Thanks Chris for sending me the link to this YouTube video. Incredible. Vista positively looks dated! Have you seen this 3D desktop? I’ve heard people raving for the past couple of weeks about a new uber-Linuz which looks spiffy, but till just now, I’ve seen no reason to take them seriously.

I’m serious - If all my software could be ported to Linux, I’d be over there right now. This thing looks incredible!

Today, it seems that there’s no one thing that I really want to write about, so here’s an informal, general list of links & things that I think you guys might like.

- Social Media… The cover taken off. (This cracked me up for about 5 minutes whilst my PC was frozen thanks to some Vista-incompatible software!)

- Silent USB Linux powered machines have hit Europe, smashing onto the arena at only €280. (Go me! I just found the euro-key on my new keyboard! Alt Gr + 4. I knew it was something like that…)

- Viacom have sued YouTube/Google $1billion for ‘unauthorized use of clips’. Seems slightly excessive to me… While I’m here, I’d like to announce that I’m suing Digg $10billion for crashing my servers. (Note to lawyerbots, that was indeed, a feeble joke. No need to smite me!)

- Having seen John Chow’s post on checking whether China is banning you blog, I decided to check it out for myself. Guess what? Turns out China have blocked me & my site. I’m not the only one though… Turns out that free-speech & wikis don’t cut the chase for the Chinese government.

- The root of all evil, John Chow is at it again… Promotional Pens maker 1234Pens, have partnered with John to give away a Nintendo Wii! *drewl* - I wanna Wii.

NOTE: The hover text over the Slashdot picture is meant to be something of an irony. Afterall ‘linking to other people’ is exactly what I’m doing now…

There’s something funny going on at bLaugh…

That is, that Chris & Fitz have come up with another quality cartoon for the blogosphere to giggle over. But the fact remains, software piracy is a real concern. Most geeks will simply head over to a torrent if they’re looking to get the latest version of Adobe Creative Suite, and there have even been reports of some brute-force Vista key hackers. No industry expert really seems to have a definite cure to piracy, and wihtout a doubt, we still won’t see any new developments in combatting pirates within the near future. The thing is, hackers are a community. You already know what can be achieved with a community in the wings… This is just another game that will have to be waited out, I guess.

No idea why a Digg button is showing for my article I did on ProBlogger.net - I didn’t put it there. Perhaps a pingback to this article in the comments? Anyhow…

Hmm… My computer which was scheduled to arrive today never did. I was holding on, and my mum even stayed home, from work to make sure everything came fine. Ah well. Tomorrow is a new day, and if the PC is one day late, I’ll live. The fact that the coming gave a definite date though, then when we rang to check with customer service at 3PM today, it was again confirmed, is rather disappointing. I expected better.

Everyone has one right? Even those adults amongst you. There’s no point in denying it. Whether you want something outrageous, something more practical, or a trip to Florida, there’s no doubt there’s something that you’d like. Me? Well, as some of you may know, using my own money, and some that family are giving me for my birthday, I’m buying a pretty swish $3,500 PC, with Windows Vista Ultimate, and Office 2007 Student edition. It’s a snazzy piece of kit, and is due to arrive tomorrow. Thought I’d warn you about the entourage of pictures coming! Hopefully Nate, my hoster won’t mind.

Anyhow, here’s my birthday list. It’s not till this coming Thursday, February 15th, but I think I have justification to post it up now.

Things I’ve asked for that I know I’m getting?

1) Socks

2) PC Games

3) Money

4) A New Surge Protector

Things I won’t be getting which I’d love?

1) Macromedia Studio 8 - Student Edition (£75 from Amazon)

2) Adobe Creative Suite Premium - Student Edition (£175 from Amazon)

3) Microsoft Student 2007 (£52 from Amazon)

And of couple of games which I’m too lazy to mention.

It seems that the Microsoft website has an incredibly bad lag, after suffering the Digg effect, for accidentally recommending users buy ‘GarageBand for Mac’. As I quote from the Microsoft website…

Part of iLife ‘05, a suite of integrated applications (including iMovie and iDVD), GarageBand is a popular program that turns a Mac computer into a professional-quality recording studio for musicians. The intuitive interface lets music lovers create and record music by selecting from the more than 50 virtual instruments (including a convincing grand piano) and more than 1,000 professional-quality audio loops that can be used in a new composition. Players can also attach instruments to their computer, such as music keyboard or electric guitar (via analog input or microphone), which can be recorded, edited, and mixed together with other tracks. GarageBand users can also add more instruments and loops with any of four Jam Packs (U.S.$99). These expansion discs each add more than 2,000 additional loops and dozens of new software instruments, among other features.

Incredible what hiring an editor would do for the Microsoft website. Sheesh! What a company blunder! They were so kind to even include a link to the Apple iLife Product Page! Either this is a real good show of faith from the Redmond giant, someone with a laser has it pointed at Bill’s forehead, this is reverse-psychology, or Mr Gates has finally cracked, we won’t know tell Microsoft lets us know. Very funny, whatever the outcome. Admittedly, as a Windows user though, there are very few decent Windows audio editing tools, and GarageBand for Mac does the job perfectly. Sourced from Digg.

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 myself have never had much luck with Slashdot myself, and it seems that my mate Chris Pirillo, is either trying to get himself slashdotted, or generally just make a point.

As usual, nice cartoon work by Brad Fitzpatrick. I also noticed this cartoon on his blog too…

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Very nicely done. Sometimes things justslip out. It’s unavoidable, of course. Let’s all blame the software.

This is a totally honest review, of what happened when I received Dragon Naturally Speaking 9 to review… Not quite what I’d been expecting!

First Impressions
Brilliant! The spiffy box arrived at my house just a few days before Christmas. On opening the box, I was greeted by another brown cardboard box, this one more tightly sealed. Inside lay a bubble wrap bag containing two CD pouches with the installation discs inside. A users guide and ‘Quick Reference’ book were also included, along with a wired headset. So far, so good! In goes the disc. Okay, okay… I got through the installation process till the ‘Select a drive to install your copy of Nuance Dragon Naturally Speaking 9 on’, or something like that. I had lots of trouble installing the software, as it was claiming I had insufficient space on my main hard drive. Infact, I had “22.6 GB of free space” on my computer, and I finally got it up and running, after repeatedly retrying to install the software. The installation itself time took a reasonable amount of time and I quickly registered my product with Nuance. (Nuisance! Ahem…)

Training
I did about 30 minutes of training no problem. I was told to read the sentences that appeared on the screen so that the software could ‘calibrate’ my voice pattern. Thinking that everything will be fine, I opened up Dragon’s special dictation software, ‘Dragon Pad’. In the English language, there are a couple of things that are considered ‘standard sentences’.

The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over The Lazy Hen.
You want to see what Dragon Pad thought I was saying? No, you really don’t… But for the purpose of providing an honest review, I have to post the results. ‘My thick round ox jumped over my daisy’s pen.’ Hmph… All in all, I can type a lot quicker and more accurately than that anyway. Since I was delivered the software, I’ve used it over 20 times. I must have done the training that many times too. The software crashes every single time I use it. I’m kind of fed up now, after many unsuccessful attempts. Okay, my PC isn’t state of the art, but it’s only a year old, and has twice the recommended amount of RAM, and a 3.3Ghz P4 processor, far more than needed to run a program like this.

Overall Impressions
I’m sure that the software really is a good product, and I know it’s had outstanding reviews from many top-class websites, but for me, it’s just not worked out. I’ve had heap loads of problems, and only a few sentences of garbled text and a new Skype headset to show for it. Maybe next time I’ll have better luck…

David Wilkinson, 12-year old geek, signing out!

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!