Although some Vista users are having some problems, specially with Nvidia drivers, and some with performance issues, there are some who have already made the jump and dedicate themselves fully to developing software for the new OS, Start++ is just the start of such programs. This program basically upgrades the Vista’s start menu search box and enables you to: Run a Wikipedia search by typing w Han Solo Launch an app as an administrator with sudo cmd Play music by a specific artist with play Portishead Not too shabby for a first version, and on the upcoming one that Brandon Paddock (the creator of Start++), the search results for music Read more »

Although the source marks this as a rumor, I have read various confirmations therefore I think that it’s safe to assume that this really works. All you need is an NTSC Gamecube game. Pop a PAL GameCube disc into the Wii, and head to the ‘Disc Channel’. A GameCube logo should be up on the screen. Point the Wii Remote’s cursor over the ‘Start’ option so it’s highlighted, and while keeping your hand steady, press the eject button on the Wii. For about one second, the ‘Start’ option will remain active. In this window of time, hit the A button on the Wii Remote and then swap out your ejected Read more »

Back in the good old days of the PSP, when it first received if’s flash-enabled browser, various developers started working very hard on making their games compatible with the PSP’s interface. Today, the same thing is happening with the Wii and it’s Opera browser, but don’t get over-excited yet. Only the D-Pad and the normal buttons have been “enabled”, there is still no support for the gyroscope function. This is thanks to an API released by the Flash game aggregator website Wiicade. So I guess that this means that soon we might start seeing a few “Virtual Console” titles, or clones, in the form of flash games. Via Joystiq Read more »

Japanese hardware manufacturer has just release a slightly innovative wired mouse that has a D-Pad instead of a scroll wheel, but doesn’t feature any more additional buttons other than those two. The bright side of this mouse is that it’s quite cheap (3320 Yen / $28), and it has a decent resolution of 800 dpi. The bad side, is that it’s wired, and non-Mac users probably know that we already have way too many of those. Read more »

If you happen to live in Europe, than the StarTac cellphone is probably familiar to you. You, or one of your acquaintances probably had one. It was one of the very first clamshell cellphones, and it was incredibly small for it’s time, although it looks horribly bulky if you look at it nowadays. Today, Motorla is releasing the third version of it for Korea. It is still a clamshell phone to remain relatively faithful to the older models, has a 2″ TFF QVGA (320×240 pixels) screen, Global Roaming, GPS, dictionary and plays MP3. Although there’s nothing “amazing” about it, it’s nice to see a phone that simply focuses on calling, Read more »

Looks like this isn’t a good day for Microsoft software. Jason Busch from SpendMatters, The Business Blog for Spend Management, has just advised it’s readers to not “upgrade” to Office 2007. Apparently, he has spent over a day of working hours trying to achieve the same level of performance he has with Windows XP and Office 2003 on his brand new Dell laptop, with 2Gb of RAM. Despite all his efforts, and tweaks, he hasn’t been able to even come close to the level of performance he had with the previous version of the operative system. Even simple tasks like writing an e-mail proved to be very sluggish: Even such Read more »

Although Vista has been a buzzword lately, or was a buzzword, depending on where you live or what your interest in it is, it appears that once again it has been proved to be less efficient than it’s older brother, Windows XP. Pfeiffer Consulting, an international research and consulting organization, that specializes in technology and media, have recently released a report which explains why Windows Vista will actually make you less efficient when working on it. Not only is Vista performing slowly in simple tasks like opening menus, but also in desktop applications and mouse precision which is crucial for people who work in applications like Photoshop or Autocad. Pfeiffer Read more »

Sony has just unveiled today their latest ultra-portable camera models, the “high end” DSC-T100 and the and the slightly weaker DSC-T20, which both come with pretty impressive specifications. The T100 and the T20 both come with the famous Carl Zeiss less, and have 5x and 3x optical zoom respectively. On the software side, Sony has now included a new software that makes the machine automatically detect up to 8 faces when it focus that allows it to automatically adjust the white balance, focus and flash in order to achieve better results. As if that wasn’t good enough, they now feature an even better light sensibility (up to ISO 3200) and Read more »

The recording label EMI is apparently the only one that has considered dropping DRM in favor of a “clean” music format. However, not all is green in music land, because in order to do so, they request what everyone wants to have: money, and according to Bloomberg, it was a considerable quantity: EMI has backed out of talks for now because no one will pay what they’re asking. No dollar amounts are known at this time. In all honesty, I honestly hope that this doens’t lead to a dark age of music “split up”. On one hand we’d be able to purchase “limited” tracks from online stores, on the other Read more »

Although I wasn’t hearing any complaints about it, it seems that Apple is set to bring the eye-candy CoverFlow feature to it’s iPod line. It looks and works exactly as you’d expect it to, but it will probably consume a little bit more battery than it normally would, if you were to browse in the “classic” mode. Although some people are sceptical about this, I think that it will eventually become true, so there’s not much use in discussing whether or not this is true, because it will certainly become true in the next incarnation of the iPods. Read more »