Filed under: OS Updates, E-mail, Microsoft

Have you ever had one of those days when you can't seem to get your computer to do anything you want it to? Say you want to download Windows Movie Maker, so you go to the Microsoft web site, check out the download page, and simply can't find it anywhere. When you do finally find it after performing a search, the page times out before you can download it. And once you've finally managed to get it on your PC, the installation process is excruciating.

It turns out you're not the only person who has trouble getting Windows to do what you want it to. The above scenerio is described in great detail in an email Bill Gates sent in 2003. This letter was released to the public along with a huge pile of other communications as part of the antitrust litigation Microsoft's been involved in for the past few years. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has posted the text of the entire email, but here are a few of our favorite parts:

• Gates seems infuriated that it takes so long for Microsoft web pages to load
• He had no idea why he would have to use Windows Update to install additional software before he could install Windows Movie Maker
• His computer was unuseable for 6 minutes while applying updates
• He asked why he should have to reboot his machine, which he reboots every night

Upon installing Movie Maker, Gates checks the add/remove programs dialog to see if it shows up, and instead he finds a list of programs with obscure names like Windows XP Hotfix Q329048. hHe writes "Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable?" he asked. "The file system is no longer usable, the registry is not usable. This program listing was one sane place, but now it is all crapped up."

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Filed under: Internet, Google, Open Source

Google may have decided to cease development of the Google Browser Sync plugin for Firefox, but that doesn't mean the utility will never see another update. Because rather than simply boxing up the source code and packing it away, Google decided to release the source code publicly under the BSD license.

Google Browser Sync is a utility that lets you synchronize your Firefox bookmarks, preferences, and cookies across multiple computers.

Now anyone can check out the source from the Google Code project page. While nobody's done anything really cool yet like make a version of Google Browser Sync that works with Firefox 3, it may just be a matter of time.

One thing that's particularly interesting is the fact that Ars Technica reports Google posted the source code online on June 13, the same day that Lifehacker confirmed the death of the official project. It's not clear which came first, the chicken or the egg. But either way, we're not complaining. If Google isn't going to continue developing this useful utility, then we're just glad that someone else may be able to pick up the torch.

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Filed under: Internet, Productivity, Social Software

All of us could use a personal assistant every now and then, especially when it comes to planning your itinerary for a trip where you have to put together reservations for restaurants, entertainment, and rental cars into something you can follow once you reach your destination.

TripIt is a site designed to take confusion out of trying to organize all your reservations by doing it for you. The service takes all the plans you've made for your trip such as plane reservations, rental cars, and restaurant reservations and organizes them, adding important things like directions to get to where you're going and a projected weather forecast for your trip. Your TripIt itinerary can then be printed out and taken with you as well as forwarded to friends in email, synced with your personal calender, or viewed on your mobile device.

TripIt allows you to add information to your trips manually or if you schedule events with one of TripIts supported websites you can just forward your reservations to the site via email and have them added to your itinerary for you. Currently TripIt supports a slew of airline websites, restaurant reservations through OpenTable.com, and they just added support for a variety of event sites such as Ticketmaster.

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Filed under: Canonical

Canonical has made the Mobile Internet Device (MID) version of Ubuntu available to developers. Developers can now make the necessary changes to their desktop applications to better match the smaller screen sizes and processing power of these devices as well as take advantage of the touchscreen interface to improve the user experience.

Ubuntu MID is based on the desktop version of the Ubuntu operating system but has the necessary tweaks made to run efficiently on smaller and less powerful devices like the Samsung Q1U which currently ships with Vista. We had an opportunity to demo this unit running on Vista with the standard 800MHz CPU and 1GB of RAM and the Q1U was really sluggish and not as responsive as we would like.

Hopefully, Ubuntu MID will be well optimized to make devices like the Q1U more usable as it will include a Gecko based browser, email, calendaring and media player specifically designed for these types of devices.

But does the recent announcement of Ubuntu Linux Remix and Symbian going open source possibly take some of the potential Ubuntu MID sales away?

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Filed under: Design, Utilities, Productivity

If you're moving to a new place or just want to reorganize furniture in your current living space, PlanningWiz may be helpful by letting you plan and lay out objects in your rooms. Set your room dimensions (you can choose Imperial or Metric system, but for some reason you can't choose Imperial on the first step) and start selecting furniture pieces to begin experimenting.

You can choose furniture from categories like "child's bedroom," "bathroom," and "kitchen," and you can drag-to-resize the furniture objects to match the dimensions of your existing (or future) objects. PlanningWiz also lets you customize the design with color, text, and dimension guides.

The plan can have a custom scale from 1":1' down to 3/32":1'. Plans can be saved to your free account space, printed, or shared via e-mail.

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Filed under: Business, Internet, Utilities

meOwns is a site designed to allow you to showcase the stuff you own. You can list items that you actually own, or items that you would like to own on the site and add photos to those lists so people can see what you're talking about. The lists you create on meOwns can then be put into a widget that you can embed on your website or MySpace profile, or you can add a Facebook widget to display your items for your Facebook friends.

According to the site, the idea is is to bring people together through "the one thing that connects us all - the yearn to own!" While we're not so sure any normal person anyone would want to upload all the stuff they own to the site, the site could have some use in getting rid of the stuff you already own and don't want anymore. The widget could be an easy way to showcase your old movies, CDs, computer monitors, clothing, etc. for your friends, and mention things that they might own you'd be interested in taking off their hands in exchange.

One huge downside is that right now the site requires you to upload photos from your computer for each item you add. It would be nice to see them add automatic photos for things like DVDs and CDs that are going to always look the same so you don't have to upload a new picture for each individual item which gets annoying pretty quickly particularly if you have that crazy "yearn to own" they were talking about.

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Filed under: Internet, Browser Tips

Read it Later, a bookmarking plugin for Firefox that we first covered last year is now Firefox 3 compatible. The new version also adds a handful of new features that make it even more useful.

What makes Read it Later different from other bookmarking tools like the del.icio.us plugin for Firefox is the fact that Read it Later makes it easy to bookmark pages, but makes it just as easy to delete those bookmarks. While other services let you save pages forever, Read it Later is designed to let you come back to pages you just don't have time to read fully right now.

The latest version features:

• Offline viewing
• An RSS feed so you can subscribe to your bookmarked pages and keep track of them in a reader
• Synchronize your saved pages with other computers

You can also activate a new "click to save" mode by hitting Alt+M. In this mode, any link you click on a web page will automatically be saved to your reading list. Hit Alt+M again to deactivate this feature if you actually want to open up pages by clicking on links.

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Filed under: Audio, Web services

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Filed under: Audio, Fun, Video, Social Software

Let's be honest here. How many of us have gotten on stage to do a bit of karaoke. Don't worry no one is gonna laugh at you. Because when you did get up there, it was only for that moment never to be repeated again. Well that would be true unless you decided to sing it up at Red Karaoke.

Red Karaoke gives you the ability to sing your favorite songs and have it hosted on their site to share with others. Depending on how good you are at karaoke, this could be a good thing or a bad thing because members can comment and do vote on your performance.

The quality of the music reminds us of general midi files, but then again the accompaniment isn't the star here you are. If you want to give your performance a little more pizazz connect your web cam for some video karaoke action! The service itself is fun and easy to use. And Red Karaoke does offer a decent selection of songs ranging from the 1950's to the present in a variety of genres.

But try as we did, we couldn't find any NKOTB.

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Filed under: OS Updates, Microsoft

Microsoft may finally be phasing out Windows XP sales, but the company is telling customers that it will offer support for the operating system through 2014.

June 30th is the last day you'll be able to pick up a retail copy of Windows XP. But you will still be able to purchase a computer running Windows Vista Business or Ultimate editions and ask the computer maker to downgrade the system to XP for you. Some PC makers may offer this option for free while others will charge a fee.

Microsoft is also making an exception to the no-sales-beyond-June 30th rule for some low-cost, low-power devices like the Asus Eee PC. So it makes sense for the company to offer a few more years of support. Add to this the fact that Windows Vista adoption has been slow in some sectors, and it honestly seems like Microsoft didn't have much choice but to offer extended support for an operating system that was first released in 2001.

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