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!

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.

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!

Mozilla’s Firefox, the world’s favorite alternative browser, has surpassed the 1 billion download mark. That’s over 1,000,000,000 times! To commemorate this achievements, Mozilla is launching a new web site called One Billion Plus You.

The download count is a cumulative total for all versions of Firefox since the beginning of time. The official download counter page writes:

We passed the 1,000,000,000 download mark for Firefox just in the past couple hours.  This number is cumulative across all of time and it includes actual user-initiated downloads (i.e., not automatic updates).

I wonder how many IE, Chrome, and Opera downloads there have been.

Mozilla released Firefox 3.5 Preview, also known as Firefox 3.5b99, a couple days ago as a sneak peak at the upcoming release candidate. If you are running Beta 4, you can get it by checking for updates.

While most things seem to work just fine, the WordPress admin interface has somehow been broken by this new release, at least for version 2.7.x. It is still somewhat usable, but AJAX and other JavaScript related features seem to not work. Of course, the admin interface is heavy with such features, rendering many tasks very difficult.

If you are a Firefox user, you may want to hold off on upgrading to 3.5 Preview if you run WordPress sites. Or, this might be a great time to try out other browsers like Chrome or Opera for a while.

UPDATE 2009/06/11: WordPress 2.8 was released yesterday and this new version works well with Firefox 3.5 Preview. It also provides a lot of snazzy cool new features. Check it out if you can upgrade.

UPDATE: FileFront was bought from Ziff Davis Media by the original owners and has announced that it will continue operating! See the full story here.

Despite the big closings like Circuit City and the demise of financial institutions due to the economic recession, I haven’t seen too many web sites go down. Thus, I was a bit surprised to read the news that FileFront, the popular gaming-related file host will be closing its doors on March 30th.

I’ve used them for many (mostly video) downloads in the past. Anytime something familiar announces a departure, it really hits you that maybe the current situation is not just in your mind after all. I wonder what other staple web sites will fall in the near future.