Geek and a Half

September 4th, 2007 by Jake

I was recently invited to join the Trillian Astra Alpha Preview, and I must say I’m impressed. While it’s still an alpha release, and there are bugs, there are also MAJOR improvements over Trilian 3.x.

Their central theme is “one contact for all contacts”, if that makse sense. So, you have one contact which in turn holds all your other contacts. My “AstraContact” is SpikeX, and it holds all my IM account information, for AIM, MSN, Google Talk, etc. They have strict privacy controls, as well, allowing you to restrict who can view what.

They’re also going mobile (in two ways). They have a very nice flash-based website that will act as a Meebo-like clone, and then they have this “TrillianMini” thing, it’s pretty much a forum signature banner that shows off your contacts. Oh, and they have an iPhone site set up, too. Whoop-de-frickin-do.

Here’s my Trillian Mini:

(Requires Flash)

Not much, I know, but I’m sure it will be perfected im time for the final release.

There are quite a few bugs I can point out still, but overall it’s coming along very well. If Google Talk doesn’t get its act together and release some updates, I might just switch to Trillian.

February 8th, 2007 by Jake

Remember Trillian, the feature-ful multi-protocol free IM program? Well they’re back, and better than ever.

Check out the new version of Trillian, code-named Astra over at the BigBlueBall. Trillian Astra is a completely redesigned version of Trillian which sports faster load times, a sleek new interface, and a new web service they’re calling your “Astra Profile” which basically allows you to take your Trillian connection settings with you wherever you go (sign in using someone else’s Astra or use the web interface. You can even chat using the web interface! (Meebo killer? Only if it has a sleek, unfied design.)). In fact, that seems to be the new trend among internet related companies, taking your stuff with you wherever you go. The new Maxthon2 Beta allows you to create an online profile and store favorites and other settings remotely.

Overall, if the speed increases stay in place and the Astra Profile is designed well, I think Trillian Astra could be a success.

December 23rd, 2006 by Jake

As you may have noticed, my blog’s got a new skin. Some of you were complaining about the many MB of images you needed to download with the old skin, so I decided to go with a new one. Yeah, it’s blue, but hey, what would you rather have, blue or puke green+a few mb of images to download?

I need to tweak the CSS a bit, so some things may not look right just yet. I’m working on it as we speak (type?).

Edit: That wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. Let me know what you think!

December 4th, 2006 by Jake

Amazing FooBar Poster,
originally uploaded by Orli Yakuel.
Web2.0 FooBar Poster. Very cool.

October 22nd, 2006 by Jake

This was posted on Digg today, and I figured I’d post it here, as well, because a) I’ve found that the method works and b) nobody should ever have to bear using IE6 longer than they have to. Original article as follows:

Internet Explorer 7.0 is the long awaited tabbed web browser by Microsoft. Nearly four years after the release of Internet Explorer 6.0, in the face of growing competition from Mozilla’s Firefox, Microsoft has finally given the old IE platform a facelift. Optimized design along with new cool interface, favorites centre, search box, RSS feeds and most importantly easy to use tabbed browsing are the exclusive features of this new internet explorer.

You must have Windows XP Service Pack-2 (SP2) in order to install Internet Explorer 7.0. But still you will face a problem while installing this new Internet Explorer if your copy of Windows XP is not a genuine (non-pirated) one, since IE 7.0 installation requires genuine windows validation!!! So what to do??? Don’t worry… There are some tricky steps through which you can install IE 7.0 even in your pirated copy of windows XP bypassing the genuine windows validation. You just have to follow the following steps one by one:

1. Download Internet Explorer 7.0 from the Microsoft site. You have to choose Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) as your operating system. Remember you can’t install IE 7.0 if service pack 2.0 is not installed in your operating system.

2. Extract the downloaded Internet Explorer setup file (IE7-WindowsXP-x86-enu.exe) using WinRAR to a directory (IE7-WindowsXP-x86-enu).
3. Download the patched iecustom.dll and then copy-paste it to the update folder (IE7-WindowsXP-x86-enu\update\) and click yes when asked to overwrite.
4. Run ‘update.exe’ in the update folder (not iesetup.exe!!!). At the end, you have to choose ‘exit/finish without restart’ option to finish the running process of the exe file.
5. Download normaliz.dll and then copy-paste it to “c:\windows\system32\” directory (in order to prevent problems with the file not being found after the installation). And then reboot/restart your pc.
6. After rebooting your pc, you may face a problem with a file called normaliz.dll that can not be found by explorer.exe. If you’re having this problem, you will find your desktop blank.(If you are not facing this problem then just go to step 7) In order to fix this problem, you have to do the following things one by one:

1. Press ctrl-alt-del to go to the task manager.
2. Go to “File -> Run” in the task manager.
3. Type: ‘cmd’ and push enter. The command prompt window will appear.
4. Type:
   ‘copy c:\normaliz.dll c:\windows\system32\normaliz.dll’
   - in the command prompt window and push enter.
5. Reboot your pc and yahoo!!! now you can see your desktop contents!!!.

So folks, don’t forget to install Windows Internet Explorer 7.0 in your pc and enjoy the experience of tabbed browsing with lots of new features. And those who are using Firefox, can use a special IE Tab plugin to enjoy browsing in the Internet Explorer environment being in the firefox and switching around from Firefox to IE and IE to Firefox. And thus you can make your web browsing faster and more interesting…

Original Article can be found here.