Give your Flip Cam an Icon on Windows
Did you delete all the files on your flip cam at least once? Or do you not like that FlipShare icon that always shows up whenever you plug your FlipCam into your Windows computer? Well, until the nice people over at Cisco decide to support Windows 7 Device Stage for their FlipCam line, you can at least come half way and make sure your camera has a nice little icon.
This is pretty easy, and as long as you’re not depending on the autorun.inf to open FlipShare every time you plug your Flip Camera in (and if you’re reading this blog, I’m 90% sure you aren’t), you can just copy the contents of the Flip Icon Zip File to the base directory of your Flip Cam, and it will start showing up in Auto Play (if enabled) and Windows Explorer with this very lovely, very high resolution icon created by Tim Van Damme.
For a preview of what this looks like in Windows Explorer:
Why Steam on Windows 7 Disappoints Me
This actually isn’t a post against Windows 7. In fact, you will find very few of those among this blog, if any at all. This is actually a post voicing my disappointment with the very popular Social Network Gaming Software, Steam.
One of the first things quickly and easily noticed is that it uses its own Window customization. This really isn’t such a big deal for me. Sure, it’d be nice if it could do the whole aero thing and fall back on this, but this looks pretty cool, so I’m not really going to fault them for this.
Next is actually mostly a good thing. Steam has this very nice jumplist for Windows 7, something not a lot of other programs have really taken the time to integrate just yet. You can see video games I have recently (attempted to anyway) launched from Steam, their own quick links to important parts of their client, and an optional (disabled by default) ability to change your current status from the jumplist.
The one problem I have with this jump list is that the tasks have no icons. You could easily find some sort of icon for each of their little tasks. A shopping cart for Store, a generic user-like figure for community, etc etc but there is nothing there.
Then of course, there is my ultimate pickle with Steam. As I’m sure you can tell from the above screenshot – Steam has NO PRESENCE in the Windows Games Explorer. This is awful! The Games Explorer has been around since Vista, and yet Steam has yet to embrace it.
There could (and should) be (at the very least) a high resolution steam icon under Game Providers. It’s not very difficult to make, and the “News” feed you see from Games for Windows LIVE is a simple RSS feed. They could either populate this with the news from their site, or just a list of new releases, creating a steam:// URI (if it doesn’t already exist) to open up links in their own client. Instead, they don’t even touch this.
As for games, I don’t know if they show up in the Explorer or not. I don’t have any spare cash lying around, so I haven’t been able to check for myself – but somehow I doubt that the games appear there (though, I could be wrong – can anyone vouch for this?).
Hopefully, these issues will be addressed in a future version of Steam, and embraced by Rival companies. (I’m looking at you On Live. Yes, I expect this from you as well).
What are your thoughts on the matter, anyway?
Fixing Chrome’s “Network Error 2”
If you are encountering missing images and YouTube not working and other things related to Google Chrome’s NET::ERR::2; then just follow these few simple steps to get everything working again:
- Close Google Chrome
- Navigate to your Application Data folder
- XP Users:
- C:\documents and settins\%user%\Application Data\
- Vista Users:
- C:\users\%user%\appdata\
- In the Application Data folder, navigate to:
- local\google\chrome\user data\default\cache
- Delete all the files (in that caché)
Fixed! Open up Chrome and continue on and have fun ^_^
MacBook Air
The world's thinnest notebook. I have to admit, this notebook is pretty impressive. One of the best at the $1,800 price limit. But its features, how much of its new? And yes, I'm sorry if I'm raining on your parade.
Indeed, Intel went way out of their way to make that super-mini Core 2 Duo Processor. Good Job Intel, I salute your efforts. It has a rather large battery (as shown in the keynote demo), a very small motherboard, a full size keyboard, and a lovely display. It is indeed, a work of art.
One of the main things that bugged me, was the wireless Optical drive. It is, indeed, a wonderful idea. But its nowhere near new. As any technology enthusiast knows, Macintosh OS X is modified from the FreeBSD system. While doing some hacking around inside of my step-father's mac, I noticed that it uses the Samba program. Samba is a program used in Linux, Unix, BSD, (and macintosh) operating systems for file-sharing and networking and all that good jazz.
*Nix mounts CDs/DVDs to a certain folder, such as /media/cdrom or /media/dvd or any other possible mount point that the operating system or user specifies. And Samba, can quite easily share this system over the network.
I'm assuming (now its not know because nobody has the Windows disk for the MacBook Air, seeing as it doesn't ship for two weeks), that it includes a modified version of Samba made for Windows, and that all it really is a hacked version of Samba.
It was just a little something that bugged me, but that's not to say that the MacBook Air is not an impressive machine. I'd be lying if I said that, it is a VERY impressive machine. I want one 
.
So, that's my take on the Remote Disc feature of the MacBook Air. I don't really have much to say right now, I'm just blogging away, heh. Its currently 12:37 am CST, I'm watching the end of the Apple Keynote over QuickTime right now on my wonderful Windows Vista computer, and I just felt like I had to blog about it. So, there you go.
Maybe tomorrow I'll post some real content, eh?
What Windows Vista would have been
After about five years, people were wondering what Windows was doing and why their operating system wasn't out yet. Businesses and Technology enthusiasts were pushing Microsoft to release their next big upgrade, but Microsoft's technology specialists weren't anywhere near finished with Windows Vista. There were a lot of features that they really wanted to put into it, and judging from some YouTube videos I've seen (some of which may not be authentic), Windows Vista was going to be one hell of an operating system, with one hell of a GUI.
After being rushed, they took away the WinFS, which was truly going to be a revolutionary file system (or so they say). But they also toned down the GUI a lot. And I can see why. Even after Windows Vista was released, there was a lot of complain over how computers that were marked "Windows Vista Capable" were only capable of running Windows Vista in basic mode, not with Aero capabilities. Imagine how much more infuriated people would have been if the GUI had in fact been much better. Computers (considering how bloated Vista is) would have needed to be much faster, and have much higher computer requirements.
This is my opinion anyway, based on some videos I watched, although, I can not confirm how authentic they are, I've posted some links below:
Enjoy yourself ^.~
Until Later,
Navarr
PHP Programming using Windows Vista Voice Recognition
Alternative Text: A short YouTube video showing that Windows Vista Voice Recognition actually does (surprisingly!) work. Using it to program a small PHP script.