I’ve always been a big fan of the Microsoft Mouse line, and now with Vista, a new reason: Instant View. This is a great new feature in the next version on the IntelliPoint software. I’ve been using a bit of a hack since I installed Vista back in November. So it’s nice to be using a copy of IntelliPoint that is actually supposed to work with Vista.
I’ve got to say, the new Instant View feature is a very nice touch, and one that I really prefer to Aero‘s Flip 3D (Windows+Tab) feature (Instant View has a fair bit less lag). This is really an impressive feature, though not perfect. While it does work on multi-monitor setups, Flip 3D is far more graceful about it.
Try it, I’m quite certain you’ll like it.
An update to the Visual Studio PowerToy Pack Installer has just been announced. This handy application wraps up many of the PowerToys so that they can be installed from one easy to use UI. With so many of these Power Toys available, this installer is great to have; otherwise finding and installing them can be a slow and painful experience.
If you’re a power user, or fancy yourself a power tweaker, this one might just be for you.
Today I had to do something I’ve not done since I switched to Vista: burn a ISO image. Normally I would just fire up Nero and be on my way; but my version of Nero is old, and I didn’t feel like fighting with it. So I decide to find something new.
I found a fair bit of discussion on the topic, and a few highly recommended (and free) choices:
- ImgBurn – This is a well polished application, it exposes a fair bit of information about what’s going on, and some of the behind the scenes details. Novice tend to prefer knowing as little as possible, but for more advanced users, it looks like a winner.
- CDBurnerXP Pro – This one received a several recommendations, though I’d have to advise against it. While it seems like a well built application, it’s obvious that it’s not been tested on Vista (the warning about running on Windows 95 or Windows NT doesn’t inspire confidence).
- ISO Recorder – This is one that I didn’t get a chance to test, though it sounds quite promising.
Of those I tested, all had the same major flaw: none worked. ImgBurn came the closest, though failed to actually start writing. After a quick search I turned up the reason: my old Iomega CD-RW drive was so old, it doesn’t follow the standards newer drives implement.
So now I’m facing buying a new copy of Nero (as it’s always worked for me), when I stumbled upon a writeup for BurnCDCC. Even though I thought it would be a waste of time, I went ahead and tried it. After downloading the whopping 69KB file, I fired it up, and sure enough; it worked!
So if you’ll looking for a free way to burn ISOs, and have and old, hopeless drive; BurnCDCC just might help. Seems to be a great little program, and I have to appreciate the simplicity. Something nice about software that does one thing, and does it very well.
Looking to get a good start in the latest Microsoft technology? Rob Eisenberg has written what appears to be a rather interesting, and quite useful, crash course in WPF. If you’re looking for a quick way to get up to speed, this looks like a good place to start.
For those that do any web development, you’ll be interested to know that the IE Team has released beta 3 of the IE Developer Toolbar. From what I’ve seen, this looks like an impressive release. This is well worth the download and has saved me a fair bit of time in the past.
I’m sure there’s nothing to this, but I have to point it out: a Microsoft employee publicly seeking information on Google PageRank. Roberto D’Angelo, in How Google PageRank(tm) works (the post has been removed, here is a PDF version of the original*), discusses how the PageRank algorithm works as well as asks for others to provide additional information.
Anybody find this a bit odd?
I’m not trying to knock Roberto, or Microsoft, it just strikes me as odd that a Microsoft employee would be publicly seeking information on a proprietary feature of a competitor’s product. While it’s normal to review a competitor’s product to see what it does better, trying to figure out patented and proprietary technologies, in a public setting, seems like a bad idea to me.
What gets me about this, is that it’s so public. Digging into a competitor’s product in a public manner will lead to backlash, especially when we’re talking about Google and Microsoft. I can only imagine the comments that will be made as a result of his post. So far I’ve not seen any feedback on this, but I have to image that it will be coming. From a business perspective, I have to suspect this will be considered a mistake.
What do you think, is it really a good idea to publicly dig into the proprietary feature of a competitors product?
Update: Since this was published the original page was removed, making public discussion a bit of a moot point. I’m leaving this as I feel it’s an interesting point. I’ve removed the original link and added a link to a PDF file of the original page, for those interested in seeing what was said.
