Here is hoping that you can prevent your next computer disaster by reading the following article and implementing one of the programs before it happens. Good luck!

Five Best Free System Restore Tools.

Anyways I’m getting off course, being a stumbler and having tuned my preferences to serve my wildly varied tastes, I do tend to get a large number of ‘you may not have known about the features of’ articles. I pass most of them because being a power user, I know most of the hidden abilities of programs. This one however caught my eye because it turns Chrome into an even larger part of my day. Having just applied to get the CR-48 to give it a merciless beating from my usage habits, it also gave me many items that I will be needing. Read about it at Guiding Tech:

15 Killer Google Chrome Features You Might Not Know About.

Great! I thought. When I visited the creators website, I saw that they had other tracking software, one for movies in particular (All My Movies). Of course I wanted to see how well it worked, and wondered how they would pull off the same trick they did with the books. Well, thanks to sites like IMDB.com and Amazon, they have all the actors listed, screenshots, the movie synopsis, and way more that they simply pull into your program after you either enter the title, OR even better the barcode that gurantees you get the right information and don’t pull in the cartoon version of one of your favorite movies.

After playing around with movies that I actually own, I entered ones that I wanted when I realized they give you the option of creating a wishlist (finally!) of movies you want to get (or have people get you). They have multiple layouts you can use to view the information for each movie, and even better, if you like sharing what is in your collection with the rest of the world, they give you the ability to export the html code for the layout to simply paste into a webpage!

If you are more of a ‘don’t need the DVD’ type, the program can even search your hard drive for what you’ve copied off your legally bought DVDs (wink). I haven’t tried this portion of the program out yet since my laptop is the only place I do this at.

All I have to say is that if you finally want to get an idea of what you have and not have to thumb through hundreds of cases over and over when someone asks what you’ve got, check out All My Movies.

Movie Database Software

By Liam Tung, ZDNet.com Australia, News.com
Posted on ZDNet News: Jun 19, 2008 6:09:26 AM

The makers of Wine claim that version 1.0 is the first such “stable” release and have said that although compatibility is not perfect, thousands of applications are reported to “work very well.”

Member and former president of Linux Australia Jonathon Oxer told ZDNet.com.au that the Wine project is “an attempt to make Windows irrelevant.”

“Essentially, it’s an effort to supplant the underlying operating system layer and allow Windows software to run on a Linux platform without requiring Windows to be installed,” he said.

A challenge for the Wine project is creating libraries that perfectly emulate Windows libraries.

“It never will be stable because the target keeps moving. As each new version of Windows comes out, the underlying libraries are also changed and so, Wine has the same problem as a typical Windows developer who is attempting to write software to run on Windows,” said Oxer.

Oxer said he considers the tool a Linux “migration path” for existing Windows users because they can move their applications across, even where they haven’t been designed to run on Linux. Although Wine’s original purpose was to provide a compatibility layer for office applications, the most popular use of the tool today is for gamers who want to play Windows games on Linux systems.

The only non-gaming application in Wine’s top 10 most popular applications is Adobe Photoshop CS2, which is in second place behind Guild Wars.

Wine, not surprisingly, has been the target of anti-piracy campaigns by Microsoft. In 2005, Wine users were prevented under the Windows Genuine Advantage scheme from receiving Windows updates.

Fellow internet giant Google, however, has chosen to support the program, recently contributing cash to the open source project to ensure that Adobe’s Creative Suite software still runs on Linux systems.

A list of Wine-compatible applications can be found here.

Posted by Matt Asay

And to think Microsoft used to be popular with the developer crowd…Not anymore. A recent report from Evans Data shows fewer than one in 10 software developers writing applications for Windows Vista this year. Eight percent. This is perhaps made even worse by the corresponding data that shows 49 percent of developers writing applications for Windows XP.

Such appreciation for history is not likely to warm the cockles of Microsoft’s heart, especially when Linux is getting lots of love from developers (13 percent writing apps for it this year and 15.5 percent in 2009). The Mac? I don’t have any equivalent data via Evans Data. But the Mac OS has rocketed by 380 percent as a targeted development platform, Evans Data told Computerworld.

The numbers don’t get much better for Vista in 2009: 24 percent (compared with 29 percent for XP). That’s a big step up from 8 percent, but is it a sign of momentum to come or just a temporary stopgap while developers wait until Windows 7?

Nor has Microsoft made it easy to develop Vista applications, according to an article in ITJungle.com:

Unfortunately, that improved security posture makes it more difficult for developers to write applications for Vista (read: no more kernel-level access and UAC to worry about), and it also causes compatibility problems with older applications. Ironically, the wave of attacks targeting operating system vulnerabilities has largely passed, and today hackers have moved on to target applications. At the same time, Microsoft has provided iterative improvements in Windows XP security, bolstering its status as “good enough” and further eating into Vista’s pie.

Indeed. Microsoft doesn’t need to handicap itself on the desktop given its difficulties competing everywhere else. With Linux and the Mac taking ever-increasing shares of the developer pie, Microsoft would do well to shore up developer support for Windows.

Unfortunately for Microsoft, that probably means re-investing in XP and forgetting its “New Coke” moment with Vista.

“Windows is too monolithic,” says Gartner

Microsoft’s Windows operating system is teetering on the edge of catastrophic collapse. So say analysts at respected technology consultancy Gartner.

Of course, since the release of the troubled Vista iteration of Windows, sticking the boot into Microsoft has been a popular sport for cranks and commentators alike. More recently, the chatter has concerned the possibility that many businesses might skip Vista altogether and jump straight to the next version of Microsoft’s cash cow, currently known as Windows 7.

But when a serious operation like Gartner weighs in with such a damning appraisal, it can’t be dismissed as the usual anti-monopolist moaning.

Where’s the beef?

So, what exactly is Gartner’s beef? According to analysts Michael Silver and Neil MacDonald, “Windows is too monolithic”. Through a combination of feature creep, a desire to lock users into a single software environment and the need for backwards compatibility, the latest version of Windows has simply become too big. As MacDonald says, “one size no longer fits all”.

The situation is so acute, reckon Silver and MacDonald, it threatens to render Windows irrelevant. They claim they are now routinely quizzed by clients whether they should skip Vista and stick with XP until Windows 7 rolls out, probably no sooner than 2010.

The problem stems from the fact that the PC has evolved from a relatively simple productivity workhorse into a multi-form-factor beast used in a wide variety of environments, each with different priorities. A typical home user might prize efficient performance and scalability. In business, reliability and availability are often key concerns, while efficient virtualisation support and security factory highly for server machines.

Bigger, bloatier

But instead of tailoring different versions to suit specific usage models, with each new iteration Microsoft has been making Windows ever bigger and more unwieldy. It’s all a misguided attempt to force users to use essentially the same product, in other words.

Whether you agree with all that, there’s little doubt that a consensus is building around the idea that Vista is fundamentally broken. One intriguing example of the current mood is a recent – admittedly rather unscientific – survey by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes of Zdnet. His online poll found that of those who had chosen to give Vista a miss, 45 per cent based that decision on the analysis and opinions of others, rather than first hand experience.

If that is reflected in the wider IT community, it’s scary stuff for Microsoft indeed. What, therefore, should MS do? The guys from Gartner note there are signs that Microsoft realises that Vista is too “big” for widespread adoption. The availability of Windows XP starter edition has been extended to June 2010, for instance, and Windows for Legacy PCs also remains based on the smaller less demanding Windows XP kernel.

Cut down kernel

What’s more, late last year, Microsoft engineers confirmed that a massively cut-down build of the Windows kernel known as MinWin was under development. In contrast to the flatulent 4GB required to house Vista, MinWin can be crammed into just 25MB. And it’s MinWin that will form the basis of Windows 7.

Needless to say, actual usable builds of Windows 7 will be much, much larger. The basic 25MB build of MinWin has no graphics support, for example. But current speculation suggests several modular variants of Windows 7 will be spawned by MinWin, each restricted to components relevant to specific usage models.

All of which is highly plausible. However, the crucial unresolved issue is backwards compatibility. Much of the bloatware that is part of the Windows experience is necessary to ensure that the best part of a decade of legacy software works smoothly on contemporary machines. Take away backwards compatibility and you remove the main reason why so many have put up with Windows’ shortcomings for so long.

By Jeremy Laird

In April, Microsoft announced the worldwide extension of the availability of Windows for this emerging class of devices that are primarily used for e-mail, accessing the Internet and instant messaging, and the company is seeing much demand among industry partners who want to ensure that customers can have the benefits of Windows on both new and existing devices.

Customers are asking for Windows on these devices because the experience is familiar to existing PC users and easy to learn for customers who are new to computing. Customers want to be able to take advantage of the wide range of applications, devices and online experiences supported by Windows today. Microsoft partners also appreciate Windows-based solutions for these computers because they already know how to build and support high-quality systems that are powered by Windows.

The marketplace for this emerging class of computers has expanded, and Microsoft and its partners are now seeing interest in these devices in developed markets as well, especially as companion devices in multi-PC households. As demand for this new category has grown, both customers and partners have expressed their strong preference that Windows be the operating system on these devices.

“Customers and partners have made it clear to us that they want Windows on their netbooks and nettops,” said Steven Guggenheimer, corporate vice president of the Original Equipment Manufacturer Division at Microsoft. “We are committed to providing Windows solutions for these devices, helping to ensure a high-quality experience for both our partners and customers.”

The company has been investing in this emerging hardware category in a variety of ways, with its efforts around Windows in emerging markets and by extending the availability of Windows to developed markets worldwide. The special class of mobile and desktop devices known as netbooks or nettops is optimized for Internet-based activities such as e-mail, Web browsing and instant messaging. By making it possible for OEMs to offer Windows on these devices, Microsoft enables consumers to have the familiar computing experience they have come to expect, as well as a robust platform that can integrate with their other computers and devices.

“We have seen much demand for Windows on the Eee PC,” said Jerry Sheen, CEO of ASUSTek Computer. “It is great that Microsoft is addressing this customer demand and providing a Windows solution on these devices, which will provide a familiar computing experience.”

“The Asus Eee PC has been and continues to be a very successful product for Cellnet,” said Julian Phua, general manager of Cellnet Group Ltd. “The feedback from our customers in retail and the reseller channel is that they overwhelmingly prefer to sell the Eee PC running with Windows. To move our existing Linux inventory, we are now offering our channel the option of purchasing Windows XP with their Eee units so they can provide a compelling offering for customers.”

Microsoft is working with more than 20 original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) including Acer Inc., ASUSTek Computer Inc., BenQ Corp., Dell Inc., First International Computer Inc., Gigabyte Technology Co. Ltd., HP, Inventec Corp., Lenovo, Medion AG, Micro-Star International Co., Positivo Informatica, Pegatron Corp., Quanta Computer Inc. and Wistron Corp. to deliver Windows-based offerings for consumers.

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

Note to editors: If you are interested in viewing additional information on Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft Web page at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass on Microsoft’s corporate information pages. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may since have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/contactpr.mspx.

Now, it appears, the acquired company, Fast Search & Transfer, may have some criminal matters to work out: Suspicions about the Norwegian search-engine company’s revenue reporting are now in the hands of the Oslo police.

Norway’s financial supervisory authority, Kredittilsynet, said its review of Fast Search’s previously disclosed accounting problems not only appeared to have violated accounting standards, they may have broken the law too.

The development is bad news for Microsoft, which snapped up Fast Search as a potential Google-buster. Fast Search, which for a while was also known as the Google of Norway, had search-engine technology that industry experts said was better than Google’s and could handle truly massive corporate projects.

Goldman Sachs estimated last year that the company would grow its revenue 27 percent in 2007. Over the years, Fast Search appeared to benefit from big contracts with customers such as AT&T, Comcast, and the Walt Disney Co.

At one point, Intel was interested in buying the Norwegian rising star, but Microsoft grabbed the prize. At the time, Microsoft was still digesting it $6 billion acquisition of the digital-advertising company aQuantive—a deal that came just one month after Google said it would pay $3.1 billion for DoubleClick.

In its haste to grab Fast Search, however, Microsoft looked past the company’s problems: They include, but aren’t limited to, accounting irregularities that began to appear as Microsoft began to look over its books.

In the second quarter of 2007, Fast Search reported an operating loss of $38 million on revenue of only $35 million—a full $20 million below forecasts. The loss widened in the following quarter, leading the Norwegian stock exchange to delist Fast Search on December 12.

That same day, Fast Search said it would review its accounting for all of 2006 and 2007. The latest unaudited results show revenue growth of 7 percent for last year, which is far below Goldman’s forecast.

Still, Microsoft pursued the acquisition, completing the deal on April 28.

Kredittilsynet, the supervisory agency, was equally determined. It referred Fast Search to investigators at Økokrim, the Norwegian National Authority for Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime.

Økokrim last week concurred that the nature of the irregularities and the amount by which Fast Search apparently inflated its accounts were serious matters warranting prosecution. But the agency said it was too busy to open a criminal investigation.

Rather than let the matter rest, the market supervisor turned it over to the Oslo police for investigation. Aftenposten, a Norwegian newspaper, characterized Kredittilsynet’s decision to involve the police as an unprecedented step in that country.

As of now, it’s unclear what the Oslo police have in store for Fast Search—or for former company C.E.O. John Markus Lervik, who is now the vice president for enterprise search at Microsoft.

Google Maps has been cranking out the updates fast and furious lately. In the last week the site has incorporated photos and Wikipedia entries, added the ability to pan upward in street views and this morning it announced a new Flash mapping API.

The biggest news in the bunch is the Flash API, which means you can now feed live Google Maps into your Flash app. Couple that with some of the powerful new features in Adobe’s just-announced Flash Player 10 beta, and there’s suddenly a world of new possibilities for Flash developers.

Probably the real winner here though is Adobe AIR, Adobe’s desktop/web hybrid platform. Although AIR apps can be built using JavaScript, if the current crop of AIR apps is any indicator, Flash is the far more popular choice. The new Google Maps Flash API will allow AIR developers working exclusively in Flash to tap into Google Maps for mashups and other applications.

Of course Yahoo has offered a Flash API for its mapping service for many years, so Google’s announcement is hardly ground breaking.

Also new in Google Maps are placemarks for photos and Wikipedia entries. To access the new features just hover your mouse over the “More…” menu and select the options you want to see. As with similar features in Google Earth, the photos come from Panoramio and the Wikipedia entries offer a brief summary and link to the main page.

The last feature is a small change that now allows you to pan upward in the street view and to check out surrounding buildings. My photo-savvy friends tell me it isn’t exactly the sort of true panorama you’d find in a Quicktime VR, but it is nice for finding landmarks in cities like New York.

See Also:

• YouTube Is In Your Google Earth Playing Your Videos
• Google Earth Adds Wikipedia Content And More
• Massive Google Maps Update Adds 54 New Countries
• Google Maps Street View Succeeds Where Other Giants Have Stumbled

Mark Shuttleworth, Ubuntu honcho, has a post on his blog discussing “The Art of Release.” He applauds the team and community that got version 8.04 out the door precisely on schedule.

He diagrams (above) how, by design, some Ubuntu releases are supported longer than others.

He also makes an interesting proposal: to synchronize the releases of the various major Linux distributions. That would give all the various software developers concrete milestones to which to sync their own releases, among other advantages.

There’s one thing that could convince me to change the date of the next Ubuntu LTS: the opportunity to collaborate with the other, large distributions on a coordinated major / minor release cycle. If two out of three of Red Hat (RHEL), Novell (SLES) and Debian are willing to agree in advance on a date to the nearest month, and thereby on a combination of kernel, compiler toolchain, GNOME/KDE, X and OpenOffice versions, and agree to a six-month and 2-3 year long term cycle, then I would happily realign Ubuntu’s short and long-term cycles around that. I think the benefits of this sort of alignment to users, upstreams and the distributions themselves would be enormous.

See Also:

• Ubuntu 8.04 Brings Power and Polish to the Linux Desktop”
• Shuttleworth: Ubuntu Is Enterprise-Friendly