Windows Phone 7 SeriesMicrosoft will be shipping a new phone operating system this year. After the Windows Mobile brand, they're switching to an alternate name; Windows Phone 7 Series. And obviously, with a new name comes a new website; http://www.windowsphone7series.com.
I can't really see why they keep bothering trying to access the phone market. Every single Windows Mobile (or Windows CE as it was called in the old days) device I've owned crashed more frequently than the 'good old' Windows Millennium Edition on an average Sunday. I can't count the number of times that I received a phonecall while doing something else (e.g. playing solitaire, or reading e-mail) and that the call finally went to voicemail. Why? because the phone froze, crashed, or answer button was unresponsive.
Have you ever wondered which lens you used the most? Or what focal length is your favorite? The results of these queries can be used to decide what new lens to get; a (ultra)wide-angle, normal, or telephoto lens.
Well, there is an answer for both questions. The first (which lens) is relatively easy when you're using Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. Just select the metadata filter in the library view and examine the results.
Apple released an update for the iPhone. Release 3.1.3 fixes some issues like;
- improves accuracy of reported battery level on iPhone 3GS
- resolves issue where 3rd party apps would not launch in some instances
- fixes bug that may cause an app to crash when using the Japanese Kana keyboard
- Tethering is back (even on the non exclusive carriers)....
Results may vary since not every carrier allows tethering (like T-Mobile in the Netherlands).
When working with Virtual Machines (VM's) you probably work with templates (and/or) clones to create new VM's. When you do this, you basically get a fixed drive with this. The size of the drives are basically the size from when you created them in the past. Since people put more and more crap programs in these VM's, you'll need more, and more diskspace.
Under VMWare it's relatively simple to add space to a virtual disk (vmdk), or even add an additional disk to the VM. The problem is that this works for creating additional partitions or extend existing NON primary system partitions. This means that you can't enlarge your C: partition, a partition where (under normal circumstances) all your programs are installed.
A while back, I wrote a couple of blog posts about the FileVault quirks in OSX. The problems seemed to be gone with the upgrade to Snow Leopard, but this week I ran into a (new??) 'feature'?
When I remove a directory on a (SMB) file-share it removes the files and directory (or so it seems). But after a couple of seconds the (empty) directory re-appears.
There's a new service around called Backupify. It's an online backup system for your online identities/services (free usage till January 31, 2010). It provides automated online backup for the following online services:
- Gmail
- Twitter
- Google Docs
- Flickr
- Facebook
- Basecamp
- Wordpress
- Delicious
- Photobucket
- Blogger
- FriendFeed
- More coming soon...
On itself a nice service, since cloud services aren't invulnerable to customer data lose. This way you have a online backup in case Flickr or Twitter 'decides' to purge your data.
There are some 'drawbacks' though (in my opinion).....
Since I encountered some problems with flash on certain websites, I decided to check if my Flash player has been updated since 1972. Normally you can check the Flash settings (incl auto-update functions) through a page on the Adobe/Macromedia website. Which is weird, since you would think that this is a local setting (incl. privacy settings and audio functionalities).... But no. Macromedia/Adobe decided that you have to do that through their website.
The reason being that they can check whatever you are doing with your player.......
During the last couple of weeks I've been using Windows 7 at my work laptop (a Dell E6500). The OS itself ain't that bad (but still no OSX). Among the many improvements there's a new Backup ad Restore Center in the OS (compared to Windows XP, since I skipped Vista). But the application/service has a flaw. A very annoying one.
The interface is pretty intuitive and definitely more user-friendly. There's the option of backing up to a local (CD/DVD) drive, and you can choose to backup to a network share. In the corporate environment I choose the network drive. To do this, you do need ownership (some special permissions) on the drive share. This way the Backup and Restore application can do its thing.
Since Windows 7 is a member of the corporate domain I don't need to enter any credentials when accessing network shares, except with the backup application. Why? Don't ask me. But this is where the flaw kicks in.
We'll be heading out for some night photography next month. Playing with long exposures is one of the thing you can't get around. Especially since I don't have any f/0.2 lenses in my bag.
Most lenses are sharpest (the so-called sweet-spot) around 2 stops from their biggest aperture (mostly around the apertures of f/8 and f/11) , but the problem is that these apertures kill the available light hitting the sensor of your camera. You could turn up the ISO (to 102400 if you have a Nikon D3s), but that gives you noise, and lots of it with most consumer dSLR's.
The only proper thing to do is adjusting the shutterspeed. Leave the aperture on its sweet-spot (f/9 or f/11), and the ISO at ISO100 or ISO200 (for the lowest amount of noise). But if you do that, chances are that you need exposures much longer than the available maximum on your camera, which is 15 or 30 seconds (depending on your camera). Which leaves you with the bulb setting on your camera. But how do you calculate the time needed for an exposure?
Bulb means that the shutter stays open for as long as you press the shutter release button.
