Windows Live Street View?
February 26th, 2009Oh, Microsoft. Implementing a Street View feature for Windows Live Maps, are we? One of my friends snapped this picture on Elkhorn Ave in Norfolk, Virginia. 
Zune falls, Zune cracks. :-(
February 24th, 2009Today something tragic happened. I was walking down the hall, and as I took my Zune out of my pocket, I fumbled the device, and it fell flat on it’s face (screen) onto the hard floor. The poor thing’s front glass cracked, and now it’s sad. 
How Windows 7 Beta Behaves when you don’t activate it (WGA)
February 23rd, 2009Microsoft introduced Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) in Windows XP. WGA acts as an anti-piracy measure for Windows. In XP it made a lot of sense for Microsoft, because XP required a product key during the install. For pirates that meant finding a key online. This was tricky, because keygens for Windows just don’t exist, so any key that they would find would be used by hundreds (or thousands) of other pirates. This made WGA easily pick out pirates and act accordingly. Vista and 7 don’t require product keys during the install, but give a 30-day grace period between the install and when WGA kicks in. WGA’s behavior when it identifies a copy of windows as “not genuine” has changed even within different service packs.
I believe WGA in XP is basically just a nag from the system notification area. In Vista RTM (pre service pack 1), WGA would disable AERO when the user logged in and only give an Internet Explorer window for the user to purchase a key. (Of course, the IE window allowed the user to open up the command prompt to do various things to get the system back without paying, but that’s not what this post is about.) Vista SP1’s WGA behavior was less of a show-stopper, and did allow the user to get to the desktop and use the computer semi-normally, but onto the Windows 7 behavior.
After a month of avoiding putting in my Windows 7 Beta key, I was greeted this dialogue box while using the computer: 
“Spontaneous Overflow”
February 22nd, 2009A friend of mine from high school—he goes by Dan Metalmadcat online—creates amazing flash animations. I’ve tried flash myself, and I fail at it miserably. Dan showed me his latest animation, and I liked it so much I thought I’d share it with my reader readers. 
Dan says this about his animation:
Spontaneous Overflow is the latest animation I’ve done with Flash. Quite abstract and symbolic but always with the same degree of nonsense. In "Spontaneous Overflow" I was challenged by the statement of William Wordsworth who called poetry as a "Spontaneous Overflow of powerful feelings"
William did a good job explaining through words, now is my time to explain it in a visual art form kind of way..
Hope you like it.
Dan Metalmadcat [2009].
Dan’s website is metalmadcat.ya.st. Here’s the video:
DVD Cover Art Finder version 1.1.0.0
February 21st, 2009I just finished making some updates to DVD Cover Art Finder. It now has some new features and fewer bugs! 