Month: February 2007

Orkut has since recently a pretty weird
“feature” (or let’s call it “option”) in their settings.

And once the option appeared, it was enabled by default without my notice.

I only noticed it, because somebody from Brazil who wanted to add me pointed it out to me.

It’s “receive friend invites only from people with profiles in the following languages”.

If you think about it, it’s quite harming the sense of being an international community.

Is this Orkut’s try to make it a smaller, more controllable community?
Not sure..

Technorati Tags: Orkut, language
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Let’s face it, Skype’s Support is not the best. But they have got professional support now… for developers. Quoting Ike’s Lifestyle Blog (Who herself quoted Skype’s announcement):

“We will guarantee next business day response and three business days resolution, or your request will be handled free of charge. You will also be able to place your premium support requests confidentially.”

· Paid support issues are top priority: your issue will be resolved
before work is started on unpaid issues.
· It’s pricey, € 300 per incident, half that if you pre-pay for ten.
· It’s only through Skype’s issue tracker system. No live support.
· And it’s just for software developers.“

Technorati Tags: Skype, support
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Yesterday, I have received the first newsletter of the C64 Orchestra.

Next to their next stage details, they also mention a CD to come out near June this year.

Here is what they wrote:

——- Forwarded message ——-
From: “Productiehuis ON (no reply)”
To:
Subject: C64 orchestra newsflash
Date: Tue, 27 Feb 2007 11:41:52 +0100

February 2006

Hello C64 orchestra fan,

It has been some time since you heard from us. But no worries, we will keep you updated on what’s happening!
Let’s start with what’s happening with the release of the C64 cd. Right now we are talking with different record companies in and outside Europe. Our record label in Europe is Rounder and we are talking with Yep Roc in the States. We are working on the release of a special edition with all the specifics of C64 design. We invited some great Dutch design companies and finally made the choice to work with Hotel. In the mean time we are working on clarifying some legal issues concerning the rights of songs and games, a slow but necessary process. The release, the special edition and the ‘normal’ version, will be two cd’s. One will be the orchestrated version by the C64 orchestra and the other one has the original tunes, two games and an emulator to play the C64 games on your pc. And we will also add some video footage of the premiere! So it’s a full package of C64 fun!

The big question is: when will the cd be released?
We hope to release it in June 2007, but it’s a long shot. Lots of issues need to be resolved before we can raise the flag!

C64 orchestra is ON tour:
15-03-07 De Vereeniging, Nijmegen, NL
17-03-07 Atak, Enschede, NL
16-05-07 Vredenburg, Utrecht, NL
03-06-07 Virusfestival, Eindhoven, NL
14-07-07 Forma Nova Festival, Fredericia, Denmark

C64 orchestra ON the internet:
www.myspace.com/c64orchestra
You tube

Don’t you want to have our newsflashes? Reply to nieuwsbrief@ONinternet.nl (with the email address which receives the newsflash!) with subject ‘unsubscribe’

productiehuis ON is financially supported by
Ministerie van OCW, the provincies Overijssel &
Gelderland and the gemeente Deventer

productiehuis ON / Bagijnenstraat 11
7411 PT Deventer / 0031570600177
The Netherlands
info[at]ONinternet.nl
www.ONinternet.nl

Technorati Tags: Old computer games, orchestra, C64, Commodore 64
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Flickr will make a “Birthday Present” to me.

They are moving completely to Yahoo:

“——- Forwarded message ——-
From: “Flickr Mail”
To: nafcom[at]c64.org
Subject: [Flickr] Update for Old Skool members
Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2007 01:44:29 +0100

Dear Old Skool Account-Holding Flickr Member,

On March 15th we’ll be discontinuing the old email-based
Flickr sign in system. From that point on, everyone will
have to use a Yahoo! ID to sign in to Flickr.

We’re making this change now to simplify the sign in
process in advance of several large projects launching this
year, but some Flickr features and tools already require
Yahoo! IDs for sign in — like the mobile site at
m.flickr.com or the new Yahoo! Go program for mobiles,
available at: http://go.yahoo.com.

95% of your fellow Flickrites already use this system and
their experience is just the same as yours is now, except
they sign in on a different page. It’s easy to switch: it
takes about a minute if you already have a Yahoo! ID and
about five minutes if you don’t.

You can make the switch at any time in the next few months,
from today till the 15th. (After that day, you’ll be
required to merge before you continue using your account.)
To switch, start at this page:

http://flickr.com/account/associate/

Nothing else on your account or experience of Flickr
changes: you can continue to have your FlickrMail and
notifications sent to any email address at any domain and
your screenname will remain the same.

Complete details and answers to most common questions are
available here:

http://flickr.com/help/signin/

Thanks for your patience and understanding – and even
bigger thanks for your continued support of Flickr: if
you’re reading this, you’ve been around for a while and
that means a lot to us!

Warmest regards,

– The Flickreenos”

I am not yet sure whether I like this, as I am not a big fan of Yahoo. Maybe I will move them all to another place, I really didn’t decide yet.

Especially annoying is the fact that Yahoo took over del.icio.us Support.

Also annoying is, that Flickr denied the fact that once, a virus was in their system in their Javascript version of their Flickr Badge.

Technorati Tags: Flickr, support
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British people protest against high Vista prices now
In comparance, you have to pay in UK for all editions about 50-60 USD more than in USA.
They have started a petition regarding this here called “VistaOvercharge”.

Technorati Tags: 64bit, Vista, Windows, petition, UK
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Skype Gear blogger Stephen Pinches posts a usage experience review about the new Panasonic KX-WP1050 Wi-fi Skype phone with Wireless Travel Router.

It’s not like the other Skype wi-fi phones because indeed it comes as a bundle (not very cheap bundle!) with a portable wireless LAN router.

Technorati Tags: Skype, wi-fi, Panasonic, KX-WP1050
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We all know this, system near prgs will not work anymore, once a new version of Windows is out. I didn’t plan to invest money in new prorgram versions and decided to see what the freeware/open source market offers here.

So, the motto is: Vista: Moving away from Drive Image & Partition Manager

As a replacement for Drive Image, I found the free Drive Image XML. Fully Vista compatible. (while Drive Image2002 says the drive is 100% full and then abports with “continue, retry, abort, cancel?).

Unfortuantely, it appears that Drive Image XML has a problem with the Drive Shadowing Service of the 64bit version, so I had to use the boot CD version.

Despite the fact that Vista has its own partition manager, it isn’t really very powerful.
(I wanted one that can also merge partitions, etc).

For this, I found GParted, which is a Linux based prg that runs from a Linux Live CD.

Of course both programs fully support USB 2, SATA 1/2 HDDs too (mine were detected!).

Technorati Tags: 64bit, Vista, Windows, bluetooth, partition, image
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Getting Flash to work in Vista 64bit and Opera 9.20 is no problem (the standalone installer will work).
But Shockwave is a real pain.

Thanks to some help from the Opera Community, I have got to work!

So here is the manual:

1) Disable the windows vista sidepanel (just shut it down!).

2) Then run the Full 64bit installer version

3) Copy all .dll files from systemWOW64 to Opera’s plugin folder

4) Extract the 32 bit slim installer version.

5) Copy all .dll and plugin files into the plugin folder of Opera. (overwrite exsisting files).

6) Test your Shockwave installation

Technorati Tags: 64bit, Vista, Windows, Shockwave, Opera
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Skype has released Skype for Windows 3.1 BETA featuring SkypeFind – A bussiness finder, several bugfixes and a typing and deleting indicator! 🙂

Skype has explained it (in person of Jaanus) in detailed over here.

The complete changlog can be found here

Technorati Tags: Skype, 3.1
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I have compiled a list of applications explecitely supported for Windows Vista 64bit or workarounds for them:

>HWSpirit – Forum

Technorati Tags: 64bit, Vista, Windows
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