Archive for the 'Software' Category

As I mentioned briefly yesterday, I recently bought my first iPod (the 80 GB, generation 6 model). I haven’t gotten much time to play with it due to constant interruptions at work (which really sucks), so I’ll be coming back to it later this week. For now, I’d like to share some thoughts on iTunes 7.

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It appears that WordPress 2.3 has been feature frozen, and has now entered the bug hunting and fixing phase. The listing of what’s new seems pretty bare bones, but I guess that is to be expected on a shorter release schedule. One of the big new features coming is tagging, something I’ve neither been impressed with nor interested in. Does anyone here make use of that on any other website? I don’t see too much difference between tags and categories, so why include them? What I really wish they’d get around to adding is an automated updating feature; migrating to a new version is really painful.

Amazon.com recently purchased AmieStreet.com, a digital music store that uses a unique demand based pricing. There has been some speculation as to what Amazon intends to do with this acquisition, but I’m guessing they will use this idea in their upcoming online music store. A demand based pricing system is interesting: all music starts out free of charge and, as the demand for specific tracks increases, so does the price. There certainly must be a price cap (no one would shell out lots of money for a single music track), but I’m not sure what that might be.

I think this could do very well for Amazon. One of the biggest selling points is that all music will be completely DRM free. Only time will tell how well Amazon can do against the existing juggernauts.

I was touching up some of my photographs recently when I noticed that one shot in particular had substantial vignetting. Wishing to use this photograph as a desktop wallpaper, I set out to try and remove this effect from the photograph. All of the standard Photoshop tools failed to do the trick. Both the clone tool and healing tool produced poor results. Disappointed, I searched the web for help. Thankfully, I found the answer I was looking for: a new filter introduced in Photoshop CS2.

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I recently installed Apple iTunes for the first time (the QuickTime install on my laptop was having lots of problems). One of the first things I tried out was subscribing to a video podcast (specifically The Totally Rad Show), which was fairly easy to do. As soon as I started to play the latest episode, I noted that playback performance was horrible. I never had this kind of performance problem with QuickTime, so I was a little surprised that iTunes would be so different.

A quick Google search turned up a support article from Apple on iTunes performance in Windows XP and 2000. All of the standard suggestions are there (make sure you’re computer is fast enough, download the latest version, etc.), but one suggestion caught my eye: “Disable Direct3D video acceleration in QuickTime.”

I ventured to the Windows Control Panel, opened the QuickTime item, and turned off the Direct3D video acceleration. To my surprise, performance was restored! Who knew that a simple toggle could solve such an annoying problem?

In loosely related news, I’m getting closer to actually buying an iPod (something I thought I’d never do). More on this later.

You don’t know the power of the Dark Side; I must obey my master. — Darth Vader

Can anyone recommend to me a secure (i.e., spam-resistant) contact form? I use the NMS FormMail script over at Born Geek, but spam is starting to pour through it. A replacement would be great, so any recommendations would be appreciated.

Several weeks ago, I finally got around to installing Windows Media Player 11. Having put it through its paces, I’d like to share my thoughts on this release.

The most apparent change in WMP 11 is the new look and feel, courtesy of Windows Vista. In fact, the player features the Vista-esque minimize, maximize, and close buttons in the upper right hand corner. Strangely enough, a 1-pixel “dead zone” exists above each of these buttons when the application is maximized. I tend to run most applications maximized, and when I want to either minimize or close a window, I throw my mouse all the way up to the upper right of the screen. With Media Player 11, I can’t do that. Instead, I have to move the mouse down at least 1 pixel from the top to activate any of the buttons. What an unnecessary aggravation, not to mention a break in the Windows XP standard!

The entire interface, as with most things Microsoft tries to make modern, looks like it has been coated in plastic. Everything is black, with the exception of the buttons, which sport an electric blue, back-lit effect. Overall, the interface feels uninspired, but it’s one I can live with. It took me a while to figure out that you have to right click the top of the player to access the standard application menus. Why exactly is Microsoft getting rid of the menus in all of its new applications? Internet Explorer 7 does the same thing.

The new media library interface is a prime example of Media Player’s stance as an iTunes wannabe. Gone is the oh-so-useful tree control for browsing through your stored albums. Instead, the user is presented with a visual collection of music “stacks,” as Microsoft calls them. The more albums in your library for a particular artist, the bigger that artist’s stack will be. This new interface is fairly confusing to me. I have a much harder time finding the artist I want to listen to now, mostly because I can’t quickly scan for the artist’s name (looking down an alphabetized tree control was much easier). One other problem is that the media library is very slow, especially on initial startup. It takes Media Player a while to load all of the album art it needs to display, and this initial slowdown is quite noticeable.

Speaking of album art, Media Player occasionally can’t find the appropriate album cover image. One 2-disc collection of mine (John Denver’s Rocky Mountain Collection) has the correct album image for disc 1, but only has a blank placeholder for disc 2. I note that some of the meta-data for disc 2 also differs, so it’s no doubt a problem with the music database service that Microsoft uses. It’s still a noteworthy annoyance.

I can find at least one positive note about the new media library interface. Playing music from the artist level, rather than the album level, allows me to listen to all of a particular artist’s albums without having to click through them. Media Player automatically moves to the next album in the list when the current album has finished playing, a most welcome feature.

Playing videos through WMP 11 is fine, though I have experienced some occasional stuttering on locally saved files. I recently attempted to watch an episode of Diggnation that I had downloaded, and I found that I could not jump around in the video without experiencing incredible delays of 5 to 10 seconds or more. This wasn’t a problem in version 10.

Ripping music has changed slightly (progress bars now advance in 10% increments), but still seems fast. I have not yet performed a sync operation with my Creative Zen Micro, so I can’t comment on that part of the application. I’m avoiding the “built-in” Napster and URGE music stores, since I still prefer to obtain music on CD.

I’m not sure how to sum up Media Player 11. While it has a few nice features, I think Microsoft has generally taken a step in the wrong direction with this. Have you used WMP 11? If so, what do you think?

Version 2.2 of WordPress has been released. One of the changes in this release is the reinclusion of the Preview and Edit links on the Write Post page (although it sounds like the preview now appears in a pop-up window instead of an iframe). This fixes a bug I griped about when 2.1 was released.

I will probably update this blog to 2.2 at some point, though updating WordPress is always a colossal bother. Seeing as I skipped over 2.1, it’s probably time to move to the latest version.

It looks like the next generation of the Thunderbird e-mail client has been released. Although I have not yet updated my client at home, I will certainly be doing so tonight. Thunderbird is a fantastic client, and I am really looking forward to all the new features (not to mention the boat loads of bug fixes).

It looks as if Windows XP will be phased out by the end of the year, despite a continued strong demand for the operating system. Though Microsoft claims that sales of Vista are high, this rush to stop shipping Windows XP seems to say the exact opposite. In a recent Harris poll on over 2200 US adults, only 12% showed any interest in actually upgrading to Vista. This is bad news for Microsoft, and might be one reason why they are rushing XP out the door. My attitude is, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. As such, I intend to stick with XP for several more years. There are far too many problems in the current release of Vista than I’d like to deal with (not to mention all of the overhead for those fancy transparent windows).