TechThisOut!

To the suprise of many, starting on 2nd August 2006 at 6pm (PDT), Microsoft will be charging users $1.50 (£0.80) per download of Office2007.

This move apparently came round after the Office beta was alot more popular than expected, and with 3million downloads, that was five hundred percent more than Microsoft thought it would be.

Existing users of the beta will be able to download updates for free, but many have been outraged that a multi-billion company like Microsoft has to charge for beta software (that will stop working sometime, just like most betas!) with the fee helping “offset the cost of downloading from the servers”.

You still have a few days to download it free, so go and get it quick!

Update: Stuffplug has now been released an is available here!

Yes that’s right! A techthisout.net exclusive preview of the newest pre-beta build of StuffPlug3, the very popular (now stand-alone!) add-on for Windows Live Messenger (which from now on will be reffered to as WLM).

It installed easily and quickly, but the installer isn’t the final one that will be “shipped” with StuffPlug3, so I won’t really say much about it.

The thing I noticed after the installation was the seamless incorporation into WLM. As you can see from the screenshot below, it adds an icon and a menu (very much like MsgPlus! does) to make it alot easier to get to the options. This is certainly a great improvement to the old method of going to the options via typing in a conversation window or going into the Plus! options.

I then decided to have a look around it, and after exploring the menu, had a look at the Welcome Screen:

Here we see everything nicely laid out, with a damn nice new interface! There’s not a whole lot to say about it, so I shall move swiftly on to the first options pages.

General Options:

There are 3 options, the first being to do with WLM add-ins, and the next two are pretty self explanatory.

The Content Stealer.

This steals Display Pictures, Emoticons, Dynamic Pictures and Winks. The thing that impressed me most, was its ability to steal the emoticon at it’s original size (before the other person’s WLM resized it), and contrary to the older versions of StuffPlug, it actually steals everything and not just a few display pictures and emoticons here and there.

New Mail Icon in the System Tray

Here’s a brand new feature for StuffPlug, and got to be one of my favourites. Now at a glance you can see if you have any emails, without having to check the main messenger window each time.

Now onto the “Conversation” options screen:

Here we see 7 features (a lot less disappointing than the first options page) consisting of:

Use a Chat Only Name

This feature was in most previous versions of StuffPlug, and for those who don’t know, this feature allows you to choose a different name to appear when you’re in a conversation. Very useful if you have a long name that you want people to see, but want a short and simple name to appear when you’re chatting to your buddies.

Action Text

As you can see from the screenshot, it allows you to send messages that look identical to what you see when you send/recieve a nudge.

Fake Invite

Allows you to send fake invites to contacts, which gets very confusing for them!

Obviously it doesn’t actually send anything, and if they accept, all they see is: “This activity or game is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later.”
Doesn’t make it any less fun though!

Allow Talking To Contacts You Blocked

Unfortunatly this feature isn’t quite working yet, but when it is, I’ll be sure to let you know how it goes! It’s obvious what it does though, and will be useful for all those people you don’t want to delete, don’t want them to start messaging you, but still might need to contact from time to time!

Boost Character Limit

This allows you to send as many as 5,000 characters per message in a conversation.

Make Window Icons Reflect Contact’s Status

Now this is another brand new feature, and another of my favourites!
Wheras before, you didn’t know if people had changed status without looking at the main WLM or conversation window, you can now see easily! The screenshot sums it up well:

Flash Keyboard LED when Fullscreen App

Useful for all you CounterStrike players out there. This feature makes one or more LED (”little light” or CapsLock/NumLock/ScrollLock light for all you PC illiterates out there!) flash when someone messages you when you have a fullscreen program open.

Again, this is a feature that’s not yet complete, but will certainly come in handy when it is!

Lastly, the “Contact List” options.

Allow Editing of Friendly Names in the Contact List

Allows you to change your WLM name without having to go into the options, the same way as you do your personal message.

Unfortunaly it isn’t 100% compatible with MsgPlus, but TheBlasphemer is working on getting it sorted.

Enable Ad Hider

I’ve been waiting for this, and although it doesn’t completely remove the advertisment at the bottom of the contact list, it does hide it (as the name suggests) and makes it alot less offensive to the eye.

And that’s it so far!

Well….. You’d think so, but I have a list of all the features that are yet to be added!

• Getting the contact’s emoticon keystroke when you Install an emoticon you are stealing from them. (Just like the existing “Add” in WLM)
• New Installer (not really a feature but still good!)
• An Auto-updater, so you’ll be able to get the newest versions without having to visit the website.
• Open all links in the default browser
• Auto complete commands (such as !fakeinvite). Also the old /[command] commands will probably be brought back to replace doing ![command]
• Give you the opion to auto-disable commands that did not load correctly
• Allowing over-sized emoticons
• Ignore Feature (they can talk to you, but you won’t see any of the messages. Saves you having to block them and risk them finding out!)
• Timestamps also might return, but this isn’t definite

As of yet, there is no timescale for beta-testing, or any release date, so you’ll just have to be patient! I shall keep you updated if and when I get new versions.

NOTE: I will not be giving ANYONE a download link, so please don’t bother asking.

Almost forgot:

The About Screen

As everyone seems to be asking, the theme I’m using is LonghornPro, and it’s for StyleXP

About the Window Opened/Closed Notifier

The Window Opened Notifier will not return due to the way MSN7.x (which is used by all pre-XP users) requests display pictures. The notifier used to work by detecting when your display pic was requested, which only happened when a convo window was opened.

MSN7.x now uses contact cards/display pics in the contacts window/display pics in the sign-in popup, so now when ANY of those happen, it would make the notifier popup (even if someone just opened your contact card) which makes it highly inaccurate and therefore pretty useless.

The Window Closed Notifier will no longer be included as current versions of WLM/MSN close the connection woth your contact when they have been inactive for so many minutes. The notifier worked by detecting when the connection had been closed, with the only way of it being closed being when the window was closed. As I previously said, the connection is now randomly closed, so you would recieve a notification not only when the window had been closed, but after your contact had been idle for so long, which makes it inaccurate.

Understandably, TheBlasphemer only wants to include fully functional features, as otherwise, when it pops up and someone hasn’t opened/closed a convo, everyone will moan and complain about it.

Regardless of how great/inaccurate you think the feature is, it WILL NOT BE PUT BACK IN, no matter how many times you ask, and no matter what you do or say.

Let that be the last that is said about them, and all future comments asking about them will be deleted.

Comments now have to be approved by an Administrator, so don’t worry if your comment doesn’t appear immediatly, it will be approved within 24 hours.

Quoted from Plus.Net: 

This major incident occurred as a result of human error during work to resolve timeouts when collecting mails, which we reported via service status last week:
http://usertools.plus.net/status/archive/1152295291.htm

Although this was noticed very quickly, over 700GB of live customer data was removed before the process could be halted.

I can’t begin to imagine what went through that poor technicians head when he realised he had wiped the wrong server. I often have several consoles open and run commands in both at the same time, but I always check which is which, especially when removing data!

Due to a family bereavement, I will not be posting for a week or so.

Just when you thought the internet couldn’t get more bizzare, out comes: the first ever online operating system.

I decided to give it a go, first using a guest account, and then signing up to a members account. If you create your own personal account, anything you save whilst logged in, will still be there when you next log in, even if you’re on the other side of the world!

The main page boasts:

• Access from anywhere.
  Create a document at an office computer, drive home, continue right from where you left off.
• Built-in sharing.
  Instantly share music, documents and more with your buddies.
• An application community.
  Everyone from professional software engineers to highschool age programmers can participate at no cost. Choose from a growing list of over 150 applications developed by our users.

First, I tried out the Rich Text Editor (which took a little while to open but not too long) and it handled cyrillic/latin (that’s Russian and English to most people) fine and saving it (although you have to open it from within the RTE and can’t do as you would with Windows and double-click) but again, it took a little while to do this. Saying that, it is only an online OS, so is doing pretty well in my opinion so far!

Back to point number 3 above, I thought I would see what other applications there were besides what you’d expect, as the File Explorer/Trash Can worked as one would expect.

As it has only been around for 6 months, and is therefore relatively new, there isn’t a whole lot of choice when it comes to applications, and some are just a little strange!

There are 2 browsers:

• Bitty Browser, which is a simple text browser allowing you to go back. forwards, and search google. Very Useful for all you ad haters out there!
• YouBrowser, which works like any other browser, allowing you to veiw sites with pictures as you usually would. It does have one drawback however, and that is, it has a lack of navigation buttons. This does make it difficult when you’re browsing as you normally would.

Having said that, your normal browser is already open and showing you YouOS, so why not just open a new tab/window and use that?!

Now we come onto the chat application, which users of mIRC/any other IRC client will be familiar with. You have the following commands: /users - shows you all the users in the chat.
/quit - quits the chat (what a suprise!)
/join [channel] - Allows you to join a different channel, eg: “/join kangie” makes you join the channel “kangie”

FlickRSS basically is window that opens on the ‘desktop’ that shows you pictures from the popular site Flickr. (You have to specify a tag though.)

TubeRSS does what FlickRSS does, only this time it’s videos from YouTube.

YouBuddy allows you to add other users of YouOS (providing you know their name) for a bit of MSN Style chatting.

YouMail allows you to email people from within YouOS. Unfortunatly it currently only supports emailing other YouOS users, and not actual email addresses, but hopefully that will be implemented in the future.

YouShell looks like a mix between notepad and command prompt/DOS works like linux, and allows you to manage applications/processes, as well as changing the directory of files and changing the data structure. (Typing in Help gets you a nice list of all the commands and what each of them does.)

YouSticky makes a little resizable box appear on your ‘desktop’ which you can type into. Whatever you type stays there until you delete it or close the window, even if you log off. Very handy for those of you that, like me, have the memory of a goldfish!

Thats all the applications covered, so now on to how it looks. (You can sign in with a guest account on the main page and see for yourself!)

It does look pretty much like Windows, with the taskbar at the top instead of the bottom, there’s even a “Start” button, only it’s called “Stuff”.
By right-clicking the desktop, you can add shortcuts to the above applications, as well as arranging the desktop icons.
You can change the wallpaper (although if you wish to use your own, it has to be uploaded to a website first) although it does seem to change back to the default when you next log in.
There’s a taskmanager type application (the little screen on the taskbar at the right) which tells you what processes are running.
You can even (after specifying a mobile number in “My Account” in “Stuff”) text an address, and what you typed, will appear on your Notes on the desktop when you next log in.

That’s about it for now, it’s simple to use, and has potential! It does alot more that I expected it would when I first logged in, but still has a loooong way to go before it becomes any kind of competitor to Microsoft/Apple.

I must say, the biggest disadvantage is that you need an operating system in the first place to be able to use YouOS, but being able to save things without the need to use disks/CDs is deffinely very useful.

Try it here!.

>> Source: Techcentral

ATLANTA, Georgia (AP) — A super-cooled computer chip has shattered speed records for silicon-based electronics, but don’t expect your PC to hum along at 500 gigahertz anytime soon.

The chip only ran at the high speed when it was cooled to 451 degrees below zero — just 8 degrees above absolute zero, the coldest temperature possible in nature, researchers at IBM Corp. and Georgia Tech said.

Still, researchers believe they can improve the technology so that high speeds can be reached at room temperature — a development that could lead to advances in cell phones, radar technology and space exploration, among other applications.

The typical cell phone chip today runs at 2 GHz, while the highest-end PC microprocessors run at less than 4 GHz.

“The industry always wants more. People are always wondering how far silicon can take us,” said John Cressler, a professor with Georgia Tech’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “And this should show there’s a lot of mileage left to go.”

Cressler and a team of 22 scientists and graduate students forged the chip by melding silicon with atoms of the element germanium, a process so fragile that even the tiniest miscue could evaporate their work.

It took researchers nine months to invent a new process to clock the chip by injecting liquid helium into a probing station. Scientists can view the process through a powerful electronic microscope zoomed to see the tiny chip, only a few thousandths of a millimeter wide.

Silicon remains the cheapest and easiest material to mass produce, and researchers say this latest development is an important step in showing the electronics industry the speeds that silicon-based chips could reach.

The previous speed for a silicon-based chip, set at room temperature, was 375 GHz. While the Georgia Tech team’s chip set a slightly lower speed at the same temperature — about 350 GHz — Cressler said there is plenty of room to improve.

“This is a first look at what the limits can be,” Cressler said. “I’m hoping this record can be broken a few times.”

LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) — Google Inc. Thursday will launch a long-awaited service called Google Checkout, which some analysts said could help online merchants boost sales and convince them to commit more advertising money to the Web search leader.

Analysts were mixed on whether the product, initially available only in the United States, puts eBay Inc.’s PayPal online payment system in Google’s competitive sights.

The new offering, referred to in news and analyst reports as GBuy or Google Wallet, promises online sellers an easy way to add a checkout to their sites and can be used in addition to other options such as PayPal or a merchant’s own pay system.

Google said Checkout stores names, shipping and credit card information and eliminates the need for consumers to resubmit that data with each purchase. Google is responsible for processing the credit card payments and keeping data safe.

“We think we’re making e-commerce a lot more efficient and easier to use,” Salar Kamangar, Google’s vice president of product management, told Reuters.

Google charges merchants 2 percent of the value of each sale plus 20 cents per transaction — a fee that early users said was in line with other options. The company rewards its advertisers by offering them $10 in free sales processing for every dollar they spend on its advertising program, AdWords.

“There is a clear revenue opportunity here,” said Greg Sterling, an independent analyst, who noted that Google built its massive business on lots of tiny transactions.

While Sterling said eBay and financial analysts will likely view the product as a PayPal competitor, Forrester analyst Charlene Li and early users such as Buy.com said it will expand the market by giving consumers another way to pay.

In storing personal data, Google Checkout is reminiscent of Passport, Microsoft’s online wallet, which bumped into security and privacy issues and failed to live up to the software titan’s expectations after its launch about seven years ago.

While Google is popular, it angered privacy advocates with an e-mail product that delivers ads based on message content.

Li predicted an eventual backlash as Google pushes ahead with its goal to be the world’s information clearinghouse and encounters inevitable customer service problems.

“Whereas Microsoft wanted to own the desktop, Google wants the monopoly on your information,” she said, noting Checkout also provides buyers with a purchase history that shows where they spend their money. “I’m concerned that they could fall into a situation where they’re the next Microsoft.”

Source: Reuters

— Im not to sure how this will go for google but i think it might be a nice alternitive to paypal

I was just thinking the other day, how difficult it was trying to play GTA:Vice City on my laptop, and now I have the perfect solution!
The USB Playstation2 controller converter allows you to plug PS2 controllers straight into your PC via the USB port, ready for you to start playing your favourite games without having to spend 6 hours memorising the key combinations for every move.

It’s features are as follows:

• USB powered.
• Easy to install, simply hot-plug to USB port.
• Real vibration feedback function.
• Digital & analog modes are available.
• Support dual player games.
• Compatible with PlayStation/PlayStation2 controller.
• Compatible with Win XP, 2000, ME, 98SE, 98 with Direct X 7.0a or above.
• Size : 85 x 65 x 20 mm
• Weight : 66gm
• Cable Length: 60 cm.

Unfortunatly I haven’t had the oppurtunity to try one out, but when I do, I shall give you a personal review!