Lifestyle Technology

Windows Vista: Today's Scary Hallowe'en Experiment

'Jason' from 'Friday the 13th' and the case for the Windows Vista RC1 DVD.

I do most of my work on a 1.33 gig PowerBook G4, but I'm not going to say no to a company-issued computer with decent specs. Hence the other computer on my desk, a 3.0 gig P4 IBM ThinkCentre with half a gig of RAM, one of the standard issue machines here at Tucows. I use it mostly as a machine for testing sites and web applications in Windows, and occasionally, I'll do a tiny bit of Windows development on it. There aren't any important files on the machine, which made it a suitable subject for today's scary Hallowe'en experiment: installing Windows Vista RC1 (that's Release Candidate 1).

I got a copy of Windows Vista RC1 last night at a gathering held by Microsoft here in Toronto, where they invited a number of Toronto tech bloggers to see Vista in action and hear presentations on deployment and security. I took notes and will post them here later.

Earlier today, I attempted to install Windows Vista on my work machine and my notes from that experience appear in Global Nerdy, a tech blog I write with my friend George Scriban. The experience wasn't as smooth as I'd hoped.

Captain Christopher Pike from the original 'Star Trek', in his support chair.

Link

Internet Explorer 7 Released

Internet Explorer 7 logo

If you're feeling particularly bold, you can venture over to the Internet Explorer page and download the final release version of Internet Explorer 7, which became available to the general public yesterday afternoon.

Although the Windows machine I have at work is a pretty nice one (developers are assigned machines with the same specs), it's largely relegated to Windows compatibility testing and a teensy bit of .NET development. Since I don't store any crucial files on that machine, I thought it would be the perfect guinea pig on which to test IE7. Over the next few days, I'll report my experiences, complete with screenshots.

Here's a screenshot of IE7 showing the Tucows Blog main page:

Screenshot of the Tucows Blog main page as seen in Internet Explorer 7

Rules for Good Blog Writing Style

Google Blogoscoped presents these ten rules of Good Blog Writing Style:

  1. Use descriptive headlines.
  2. Write in "inverted-pyramid" style (get to the point at the beginning, elaborate in later paragraphs)
  3. The first link is the one people click on, so make it the main link of your article.
  4. Reintroduce core ideas in longer posts.
  5. Use lists, images, tables and anything else that will make your artiles easier to scan.
  6. Use simple language if you're writing for a global audience.
  7. Credit your sources.
  8. Mark updates and changes.
  9. Spellcheck your posts and re-read them for clarity.
  10. Note that all these rules have exceptions; know when they apply!

Taking Passwords to the Grave

Tombstone with the engraving 'LOGIN INCORRECT - PLEASE TRY AGAIN.
Picture created with the Tombstone Generator.

c|net's article, Taking Passwords to the Grave, looks at an interesting problem: what happens if your loved ones can't recover your data after you're dead because they don't have your passwords?

Their recommendation: include important login information in your estate planning documents. Of course, this means that you'll need to write those up if you don't already have them.