, possibly 9.3), the option is only changeable when your screen resolution is not at your LCD’s native (max) resolution. Yes, that’s a statement from an official AMD forum moderator. I don’t know what happens on CRTs, but this seems kind of idiotic.

The primary reason for changing this setting is to run games at appropriate aspect ratios, stretched, or 1:1 as preferred by the user. However, you can’t access the control panel while in the game. When you switch back to the desktop to use it, the resolution should also be back to native. So what do you do?

The solution is to change to a lower desktop resolution temporarily to enable the feature and set the desired setting before changing back. Of course, this will displace any windows and desktop icons not within the confines of the lower resolution.

Is this a game-breaking (no pun intended) design mishap? No… but it is an inconvenience that doesn’t make much sense. As of this writing, the latest Catalyst version is 9.7. Here’s hoping they decide to revert this design change in the near future.

UPDATE 8/17/2009: What do you know, they just released version 9.8.

Oh, how quickly public perception can shift. Digsby, who won 4 out of 5 nominations (out of 6 total categories) in About.com’s 2008 user-voted IM client awards including Developers of the Year, has been one of the much-loved IM clients. Their community has to be very supportive and vocal in order for them to win awards like that. However, they’ve recently made a huge snafu in the PR department by bundling excessive advertising and malware in the installer. After this, I think they won’t be winning the developers of the year award again anytime soon.

Lifehacker’s post sums up everything you need to know about the situation, but reading the comments really gives insight into the people’s thoughts. It’s amazing how hard it is to earn people’s trust, both in business and personal relationships. Yet, that trust can disappear quicker than you can blink. I don’t know if this is the end for Digsby or if they will be able to repair the damage to their brand. However it unfolds, it’s a valuable lesson for all to learn.

I haven’t subscribed to cable television in… well, ever. I don’t watch much TV. When I do, it’s usually for a specific show or online on sites like Hulu. If you don’t need all the hundreds of various channels that cable TV provides, you can get digital HDTV absolutely free over the air (OTA). Earlier this year, the US government mandated that all OTA broadcasts must switch to digital from analog. This means that all OTA TV now has great picture quality and clarity.

To take advantage of this, I set up a pseudo TV with my computer monitor, a home-made antenna, and a free converter box. This guide will show you the steps you need to take to create your own free, completely legal, digital TV solution. Let’s get started!

(continue reading…)

Yesterday, Microsoft made Windows 7 RTM (Final) available to Technet and MSDN subscribers. Download speed reports have varied and there was a period of time when the Ultimate and Enterprise versions could not be downloaded even though all the other versions were available. Things should be considerably better today after the initial rush.

It seems that the different versions (Home Basic, Home Premium, Professional, Ultimate) of Windows 7 each have their own install disc. This is a departure from the single disc convenience of Vista. However, the other thing controlling the version to be installed is the /sources/ei.cfg file, which can be edited to a different version or simply deleted to enable a version selection screen. You will need an ISO editor or the know-how to create a bootable disc (image) if you extract the files out for deletion.

Another thing to note is the possibility of a memory leak and crash bug in chkdsk. Microsoft’s response has been that it may be by design (probably not the crashing part). Until they get this issue sorted out, you’ll have to kick your habit of running chkdsk every other hour for amusement.

Other than this, Windows 7 is, I believe, the finest OS Microsoft has put out since Windows XP (or maybe even Windows 2000). Good job Redmond!