Deep Thought · win

Classy Gradient Wallpapers Using Only MS Paint

2009-03-30T06:00:03Z

If you just want a classy, simple wallpaper, but only have access to MS Paint (this is most useful in an office,) there exists a way to create simple gradients using an image as small as nine pixels square.

Use the Attributes dialog to specify a very small image. Depending on the amount of colors you want to use for the gradient, you may want to add more or less, but keep the image square.
The pencil tool can be used to color individual pixels and fill the image. Play around with the shape and tones of the intended gradient.
Save the file as a .jpg.
Set it as your wallpaper, in stretch mode. Windows will scale the image as if it were a photograph, and smoothly blend the image.

et viola!

To download the sample image, “Right Click, Save As” this text.

Oh Great Thanks A Big Bundle Microsoft Marketing Department

2009-03-28T01:56:55Z

No, really, thanks. Not only now do I have to deal with your stupid ad campaign getting plastered all over the internet, getting talked about by anyone and everyone with an opinion and just a smidge of an audience (oh, and the actual campaign you’re running, too) now I’ll have to see more of the opposite but equal counterpart: “Hey Guys I’m a Mac I’m supposed to be cool but instead I’m Justin Long isn’t that weird?” Yes, that’s right, the Apple marketing department is likely right now--at this very moment--working on their witty rebuttal. So not only do I have to sit through more parts of their ads that don’t involve John Hodgman, I have to sit through more Daily Show episodes that do not feature him as a correspondent. And on top of that, whiny internet nerds who are not me.

No, seriously, great job.

Safari 4 Beta (tl;dr: meh)

2009-02-24T23:14:45Z

So I come home this afternoon to find that all the blogs are abuzz with the glee of new software. Naturally, I approach (with far more dignity, I might add (because of how dignified I am (I am awesome))) the source of this kerfuffle to discover that, surprise surprise, it’s about Apple.

“Whoop de doo,” I thought, “another session of Apple blowing their own horn over something that really doesn’t need it.” And I was right. Mostly. Safari 4 contains the following new features:

A slight extension of the browser epenis that is JavaScript rendering speed
The speed dial feature of Opera except now it’s on a concave surface and you can rearrange the sites
The entire top interface of Chrome in its entirety
More instances of Coverflow being run directly into the ground (experts predict that we will have depleted our Coverflow reserves by 2015 in optimistic estimates)
The fact that they finally understand that no one cares about their Mac-looking interface when it’s not actually on a Mac
A few rendering engine enhancements that will have come to every other browser by the time people other than Apple actually use those features in web design
A slight animation when skipping to named anchors

Let’s step back and have a look at that item three up from the bottom. Yes, this one:

The fact that they finally understand that no one cares about their Mac-like interface when it’s not actually on a Mac

Unfortunately for Apple, the King shall remain on his throne. Hopefully, however, this exciting new turn of interface events makes it to iTunes and Quicktime. In the case of the former, my head will most likely combust.

So, um, Windows 7

2008-10-29T03:56:17Z

There really isn’t any other way I can think of to introduce an entry where I talk about Windows 7.

So, after seeing a run-down of the new taskbar in 7, I have to say that I’m cautiously optimistic. On one hand, there was the somewhat bad decision to eliminate separation of open applications and shortcuts in the taskbar, as well as remove the titles from view. On the other hand, some of the other enhancements, such as the Jump Lists, the pinning applications in position, and the Peek slab sounds like a useful feature in theory, though it hasn’t yet been implemented. This is one situation where Microsoft’s position on deprecating old features can be appreciated, as it appears the current style can be chosen over the new one. I do like the direction Microsoft has taken with the system tray, which will, by default, suppress all third-party icons and notifications.

Aero Snaps could actually catch on like hot corners have on other operating systems. I can see myself making use of the left and right edges often, though I do wonder how it’ll handle dual-monitor situations. Gadgets should have retained the sidebar as I preferred them that way, and the new theme manager is a nice, if small, upgrade.

More screenshots here.

And now for something completely different…

To round out this post, I’m going to do something crazy: admit that I was wrong. When Google Chrome first came out, my reaction was the same as all other internet professionals: sux lol. Now, well,

So, there you go, Windows 7 looks okay and I’m not always right (only mostly.)

Note to Apple: Vista is fixed.

2008-10-22T04:32:38Z

Apple’s relentless anti-Vista smear campaign continues, with its latest round of “Mac vs. PC” commercials accusing Microsoft of spending money on marketing that it could be spending to “fix Vista.”

Here’s a note to Apple: Vista is fixed. It’s called Service Pack 1, a release that, by all accounts, addresses the vast majority of issues Vista had at launch. Windows Vista with SP1 is fast, stable and highly capable, and despite Apple’s relentless smear campaign, people are gradually beginning to realize that Vista isn’t as bad as they’d been led to believe.

It’s time for Apple to stop the smearing and go back to focusing on the positive aspects of Mac OS X.

Just For The Record

2008-10-21T02:10:28Z

Since over the years it has become increasingly clear that Apple’s developers cannot for the life of them write Windows applications with any sort of the attention to detail for which they are known, and since it is also an arduous task to educate those who have not personally experienced the cavalcade of mediocrity that is anything made by Apple with the extension .exe, I want to array out just how oddly inconsistent and sometimes frustrating these applications are. Rather than start right in with the evisceration, however, I want to go over the sole Apple application that actually took Being a Windows Application 1-2: Software Update, for some mysterious reason.

Apple Software Update

Ignoring the obvious aberration that under no circumstances should bug fixes necessitate a 75MB download, Software Update by and large is the best application of the four. It’s consistent with the visual theme of the system rather than foisting it’s own look upon everyone, it (mostly) uses Windows design conventions (except for one big one: Tools>Options is the preferred way, not Edit>Preferences. An entire menu in the menubar could have been eliminated by following this simple paradigm.)

Quicktime

I’ll start with the most mature application of the group, and by mature I mean senile. Remember when Apple thought so highly of encasing every product they made in brushed aluminum that they got half way through their software library before realizing robovomit isn’t attractive? Quicktime is a monument to that bygone age. It’s also a monument to the bygone age of Windows 98, because that’s what all the options dialogs look like.

iTunes

Next up is iTunes, and the best thing I can say about iTunes is that it shed its robovomit shell. The worst thing I can say about it is that it’s one of the worst applications I’ve used outside of malware because any decent feature it may have is buried under a thick layer of slow, but that’s besides the point. The point is that it forces a custom skin that in no way wants me to run out and switch to a Mac (although it does create the urge to do things involving blunt, rusty nails and cute innocent creatures, although I’ll probably be sent to jail.) The most puzzling issue is that unlike Quicktime, options dialogs no longer hearken back to Ye Olde Windows; they’re native no matter the theme applied.

But wait, it gets even more confusing!

Safari

This is by far the least conforming application of the group (that applies both to Windows in general and the applications in said group.) Not only does it go the distance and fully skin everything, it even has its own font rendering shared by nothing else. Unlike iTunes, Safari is not cripplingly slow, although it does throw just about every Windows interface convention out the window with not even a hint of hesitation.

Anybody have an answer for why this is? I’d love to know. My current theory involves Jobs as a being not of this dimension and the alignment of several crucial stars, but maybe there are others out there.

NY Times: Microsoft walks away from Yahoo bid

2008-05-03T23:59:00Z

Well, there you go.

The New York Times reports that after months of wrangling, Microsoft has walked away from its attempt to purchase Yahoo.¹ The reason? Microsoft and Yahoo couldn’t come to terms on a price, so instead of launching a long and difficult proxy fight, Microsoft decided to give up on its takeover bid. You can read the details here.

Personally I think this was a good idea on Microsoft’s part. For one, the Yahoo takeover was becoming a bit of a distraction at a time when Microsoft has larger fish to fry (like convincing the world that Windows Vista doesn’t suck). For another, I still have a hard time how a Microsoft-Yahoo merger makes sense. Sure, Yahoo’s more popular than MSN and Windows Live, but Yahoo is still far, far behind Google, and with some exceptions, hasn’t been particularly innovative in recent years. What Microsoft needs is innovation to keep up with Google. Yahoo wouldn’t have brought it. And then you have the messy issue of trying to blend the two companies. Will it blend? Probably not. My guess is that Yahoo would have survived as a Microsoft subsidiary.

Where do Yahoo and Microsoft go from here? In the months since Microsoft made its initial bid, there have been rumors of Yahoo forming an alliance with another company (News Corp. and AOL). Meanwhile, Microsoft has to find some way to compete with Google being that it looks like which OS you use is becoming less important, giving people an excuse to look at Mac OS X and Linux. Could we see a Microsoft-Yahoo partnership of some sort in the near future?

What do you think? Leave a comment!

¹You were right, Anthony. ↩

EXCLUSIVE: Microsoft moves up Windows 7 release date

2008-04-01T07:00:00Z

Deep Thought has received word from an anonymous source that Microsoft is set to release Windows 7...next month. The reason? People just don’t like Vista. Our source sent us an excerpt from an internal memo:

TO: All Microsoft Employees
FROM: Steve Ballmer
RE: Windows 7

Dear team,
We have decided to move up the Windows 7 release date to sometime next month. The Windows development team has been working around the clock to get Windows 7—which will be branded as Windows the Magnificent --ready years ahead of schedule. In fact, we have had a secret team working on Windows 7 since before Vista’s development concluded. We were hoping to release it at a later date, but unfortunately Vista was such a commercial failure that we couldn’t wait any longer and had to move up Windows 7 by a little bit.

More information will be forthcoming in the coming days.

What does this mean for Microsoft? “They have learned how to listen to their customers, without a doubt,” noted analyst A.P. Rulfulse from the firm Lawson, Mayer, Aldridge, and Owens, LLC. “It’s unfortunate for Microsoft that Vista was such a miserable failure, but I believe they learned their lesson. Moving up the Windows 7—the Magnificent—release shows that Microsoft is still a dynamic force in today’s tech economy.”

“Microsoft followers who saw Vista’s reign as a reign of terror will be pleased by this development.” said George Otcha of Ronald-Otcha Technology Forecasting. “The jury is still out on Windows the Magnificent, of course, but it can’t possibly be worse than the consumer response to Vista.”

Microsoft was not available for comment. Lame.

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Windows Vista SP1 Released

2008-03-18T20:09:00Z

It’s coming...

It’s here. Impressions if it works; ranting if it doesn’t.

Thoughts

I didn’t really pay attention to my PC while SP1 installed, but it couldn’t have taken more than half an hour to complete. It was installed like any other update, with downloading and preliminary installing occurring in a Windows Update window. Then it rebooted the PC and finished up before letting me log in. The only problem I’ve had so far occurred when I got to my PC after it was finished. The screen seemed compressed; it was the result of my display resolution on my primary monitor being changed from 1280x1024 to 1280x768. I haven’t noticed much of a responsiveness increase, though I never had an issue with the responsiveness of Vista.

Microsoft has published an article on TechCenter that is the be-all end-all of SP1 information pages. This page is long, but does contain some useful information. The most notable change to me is the removal of the Search item in the Start Menu’s right pane, which I used every once in a while (thanks Google :rolleyes: ) I don’t have the means to test it, but apparently network file transfer speeds have improved.

In the end, SP1 is a decent update to Vista, and marks the point at which Vista begins to be a proven technology. I expect many businesses will begin to consider Vista in future rollouts. Whether it will speed Vista’s adoption in the consumer market remains to be seen, though most consumers choose to upgrade with a new PC, so I doubt there will be too many more copies sold this coming month. Nothing broke on my computer, and I recommend it for all Vista users.

Microsoft Makes Standards Mode Default for IE8

2008-03-04T02:40:00Z

Microsoft today announced that, contrary to earlier plans, Internet Explorer 8 would default to its most standards compliant rendering mode. Early reports from the company’s Internet Explorer team stated that IE8 would default to a rendering mode identical to the standards support of IE7, with support for a meta tag placed in the header of the web’s source that could switch standards mode on. Now, plans have been reversed, with the engine’s most standards complient mode on for all web pages, and legacy support available for those who wish to avoid having to troubleshoot bugs that may appear in standards mode.

This decision appears to have been made in accordance with recently published Interoperability Principles from the company, in a push to become more standards friendly (see section II.) According to Internet Explorer’s General Manager Dean Hachamovitch,

Microsoft recently published a set of Interoperability Principles. Thinking about IE8’s behavior with these principles in mind, interpreting web content in the most standards compliant way possible is a better thing to do.

We think that acting in accordance with principles is important, and IE8’s default is a demonstration of the interoperability principles in action. While we do not believe any current legal requirements would dictate which rendering mode a browser must use, this step clearly removes this question as a potential legal and regulatory issue. As stated above, we think it’s the better choice.

A public beta of Internet Explorer 8 is expected to be released later this month.

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Official Announcement on IEBlog

Let’s Preview: Yahoo! Messenger for Windows Vista

2008-03-04T01:34:00Z

There’s not much of an incentive to using single-network chat clients these days. Why restrict yourself to one service or run multiple clients in a cavalcade of memory-hogging when you can use a multi-network client like Pidgin or Trillian? Questions like these, while not necessarily the bane of a given service’s existence (the number people who will use AIM 6 on purpose is a staggering number to us geeks,) are questions that, if answered, could result in a considerable boost in use of that client. Of course, one of the most cost-effective methods of attracting new users is to add eye candy. This is precisely what Yahoo! has chosen to do in a version of Yahoo! Messenger exclusively for Windows Vista. Using Windows Presentation Foundation, they’ve loaded it up with all the fancy effects, from drop shadows to transparency. Though this is only a preview, it serves as a good preview of the interface and that’s what’s important (to me, Mr. Superficial.)

The buddy list is actually somewhat barren; most of the features of the current client haven’t been replicated in the new one. The three buttons on beneath the avatar are, from left to right: add contact, contact detail slider, color changer, and buddy list search. The arrow next to the window controls opens the main menu, which contains every command not in another area of the UI. The status menu is below the user’s name and allows custom statuses to be typed in. Custom statuses will be added to the list after their first use. User-alterable preferences are frustratingly bare, as certain settings, such as display name, are not changeable. With only about 10 options, the client currently is not very flexible. Chat is, at present, limited to text chat and file sharing. Nothing is truly notable about the chat window, except the look. It does look decent and the layout is good. There’s nothing much really to say about either.

Overall, Yahoo! Messenger for Windows Vista is only a preview; you’ll get no Gmail-style beta from this chat client. While not really worth using at the moment, keep an eye on this to be finished up and eventually replace the current version of Y! Messenger feature for feature. Who knows, it may even convince some Windows Live users to switch.

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Beta

BusinesssWeek to Ballmer: Learn a trick from Jobs

2008-02-08T18:35:01Z

Today BusinessWeek’s Arik Hesseldahl published a lengthy open letter to Steve Ballmer, urging him to borrow a trick from Steve Jobs’ playbook and guide Microsoft down a more focused path (i.e. software and software only).

Quoth Hesseldahl:

So who has focus? That other Steve. You know, the turtle-necked guy in California who keeps annoying you by selling iPods and computers that typically don’t run on Windows. You could learn a lot from him. Focus saved his company from oblivion.

Hesseldahl also highlights a litany of tech mega-mergers (Lucent-Ascend, AOL-Time Warner, Compaq-Digital, etc...) to highlight how such large undertakings often lead to failure.

It’s a very good read, and I agree completely. Microsoft is a jack of all trades, and outside of their software business (and some success with gaming), they haven’t shown mastery in any of the markets they’ve jumped into. Web services? They’re a distant third. Digital media players? They’re a distant second. Microsoft has become a reactive company, trying to jump onto the latest tech trend or product segment without much success. I agree that Microsoft needs to re-focus on their strengths, and when they expand into new markets, they need to be proactive, not merely reactive. They need to innovate instead of merely developing a product to simply respond to Apple or Google or whoever their competition may be. The Yahoo merger would do nothing to improve Microsoft in this regard.

An Open Letter to Steve Ballmer

PC World: Vista SP 1 performance ‘mixed’

2008-02-07T08:41:29Z

PC World posted a short advance review of Windows Vista Service Pack 1’s performance on their web site today. Their verdict? Service Pack 1 improves Vista’s performance in some areas such as copying files, but is slightly slower in others. In her tests, article author Melissa Perenson notes a 9% performance improvement in her file copy test (copying 1.9 GB from a flash drive to the PC’s hard drive). Startup and shut down times are mostly unchanged in SP 1, but had very slight improvements (hin her tests, Perenson noted a slight 3-second improvement in startup times and a 1-second improvement in shut down time). Meanwhile, archiving five 500 MB files in a ZIP archive took slightly longer under SP 1.

Perenson notes that “based on my informal tests conducted in the first hours of having Vista Service Pack 1 in hand, it’s hard to draw any hard and fast conclusions.” Needless to say, more tests are on the way.

Windows Vista SP1 was released to manufacturing on Monday, and will be available for download in March. Okay, let’s stop right there for just a second. Why is it, that despite Vista’s relatively poor reputation, Microsoft decided in their infinite wisdom to keep SP 1 out of the hands of users for another month? If it’s ready, it’s ready. get it out to the people. Come on, guys.

Maybe they need to redesign the box?¹

At any rate, Deep Thought will hopefully have something to say about SP 1, uh, whenever we get our hands on it. Hey, Mr. Ballmer, sir? You wouldn’t have an extra press review copy of Vista SP 1 you could spare, would you?

¹Thanks, Arden. ↩

PC World - Performance Results Mixed with Vista Service Pack 1

Microhoo: this could get very messy

2008-02-03T07:01:00Z

What can you do with $44.6 billion?¹

You can fill the California state budget deficit three times over.

You can buy 7.8 Steve Jobses (according to his 2007 net worth).

You can buy nearly 111.8 million iPhones (before tax).

Or you can buy a struggling dot-com pioneer.

If you’ve been following the news lately, you already know which option Microsoft chose. Me? I would have chosen the iPhones.

So what do I think of the Microsoft-Yahoo buyout proposal? This could get very messy very quickly.

Dollars and cents

In buying Yahoo, Microsoft would burn through just about all of their cash on hand. While any large buyout or merger carries the risk of failure, Yahoo’s failing fortunes as of late makes me question the logic behind this move. According to their latest earnings report, Microsoft’s Online Services Business division is still losing money, and the losses have actually deepened over the same period last year.

So Microsoft’s online services are struggling. Yahoo is struggling. I’m confused. How is taking on a company with similar problems is going to help Microsoft?

Platforms

How is Microsoft going to incorporate a company based on open-source solutions into the fold? After all, the rest of the company runs Windows and Windows-based servers. The only way I see Microsoft making this work is if they take a hands-off approach and let Yahoo be. Let it be!

Competition against itself

How will Microsoft deal with the fact that, once again, the company would be competing against itself? Microsoft currently has its MSN brand and WIndows Live brand for online services. If Microsoft absorbs Yahoo, they will have a third brand to incorporate somehow (not counting Flickr, Del.icio.us, etc...). Microsoft currently uses the Live brand for search and maps, and the MSN brand as their general portal (Why they haven’t done more to bring the two brands together is beyond me). Adding Yahoo into the mix will add a third brand into the mix. Knowing how Microsoft has had Microsoft-run music stores and DRM schemes competing with each other in the past, there’s the possibility that Microsoft could do the same with Yahoo, MSN, and Windows Live. A more reasonable approach would be to merge everything under one brand name, preferably Yahoo. That doesn’t sort out any possible platform or other technical integration issues, though. I’ll leave that to Redmond’s best and brightest.

Regulators

Even though Microsoft doesn’t dominate the online services market (not like a long shot), Microsoft’s history won’t bode well as it tries to get regulatory approval for any such merger. They might be able to get it past the more-business-friendly FTC of the Bush Administration, but the EU? Ha! Forget it. My money’s on Microsoft being forced to sell some properties if they want to get the deal through.

Customer backlash

Turning off customers may or may not be a big deal. Most people probably just don’t care as long as they get their email! I know that if Microsoft buys Yahoo, they’ve just lost the whole anti-Microsoft crowd (although many have probably already fled to Google). I think the big test would be to see what happens if there’s a major transition and things don’t go smoothly. Will MSN dows Live hoo ckr .us² experience technical and reliability issues in a transition/merger? And if so, will it turn customers off?

Overcoming Google

This will be the biggest roadblock, without a doubt. I don’t see this deal really hurting Google in any major way, over the long term or short term. Will the same stale ideas employed by Microsoft and Yahoo (Flickr and Del.icio.us aside) really do any good against the Google juggernaut? Maybe, but I’m not convinced. I simply don’t see this proposal giving Microsoft the competitive edge. And maybe Microsoft isn’t destined to dominate search and online services the way they dominate the desktop.

Consider this: Microsoft was very effective at making “Windows” synonymous with computing. The problem for Microsoft is that “Google” has become synonymous with web searching. Once that happens, I think it’s very hard to make big gains in any market. Just look at competitors to the iPod. And just look at the Mac; it’s taken Apple years and years and years to finally reagin any momentum in the desktop market. Microsoft may ultimately be locked into a similar battle with Google.

At best, Microsoft may make some gains, and may end up surprising people. At worst, Microsoft could end up with an AOL Time Warner-type disaster on their hands. In reality, I think the outcome will fall in between, with Microsoft basically taking over where Yahoo was, but not making much of an assault on Google.

I simply don’t see how buying Yahoo would really turn the tide.

Yahoo may help, but as it stands today, this is not a war Microsoft can win.

¹All currency in US dollars. Yes, I know it’s weak, but so it goes.↩
²Isn’t that an awesome name? ↩

Holy crap: Microsoft bids on Yahoo!

2008-02-01T17:04:00Z

Wow, who saw this coming?

MSNBC reports that Microsoft has made a $44.6 billion takeover bid for its search rival Yahoo! Inc. Now why would Microsoft want to do something like that? To take on Google, of course!

Yahoo has been struggling as of late. Granted, both Yahoo and Microsoft are well behind Google in the search engine market; MSNBC reports that Google’s market share is in the neighborhood of 60%, while Yahoo and Microsoft have a combined 33% share.

Some questions naturally arise from this buyout proposal. Will regulators allow Microsoft to buy Yahoo without without messy antitrust issues? What will happen to MSN and Windows Live Search? Will this really do Microsoft any good in the end? And what about other Yahoo properties such as Flickr? Is Microsoft overpaying?

Me? I’d be surprised--nay, shocked!--if this deal goes through without Microsoft being forced to give up quite a bit. That is, if this deal goes through at all. Time wil tell. I’m sure we’ll have more to say about this proposed buyout in the coming days.

As of this writing, Google’s share price is down nearly 8%, Microsoft is down over 6%, and Yahoo is up nearly 86%.

MSNBC article