Nafcom's Personal Site

Next to other ICQ 6 skins I found, also Maxx Scharlatan started with this version. check it out.

Just one yet as of today, but probably he will also do more 🙂

Technorati Tags: ICQ, icq6, skin
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Opera has recently released an early Opera test build with integrate video into web pages, and native support for video in browsers. (info source and download), which means it allows homepages to display video elements right into the browser not requiring plugins.

Very Inportant notes about this build (source: Opera Fansite (German)):

Opera mustn’t automatically start from within the setup program but has to be started manually, only!

Technorati Tags: Opera, video
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There are quite some people who experience ICQ 6 being slow, or Flash being slow and having breaks and whatnot, and Adobe even released a new version as written on the ITsVista Blog.

I am almost very sure that the problem is connected with the Windows Vista X64 drivers, RealTek released and which are also downloaded and installed from Microsoft Update once you run it on a fresh Windows Vista X64 installation.

By the history of this driver, you can follow definate changes in behaviour of your Vista installation once you run certain stuff playing sound.

Yet the RealTek drivers (on-board sound) seem to cause the following problems:

-MIDI files shudder, have breaks and do not play fluently in most situations

-Flash causes 100% CPU load in Opera, 88%-90% CPU load in IE7 (thanks to the new update of Flash as mentioned above)

-The driver/app component of the Logitech QuickCam software cause 100% CPU load when speaking into the micrphone while speaking in Skype (before the latest cam software, it was both ways) – Logitech is working on fixing this issue 100% since February (they have fixed it 50% so now I am waiting since 2 months for them to fix it when using webcam/mic in Skype, too).

I am trying since months to get a respond on this from RealTek so they would at least acknolegde, confirm, try to fix/improve the bug/problems in their driver or anything like that.
Years ago, I also tried to get in touch with them and they didn’t give a reply either.

I wonder whether any RealTek representative/worker will read this and do something about it!

Nvidia is also not better really. I reported the fact that their nForce4 chipset driver make my system incredibly slow!

After a couple of replies and me explaining the reasons, they simply closed my ticket.

Among the best support is really Logitech (just they take ages to fix the bugs I report/reported but at least they fix them!) and ATI USA.

ATI USA support is quick, helpful and they have fixed all the bugs I ever reported about their drivers in Windows Vista X64!

Technorati Tags: Windows, Vista, X64, Skype, Flash, ICQ6, midi, RealTek, support, Logitech Quickcam Orbit MP, 64bit
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Note: Posts about other wi-fi Skype phones: here

There is another Skype wi-fi phone (yes, it doesn’t stop!) that came to the market, and of course again the Skype Gadged blog reviews it (this time by Andrew Brennan).

The major differences between the others are:

“WIP320 also has the ability to update its software automatically, rather than having to connect it to a computer to install new firmware. This is particularly useful because with the recent release of Skype 3.2 Beta, Skype introduced Multi-Device Presence. This means that when you’re signed in to Skype on multiple devices, your most recent status is synched across the devices—hopefully Linksys will add this feature soon“

and

“Battery life was as expected – I could go 2-3 days between charges.”

The rest looks like being indentical to the other Skype wi-fi phones.

Full review (with photos!) at above’s link.

Technorati Tags: Skype, wi-fi, LinkSys, WIP320
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One of the most popular viewers – Irfan View now got a new update after a long while featuring official Windows Vista and Google Earth support (a button which shows the thing you have on the photo on pusing (if GPS data is available!) also some improvements for Windows Vsta have been made!

Technorati Tags: Vista, Google Earth, IrfanView
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Netgear released a firmware for T-Mobile (in USA only) login support for the SPH101.
As we remember the earlier firmware was not that useful, so looks like they have fixed it.

A quote from the site:

“Published: Mar 29, 2007.

Enhancements / New Features:
This new firmware provides the ability to login to T-Mobile hot spots within the continental United States using the Skype WiFi Phone (SPH101).
You can not log into any T-Mobile hot spots outside United States.
You should have already established an account with T-Mobile to be able to use this feature on SPH101. You cannot create a T-Mobile account using the SPH101.

How to use the T-Mobile features on SPH101?

After you have completed the upgrade procedure described below, follow: Instructions to login/logout of T-Mobile account on your SPH101.”

Hope they will also do it for other country’s T-Mobile Hotspots, too! 🙂

Note, it’s beta, so it still may have bugs!

Technorati Tags: Skype, firmware, T-Mobile, SPH101
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And once again a quote from the Skype Dev Newsletter I just received a couple of minutes ago:

I suppose I should start by stating who I am what I do. My name is Morné van Dalen and I am a technical project manager in the Windows desktop team at Skype. And yes, you guessed it: For my sins Call Transfer is one of my projects and it is earmarked for the future release of Skype for Windows.
This feature has been one of the most requested/anticipated features for a long time, so it is important for us to make sure we get it right. We want to be able to offer a feature that not only matches functionality available on your landline or mobile, but be able to deliver an even better experience. That seems like a tall order, so how are we going to do it?
Functionality: between Call forwarding and Call transfer (read more)
Transfer methods: Direct transfer or Screening transfer (read more)
Which calls can be transferred?

*Skype to Skype (P2P)
*Skype to SkypeOut (P2P to SipOut)
*SkypeIn to Skype (SipIn to P2P)
*SkypeIn to SkypeOut (SipIn to SipOut)
*Skype to Group
*SkypeIn to Group

Will it be available to everyone? No. (read more)
Integrating with existing functionalityThere should be no problems integrating with existing functionality like call Forward and Voicemail. (read more)
Integrating with our developer partners/community
All the functionality is available via the Skype API. The restrictions on functionality available to SkypePro users still apply, as this “privilege” is verified on the back end, the library & the client UI. In fact the Skype to Skype capability has been in the API for a while now and people like Don Kennedy have already been playing with this feature.

read more…

Technorati Tags: Skype, Call Transfer
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Since about a week, I have added AddThis to my blog posts, which allows to add the blog posts to almost any bookmark manager (they even support some I have never ever heard of before).

The footer of the posts have been re-aligned too and have been tested to look nice in 1024 x 768 and up in Opera 9.20, Firefox 2 X54 and IE7 (all in full screen mode) and it appeared to disply fine. If you experience any problems, please let know!

I found this nice tool thanks to the AskReaMaor Blog.

Technorati Tags: Blog, AddThis
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I knew about the Prophet64 since quite a while but if I recall correctly it wasn’t quite available at this time. Since I read on the C64 Music! Blog.

Then I ordered it at Prophet64.com by PayPal and received a confirmation of receiving and sending out the thing pretty quickly. Actually, 2 days later the thing arrived. Because I have 2 left hands, I asked my grandfather to insert the SID2SID to me. And what can I say?

1) The Prophet64 works perfectly and really is easy to use and very compative with professional software you know from the PC – the manual is easy to understand (tried the Sequencer yet so the MAIN application on the cartridge!).

2) I noticed that it has some small irregularities. The 1351 mouse (I tried 2 real and 2 compatible ones) only works for me at all when I hold down the CBM key while selecting the Sequencer.

Also, sometimes the application accidently sets the volume to almost zero when loading a file after playing the demo, if 2 SIDS are available and sometimes the speed is set wrong and won’t change when adjusting.

3) 8bit ventures are very friendly and replied to my emails within 48 hours and replied to my questions.
Didn’t get the feeling that they don’t care for any second.

4) The instruments seem to be patched to sound right on each SID (6581/8085). However, it’s strictily not recommended to mix both types as they told me by email
(And I have to admit the demo song sounds better with 2 x the same type of SID chip).

5) According to my grandfather, the manual was simple to understand and well written and the SID2SID really works great in my C64G. Here is the 2nd SID output to connect to my stereo:

Even a noob can produce nice sounding SID music in stereo (2 x 3 chanels) with a GUI looking and feeling like Windows and being never slow or ugly. I also was warned to not use the Prophet64 on a worn out C64. I noticed it seems to be quite stable and it’s not that easy to make it crash.

So far from what I saw , the applications seem to be something like close-to-100% bug free. The SID2SID manual even indicates a slight sense of fresh humour! 🙂

Anybody who sucks in traditional C64 SID composing like me can celebrate now and get his cart! 🙂

Technorati Tags: Old computer games, C64, Commodore 64, Prophet64
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Now that ICQ 6 is out, it’s time to look what the community has to offer:

First, I found this in the official ICQ 6 Forum which appears to look like a post written in the style the ICQ Team used to have when they still had ICQ Customer Support

So it appears that offcial ICQ 6 skins will come soon. ICQ 5.1 also had official ICQ skins but only 2.

Well, the community is faster and already made ICQ 6 skins on its own, some can be found here.

When ICQ 5 was released, the Portuguese and German version were released two weeks after.

So, I would encourage anybody to rather wait than using the patch released at the same link as the skins.

Technorati Tags: ICQ, icq6, skin
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