Nafcom's Personal Site

ICQ 6 Final is out and can be downloaded here, including info on what is new, a history video and the story about the new ICQ soundtrack.

This entry is considerably short, sorry for that.

And for all who miss me on ICQ: Use Skype at the moment, thanks.

My earlier words regarding ICQ 6 can be found here.

I got pinged while I wrote this by Flashboy, thanks for that! 🙂

Update: My first experiences: It looks nice, from the features a lot gained in comparance to the preview, but it looks like the preview so no new screenshots needed.

The Xtraz are no more in an Xtraz center but accessable from the message session window, the bottom of the contact list, the top and some by right click on a contact in your contact list. This way an intutive operation and accessing on the xtraz is possible and way easier than in ICQ 5.1 but it also lead a lot of users to think that the xtraz are all missing (however only the demo versions of the flash promo singleplayer games are missing) which is of course not true.

The History converter (ICQ 5.1 to ICQ6 in this case) doesn’t work correctly yet and missed out 1395 if my 1400 history files.

The new sounds by infected mushrooms are nice, I really like them! (but I am not yet sure whether I will really keep them on).

A lot of features are however still missing and are about to come soon, details about those can be seen on a checklist here

Technorati Tags: ICQ, ICQ6
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ICQ 5.1 allows now to send free SMS to Israel!

For this you require to have a balence of free SMS. The default SMS balance is appearantly 14 and you can get more free SMS doing either:

1) Sending a SMS to yourself (if you are located in Israel), or

2) Receive SMS from Israel.

Both will give you 8 credits!

Funny thing is that the links at the bottom refer to (I suppose) wrong sites within the ICQ homepage tree.

It’s possible to send free SMS to a few other countries and paid SMS to others using localized ICQ 5.1 clients

Technorati Tags: ICQ, sms, Israel
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Mr. Orkut got interviewed recently. (English/Portuguese!)

He talks in the video interview about the privacy, history, security issues.
Future plans of Google and how it is working for Google.

He also talks about his opinion regarding Brazilians and the whole community.

The very interesting video is in English including Portuguese subtitles.

Watch It!.

Source: What Should Orkut Do? Community.

Technorati Tags: Orkut, video, interview
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If you had or have experienced lately that the Blogarithm graphic was messed up like this:

… then this was because they had some problems. So you have seen SearchNut instead.

Here is what Andrew of Blogarithm wrote to me:

“Hi Joerg,

Blogarithm is still alive, but we had a mixup with our domain registration. This has caused problems for some people to get to our site or see our graphics. The fix to this is propagating through the Internet, and it should clear up in the next day or so. Hold tight and we will be back. We are very sorry that this happened and the it has inconvenienced you.

Andy”

Technorati Tags: Blogarithm, blog
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No more ICQ Support? Get active! Complain now!

In an earlier post, I explained that GameSpy Arcade and Netscape can destroy your Windows Vista/Vista Firewall/ (and force you to reinstall it from scratch if you have no restore point set and/or a recent image).

I decided to share this blog post with them.

Here are the rplies by GameSpy Arcade and Netscape.

While Netscape reply was all positive, the reply from GameSpy Arcade showed much that they don’t quite bother:

“Hi Joerg

Windows Vista is not a supported operating system for GameSpy Arcade. We have no estimated time on when or even if support will be added.”

When I re-replied with saying that it’s just the installer to fix, they replied with this:

“Hi Joerg

Great suggestion, but one that will not be happening anytime soon. As stated before, it is not supported and there are no plans on supporting it in the near future.”

Then I said, they should at least put a warning as the problem destroyes the firewall if you do not disable it before the installation.
(Will help a lot of people and avoid frustrations like Vista-reinstallations).

I have am yet in the process of waiting to hear back from them.

Taken into consideration that they replied pretty quick in the past – I would say – they ignored my final statement!

IGN Network doesn’t seem to care about this serious problem (which only requires a small fix or at least note from their side) pretty much.

Here the nicer reply from Netscape:

“Dear Joerg,

I am writing on behalf of Netscape Internet Services to answer your recent questions/comments.

Thank you for taking the time to write to Netscape Internet Service. I have carefully read your email and understand where you are coming from on this issue. I have gone ahead and forwarded your request as well as your comment to the appropriate department. At Netscape Internet Service we are committed to providing quality customer service to our members and appreciate receiving your feedback.

Thank you for choosing Netscape Internet Services. If you have any further questions, please feel free to email us at any time.”

Technorati Tags: 64bit, Vista, Windows, firewall, Netscape, GameSpy, GameSpy Arcade, support
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I used to write a bit about other interesting blogs I found.

But infact I didn’t do that since quite a while, so time to brake that habit and do it again.

The blog post is from Doobybrain.com – my-teacher-doesnt-know-any-email-etiquette.

He writes about the nice way, his teacher Bill messes up emails, annoys his pupils and at the end he gives some hints to the GMail users.

It’s worth reading it – poor teacher. We only had one sending us files with CRC error by emails 🙂

Technorati Tags: Blogs, Gmail
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No more ICQ Support? Get active! Complain now!

Opera released 9.20.

Download links, changelog and info as found on Desktop Team blog:

“9.2 is not only an important update with bug fixes and the new Speed Dial functionality, it’s also a milestone in spreading Opera to new users around the world: Opera 9.2 for Windows ships with 31 languages

The latest addition is Macedonian, so if you know the language, feel free to post a small celebration message in the comments section Remember that we also have a number of forums where you can discuss Opera in your own language.

If you haven’t done so already, please go to opera.com/download and get your brand new Opera.”

Technorati Tags: Opera, 9.2
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Skype is planning an Enterprise Edition.

I have received this news in the Skype Business Newsletter:

“——- Forwarded message ——-
From: <""Skype">
To:
Subject: Skype Enterprise Edition
Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2007 10:02:30 +0200

Hello,

I would like to tell you about a new product we will soon be releasing
which is an Enterprise version of Skype. It has all the regular
features of Skype, but also includes these additional benefits:

* Enterprise network compatibility.
* Company-owned Skype Name creation.
* Customisable to your corporate requirements.
* Direct technical support from Skype.
* Ongoing upgrades maintenance.

We are currently looking for companies (typically 1000 employees or
more) who would like to be part of our Early Adopter Program. If your
company is already using Skype or looking to implement Skype in the
future, we would love to hear from you.

Please contact mailto:enterprisesolutions[at]skype.net and include
details of your company and your plans for using Skype.

Regards,

Paul Sagoo
Global Business Director
Skype Enterprise Solutions”

Technorati Tags: Skype, Enterprise
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Some programs, such as Netscape and GameSpy Arcade, will try -without warning you!- to add themselves to the Windows firewall which will majorily destroy your Windows Vista firewall so that you:

-Cannot access the internet anymore with most programs.
-Cannot switch the firewall off
-Cannot change the settings of the firewall.

Any try to change this will result in no effect.

I even failed to

-Install an alternative firewall instead

(It just resulted in Windows Vista to crash when I tried Jetico Personal Firewall freeware (for Windows 2000/XP/2003/XP x64/2003 x64/Vista/Vista x64).

Here is how to avoid destryoing your Windows Vista firewall:

1) Create a system restore point using the Windows System Recovery (it will lead you to the Windows Computer Security)

2) Disable the Windows Vista Firewall

3) Install the prg

4) Reenable the Windows Vista Firewall

Technorati Tags: 64bit, Vista, Windows, firewall, Netscape, GameSpy, GameSpy Arcade
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I just found this lame excuse for no X64 drivers from Netgear, found on a Microsoft employee’s blog – Brendan Paddock writes:

“Companies with modern products that don’t have 64-bit drivers.
Netgear, you suck. And the completely non-sense explanation about what 64-bit is and why you’re too lazy to support it is a total crock. Dual CPUs? Give me a break. Let technical people write your technical articles from now on please. Making an x64 driver isn’t nearly as hard as they make it sound. In fact, it’s harder for video drivers but Nvidia, ATI, and Intel have done fine there. USB network adapter? Cake.“

Infact, my experience with Netgear support isn’t very good either! :-/

Technorati Tags: 64bit, Vista, Windows, Netgear, support
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No more ICQ Support? Get active! Complain now!