Activity for Yesterday

Review - Mozilla Thunderbird for Windows
3.0 Beta 4 (Sep 23, 2009)

Nice performance increase in Beta 4, although it disregarded my existing layout.

Since Beta 3, it tends to not exit gracefully. It gets caught in a loop and maxes out the CPU until it is forced to terminate.
Review - Microsoft Windows Vista (32-bit)
Service Pack 2 (May 26, 2009)

Pretty painless install, although it takes an awfully long time for it to "personalize" Windows Mail (which I have never used).

Once up and running after the install, I ran into a problem with Windows Update hanging on load. However, this went away after a reboot (although it did initally list SP2 as being ready to intall on opening which went away with a refresh). Other than that, no issues so far.
Review - Opera for Windows (Beta)
10.0 Build 1413 Alpha (Apr 11, 2009)

Upgrade install path completely overwrote my previous configuration whereas prior alphas had respected it. Very irritating!
Review - Ad Muncher
4.73 Build 30615 Beta (Mar 16, 2009)

Still a rock solid, low-footprint app. To me, it's essential. It does a fantastic job of blocking ads and cleaning up pages. Even blocks ads thrown in on Hulu and CBS videos. Works consistantly no matter which browser I decide to use (and with other apps). The developer personally responds to reported issues and tries to work with you to resolve them. One of the very few pieces of software that I'm proud to shell out money to support.

On the downside, it has been taking an awfully long time to get some of the new features that people have been clamoring for. Doesn't bother me too much, but we all have our own priorities.

If a site doesn't work, usually all that you have to do is just quickly disable it for a quick one-off. Otherwise, you can create an exception. The only one I've encountered that won't work at all with it running is Badongo, which just takes you through an endless loop when you try to download. This is known though.
Review - SQLyog for Windows
8.03 Beta (Feb 28, 2009)

The changelogs get posted to their blog:
http://www.webyog.com/blog/
Comment - AOL's spinoff from Time Warner to shed 2,500 jobs
8.03 Beta (Nov 19, 2009 - 1:50 PM)

It was a bizarre move purchasing AOL and it has never made any sense. The writing was already on the wall. We never saw AOL leveraged as described to push TimeWarner media either.
Comment - Antisocial media: Lack of safeguards is killing the experience
8.03 Beta (Nov 2, 2009 - 12:18 PM)

Perhaps you're making the wrong friends? I have a ton who aren't close and haven't noticed a problem with scam updates. Just the usual, annoying application invites.
Comment - Google to FCC: Apple and AT&T lied
8.03 Beta (Sep 18, 2009 - 3:31 PM)

Cry me a river....Apple makes it abundantly clear that they can and will reject whatever apps that it feels like. They spell out the risk and Google accepted it. Like any other store, it simply doesn't have to carry your product.
Comment - Silverlight 4 to do for PCs what HD DVD couldn't
8.03 Beta (Sep 9, 2009 - 3:05 PM)

All part of Microsoft's ongoing efforts to force Silverlight into wider acceptance through strategic partnerships. The Netflix streaming actually works great (better than Flash), but it's just not enough to move people over from the dominant Flash platform.

As a Silverlight dev, the downside of MS concentrating so intensely on its few big corporate partners is that they flesh out the media and DRM components while leaving more basic components incomplete, buggy or absent. The integration with Visual Studio still leaves much to be desired as well.
Comment - Without the fastest JavaScript, can Opera 10 RC still lay claim to speed?
8.03 Beta (Aug 26, 2009 - 3:44 PM)

The JavaScript benchmarks that have become the central focus for many thanks to Chrome are just numbers for many (like how Google is rushing to inflate the Chrome version number). There are presently very few opportunities outside of Google's own apps to take advantage of such enhancements to the JS engine. Most sites are pretty light on JS, which makes the rendering engine far more important.