Windows 7, shown at PDC, has one cool feature… the SuperBar! It is a bigger task bar that loses the text (hmm… can anyone say OSX dock?), and is better for touchscreen computers. It also has plenty of transparency. Anyways, Microsoft passed out a build of 7 at PDC to attendents. This build, however, doesn’t include the SuperBar. Most thought that enabling it was a lost cause. However, this person didn’t. Say hello to the SuperBar in 6801.

Here’s the important part of the post:

Simply download a copy of a tool I whipped up for either x86 or x64 (untested thus far), drop it into your Windows\ directory and execute the following commands as an Administrator in a command prompt window:

• takeown /f %windir%\explorer.exe
• cacls %windir%\explorer.exe /E /G MyUserName:F (replacing MyUserName with your username)
• taskkill /im explorer.exe /f
• start unlockProtectedFeatures.exe

After changing the protected feature lock state, you can re-launch the shell by clicking the Launch button.

[OC x86 Mirror] [OC x64 Mirror]

Here are a few of my favorite Windows Sidebar Gadgets.

1. isAlive

• Checks every 10 minutes to see if your website is up
• mirror

2. Piano (no longer avaiable)

• A small (or large, if you drag it off the sidebar) piano that you can play by clicking the keys or using your keyboard.
• Still beta, abandoned.
• download

3. Network Meter (download: wired/wireless)

• Although sometimes buggy, this gadget allows you to see all of the traffic going in and out of your computer’s NIC.
• mirror: wired/wireless

4. Skype Gadget by Craig

• Gadget that allows you to see who’s online.
• mirror

5. Amnesty

• This is a cool generator that lets you make your own gadgets out of web widgets from your website of choice. Its pretty cool.

Yesterday, Apple announced a new line of (amazing) iPod nanos and a new iPod Touch, along with an iPod Classic (mini) refresh. With all these new iPods, Apple also announced release of iTunes 8. Well, even though the Grid View and Genius are cool, iTunes 8 brings back something that I have cherished… NBC TV Shows. And along with NBC came Sci-Fi, USA, and Bravo! Say hello to The Office, Monk, and my all time favorite TV Show (for now) EUReKA!!!!!!

Yesterday, I posted about the Google Chrome browser, and today I bring you my mini-review of it.

Google Chrome is overall a great browser that has a few features that  set it apart from the crowd. First, each tab is a “sandbox”, so if a flash object (for example) crashes one tab, it only makes that tab close, not your entire browser (and for me that is a big plus, as I have over 10 tabs open a lot of the time and don’t want to lose those particular sites).

Second, when you open a page for a new tab, it will show you your 10 (or so) most visited sites, and your recently closed tabs. This can help if you do encounter a tab-crash (I haven’t so far, but it could happen).

Third, The tabs are located above the address bar. Some would call this a feature, some might just say that you can do the same thing in Opera.

Finally, It does an alright job on the Acid2 test.

Overall, I would recommend Google Chrome as an alright browser for day-to-day use. However, adding an addon feature (Adblock Plus FTW), would be a big plus, and might sway me from using Firefox 3 all the time.

Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Opera… How many browsers can this world throw at us? Well, not enough, apparently, as Google plans to release a new browser, dubbed “Google Chrome”, tomorrow. It will be open source, and apparantly one feature that is seperate it from the crowd is the fact that the tabs will be above the address bar, unlike its below bar brethren. How will it turn out? Only time will tell.

Hey everyone. Today I made some minor updates/bugfixes on the Directory listing with Delete script. You can download the newest version here, however sadly you can’t upgrade from version 2.0 without deleting your settings. Enjoy!

As some of you may (or may not) know, I run Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit. It runs great for what I want, and it has a lot of nice features that you don’t see in XP. Recently, Microsoft released the installers for vista sp1. Last night, I was bored, so I installed SP1. The install went smoothly, completing in under 2 hours. However, after I rebooted my computer, something was absent. The sound! I was too tired to deal with it last night, so after I woke up this morning, I did a quick google search. It returned a link to the Microsoft Knowledge Base.

I had already tried to restart my computer (Several times), to no avail. So I followed the second step (unplug your speakers, and then plug em back in). Bang! The audio software popped up asking me what the jack I had plugged in did (I have 5.1 audio). YAY! My audio works again!

As for other things I’ve noticed in SP1, I’ve found a few in my few hours of use.

First, The reboot time of my computer has been cut in half. It was somewhere around 4 minutes before the upgrade, and now its down to 2.

Second, the general OS itself feels a bit snappier. Prompts come up quicker and Firefox and iTunes both load faster (amazingly), among other things.

Finally, I’ve noticed that my custom UXTheme was disabled after installation. You can repatch it again, but I haven’t gotten around to doing that yet. This was kind of a disappointment.

Overall, I greatly enjoy the upgrade to Vista SP1. This upgrade has made my decision final: I will never go back to Windows XP.

I’m gonna start a series on essential software, and what better way to kick it off then with the program that lets me code all of my websites (not this one of course, its running wordpress!). And this software is… (more…)

Hey,

My friend and I were playing around in skype and we found a few hidden emotions.

Heres a list:

• (mooning)
• (finger)
• (fubar)
• (myspace) No longer working in Skype 4 Beta
• (smoking)
• (drunk)
• (poolparty)
• (swear)
• (bandit)
• (bug)
• (flag:ss)
• (hug)
• (heidy)
• (headbang)
• (nerd)
• (makeup)
• (punch)

Just to name a few. Feel free to post more in the comments.
By the way, You can see some more (including TONS of flags) in the comments here and at this page here.