Archive for category Windows
Rockmelt
Posted by Gavin Lewis in Internet, Mac OSX, Windows on April 23, 2011
Chrome quickly started eating up browser marketshare and matured quickly, with Google adding new features, fixing bugs and adding extensions to allow users to add functionality. Just as Flock incorporates social features into Firefox, Rockmelt does the same thing but with Chromium at its heart.
Calibre Ebook Management
Posted by Gavin Lewis in Linux, UNIX & Open Source, Mac OSX, Windows on April 16, 2011
With Amazon’s Kindle and Apple’s iBooks on the market, the eBook is starting to make waves amongst even the most ardent of luddites. As someone who lives with (and has moved house many times with) an avid reader, I love eBooks. They don’t weigh anything and you can take as many of them with you as you are going to need. The trouble is, the Kindle uses a different file format to the emerging ePub standard, so you could find yourself with a library of books that are tied to a particular device.
Windows App store
Posted by Gavin Lewis in Internet, Windows on April 13, 2011
Not wishing to be outdone, but keen to stick to its “better late than never” approach to keeping up with what consumers are buying into, Microsoft are apparently working on something similar. Techcrunch has posted a leaked screenshot and a comparison to other app stores, remarking at how similar they all look. I don’t really care about that, but I do find it amusing that Microsoft are last to catch on yet again.
Microsoft – a train wreck in slow motion
Posted by Gavin Lewis in Thoughts, Windows on March 28, 2011
Things haven’t been going well for Microsoft for a while now. The list of failures is stacking up and its getting a little silly.
Dropbox reaches version 1.0
Posted by Gavin Lewis in Internet, Linux, UNIX & Open Source, Mac OSX, News, Windows on December 17, 2010
It may surprise you to know that the incredibly useful cloud storage tool Dropbox has only now reached version 1.0. It’s already such an accomplished and useful program on all platforms that the “beta” tag or a sub-1.0 version number just seems wrong.
The MS anti-virus bundling debate
Posted by Gavin Lewis in Thoughts, Windows on November 14, 2010
Microsoft has recently started beaming their Security Essentials anti-virus suite through the Windows Update service for systems with no anti-virus suite installed. However, the makers of Panda anti-virus are unhappy about this and have branded it anti-competitive.
Windows Phone 7′s slow start
Posted by Gavin Lewis in Internet, News, Windows on November 11, 2010
The internet is currently awash with reports of Windows Phone 7′s disappointing start – selling a mere 40,000 units, not including the 89,000 that are going to be given to Microsoft employees.
Post-PC Microsoft
Posted by Gavin Lewis in Thoughts, Windows on October 29, 2010
The BBC ask whether Microsoft is ready for a post-Windows world. In my opinion, no, I don’t think they are.
Oracle
Oh dear oh dear oh dear, what have you done Oracle – and what are you going to do next?
Since aquiring Sun Microsystems for $7.4bn in April 2009, they’ve quickly become the scourge of the open source community. First of all, they fired up their team of lawyers to go after Google over an alleged copyright and patent infringement of its Java technology.
iTunes 10
Posted by Gavin Lewis in Mac OSX, Windows on September 2, 2010
Apple recently held a media event to launch some new ipods, a new Apple TV and iTunes 10. Whilst the first two seem to have been largely welcomed, the new iTunes has created some debate. For starters, they’ve changed the UI so that now the minimise, maximise and close buttons are aligned vertically and the icons for music, movies, apps etc are devoid of colour. Whilst I like black & white photography, I quite like colour in my icons…
iReader for Chrome
Posted by Gavin Lewis in Mac OSX, Ubuntu, Windows on June 25, 2010
‘ve previously mentioned how much I like the Reader function in Safari 5 and have longed for it in other browsers. Fortunately, someone has kindly ported it to Chrome and it looks and works “almost” exactly the same as the Safari version.
Safari 5 – The Reader
Posted by Gavin Lewis in Internet, Mac OSX, Windows on June 8, 2010
I love the new Safari 5 reader function. Along with a bunch of HTML5 and Javascript related improvements and performance boosts, Safari 5 also has this cool function that strips out all of the extraneous junk from a typical website and then makes it look like a (iWork) Pages document. The above shot is of [...]
Half Life 2 – Engine update
Posted by Gavin Lewis in Games, Mac OSX, Windows on June 1, 2010
The best game in the world (in my opinion) has recently had an upgrade. The game uses the Source engine, which when coupled with the Steam content delivery platform allows Valve to upgrade certain parts of the source engine, whether it be the physics engine, the textures or anything else. Since 2004 when Half Life 2 was released, the engine has seen a number of improvements, such as HDR lighting, more anti-aliasing and multicore rendering. Unfortunately until very recently it was only the later episodes of Half LIfe 2 that incorporated these features, which was a shame because the main game is arguably the most important part.
MobileMe Update
Posted by Gavin Lewis in iOS, Mac OSX, Windows on May 12, 2010
Well, my two month free trial is coming to an end soon and I thought I’d best tell you how I got on. I’ve been using it with my usual three platforms – OSX, Windows and Linux for a few weeks now and I’ve had vastly different experiences with all three
alternativeto.net
It’s pretty fair to say I’m not your biggest fan of proprietary software, or even paid-for software. I often find that, as I mentioned in my Photoshop Elements 8 post a lot of paid-for software seems to take up a lot of space and use a lot of RAM for no apparent reason. If you are like me, you may wish to take a look at alternativeto.net
Grand Theft Auto 4 & Episodes from Liberty City
Posted by Gavin Lewis in Games, Windows on May 2, 2010
I thought it was about time I said something about GTA4, but I wanted to wait until I’d played the episodes as well. I’ve finished GTA4 and the Lost & The Damned, so now I just have the Ballad of Gay Tony to go before I’ve got the full picture…
MobileMe – First impressions
Posted by Gavin Lewis in iOS, Mac OSX, Ubuntu, Windows on April 13, 2010
MobileMe was a rocky launch for Apple. After discontinuing “.Mac” around the launch of the iphone 3G and introducing MobileMe the infrastructure went into meltdown and there were no end of syncing problems and other issues. Apple responded by sending out apologetic emails and extending the free trial by a month as a peace offering. Things seem to have settled down somewhat and following the arrival of my new iPhone I decided to take the two month free trial.
GTA4 – PC – 1.0.6.0.
Posted by Gavin Lewis in Games, Windows on April 13, 2010
In readyness for the downloadable content, patch 1.0.6.0 has been pushed out for the PC. Features are listed as follows.
Adobe Photoshop Elements 8
Posted by Gavin Lewis in Photography, Windows on April 2, 2010
I must confess to feeling a bit dirty. I’m normally a firm advocate of Free & Open Source software alternatives, such as GIMP, UFRaw, RawStudio and QTPFSGUI. However, there’s a few things amiss with the current FOSS (& Google) offerings. The main issue for me is that I’m getting tired of re-organising my library, re-tagging and running the face detection algorithm of the moment each time I change program. I decided it was time I bought something a bit more complete, more self contained, but able to do all of the same things. So, here I am with Photoshop Elements 8.
The Mac, a gaming scene in the making?
Posted by Gavin Lewis in Games, Mac OSX, Windows on March 12, 2010
Valve, the much championed game developer and creator of the Steam delivery service for Windows PC’s recently announced that it was bringing the Steam client to OSX. Steam is the one right answer to combating piracy on the PC and most publishers worth the time of day use it. Steam allows you to buy and download games from their online store, right onto your hard drive, whilst protecting the developer with its inbuilt DRM yet allowing the consumer to re-download the game at any time. Not only that it also patches your purchased games automatically and provides community features such as instant messaging, a server browser, community groups and personal profiles for each user. It has recently added more features, such as the ability to store your save games in the cloud, achievements and Steamworks – its development and publishing suite.
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