The annoying Microsoft Office Assistant ‘Clippy’ which was no-doubt single-handedly responsible for 95% of Windows-To-Mac conversions these past 10, long, torturous Clippy lives, has now finally been killed in the latest re-incarnation of Office 2007. With the announcement, it’s my reckoning that Microsoft will see both it’s sales of Office 2007 & it’s shares rise dramatically over these coming weeks.

Clippy, you’ll be sorely missed. All those hours of right-clicking you only to press the ‘disable office assistant’, annoying as they were, played a major role in my life, up until 2003 when you were turned off of standard. That was a lifesaver. Now they’ve killed you? Nobody really cares.

It’ll take ten more years of Microsoft’s office attempts before I’ll ever forgive them to the horror that Clippy caused me… But you were loved…

Yeah… But perhaps ‘loved’ wouldn’t be the right word. Much as I like MS, I never did like you Clippy. Sourced from Engadget.

I’m not one for taking sides, but even as a Windows Vista Ultimate buyer, after watching this video, it’s hard to score Microsoft any points on the innovation scale.

50,000,000 lines of code? Sheesh… They really are branching out!

Sourced from THW.

I’m all over Vista Ultimate, but I can’t help laughing at this great cartoon I spotted on Nate’s spiffy new blog. Check it out, and while you’re there, let him know that I sent you. Through Nate, I’ve recently uncovered a whole load of new sites, The Daily Domainer included!

Nate has an interesting blog, which regularly covers everything from cars, domains and entrepreneurship to Macs & prioritizing your online life. Recently, Nate quite his job at Apple, and in the space of one week, has earned the same amount he would have made working there! Who said self-employment sucked? That’s the net for you!

What a day! The launch of Vista, and I didn’t even manage to push out a post! Well, besides this one. Anyhow, I can confirm that my Vista Ultimate copy will be arriving on the 12th of February. Please note that I’ve included a little snapshot above, because the bigger image is 1.1MB in size, and those of you (0.121%) who are using dial-up may not wish to see the whole thing. But click on it to see the full thing.

The ‘Wow’ starts now. In theory… But seriously, Vista is set to be a hit. I’m all for early-adopting it, and in my opinion, Vista will decide the future of Microsoft. I’m hoping to work more closely with the company in future. They still have a great time ahead of them, and us kids need to be educated better, how to use the software, tools and services provided by them in a more streamlined, effective, productive way. At the moment, the only thing the whole of my class knows how to do without fail, is ‘Copy & Paste’. Even then, they have trouble rendering the text/images correctly in MS-Word because of some ‘table’ element in the layout. Shame on you! CSS helps us kids steal your content for homework better. Nope… I’m good. I don’t steal stuff.

Anyhow… Vista. Well, as I can’t be bothered writing a post today (too tired!), I’ll include a list articles below…

Engadget - Vista Roundup
TechTree - Multiple Launches
Huliq - Washington Gets $3.5 Billion from Vista!
MobileTechReview - Interesting Factsheet
BusinessWire - Vista Dell PCs

Anyhow, I’ve been a busy man with Techzi.net, and am proud to announce that we’re very nearly ready! We have some bugs to iron out, we need to finish Wordpress Integration, Tag some 670 posts, set http://www.techzi.net/ to point to the same place that http://techzi.net/ is pointing to, and then we need to finish all of the individual pages on the site/blog/thingy.

Should be great! If I don’t post for a few days, you know why. It’ll be worth the wait!

A quick roundup of the 6 Apple 2006 PC vs Mac adverts. Even if you’re a PC fan, it’s hard to resist liking these adverts.

Speaking of PCs, I’m getting a new one for my Birthday. Nvidia GeForce 8800GTS, 2GB RAM, Intel Core 2 Due E6600, Windows Vista Ultimate Edition, Office 2007, and a whole lot more… Weighs in at $3500!

Microsoft, Google, Yahoo & Vodafone. Not often of such big, and competing companies collaborating on such a major project as this. But it seems that the companies have teamed together, in the hope of creating a ‘Code Of Conduct’.

“Technology companies have come under fire for providing equipment or software that permits governments to censor information or monitor the online or offline activities of their citizens. For example, last year, Google’s approach to the China market was criticized over its creation of a censored, local version of its search engine. A Yahoo subsidiary was cited by human rights groups for working with Chinese police to identify political activists, who were ultimately arrested and prosecuted for posting anti-government opinions and information online. The parties involved said that they would develop a framework that would hold signatories accountable for their actions in the areas of freedom of expression and privacy rights.” [PCW]

Amongst the four afformentioned companies, a large froup of organizations will also be chiming in with their thoughts, opinions and ideas. The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School; Business for Social Responsibility; Electronic Frontier Foundation; Human Rights Watch; and Reporters Without Borders are just a few currently known to be participating.

via Engadget. Sourced from PCW.

Utter rubbish… I’ve been very pro-Microsoft lately, and am even going out my way to get myself Vista Ultimate edition, but this, is ridiculous. ‘People won’t buy the iPhone because it has no keyboard’. Steve Ballmer? Are you listening? Are you stupid!?!? Seriously… You will regret it when the iPhone becomes the best-selling phone in the world, and judging by the hype, the stats, and the people I know (Even those who don’t have iPods! =O Shock horror!) are raving about the iPhone.

‘Apple is selling zero phones a year.’ Genius this guy… Think he’s realized they’ve not launched yet? “He lies right out his own ass on numbers regarding the Zune, saying it has 25 percent of the high-end MP3 player market (over $250).” Too right… And Steve Ballmer, can you say to me with a straight face that you truly believe that you will ever overthrow the iPod? Please… People will buy the latest iPod, because it is the iPhone… People will buy the iPhone, because it rocks! Apple have the upperhand by far when it comes to design, and the best Microsoft can do, is give us photos of toilets… Sheesh!

In addition, Ballmer raves about how ‘expensive’ the iPhone is… Reckon he’s seen the spec sheet? For what it does, it massively eclipses all the other current MS offerings by far, on the bang for buck ratio, the overall appeal, and the general snazzyness factor.

Heck… I’m still up for Vista thought. But keep the Zune out of it! My mobile devices all belong to Apple. The best thing about it from Bill Gates’ point of view? He’s still making several hundred dollars a second. Perhaps I should stop writing, and starting begging him… I know he’s on my Skype list somewhere… Ah yes! Right above Colbert Low, and below Amit Agarwal. Sourced from CrunchGear.

Microsoft have indeed, unveiled their very own eToilet. Full compatibility with the Zune is promised, and the toilet packs in a powerful array of additional smart loo features not usually found.

The in-built thermostat warms the normally cold toilet seat, a delay-mechanism prevents flushing while in the shower, and the toilet’s composition gauge will make helpful, dietary suggestions, based on the makeup of the brown stuff that goes into it’s basin, and for those of you that forget, the toilet automatically puts down the lid when you’re finished.

Bill Gates, speaking at an invite-only party at CES in Las Vegas, said that “Americans spend an average of two weeks per year in the bathroom and as part of Microsoft’s efforts to continue to make inroads in the home, we fully plan to capitalize on that time.”

So what does he mean? He means a 21″ touchscreen monitor infused into the toilet lid! The lid simply flips round, and viola! There you have it. Your own in-loo entertainment hub. No word yet on whether this thing runs Vista yet though. From what I can see, it’s XP on the photo. Sourced from CrunchGear. By the way, I’ve got a hunch that this thing may be fake.

I dare say that message containing the words ‘Apple’ and ‘Linux’ are marked as spam amongst the 620,000 other odd messages he receives every day. Dilbert doesn’t care though, and manages to make a very funny scene out of it. But seriously guys… I think Bill Gates is better than he seems.

In other news, Robert Scoble said this about me… ‘You write extremely well for a 12-year-old. I was reading your blog and not realizing your age. My son just turned 13 and he doesn’t write this well.‘ Cool, huh? That said, I turn 13 this coming February. Anyone got any suggestions on what I could ask for? Anyone feel like giving me anything? ;) Feel free to drop me an e-mail at David [at] Techzi [dot] net

A Windows Vista Readboost Optimized USB drive? Count us in. There’s un-deniable evidence that the technology works, and is worth it’s chips, so anything that can enhance it further is definitely on my must have list.

That said, I’m hoping that a rig with an Intel Core 2 CPU, a Nvidia 8800 GPU and 2GB of high-frequency DDR2 RAM
will hold up Vista nicely anyhow. If not, for $99, I can pick myself up an optimized drive myself. But if I was going to a LAN party, there’s another USB drive tailor made for me, and oh! Look! A 16GB drive too. Sweet stuff! Sourced from Gadgetell.