I have decided this blog fulfils no purpose, I have a number of other projects I have moved onto with more success and I wish to spend my time on those.
Check out Shipping Seven for my new blog. An unofficial blog on the Windows 7 development process…
“Give your ordinary desktop new life” suggests Schillergames, the creators of Real Desktop, “enjoy the fascinating dynamics of a revolutionary graphic rendition of your desktop.” And that’s not all! “Your icons behave now, thanks to the powerful physics-engine, that you can touch and move like on a real desk.”
To me the premise of a 3D desktop sounds maybe only a tad more useful then 3D email, but for some of you this may be your kind of thing. Real Desktop converts your 2D desktop into a virtual desktop where the icons act as files strewn across your workspace and can be picked up, throw and stacked.
The software costs $25.95 to buy, but you can try out the free version called ‘Real Desktop Lite’. The Lite version lacks all customisation features, but use it for a couple minutes and your curiosity should be adequately satisfied. A need for further investment should seem unlikely.
Schillergames promises Real Desktop is light on system resources. I found that to be largely true, the software didn’t noticeably cause any slowdown, but the program itself lags quite significantly as move icons around.
I suggest you just spend a couple minutes organising your desktop rather then much longer fiddling around with a 3D desktop environment.
My suggestions of browsing freelance job boards for work?
Don’t.
You will not believe the amount of writing people are willing to do for the most pathetic amounts of money. Look at the this posting:
A writing opportunity for serious article writers. Its more like a regular job than any other writing work. The writer would be required to deliver 1 article of 600 words daily and is suppose to keep in touch with me constantly. Since it is like a regular home writing job, the budget is $2 per article, and the payment for first 15 articles (i.e., for 15 days) would be kept in escrow account once the writer is selected. After delivering 15 articles (daily basis) partial payment would be released and after 30 days, the remaining funds would be transferred.
I am looking for a writer who can write for me in a timely manner, no delays please since I have to update on a daily basis. Besides, the subjects would be law, literature, psychology, management, nursing and so on. Writer is free to choose and write upon any matter but the information should be useful and meet the standards of a mature reader (Often I would be giving him selective topics to write, overall the topics would be decided beforehand). I could have done the task myself but due to timing constraint, I am unable to do so. Once the writer be able to gain my trust, I would prefer him or her for my future projects.
So in summary this person is asking someone to write 600 words for $2, every day for 15 days before she pays anything. That’s 9000 words, or nearly 20 pages of content for no more then 30 dollars. After this they will then receive partial payment, $15 I presume, and then they have to wait 30 days before receiving the remainder. I can only presume in this time she will be wanting another 20 pages.
What is shocking about this is that people actually bid on these kind of Jobs… Maybe it’s worth a lot more to people in other countries, but it certainly makes it harder to get any kind of freelance work with people willing to work for that kind of price.
I think the $8-$15 range is reasonable for posts between 200 and 500 words. For this you can be averaging maybe around $12 an hour if you write fast. I currently need to improve my writing speed. Often I find myself writing an article I then consequently completely rework later.
My aim is be able to write a decent, well linked 250-350 word article in 40 min or so.
Apologies for the intrusive advertising in the right column.
The skyscraper banner ruins my theme, but I just haven’t got around to modifying it more to fit in better or replace it with something else.
Louis Gray wrote an article a couple of weeks back igniting a debate about advertising on blogs. Much of what he said was quite true, but in other ways the point of view he was coming from is very different to many bloggers. Take his opening few sentences for example:
It’s routinely shocking to me that so many bloggers think they should try and make a profit from their Web site.
Urged on by the success of mega blog networks like TechCrunch and spurred forward by stories from ProBlogger, or corner cases like Dooce.com, Daily Kos and others, an inordinate amount of people are hoisting ads on their blogs, from Google AdSense, from AdBrite or Federated Media, in the hope of turning their daily rantings into big dollars that could possibly change their life. It’s no surprise that blogging for many has the shiny look of a “get rich quick” scheme, when actuality is far different.
Their hopes are misguided, and for most, a serious reality adjustment is needed.
He is making the assumption that bloggers who host ads are hoping in “turning their daily rantings into big dollars that could possibly change their life”. This may apply to some new bloggers, but for the most part we know that little can be expected from advertising alone. I certainly never expected big advertising dollars, but its enough to cover the costs of blog hosting.
Viewers accept advertising as a way for many things to remain free. I disagree with advertising that is too intrusive such as “in-text” advertising and banners that fold out when you mouse over, but as a whole I can shut off to them quite easily.
Most sites are not big enough, traffic-wise, to generate significant revenue. Assuming a mid-size blog gets about 1,000 unique visitors per day, and an ad delivers 1 cent per impression, you’re only talking ten dollars a day. If you’re instead getting 25 cents for a click-through, you would need 4 percent of your visitors to click on an ad to achieve that same ten bucks. And advertising click through rates are usually in the low tenths of a percent, let alone full percents, so most numbers would actually be much less than this.
Again, Louis is speaking from the point of view of a working professional. To him $10 a day is totally insignificant, but to me $10 a day is $70 a week. And $70 a week is roughly 30% of my weekly income.
I’m only a part-time worker as I’m currently at university, and adding this sort of revenue to some freelance blogging and it provides a significant source of income for me. In fact it has meant I have been able to cut down my working hours somewhat and give me more time to study.
Advertising revenue may be insignificant for many, but for others its enough.
Hamad Darwish is quite frankly one of the best landscape photographers I have seen.
You may have heard his story before… an amateur photographer who uploaded his photographs to Flickr and ended up receiving an offer from Microsoft.
Of the 6000 images he took, Microsoft bought 5 and 2 made it into the Vista Wallpaper pack.
I think the above image is amazing, and it featured on my desktop long before I had Vista.
I pity the Microsoft employee’s who’s job it was sifting through all his thousands of photos and choosing just a mere two. In fact looking at these I would have struggled to pick out even 10 that are the best.
If you liked the wallpapers that came with Vista then check these out. I All these are copyright Hamad Darwish.
You can download the complete wallpaper packs on his website here. And see some of his other work here..
I love reading Phil Thurrott’s SuperSite Blog.
He’s a great journalist and is also maybe the most balanced IT writer I have read. He may be involved in a lot of Microsoft work but if they do something stupid, he says so. If Apple does something great, he acknowledges it.
What I like best about his blog is the way he blasts the hopeless hacks who try to cover technology news. Sometimes he can be a little arrogant but for the most part he is great to read.
Recently he did a great post highlighting the not-so-subliminal bias of Wired Blog by turning this post:
Zune Eats Creative’s Meager Lunch, Grabbing 4 Percent of MP3 Player Market
Microsoft’s Zune picked up a percentage point in the MP3 player market, bringing its share to a whopping four percent, with two million units sold. Microsoft has said from the start that it will stick with the Zune for as long as it takes for the player to gain traction, and it looks like that’s starting to happen.
Apple’s share of the MP3 player market share dropped a single point to 71 percent, according to the NPD Group’s study, but its lead is still monstrous. The bigger loser between Q1 2007 and Q1 2008 was Creative, which saw its share halved to two percent.
into this:
Apple Eats Packard-Bell’s Meager Lunch, Grabbing 4 Percent of PC Market
Apple’s Mac picked up a percentage point in the PC player market, bringing its share to a whopping four percent, with two million units sold. Apple has said from the start that it will stick with the Mac for as long as it takes for the platform to gain traction, and it looks like that’s starting to happen.
Microsoft’s share of the desktop OS market share dropped a single point to 91 percent, according to the NPD Group’s study, but its lead is still monstrous. The bigger loser between Q1 2007 and Q1 2008 was Packard-Bell, which saw its share halved to two percent.
This kind of reporting annoys me regularly, especially the way that whenever Apple does something it must be some amazing innovative new breakthrough. Macbooks getting faster Intel processors? Wow! Why didn’t Toshiba think of that??
I think the Zune does have promise if Microsoft picks up its game a little and releases it overseas. I hardly see how it is doing horribly, in the space of two years Microsoft has grabbed 4% marketshare and overtook the number two competitor (Creative).
Gee the iPod sold 370, 000 units in its first year, the Zune sold one million. Yea yea I know there are other factors involved, but back in 2002 people certainly weren’t saying, oh the iPod is a failure for barely moving half a million units.
What we won’t see is the spike the iPod had in its 3rd year when it jumped from around 600 000 units a quarter to 2, 4, 6 then 14 million units sold. However I can see the Zune will slowly gain ground over the next couple years.
I got Vista on my new laptop abut 6 months ago. I had been hearing the horror stories for the previous year or so and just assumed Vista to be this incredibly bad OS with nothing more then a superficial new theme.
However even after 3 days of troubleshooting (including my computer randomly being identified as a pirate copy) I was beginning to like Vista. Sure many of the features may seen to be small additions, but I assure you that after using Vista for some time you will hate going back to XP.
Anyway the point of this was that at first Vista did seem to be very slow. It instantly confirmed my suspicions about the resource hogging accusations, and I promptly Googled some tips to speed things up.
What I got was recommendations from IT ‘guru’s everywhere to turn off all the fancy Vista effects as it slowed down the system. These new graphics were also blamed for eating battery life and almost every other thing wrong with Vista.
However with time I soon realised that the graphic effects have no effect whatsoever on battery life or the performance of Windows. There are some sure-fire ways to speed things up such as unselecting the “highlight new programs” option in the start menu, limiting the number of processes starting with Windows and making sure your system is fully indexed. However Aero has no noticeable effect.
When you first begin using Vista it will be slow, but that is, among other reasons, because Windows is still allocating files to RAM for quick access and creating thumbnails and all that jazz for the first time. I assure you that with time Vista responds fine for normal everyday usage. I can’t say the same for gaming performance however as I don’t play high performance games. However the few I do play run fine.
I challenge someone to actually prove that the Aero interface has any connection with battery life or performance.
The newly updated Zune Software is going to be the subject of my first review here on Not Waving But Drowning.
I do not have a Zune MP3 player although I am considering purchasing one through Amazon as regardless of Microsoft’s iPod killing smack-talk they still haven’t even made the smallest of steps towards releasing the Zune in countries outside of the US.
Luckily the Zune 2 software has been available for some time for anyone to download and I checked it out a while ago to see what it was like.
Like the player themselves, the Zune 2 software was a incredible improvement over the original version. Features were somewhat lacking, but the program itself is very attractive and shows promise. In the end I left it and continued using Windows Media Player and Media Monkey.
With this update for the Zune however I have begun using the software more extensively, even as one of my main music libraries on my laptop.
Feature Update
- Addition of Video to Zune Marketplace
- Gapless Playback
- Improved filtering or music and video
- Autoplaylists
- Improved syncing via “sync groups”
- Metadata editing
- Zune Social Integration
- Removal of the ‘marketplace’ option for users outside of the US
Comparison
This update does a lot to bring the Zune in line with dominate competitor iTunes. It still lacks in many ways, but this update has shown promise.
Zune 2.5 has added a meta data editor, but unfortunately it still lacks when compared to other music organizers such as iTunes which has a far more advanced system and WMP11 which provides a number of options with its ‘advanced tag editing’.
Autoplaylists are let down somewhat by the over simplified ‘favourite’ system and lack of detail in the meta data editing. Still, there is a significant improvement here in adding this feature to the Zune once again.
The lack of genre browsing was a severe annoyance of the original software but this has now been rectified.
Video Support
Microsoft promised the Zune Marketplace would have a whole new take on video, however this has failed to materialise and Video is available to purchase in just the same way as iTunes, although admittedly Microsoft did manage to get some TV networks such as NBC on board that iTunes couldn’t (or wouldn’t).
The Zune’s 3.5” display is actually very impressive and dwarfs the iPod classics 2.5” screen. It was a pity then that viewing video was only possible through ripping and converting your own DVDs, something only a small amount of people would bother to do. (Some music videos did become available with the Marketplace 2.2 update).
Now anyone can download and watch TV shows and movies on their Zune including the Office and Heroes.
Interface
I love the Zune interface. I find it both attractive and functional.
In fact even though I used WMP11 as my main music library and tag editor, I often used the Zune 2 software to play through my library. You can see the interface below… a huge improvement on the visualisations most media players have which in my opinion are pretty pointless.
Conclusion
iTunes is still a much better Music Library and service then Zune 2.5, but Microsoft has gone some way to levelling the playing field. No news yet of a version 3, but when it comes round I am hoping we see a more advanced meta data editor, improved star system and Marketplace support for users outside of the US who may wish to purchase music.
I know this software is designed for the Zune, but it would be nice to be able to sync any media player such as my Toshiba Gigabeat.
This update gives me hope for the future of the Zune. A global Zune release will make me think the Zune really has a chance to increase that 4% marketshare somewhat. However I am guessing we will not see that till the Zune 3.
Interesting article by Paul Thurott called “Can Microsoft save the Zune?”
Note: For some reason however Zune 2.5 caused some problems on my system. Seeing as it doesn’t seem to be a complaint for other users I would assume it to be something I have done rather then the program itself. It frequently crashes or slows my whole system down when running.
Update: Seems to be running fine now.
Subscribing to feeds can become somewhat addictive. So unless I regularly go through and remove feeds I am not paying much attention to then it can become too much to handle. Not only is it a waste of bandwidth having an additional 2000 items downloading that you simply mark as “read” but it makes reading less enjoyable and more of a race.
This week the following feeds where removed:
Meme13
Good intentions… but not particularly useful. In fact I didn’t use it once, seeing as the majority of articles that appear here I already subscribe too.
James.Random()
I can’t think why I even subscribed to this to begin with. And he has ‘random’ in his blog name… ’nuff said.
Pickstroke
I have never actually really read this blog, even though I have subscribed for a while. When I had a quick look I actually found some useful stuff… but seeing as I’ve lived happily so far without it I’ll survive. *delete*
Mp3 Insider
Hasn’t been updated since 3rd of April.
Free Software
Not bad, but I just don’t need another free download site, Download Squad is good enough
Shell Extension
Interesting, but hasn’t been updated for a couple months.
This week I added these feeds:
The Drama 2.0 Show
I don’t know why I haven’t heard of this blog before, it is possibly one of the genuinely funniest blogs online, all the more because it cuts through the crap and has some very valid points.
The Statbot
The website of Yuvi, a 17 old data geek who does incredibly detailed analysis of website statistics. Quite interesting.
JeetBlog
Abhijeet Mukherjee joined the team at MakeUseof and I checked out his blog, I liked it enough it enough to add to my feeds.
And my current favourite blogs are: