The press seem to be on a roll with anti-Xbox Live stories as of late. A few weeks ago it was the kid caught cheating with a modified profile, and as a result had his gamerscore reset and his zone changed to "cheater". His mum complained and demanded his achievements back and the "cheater" removed from his gamer tile, after Microsoft refused she went to the press. In the end we found out the kid had cheated, despite his mum protesting his innocence....
With Microsoft about to unveil the release candidate of Internet Explorer 9, I thought I should take some time to cover probably the only regression that will impact a lot of people. Before I start, I'd like to make myself clear that this regression is worth the massive improvements that Internet Explorer 9 brings across the board.
As you may have guessed from the title, it surrounds subscribing to RSS feeds....
Over the last couple of months several people who rely on my computer savvy to clean their computers out of bloatware have purchased new computers, one from Dell and another from Acer.
Both of these computers have their own login backgrounds supplied by the computer manufacturer. As well as the regular desktop wallpapers - but they're easy enough to change yourself. Changing the login screen back to how Microsoft intended it to be is slightly more challenging....
PC Mag coughed up an excuse of an article today, written by Dan Costa and titled "Windows Phone 7: Where Are the Apps?" it essentially argues that Windows Phone 7 has very few applications, or none if you read it by title alone.
We already had some information stating it'll have over 2000 applications on launch. Microsoft have stated the development tools have had hundreds of thousands of downloads, and that it will have over 50 Xbox Live-enabled games on launch, that isn't including non-Xbox Live games....
As promised a few weeks back here's the last two decent Photosynths from my recent excursion to the Lake District.
First up, a nice view of Hawkshead and the surrounding landscape from the Colthouse Heights. Make sure to check out the highlights on this synth as I spent a fair bit of time working out what all the areas of interest were:
Lastly here's the synth we did while visiting Hawkshead, we actually wound up there twice, hey it happens to have a nice bread factory....
Crawling across the internets as I have a tendency to do has as usual brought plenty of ignorant comments to my attention. Today about Internet Explorer 9. It always amazes me how willing people are to spout off about something they know nothing or little about. So let's tackle some of them.
I am guessing this is on a PC that has been specially optimised by Microsoft to run its browser content as fast as possible by breaking from web standards?...
With Microsoft now preventing 3rd parties from performing massive UI overhauls, like HTC have traditionally done with Windows Mobile and Android with their TouchFLO 3D and later Sense interfaces, manufacturers and mobile operators are left to create applications and hubs - like everyone else.
Obviously HTC have invested a lot of money over the years to create their own unique look and feel, so they'll try and recreate what they can on Windows Phone 7....
Over the last couple of weeks I decided to do a few quick changes to the Gamercast website to make it a little bit more swish for Internet Explorer 9, which was released in beta form yesterday. With support for border-radius and box-shadow from CSS3 it was really a no brainer to make use of them (if only it supported multi-column too).
Unlike Chrome and Firefox, Internet Explorer 9 doesn't need to use proprietary extensions to make use of these features....
As regular readers will know in early August Catherine and I went off on a little trip to the Lake District which was largely enjoyable (bar the rubbish Virgin trains and to a lesser extent the rain). We stayed in Near Sawrey a few miles south-west of Windermere.
Of course it was solely coincidence that we would happen to stay under dark skies, in a village where a conveniently placed hill would block any light pollution from Windermere, during the week of the Perseid meteor shower....
Earlier this year Microsoft discontinued security updates for Windows XP with Service Pack 2, and Windows Vista with no service packs. I'm still seeing a lot of machines out there without the latest service packs installed, most of which are now out of support.
Users running Windows Vista without any service packs have not had any security updates for over four months now. That should set some alarm bells ringing. Those on Windows XP SP2 might have noticed this month's patch Tuesday being somewhat quiet....