Nafcom's Personal Site

Orkut allows now to add your fave YouTube videos” to your profile.

(By the way, I know it also allows adding Google Videos but Google said in the press, that they plan to close down Google Video now that they own YouTube).

Technorati Tags: Orkut, Google
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There are now more details available about Skype Pro.

E.g. what hardware you get cheaper and how the pricing looks:

“Skype Pro – the all-in-one Skype package

Skype Pro is the easiest way of getting the most out of Skype.
This all-in-one package will be launching very soon and you can
get the first five months for just €10 (excl. VAT¹).

Enter your email address and we’ll let you know when Skype Pro is available.

Included in Skype Pro:
-Pay nothing per minute to national landlines².
-Free Skype Voicemail.
-€30 discount on SkypeIn numbers.
-Includes €5 Skype Credit as a special introductory offer.

Also included:
-Save €30 on a Philips VoIP 841 cordless phone.
-Save €10 on an SMC WiFi phone.
-Plus money off Skype Extras, free avatars, emotions and ringtones.

After the first five months, keep all the benefits of Skype Pro for just €2 per month. This recurring fee will be automatically deducted from your Skype balance.
There is no commitment – you can opt-out at any time.

¹ €11.50 where VAT applies.

² A connection fee applies to all SkypeOut calls.”

Technorati Tags: Skype, SkypePro
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one year after Windows XP X64 (just sounds nicer =) ), now time to worry about drivers for Windows Vista 64bit. (Yes, I will buy the SB version again)

And I had to find out, the drivers are not such a big issue really, depending on your hardware.

So how does it look like?

Good.

-My Logitech QuickCam Orbit MP is supported with Windows Vista 64bit (If you select them, you get the same download like Windows XP X64 – so they use the same drivers for both OS’)

-Motherboard chipset drivers are included in Windows Vista already

-The Epson Stylus Color 980 is supported with an USB driver delivered with Vista, too.

-I have read on the internet that the Windows XP X64 drivers for my wheel will work under Vista 64bit, too.

-Thanks to Windows Update and Google I know that there are Windows XP X64 drivers for my USB NIC. There is a good chance that those also will come with Vista eventhough the Vista Advisor says it’s not (so maybe also with windows update) or I just use the XP X64 driver.

-Unfortunately due to a missunderstanding with Epsons, I have to stay corrected, there are no drivers planned for my Perfection 2480 Photo flatbed scanner. I have just tested and learned about the software VueScan
It works great and it comes with a driver supporting 64bit windows xp and vista as I have read.
Sure, it will cost me money, but this is better than buying a new scanner, as I have 1) no money for that and b) I have just bought it from Eposon as brand new, half a year ago.

-My USB Headset is using the C-Media codec which should be no problem for Vista.

-My office keyboard requires no drivers, the extra function keys and scrolling wheel are managed by Trust application software which is compatible with Windows XP X64 (eventhough not explecitely mentioned on their homepage) so I don’t expsect any problems under Vista 64bit.

-Vista 64bit drivers/apps are offered for my Logitech MX1000 mouse.

-For the Joystick Attack 3 only XP X64 drivers/app yet (hope/think it should work under Vista 64bit).

-TV USB II card: I have got windows xp x64 drivers from Leadtek but they did not adjust the drivers (inf etc) so it won’t install (but they insisted it was me being too stupid to install it – but windows just refused to acceppt the driver).

An IT system administrator from Bulgaria confirmed my guess when he requested the drivers from me and he took it apart.

Installing Windows Vista 64bit will be a nice adventure, I guess! 🙂

Technorati Tags: 64bit, Vista, Windows, Logitech Quickcam Orbit MP
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The Netgear SPH101 firmware 1.0.46.11 now officially announced by Netgear and can be downloaded from the firmware page.

The full changelog can be found here.

Enjoy! 🙂
The phone will be less buggy thanks to this firmware, so you really should do the update!…

Technorati Tags: SPH101, Skype, firmware
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Swicki is continously improving.

Yesterday, they have sent me the follwing email:

“Hi,
How do you make your swicki better than Google? By getting help from the
experts in your swicki community!

This is a quick note to let you know about a great new “Community Features”
in your swicki.

It is estimated that people find what they want from general search engines
only 40-70% of the time. We want to make that closer to 100% and your
swicki’s new tools will allow your community members to fill in any gaps in
the search results.

Your swicki uses the information you give it, along with the best indexing
technologies, to gather search results about your topic. No matter how good
the automatic tools it uses, there will still be gaps that you and other
experts can now easily fill. This means your swicki can become the
definitive search destination on the web for “Nafcom’s Crap Blog! Cloud”.

Your swicki users can now:
* Vote for results directly on a new results page:
http://nafcoms-crap-blog-cloud-swicki.eurekster.com
* Easily write an answer directly into the search results (see the
“Write your own search result” link at the top of the swicki
results page).
* Use the new WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor for writing
great looking search results, including: URL links and embedded video.
* See a list of unanswered questions that includes search terms people
have searched for or asked on your swicki but didn’t find good
answers for:
http://swicki.eurekster.com/communityunanswered.php?gid=badc2879-eeac-472f-9ee2-cf5f50f4cb93
* Subscribe to your swicki for the latest questions and answers using
your swicki’s RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed:
http://nafcoms-crap-blog-cloud-swicki.eurekster.com/rss.php“

So, what does this mean? Yes, it means you are now able to ask me questions about the search result you have entered in my Swicki hot search. Also if you know an answer to the questions asked by other blog readers you can answer them.

I will keep it and just see what the outcome of this all is. Hopefully something good 🙂

Well, they are moving towards making the blogs using it more and more truly community powered.

Technorati Tags: Swicki, blog
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There is a new ICQ 5.1 feature: My Page Message web notification.

Means once I receive a My Page message, I receive a notification on my ICQ 5.1. Of course those notifications can be disabled on purpose (but not switched on again as it looks like).

Technorati Tags: ICQ, ICQ5.1
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I just found out that AMD (ATI) as its own Windows Vista smoothness checker.

In contrast to Microsofts own one, ATI’s one tells me that I have the perfect PC for best performance results (I doubt it). Windows Vista 64bit requires 1024 MB RAM minimum already.

Well, we will see…

At least the screenshot is nice and interesting 🙂

Technorati Tags: 64bit, Windows, Vista
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According to Opera Watch, it appears that Opera is the most secure browser. (Especially when it comes to security issue fixes).

Here is what they wrote:

“Ben Buchanan, on his blog, wrote about this a couple days ago. He compared the patch rate on security bugs in the four major browsers (IE, Opera, Firefox, and Safari).

Browser patches between Feb 2003 and Jan 2007:
IE6 – 67% patched (out of 110 reported bugs).
IE7 – 25% patched (out of 4 reported bugs).
Firefox 1 – 87% patched (out of 39 reported bugs).
Firefox 2 – 50% patched (out of 4 reported bugs).
Opera 8 – 100% patched (out of 15 reported bugs).
Opera 9 – 100% patched (out of 3 reported bugs).
Safari 1 – 93% patched (out of 15 reported bugs).
Safari 2 – 33% patched (out of 6 reported bugs).

Here are some snippets from the blog’s conclusion:

“Well, one clear thing is that Opera is the only vendor with a 100% patch record according to Secunia. Opera is also the only vendor that maintained its patch rate between versions – in fact you have to go back to Opera 6 to find an unpatched advisory (and there’s only one).”

“So at this time Opera wins the patch stakes. The argument can be made that Opera attracts fewer attacks due to small marketshare. That could be true – there’s no way to truly know, since malicious hackers aren’t polled – but when I’m doing my banking I don’t care if it’s true. I just care that my browser is secure; and Opera currently has the best record for fixing security issues.”

Good point! I am using Opera browser myself, and so does my mother and we are all glad with it

Technorati Tags: Opera, bugs
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BigBlueBall, the instant messanger portal sent me an email recently asking me – as I am very ICQ fancy – if I would write a review about ICQ 6 Preview for their site!

It took a while but now it can be read on their front page here.

If you are searching for my ICQ 6 Preview announcement blog post, this can be found here! 🙂

Technorati Tags: ICQ, ICQ6
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Customer support, 1 very nice topics I love to blog about steadly (as seen here).

Blogger support has been pretty good in past. Well, as this already suggests; past.

Eventhough Blogger in Beta is no longer in beta, they anyway seems to have decided to ignore any bug reports and help requests. Instead they just ignore.
I have sent tons of emails, my last email was even sent to the private addresses of Blogger Team members, this one got ignored, too. So literally all my emails since August 2006 stood unreplied.

And I am not speaking about small bugs but about such who cause my template to sometimes auto destroy itself, or damaged RSS feelds that cause 404 erros in many places in which my blog/blog’s feed is listed/syndicated.

Blogger Team, if you read this: I am very much disappointed and pretty much pissed!
You are worse than Technorati now, and that isn’t that easy! So if this was what you wanted to achive, congratulations!!!

Update: The Pisstakers have written a blog post regarding Blogger support based on mine.
Thanks for the support, guys! 🙂

Technorati Tags: Support, Blogger
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