Emmanuel's Blog

Last week I posted an article on my experiences installing Windows 7 on my new HP TouchSmart iQ804 (click here for the details).  One of my remarks was:

• Note: I haven’t yet found a way to re-install the HP Software that comes with the pre-installed Vista Home Premium on the HP TouchSmart. 

I started a thread on touchsmartcommunity.com asking if anyone had any tips on how to re-install the HP TouchSmart software that comes bundled with the iQ804 on a new installation of Vista or Windows 7 (click here for that thread).  This software was called at some point "SmartCenter". 

The HP TouchSmart Software - HP makes it hard
for you to install it if you install a new operating system

I didn't get any answers, but I did get a warning from GeekTieGuy (who I think is one of the developers of the HP TouchSmart software).  He told me in a friendly way that I should read the license agreement closely - HP and its lawyers may have policies I could violate if I re-installed this software.

One or more HP lawyers and/or business folks don't
want you to install the HP TouchSmart software you
bought on the same hardware you also paid for.  Makes sense?

I'd like to give food for thought for HP and its lawyers: if HP really has policies in place that don't allow me to re-install software I paid for on the same hardware I also paid for, it could open itself to a Class Action lawsuit. 

Here's a scenario: I need Windows 7 Ultimate for example to login into my Active Directory domain - but Windows Vista Home Premium (which came with the iQ804) does not support this feature.  So if I install my own purchased version of Windows Vista Ultimate on the same iQ804- all of a sudden I should no longer be allowed to use the HP TouchSmart Software that I paid for?  There are many other examples.

To keep the HP lawyers happy:  I have not done this, but I did find a theoretical solution on how to re-install the HP TouchSmart software on a new operating system - read below if you'd like the details. 

Continue reading "How to (theoretically) re-install the HP TouchSmart Software on a new installation of Windows XP, Windows Vista or Windows 7" »

I have just finished installing Windows 7 on my new desktop, the HP Touchsmart IQ804 – thanks to Janelle for her Xmas present, which allowed me to justify buying a new computer!

HP has a pretty good website showing
off the HP TouchSmart iQ804 and other models

I decided to install Windows 7 64 bits Ultimate in parallel to the Windows Vista Premium that came with the HP TouchSmart. 

A screenshot of my desktop – using Windows 7’s “Aero Peek”
feature as I hover over the TweetDeck icon on the new taskbar.

Not only there are a ton of cool features in Windows 7 (watch my screencast here), but it also supports “Multi Touch” (Vista only supports single touch).  This allows me for example to zoom in and out using two fingers, just like folks do on an iPhone. 

If you have access to a build of Windows 7 and would like to install it on your HP TouchSmart, I wrote down a few notes and links you may find interesting - I copy them below.

Continue reading "Windows 7 running on HP TouchSmart iQ804 – sweet!" »

Last night I pointed my browser to:

  http://www.simpsonsmovie.com/

If you are a fan of the The Simpsons (a U.S. animated show, click here for details), you'll love this site.  Among other features, you can create your own "Simpsons Avatar":

Creating my Simpsons Avatar: I found a match for my body type

Once you're done, the web site than allows you to export your avatar to a JPG file - here's what I'd look like if I lived in Springfield:

What I'd look like if
I was a Simpsons character

You can also export a smaller icon that you can use for example as your avatar in web sites, Twitter, etc...  Here's a comparison of my Simpsons Avatar icon with a real picture of me:

Separated at birth?

Try it out at http://www.simpsonsmovie.com, you'll love it!

A couple of days ago Scott Hanselman published an article where he described how he used some cool Microsoft technology (Silverlight) to display hundreds of newspaper images from dozens countries; he used newspaper front pages from November 5th 2008, one day after U.S. elections were held and Barak Obama won and became our 44th President.

One of the hundreds of headlines
displayed at http://yeswecan.ehuna.org

I took the same images and created a slideshow with the "Yes we can" song as background music.  I filtered the images and excluded the headlines that did not include Barak Obama - I ended up with 596 images from newspapers across the world.

You can watch the slideshow in high-res by pointing your browser to:

http://yeswecan.ehuna.org/

If you'd like to check the origin of a specific headline, check out the original newspaper front pages at newseum.org.  Below you can see a low-res version of the slideshow which I've uploaded to YouTube.

Good luck Mr. Obama - millions stand with you.

Continue reading "Slideshow: 596 newspaper front pages announce Barak Obama's victory in U.S. Presidential Elections" »

Earlier today at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC) I talked to Bill Pytlovany (creator of WinPatrol) and Mike Brown (creator of Flow).  Bill P. actually gave me a 1GB wristband with WinPatrol on it.  We chatted for a few minutes about the PDC, the Microsoft MVP program, and the work we do.

Twitter - the latest killer app

Five minutes before our talk I had never met Bill and Mike.  I actually went to the Starbucks at the Los Angeles convention center following a message from Bill announcing he'd give out his wristbands to whoever showed up.  Bill sent this message through Twitter (www.twitter.com).  Since not everyone knows about Twitter, here's the definition from Wikipedia -

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users' updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.

Updates are displayed on the user's profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. The sender can restrict delivery to those in his or her circle of friends (delivery to everyone being the default). Users can receive updates via the Twitter website, SMS, RSS, email or through an application such as Twitterrific or Facebook

During the whole conference, I've been using Twitter and searching for the terms #PDC, #PDC08, and #PDC2008.  When I checked, every few seconds, there were 2-3 new messages from folks attending or interested in the sessions and technologies announced at the PDC.  This allowed me to know which sessions from the PDC were now online, get links to blog posts on the latest technologies announced at the PDC, or even get a 1GB wristband from Bill (Channel9 actually gave away tickets to tonight's Lakers game through Twitter!)

I used a few applications to constantly check if there were new tweets related to the PDC:

• Most of the time, wi-fi worked great at the Los Angeles Convention Center during the PDC.  This allowed me to run Firefox and point it to Tweet Grid, getting new tweets Ajax style.

 
Tweet Grid - click on image to enlarge

• Mike Brown mentioned TweetDeck today, an AIR application for the desktop that allows you to view your main Twitter timeline (those who you "follow") and any Twitter search you can think of.  Here's a screenshot with Tweetdeck searches on #PDC, #PDC08, and #PDC2008

 

Tweet Deck - click on image to enlarge

Twitter is heavily used today by developers and tech journalists such as Leo Laporte (who oddly enough was the first to create a different Twit) and Robert Scoble (who made the mistake of not attending PDC 2008 by choice).  I don't know if Twitter is ever going to become mainstream, but I greatly saw how useful it can be in the last 4 days at the PDC. 

If you don't have a Twitter account yet, sign up for one at www.twitter.com - it's free and you'll love it!

Additional Twitter Resources and Tools -

• On the Web
  • Twitter itself - http://twitter.com
  • Twit Grid - http://tweetgrid.com/
  • Twit Grid example: 1x3, 10 tweets per column, PDC searches:
    • http://tweetgrid.com/grid?l=5&q1=PDC&q2=PDC08&q3=PDC2008
  • Tweet Scan - http://www.tweetscan.com/
    • Tweet Scan is a real-time search engine for Twitter, identi.ca, and eight other sites
    • Sample scan on the tag "pdc": http://www.tweetscan.com/index.php?s=pdc
  • Tweet Works: http://www.tweetworks.com/
    • Start groups and discussions from Twitter.
  • Twitter Map: http://twittermap.com/
    • Plots Twitter user locations on a map
  • Twitt Earth: http://twittearth.com
    • Shows twitts in a 3d model of the world; a screensaver for Windows XP and Vista is also available.
  • Curse Bird: http://cursebird.com/
    • A real time feed of people swearing on Twitter (not for kids!)
• On the Desktop
  • Tweet Deck - http://www.tweetdeck.com/beta/
    • Excellent AIR based desktop client - see your timeline and additional searches (see screenshot above).
  • Twhirl - http://www.twhirl.org/
    • Cool AIR based desktop client.
  • Twitteroo: http://rareedge.com/twitteroo/
• On the Phone
  • Tiny Twitter - http://www.tinytwitter.com/
    • The application I run on my Windows Mobile 5 phone (the PPC-6700) to get my tweets on the run.
  • Skyfire - http://www.skyfire.com/
    • best browser for Windows Mobile Phones
    • Worked great at the PDC with Twit Grid - allowing me to check the PDC related tweets on my phone.
• Pictures from your Phone
• TwitXR: http://twitxr.com/
  • Share pictures from web or phone directly to Twitter (and also FaceBook, Flickr and Picasa)
  • You can use email or full mobile apps, available for iPhone, Windows Mobile, Nikia and Motorola phones.
• Twit Pic: http://twitpic.com/
• Another Twitter tool that allows you to share pictures from your phone or the web with automatic posting to Twitter.
• For Mac users
  • Twitterrific - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitterrific
• URL Shortening
  • Twitter only gives you 140 characters - when posting links on Twitter, you can use these tools to shorten long URLs
    • http://is.gd/
    • http://rurl.org/
    • http://tinyurl.com/

Today was the first day of the Professional Developers Conference (PDC, http://microsoftpdc.com/).  Or to be exact, it was the "Pre-Conference" day, since the actual first general day is tomorrow, Monday 10/27/2008.

Today I attended an amazing session on WCF, or the Windows Communication Foundation.  For those that were around for the PDC in 2005, this was "Indigo" from WinFX.  I copy the details on today's session below.

A couple of the Los Angeles Convention center workers tried out
the new Microsoft Surface on display.  I talked to them and they like it!

Below I have more information on the session I attended and a bunch of pictures I took with my phone throughout the day.

Continue reading "PDC 2008 - Day 0, or Pre-Conference, all about WCF" »

I'm getting ready to fly to Los Angeles to attend this year's Professional Developers Conference (PDC).  PDC 2008 is an amazing conference for architects and developers who use Microsoft technology. 

Typically you'll learn more about products, applications and APIs that will only become available 1-2 years from now.  You can also meet with many Microsoft developers who attend the conference.

 
My 2005 PDC badge, signed by Bill Gates!

In 2005, I attended the PDC, which was also hosted at the Los Angeles convention center.  Amazingly, I met Bill Gates and got his autograph (see the picture above)!  Here's an email I sent some friends a few hours later:

> Weirdest thing.I'm attending the Microsoft PDC in Los Angeles this week.
> This afternoon I went to my rental car to put away some t-shirts I
> got. As I'm walking back to the conference center, I see three cars in front
> of the side entrance on the second level. I think to myself: "That's weird -
> what are these guys doing on the roof (of the the first level)? There's no
> one here and how did they even get on the roof?".
> As I'm opening the door to the conference center, here comes Bill
> Gates! I'm ashamed to admit I actually got his autograph - maybe I can get a few
> bucks on eBay? I asked for a picture but one of the muscle guys said no and
> he was then gone.

Which star am I going to meet this year at the PDC in Los Angeles?  For more information on the PDC, check out http://www.microsoftpdc.com/.

I've been playing the game Spore in the last few days; it's an amazing game about evolution (and more).  Unfortunately, although you log-in when the game starts and your creature is uploaded to the Spore servers, once you play a game on one computer, you cannot continue playing on another.

One my creatures on Spore, eHunaThing is still evolving

That is... unless you have a Live Mesh!  I started a thread on the Spore forums and someone gave me instructions on how to manually copy a saved game from one computer to another. 

It worked great, so I decided to put the saved game data on my Live Mesh - it worked even better: I can now for example start a game on my laptop, pick it up on my desktop at home and continue the next day on my server at work!  This functionality was not originally in the game, but check out the instructions below and my screencast on Cloud Computing to see how you can make it work.

Information on Spore

• Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spore_(2008_video_game)
• YouTube Spore channel: http://www.youtube.com/spore
• Official Site: http://www.spore.com/ftl
• Sporepedia: http://www.spore.com/sporepedia (like Wikipedia for Spore creatures)
• Thread on Spore forum about saved games -
  • Save game on laptop, continue on desktop - possible?
  • http://forum.spore.com/jforum/posts/list/5874.page#56441 

As of today, the Spore universe has over 1.4 million planets and over 27 million creatures; about 40,000 are being added daily!

Continue reading "How to use Live Mesh to play saved Spore games across multiple computers" »

I had some time last night to play with Google Chrome (http://www.google.com/chrome)

Google Chrome: Google's new open source browser

Here’s what I found out:

The Good

• It’s extremely fast!  In different JavaScript tests it beats Internet Explorer and Firefox easily – see one test result here.
• It works well with SuperGenPass.com – like Firefox it supports long bookmarks made of Javascript.  Those that attended my screencast on managing Web passwords will appreciate that.
• The drag and drop of the tabs is pretty cool – try to drag a tab inside the tab area, notice how smooth the insert is.  Now try to drag the tab outside the tab area: notice the adorner becomes a screenshot of the actual web site.  I’m working on a lot on drag and drop right now, so I appreciated this feature.
• Flash worked out of the box – I didn’t need to install a third party “ActiveX control” or run an installer.  I’m wondering if it has built-in support or it’s simply piggy backing on Flash already installed from IE or Firefox.
• Like Firefox, Chrome is open source – we can expect a lot more features to show up soon.
• The “Most visited sites” feature is very cool – the 9 most visited sites appear automatically on the main page.
• Here’s someone who blogged the Chrome announcement – it has a lot of good additional info.

The Bad

• Ironically it doesn’t yet work with Google’s own product, Google Toolbar.  Google Toolbar is one of my favorite tools, so I was a bit disappointed as where many.  That said, a quick workaround right now is to simply place a shortcut to your “Google Bookmarks on the web” in your Chrome links bar – with one click you can access them.
• I did have some installation headaches – on one computer it didn’t install at all, on another it crashed.  Finally it worked on a Vista 32 bit machine without problems.

We need to take this first version with a grain of salt – Google only released it now because they made a marketing mistake, so from a developer’s perspective I say it’s not even a beta.  How would you feel if you had to release the current development version of your product right now – as is?

From previous experience with Google products, I think this is going to be an amazing browser, especially when it integrates with most of the Google services (without 3^rd party installers).

Continue reading "My first impressions of Google's new browser: Chrome" »

This year (2008) is Sandy & Joe's 50th Anniversary - amazing!  To celebrate, the whole family went to the island of Kauai in Hawaii.

We rented a house in the town of Anahola (see http://www.atkauai.com/ for details) and in the above slide show you'll see pictures of us scuba diving, on the beach, playing golf or poker and much more.  The music is from a famous Brazilian singer, Gilberto Gil.

Update: I created a high-res slideshow - check it out here:

  http://slideshow.ehuna.org/travel/200805-kauai/ 

To make the slide show, I selected pictures from different albums - if you'd like to view or download the individual pictures, see:

  http://pictures.ehuna.org/v/travel/hawaii/kauai2008/selected/
  (username and password required - for family only)

In addition to the selected pictures, there are a bunch of other albums:

• Scuba Diving
• Anahola Beach (cool artistic pictures taken by Joe K.)
• First Night
• Farmer's Market
• Surf and Turf
• Beach
• Harbor
• Restaurant
• Mother's Day
• Golf
• Canyon
• and... Poker

This was a great trip - hopefully the first of many to come - Emma and Nora want to have another chance at the "Annual Anahola World Championship of Poker"!