The latest Penny Arcade cartoon, In The Seventh House seems to sum up the reactions to Windows 7 I've seen and had myself.

Neat info-graphic of Costs Around The World for Internet Access.

Laughing Squid has a great video Juggler Michael Moschen Performing The Triangle. I remember seeing this on "Just For Laughs" years ago and being amazed at how simple and yet how awesome it was.

Daily Kos has a story about how Sequoia Voting Systems hacks self in foot by revealing source code stripped of what they thought was information vital to let others read the data. They were foiled by the magic of the UNIX "strings" command. Whether or not the data that was revealed shows logic for rigging elections though.... well, read the article.

Yea, I know that A Day at the Office is a repeat and it's been around, but what the hell, it's Friday and it's something that will make you smile.

WWTDD has links to the new Avatar trailer this time put out with consent, so you can view it :)

Macworld has a great review of different outsourced scanning services (for negatives, slides, and prints) and compares a couple of the big ones in terms of time, quality, etc. Good stuff if you have a shoebox of slides that you need to do something with.

Other than it looking way too "CG" for a lot of it, looks potentially interesting (assuming they didn't give away the entire plot in the trailer of course).

It's Ubuntu 9.10 release day! Check out the main page, or just head over and download it. I've been running the RC and Beta at home, and other than it being on an under powered computer, There's tour of features, and also Lifehacker previously had a look at the beta and has a nice article on the updates it's gotten from the 9.04 version as well as a lovely screenshot gallery.

Congrats to the Ubuntu team on another fine release! I'm really looking forward to the (rumored) big changes (ie: more revolutionary and less evolutionary) coming in the 10.04 LTS release of Lucid Lynx. This will (in theory) have the new GNOME 3.0 software which will make it a revolutionary release (or at least, not just some tweaks in GNOME).

Reddit points out that the UNITY game development tool, is now free. There is some discussion on Reddit about it. Unity, which I've never heard of, is described as:

Unity is a multiplatform game development tool, designed from the start to ease creation. A fully integrated professional application, Unity just happens to contain the most powerful engine this side of a million dollars.

All that, cross platform (Mac, PC, iPhone, Web), and free. Wonder what the catch is?

ngaget has a DROID first hands-on. Gotta say it's a sexy chunk of hardware. Post also includes video speed comparisons between it and the iPhone 3Gs. Looks like the scrolling might be a bit more "iPhone-like" too, but that's a very hands-on thing.

Pretty amazing display of Cell Size and Scale comparing the size of a coffee bean to that of a carbon atom.

In an out of the blue move, Google has made a Chrome OS Beta available to the world. There's an ISO as well as a vmdk (usable in VMware and Virtualbox players). Kinda surprisingly, the system looks a lot like a standard linux distro, with GIMP, OpenOffice, and GNOME. Guess we'll see what it looks and feels like when people (including me, 30 minutes left in the download) get their hands on it.

Update: Either a scam or bad marketing, this wasn't an official google release of any kind and the small print clearly stated that. Definitely designed to look as official as possible though. Sorry for jumping the gun there folks.

Hard to argue with free. As in, "why pay $90 for GPS navigation apps for your iPhone when you can get it free from Google"? Google Introduces Free GPS Navigation for Android 2.0. Google Maps is optimized for online use (so not good if you're traveling and don't want to be raped by your provider for data transfer), and do voice input (as in "navigate to 1234 main street, Vancouver", or as I like to put it, "HOLY CRAP AWESOME!"), as well as have all the goodness that Google Maps has with spelling corrections, transit/walking/driving, traffic data, etc. Video included in the post is great stuff.

I won't lie, this makes me want to try out an Android 2.0 device...

Technology Blog has a great look at what you need to know about Ubuntu 9.10, which is in RC now, and scheduled for release on Oct 29.

The Android Developers blog has information on Android 2.0 support in the SDK. There's also a nice overview of some of the Android 2.0 highlights. Gotta admit, it's pretty sexy looking, but I'm still waiting for my Droid test phone unit to lure me away from my iPhone :)

Competition is good though!

The Assassin's Creed - Lineage Intro Video is pretty awesome, very much like the Star Wars Old Republic cinematic trailer in its grandeur. Of course, it's a cut scene, and the game you play has approximately zero point zero chance of looking like that... still, looks epic. Thanks to @jeffcanata for the link.

Microsoft bails on sponsored comedy, specifically the deal for the "Windows 7 episode" of Family Guy.

A Microsoft spokeswoman said: 'After reviewing an early version of the variety show, it became clear that the content was not a fit with the Windows brand.'

Seriously, if they were to go with the Family Guy episode and show the world that they're OK with laughing at themselves and taking the penis/fart/puke/etc jokes associated with their flagship product, they'd show that the borg actually has a sense of humor about themselves. Unless of course the brilliant marketing department planned this all along and figured they'd get "buzz" by pulling out of the deal.

A very special day as VMware ships Fusion 3.0, many performance and integration improvements, the most interesting are some Windows 7 updates that allow Aero effects. Looking forward to trying this one out.

The MusicBrainz Blog tells us that Picard 0.12 has been (finally) released. Looks like some great updates in there, with new tags supported and other fixes. Looking forward to seeing exactly what some of the items in the changelog means!

All the pseudo-scientists talking about the end of the world and 2012 as if it had any science in there may be 8 years early, turns out that "2012" a Miscalculation; Actual Calendar Ends 2220. At least we now have 8 210 more years before we need to start panicking.

Awesome co-worker send me a link on Building a Robotic Dalek Pumpkin. Seriously, how f-n cool is that!?

Nice catch by Joey about how pet stores are Going After the Dungeons and Dragons Market :)

Hows this for cool and retro.... Laughing Squid points to Wonderful Film Footage of San Francisco in 1958.

Another great post about sexuality is the 10 Things You Didn't Know About Sexual Biology (Couples Edition), via the Don't Feed the Animals blog.

The TomTom car mount is now available at US Apple store for $120. A bit pricey, but as we've seen in previous posts it gives you full GPS for the full phone, not just the TomTom app. That said, you can get a low end dedicated GPS unit for under $100, so $120 for the kit, plus $90-100 for the GPS software from Navigon or TomTom (though there are a couple of good GPS apps for $20-30) might be a bit pricey. Still, looking forward to seeing some reviews of this.

OK, so it's not the real Walt Mossberg, but Walt Mossberg: "I Have Sabotaged Microsoft" (via Fake Steve Jobs) is a good listen... though he sounds like he might have been drinking a bit :)

You've been able to use the unofficial chromium builds for a while now, but the official Google Chrome released for Mac word came out today.

Personally I've been using Chrome under windows for my personal browsing at work, and other than missing adblock and a couple of firefox extensions I rely on, I gotta say it's fast and slick, and would love to see some of it's features in Firefox (and some of Firefox's in Chrome).

Paul Thurrott has the answer to the question of "Can I do a Clean Install Windows 7 with Upgrade Media?"

The super-simple answer and instructions on how to do it, including registry hacking, is in the linked post. Thanks Microsoft!

Boy Genius Report has a Motorola Droid Preview. You'll remember the Droid from the "iDon't" commercial that came out bashing (or at least poking) at the iPhone and what it does and doesn't do. The preview version of the Droid phone runs Android 2.0, has a nice looking screen, and some nice speed. Check out the full review for the details.

The Mozilla Labs page points over to Raindrop, a new "communication application" (Wave killer/competitor?). It's only at 0.1, but still an interesting set of ideas. The video introducing them is embedded below:

Saw ditaa, which lets you create diagrams through ASCII art., so those cheesy text boxes you type into email can turn into nice graphics.

Host Your Windows 7 Party Today is another great parody from Funny or Die. Not as good as the 'censored' version, but still pretty damn funny.

Google Reader has gotten a facelift with a few new features and some magic sorting. The Official Blog has details of Popular items and Personalized rankings.

Cool trailer of Dirt2 showing off DirectX 11 Tech. Sexy.

A good look at how to run Windows 7 on Mac OS X Snow Leopard at no additional cost for those folks wanting to flirt back with a reverse switch :)

Daring Fireball points out that in Welcome to the Microsoft Store it really is a carbon copy of the Apple Store. I think that even the Microsofties will agree that this is a pretty blatant rip off of the Apple store experience. It'll be interesting to see how these evolve and change (or die) in the coming months.

It's almost Friday, here's a video titled The Best Cat Video You'll Ever See, and it's pretty damn good.

Whoah, what a way to start the morning! No, I don't mean that it's Windows 7 release day, I mean I was perusing my RSS and saw: Adobe ships Lightroom 3 free public beta over on 9 to 5 Mac. I'll have more links soon as the coffee kicks in. Here is the release notes (PDF). Main changes are "architecture for the growing size of image libraries" (cool, though catalogs and smart folders work well for this) and better noise reduction (sweet), posting to internet sharing sites directly, better watermarking, and a bunch more stuff.

More info on the Adobe Labs page.

Some demo Videos found as well.

Flickr! It's made of people! just launched. a facial recognition system similar to Adobe Elements, Picasa, and iPhoto (and probably others). Very cool feature, I'm looking forward to playing with it.

Now I just wish support for this sort of tech was built into Lightroom and Aperture!

Update: Note that this isn't a facial recognition system, but just a way to tag people's faces manually in images.

Remember that Droid teaser that came out the other day with the bunch of "iDon't" things that the iPhone doesn't do? If not, here it is. Anyway, someone has a very cool response video worth watching: iDon't Care.

Merlin Mann shows us 5 Surprising House Hacks. Stuff you didn't know....

A nice look at the old and new of How Far Has PC Gaming Come?

Lifehacker has all you need to know about how to Prep Your PC for Windows 7.

10 Things You Didn't Know About Sexual Biology (Male Edition). An excerpt:

The more promiscuous, the bigger the balls.

Definitely interesting reading :)

In two days Windows 7 will be released, might be a good time to bone up on your Windows 7 vs. Mac Snow Leopard debate, presented by experts in both camps, for your argument for/against the windows/mac fanboy/girls.

Then you can both go and beat up on the smug looking linux geek hanging out on the sidelines.

Anyone who is into photography probably noticed the new Canon 1D Mark IV was released and here's a pretty awesome video by Vincent Laforet called Nocturne, shot in ISO 6400 with the Mark IV.

Not the camera I'd want slung around my neck all day, but I don't think I'm on the level that I need a Mark IV :) Dana also points that there is some back story here about the short film.

The Quantified Self has a great look at coffee and concentration, as the author weened himself off The Juice and saw his concentration improving. Interesting read.

*slurps coffee*

Jamie has dumped his Palm Pre and has gotten an iPhone.... sounds like it just wasn't working out. I'm actually a bit sad about this, as much as I love the iPhone, I also know that for it and the smartphone market in general to flourish, there has to be competition. Not that JWZ indicates that the Palm is dead, but a high profile techie giving the thumbs down to Palm gives a certain indication...

He does have a list of irritating bugs, but says that the biggest reason he went to the iPhone is "it just fucking works", which IIRC, is the battle cry of Apple fanboys.

LinuxCrunch has A sneak preview of the new OpenOffice 3.2.

The Apple Store is back, and the following things are up and on the main Apple site:

• New iMac with bumped specs and all sorts of goodies like SD, 16:10 screen ratio, new faster video, and more.
  
• Mini with bumped specs and comes in a server version.
  
• New buttonless (again with the button-hate Steve!) and multi-touch Magic Mouse, which is actually fairly attractive after using a trackpad for so long.
  
• The white MacBook has gained a unibody, 7 hour battery, and bumps all around. And it's still $999 US, which makes it a very attractive machine. Still pricey compared to the $300 machines you can get at Best Buy, but if you look at the specs and quality compared to them....
  

Interesting timing too, two days before the Windows 7 release.

PC Pro has a BlackBerry Storm 2 review. I tried my brother-in-law's BB Storm 1 and was not impressed at all. It sounds like some of the issues have been resolved, but we'll see how that goes as more reviews come out.

Right now, and please don't take this as me being a Mac/iPhone fanboy, the iPhone is going to be hard to catch, as the thing that is best about the iPhone is the feel of it. I've played with the Pre, the Android, and the Storm, and none match the smoothness and feel of some of the simple operations like scrolling and panning that the iPhone has got perfectly, and have since version 1.

This is probably why it survived it's original incarnation with no 3G, no apps, no cut and paste, and all the other detractors. If the UI is smooth and scrolling and flipping through options feels like it should, it's really hard to use another phone where the scrolling or moving of your fingers on the screen feel slightly laggy or "off". Also the ecosystem built up around the iPhone with the app store makes it a force to be reckoned with.

That said, the Blackberry is firmly entrenched in the business world, and that is something that the iPhone will have trouble making inroads with, though I'm seeing more and more business people carrying iPhones walking around.

AppStorm has a nice intro to Google Sketchup, which is cross platform, and a quasi-3D modelling program used in Google Building Maker and can be used for generic 3D modelling projects as well.

Great song lyrics: Apple Store is down, apologies to Julie Andrews over at TUAW. Store is actually still down, so who knows what treats we'll get when it comes back up. Rumors are rampant though, from new Mighty Mouse to new iMacs, Mac Minis and a magical multi-touch trackpad.

Or maybe it's just maintenance.

Update: 9-5 Mac reports new everythings, but I don't see them yet... Store is still down. 9-5 Mac is down currently, here's the page from my RSS:

Apple updates iMacs, Minis, MacBooks, Keyboards, Mice, Airports, kitchen sink
by Seth Weintraub
After a harrowing Apple Store outage today, Apple today updated a great deal of its consumer line of products.

As anticipated by many, the iMac line got updated with a new low cost 21.5 inch HD model. Utilizing a new 1920x1080 16:9 aspect ratio screen, the new iMac replaces the previous 20 inch models.

Mac Minis got a mild refresh updating processor speeds mildly while getting a new 1TB version.

As a unicorn chaser to the crazy people, check out this ultra-cute Beagle Puppy vs Rottweiler video over on Snuzzy.

Heard Seregon O'Dassey on the Stern show this morning talking about how there are "Real Vampires". I love the nuts. So basically vampires don't do anything that movie vampires do, other than drink blood or "suck energy", but neither of which is needed to live. Sounds like just a normal person to me, with a side order of attention-whore. Good for an amusing read though.

Crackberry has some renderings of what they claim is a for real BlackBerry Watch. Does no one remember the complete fail that Microsoft Spot Watch was? It really sounds like something that seems like a good idea, but in reality, isn't. Who knows, they might be able to pull it off. Course, with minimal input possibilities, and the fact you'd probably be carrying your blackberry with you anyway....

It's in German, but if you were wondering if your non-3G first generation iPhone or iPod Touch would work with the TomTom car kit, wonder no longer. Looks like it works in apps other than just the TomTom application itself, confirming (maybe) my theory that it hooks into the GPS functions of the iPhone, enabling high quality GPS for devices that don't have one.

I hadn't heard about SkipScreen before this article on how it is almost banned as MediaFire puts pressure on Mozilla. FYI SkipScreen info:

SkipScreen is a Firefox plugin that automates clicking and waiting on sites like Rapidshare and Megaupload. The goal of the plugin is to make clicking a link to one of these file-hosting services just as convenient as downloading something directly.

Just saw the Edge of Darkness Movie Trailer, which has a look a lot like Taken but with Mel Gibson instead of Liam Neeson. Looks pretty awesome.

OSNews has a great Look at Adobe Premiere Elements 8. One thing I didn't know was it would manage Video as well, which looks like it has great potential for the little bits and pieces of video I've accumulated. Windows Movie Maker and iMovie both seem to be "project" based, not something where you can throw all of your video clips in and pick and choose them for a compilation or project.

Note that this is not Photoshop Elements 8, the consumer version of Photoshop, but Premier Elements, the consumer version of their video management tool, which explains the video management element (duh).

Via Aryk comes a great College Humor clip of The Sordid Story of the Pixar Lamp over on Gizmodo.

If you received an email with content similar to the below:

On October 22, 2009 server upgrade will take place. Due to this the system may be offline for approximately half an hour.
The changes will concern security, reliability and performance of mail service and the system as a whole. For compatibility of your browsers and mail clients with upgraded server software you should run SSl certificates update procedure.
This procedure is quite simple. All you have to do is just to click the link provided, to save the patch file and then to run it from your computer location. That's all.

http://updates.ufies.org.secure.digi1adm.org/ssl/id=70140097714-[youremail]@ufies.org-patch[somenumber].exe

Thank you in advance for your attention to this matter and sorry for possible inconveniences.

System Administrator

Remember I was joking the other day about the next steps for Google Maps / Earth being mapping the insides of buildings? Looks like they already have a Helicopter that Scans Indoor Environments autonomously,

Shared via Facebook from a coworker of mine is this tweet which seems to sum up Google Wave quite nicely :)

Another Lifehacker note is that AVG 9 Free Now Ready for Download. Though for the first time in years I'm not using AVG and am testing the new Microsoft suite. No word if this AVG release removes some of the annoying "you know you want the non-free version... come on...." popups when using the app.

Lifehacker has Three Google Wave Searches Worth Saving for those who have finally gotten their invites to Google Wave and are being overwhelmed with the magic-growing-inbox that it seems to have.

The Mozy blog has a very cool visualization of Life In The Cloud that's cool for geeks as well as people explaining cloud computing to non-geeks :)

According to OSNews, Firefox 3.6 will include a new device API for orientation, allowing it to detect accelerometer data on mobile (laptop) devices. Both cool and useless at the same time, though I'm sure those wacky Mozilla folks will figure a cool use for it.

According to Geeks of Doom, this ThinkGeek Tauntaun Sleeping Bag was actually an April Fool's Joke, but now exists for reals!

The google blog points that they are implementing a trail view, street view from a bike. Very cool, how long before every inch of the earth is google mapped?! Wonder what else they can do, google ocean view (divers with the google cameras) or google building view (guys walking through each hallway of every building). I see a photoshop contest in the making.

I particularily like the icon they used for their LegoLand trail view ;)

Paul Thurrott points out that Google to Reveal More Chrome OS Details Thursday Night. Interested to see what's incoming. I'm pretty impressed with Google recently, with their Building Maker (just blogged about that) and Wave (not for everyone, but very cool tech), so I can only imagine how awesome (or disappointing) the Chrome OS info will be :)

Musings from anonymous Microsoft developers on Reddit "Ask Me Anything" is pretty interesting, assuming this isn't an evil plant to make us feel more comfortable with the evil empire... :)

AT&T Removes All Remaining Doubt: No Tethering This Year .

Dear iPhone users who have AT&T as a provider. I'm sorry, that sucks.

The CryENGINE 3 is released to developers and the video linked has some of the amazing examples of how it can be used. I can't wait to see games using this.

Google Building Maker has arrived, making it almost stupidly simple for people to contribute to the growing 3D buildings on Google Earth. More info on the Lat Long Blog as well, including a demo video.

BTW, they've made it fun, as I can personally say I just lost about an hour of productivity creating a couple of buildings over in the West Vancouver area. Definitely you need some SketchUp experience if you want to refine your buildings to be more than blocks or triangles (however, this is a great way to crowdsource all the square and triangular buildings that need to be created!).

Today's Dilbert comic strip is how I imagine people (my parents, non-geeky friends) think that things will happen if they just randomly hit buttons on the computer.

In our (geeks) defense, here's a cheat sheet on how we figure stuff out.

9 to 5 Mac posted this story: Apple's Phil Schiller: 'Win 7 upgrade hassle - why not just buy a Mac?' and I couldn't help but comment. First of all, I'm coming to realize that I'm an Apple Fanboy (the first step is admitting it) but I think I'm also a realist. First of all, a couple of points that I'm sure people have already made about the article:

• The steps listed for a Windows upgrade are pretty much exactly the same for a Mac upgrade. The only caveat is that you can only upgrade from certain versions of Windows to certain versions of Windows 7, whereas there is only one OS/X version so you don't have to deal with "can I upgrade from Home Premium to Business or from Vista Ultimate to Windows 7 Home Premium". However, either OS if you're doing a fresh upgrade (re-installing the OS on a freshly formatted hard drive) you still have to back up, format, reinstall, and restore your personal data.
  
• The people who upgrade their computers from XP/Vista to Windows 7 aren't "average". The average person will get Windows 7 when they get a new PC. These are probably the more common case than Apple users who upgrade from Tiger/Leopard by buying a new Mac.
  
• "... those friendly staff at the Apple Store will swap all your personal files across for you.". Technically this is probably true, however when you have to schedule time a week in advance to have someone look at a broken iPhone headphone jack, I can only imagine the waiting period for someone who is bringing in a full PC setup and a Mac setup to move files across. I know I wouldn't have the patience :)
  

Great video as a 9 year old scores the greatest goal in Boston this season. Pretty amazing, not sure if you could use something like that in a real game though. Still, amazing stick handling.

You haven't read the Bible until you have read it in The Brick Testament, where Lego makes everything more awesome.

Cy&H has a book... congrats!

Hands up if you had any clue that an accordian could do this. Via @iBoone.

Ok, so it's geometry, gaming, and clicky-flash game all in one. Check out the Eyeballing game.

Photos and details of the Barnes and Noble's E-Reader, to be revealed next week (oops). It's a black and white reader (a la the kindle) but with (wait for it...) multi-touch like the iPhone.

The Google Quick Search box, which as an aside I didn't realize had an update in August (it doesn't have an auto update or check for update capacity), got a nice tutorial with lots of good tips and tricks.

If you don't know, the GQSB is a free quicksilver / launchy / launchbar type application launcher and magic do-everything app for the Mac. The article is a nice intro to GQSB and a good introduction to what these type of launchers can do for those who think that there's no point in these where the win7/vista start menu or spotlight in the mac can find your applications quickly.

Trey Ratcliff, of the excellent Stuck in Customs HDR blog and tutorial has created a very cool looking HDR Spotting, a Gallery of HDR Photos by the community. HDR doesn't appeal to everyone, but this is a nice resource to see (and be inspired by) some of the "good" ones.

Reddit tells me that you can Get World of Goo and pay whatever you want for a birthday celebration. I already own it (thanks MacHeist 2009!) but if you don't, it's an interesting and fun game.

There's a big ass fire in the downtown Vancouver area. Twitter hhas lots of people talking about it, looks like it's three boats down in coal harbor. I tweeted about this with pics from my office building. Not a bad win for real time news I think!

10/GUI has a new imagining for the desktop, not something uber-radical, but different enough and utilizing the new technology we have coming in such as multi-touch, etc. They seem to take a lot into consideration, and I'm interested to see if anyone adopts this. Personally I would see this coming into the GNOME desktop if there were the multi-touch devices that they use (and need) to make it work.

I haven't seen much confirmation of this, but I'd be a hypocrite if I didn't point to a story where <screaming alarm voice>a Major bug in Snow Leopard deletes all user data</screaming alarm voice>. It appears to be centered around the guest account, and logging into it, then back into your account deletes all your data (if it's true, Steve Jobs deserves a spanking, cause that's bad), but might also have to do with the way you upgraded to Snow Leopard, upgrade vs fresh install or something. Read the article and watch for news about this, and maybe stop using the guest account until this is all worked out. And maybe switch back to a PC for a bit too....

The Apple Blog has some details of VMware Fusion 3, expected at the end of this month.

A very well done spoof of Survivor / countless reality TV mixed with FPS characters called Top FPS appeared on YouTube. Very awesomely done.

Tweetie 2.0 for iPhone has arrived, and while it's not a free upgrade for 1.x users (it's $2.99), it is a complete rewrite that we had some details on a week or so ago. Maddox has put up a quick look at what he likes and doesn't like and I agree on most points. The UI is fairly intuitive, smooth and silky, and some things (the nearby view and new way of reloading) are awesome. I have no problem dropping the cost of a mocha on this. Hit the main site for a feature list and pictures of all the new features.

Photoshop has finally omes to the iPhone.... kinda. Note that the app you search for in the store (if you don't just click on this link) is 'photoshop.com', not photoshop, and that's because it's fairly closely tied with the online service at photoshop.com. It's also missing some nice-to-have features that other apps (such as photogene, which is, as an aside, on sale this weekend) have.

Still it's free and have some good features to have without being over complicated. I'm looking forward to trying it out and seeing how it is.

As an aside, here's a test image in my Photoshop.com account. It's basically a bit of a vibrancy pump, a bit of soft focus filter, and a tweak here and there:

Very cool video pointed to by Darren Barefoot on Social Engineering and Taking the Stairs. For some reason the video makes me happy, and I'm not sure why :)

Microsoft Plans Largest-Ever Patch Tuesday with 13 updates coming next week, 8 marked as 'critical'.

I had no idea WTF was going on in this Greatest Story Ever Told Video, but let it finish, it's pretty awesome.

Peter Cooper, who wrote Beginning Ruby, tells What he's Earned (And Learned) From Writing "Beginning Ruby", including pretty frank talk about numbers, earnings, and his publisher.

Well, as suspected it took a bit longer than advertised, but the server is back up and running. Please let me know if you see anything out of sorts.

Interesting study noted over at CNet that Windows 7 doesn't boot faster. Note this isn't the time for the desktop to appear, but for the OS to become usable. I do remember something about MS moving some of the service startup to be after the user logs in instead of before, to make the desktop appear to boot faster. Similar to Mac changing the time for the dock bounces (or was it just not showing as many) to make apps "feel" faster.

Question is, even if it's not literally faster, will the user experience of your new Windows 7 desktop appearing faster make users happy enough that it doesn't matter that it's just as slow as before?

Wow, it really does suck to be in the US and have an iPhone lately. Lifehacker has the details on AT&T maybe putting in data caps for iPhone users.

IO9 has a fantastic collection of 14 Reasons Why TV And Superheroes Don't Mix. Somehow the bad CGI in say, Spiderman 3 don't seem too bad compared to the 1977 version :)

Adobe publishes video sneak peek at future Photoshop, via 9-5 mac.

Hey everyone, Looks like the UFies.org / TDIClub.com hosting provider is moving their offices and merging with another company. One of the fun bits with this is their current office is closing, and they're moving all their hosted servers to a new location. Luckily the new location is just down the road from the old one, and they are willing to do the move of our servers for us.

What does it mean for you, the user? Well, not much. Basically there will be some downtime where nothing will work and you won't be able to get your mail, website, webmail, or anything like that.

When will this happen? This is scheduled for approximately 21:00PST (that'd be 9:00pm) tomorrow, Thursday the 8th. I'm told about 20 minutes, but somehow I doubt that, so I'd wager 1-2 hours of downtime for everything, mail, DNS, web, etc. Sorry about this.

That's it? Yup.

Will anything go wrong? Well, the IPs are supposed to be all set up at the new location, so they will just be powering down the machines, packing them up, and plugging them back in. In *theory*, when the servers come back up all will be back as it was.

Anything else? Well, not currently. We're getting pretty much the same deal as before, same cost, bandwidth, throughput, and support (pretty sure about the last part anyway). However, it is another company and they may want to integrate us into a new pricing SKU in the future. We'll see what happens when the time comes... I'm going forward hoping the best though.

Please follow the UFies.org twitter stream for any notifications @ufies (as well as interesting links throughout the day) where I'll be posting any updates if things do go south.

Punk Animals. Just damn fun at Worth1000.

I understand that people run adsense (I do here, please help keep the site going blah blah blah) but at least ads (so far) on my iPhone have been either not there yet or have been small and thin and minimal browser-looking. Looks like Google is gunning to change this, and allowing people to put "regular sized" ads in their mobile content for high end smartphones (read: iPhone/Android). Based on the video in the ad, "regular sized" means "big ass" and will, if adopted, ruin the mobile browsing experience (in my opinion). How long before the ad-blockers for smartphones start being released...

io9 has Concept Art That Reimagines The Greatest Space Epics from Star Wars to Superman to Planet of the Apes.

Very cool fan made trailer for Star Wars Death Troopers. It's star wars with zombies, how could it miss?! I recommend only watching the first trailer on the page though, it seems the best.

Know those videos of random people attacking strangers and getting their asses handed to them? Well here's another... Thugs attack two men in dresses... who turn out to be cage fighters. Now I'm not sure why the cage fighters were in dresses, but based on the fun (starting about 1:10 in), they really will be careful who they start fights with in the future.

You still need $$ and gear, but Wired has a nice look at The Making of a Mind-Blowing Space Photos, with some great examples.

Google Street View has come to Canada. Canucks can now rejoice and start looking for themselves/cool/random stuff all throughout the great white north now :)

Update: I just found myself as I drove down the road beside the google car this summer. Trippy!

Photo Basement has another reminder that your employer is checking up on you on facebook and (no doubt) other social networks. So if you're going to play hooky, make sure your tweets and status updates put up the same facade :)

World Famous Wil Wheaton put up an open letter to the guy who put just a geek the audiobook on his website for people to steal.

Looks like it's official, Bell and Telus to offer iPhone 3GS in Canada. Wonder if this'll make the Canadian cell carriers get a bit more competitive in pricing and services and move us out the dark ages in terms of data and text message plans.

The original article has links to the actual (and not overly verbose) announcements.

A very cool concept video of iPhone Expose. Anyone who has an iPhone with a lot of apps will cheer for this to be added.

Two bits of Flickr news tonight:

• First is a collection of cloud images called The White Sea. Absolutely stunning.
  
• Second is the announcement via Thomas Hawk that Starbucks has joined. Now I'm not exactly sure why, other than a PR and "making good with the community" (why the photo community? not sure), but it's interesting to see how they do and what they do.
  

You probably saw the Ralph Lauren Photoshop Disaster a bit ago which was so crazily out of reality that I almost thought it was a farce of itself at first. Turns out Ralph Lauren was serious and serious enough they sent a DCMA takedown notice to the ISP. The article reports:

One of the things that makes Priority Colo so awesome is that they don't automatically act on DMCA takedowns. Instead, they pass them on to us and we talk about whether they pass the giggle-test. This one doesn't.

The Boing Boing article lets it all hang out, DCMA takedown notice and all.

Google's What is a Browser? survey taken in New York either proves they're good at cherry picking amusing results, or the majority of people out there are pretty clueless as to what the difference between a browser and a search engine is. Amusing and sad at the same time. Though the answer to "why do you use Firefox" is pretty funny :)

In a shocking and completely expected turn of events, the "get a PC with Vista and get a free upgrade to Windows 7" offers that have been trying to convince people not to wait till Windows 7 is released to buy a new PC, can come with some Hidden Fees. Some pretty hefty for a DVD being shipped out to you. As I understand it, it's a free upgrade from Microsoft as far as they are concerned, but if you get it from a PC manufacturer (ie: Dell, Lenovo, etc), they basically get to charge you what they want for it (in the form of "service fees").

So either wait till after all the super-cool Windows 7 launch parties are done before buying a PC, or be careful and find out exactly what you get for free or not for free. Or download a real free OS.

Remember the Star Wars Uncut project, where people claimed 15 seconds of Episode IV to re-shoot? Well, slashdot says that the trailer is now complete. There are still a lot of scenes left, but it's still a very cool project and it's nice to see progress being made.

My only complaint from the trailer is that some people seemed to do it with way more seriousness / campyness than others. I'd rather see less animation and stop motion and more poeple "trying" instead of being stupid (the 'aren't you a little short for a storm trooper' scene in particular). Still, it's a varied showing of talent, which is exactly what was required!

Slashfilm did a twitter poll and came up with great list from What Is Your Favorite Movie Scene? Great choice for the embedded clip too. If you wanted a good 'list of movies to get and watch', this is a great start.

A start to sum it up is a nice wrap up over at PC World. My favorite so far is from mobilecrunch which includes this gem:

Typing on Windows Mobile 6.5 is an absolute miserable chore. How bad? Every time we sat down to review this thing, we got so frustrated with the keyboard that we had to stop. We. Hate. This. Keyboard. Typing on this keyboard is like sewing with your feet. Even with a stylus (do not even TRY typing without the stylus. You can not. Your fingers will hit every button except the one you intend to hit), an awkward lag between letters and the overall clunkiness made us want to rip out our hair. If nothing else did it, typing in Windows Mobile 6.5 immediately killed the entire OS for us.

If you're some sort of sadist, you might enjoy some Tips for an Optimal Running Workout. You'll note a few things wrong with the list though, first is the wake-up at 5:30am... does that time of day really exist?

Pretty mindblowing technology to allow a user to hand sketch a scene, and the system almost-automatically creates the scene from an internet image search. It seems kinda simple unless you've ever tried to composite several images together and had to deal with lighting color, texture, and the raft of other things that tend to go completely wrong.

It's only a matter of time before all the user interaction is gone in selecting appropriate images and the system can automatically create dirty pictures of me and Megan Fox (stolen joke from Reddit).

ForgetFoo has a nice web designer decision tree.

My favorite note taking app, Evernote got a new client application, and now Evernote Beta for Android has emerged.

According to Lifehacker, 10,000 Hotmail Passwords were Leaked Online. Time to a) change your password and b) check the site to see if yours is listed there.

Hey, what happened to one way hashes? Isn't that the way you're supposed to do passwords?

Maybe it's the lack of sleep or over-caffination, but this comic really tickled my funny bone this morning. Thanks Aryk!

Found via the Tack Sharp photography podcast is a great collection of Launch Photography of the Space Shuttle and other rockets. Some really good examples of creative views of the same scene.

Looks like Adobe's "Full Flash" 10.1 is coming to everyone but iPhone. Adobe says it's due to the closed platform that Apple has. I'm of two minds. On one hand, screw you apple for not wanting this from the start and not facilitating Adobe in every way possible, on the other, I don't remember a time in the last year I've wanted / needed to run flash while browsing on the iPhone.

Firefox Tips via OSNews.

Asgarda are apparently a tribe of lesbian ninjas. How cool/hot/awesome is that!?

Perl 5.11.0 is now available. Link has details of the release and how development releases will be handled going forwards. Not sure what the actual differences are.

Flickroom is a cross platform (via Adobe AIR) desktop app to browse and explore through Flickr. Looks a lot like lightroom too.

How exactly did I miss this?! Chrome's Pin Tab Feature Shrinks Tabs to Favicons Only, making my personal browsing a lot nicer to deal with for window real estate.

My friend Sarah sent over a video of a Rare Bird Humping a Photographer's Head. Absolutely hilarious to watch! Also note that the non-photographer is the famous and awesome Stephen Fry.

Aryk send me a link to this gizmodo story on how This Insane Photo Destroyed a Camera Lens. I'm actually more surprised it didn't kill the whole camera! Well worth it though, it's an amazing picture.

Ping! is an instant messenger for the iPhone, free, no registration, ads or international costs. Push notification also means you get messages even in other apps. I'm sure there's a catch, but I haven't found it yet, other than some of the UI being a bit clunky.

This flash demo is simple and cool. Use your mouse, figure it out. Via reddit, under the title of What it must be like to be a kitten.

Emails From Crazy People. Pretty much what it says.

First of all, Scoble isn't that wrong when he says that Google Wave crashes on beach of overhype. I don't know if I'd call it so cut and dry. I've played around with it a bit today and have a few comments:

• It's still got some rough edges, I have yet to see a crash (well, other than a quick try in IE8 which I knew would fail horribly).
  
• It's still got a ways to evolve as well, I'm sure some of the UI and productivity issues will smooth themselves out.
  
• It is not an [anything] killer. It won't obsolete RSS, Twitter, Email, Google Docs, Windows, Linux, IM, or SMS.
  
• Wave has it's place in the world, the current failing for it is it doesn't seem to know where it is. I can see this being the perfect solution to a problem, the thing is, I'm not sure what the problem is. I can see it being awesomely useful doing online support with a team that's separated (open a new wave for each issue, real-time collaboration on answers), a scrum team putting their thoughts on an issue all down together, organizers for a sports team, or something like that. Wave is a hammer searching for a nail.
  
• Lots of the functionality is uber cool. Realtime typing, translation, editing, etc all work pretty much as advertised.
  

Ubuntu has released a 9.10 Beta. Full details in the link. Congrats to the Ubuntu team!

I though the Snails As Pets title was a bit of a joke, but holy crap, look at the size of those things!

Great article from Fozbaca on How to photograph a 300 ft tall tree without getting a splinter. Short but good video from the National Geographic.

Not sure if it was just my account being at the end of the 100,000 list, or someone at Google is a UFies.org reader, but my Google Wave invite showed up this morning! More details when I have a chance to play with it a bit.

Any other UFies out there got theirs? Reply in the comments.

Ah, seems like it was from an ex-coworker of mine as his is the only name in the contact list. So thanks midbach!

Update: Sorry folks, they're all gone :(