Archives
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Last.FM, and MyLastFM - an open source c# player for Last.FM radio
Summary: Last.FM is cool, but their player desktop application is pretty horrible. MyLastFM is the beautiful player that Last.FM deserves. myLastFM has always been free, but now it's better than ever and open source.
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[OT] Rough week
This is way off-topic from my normal technical content, so you may just want to move along. It just doesn't feel right to write about technical content and pretend like real life doesn't exist.
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Attention - profile first, recommendations afterwards
The concept of Attention (as it relates to the internet) is still a new and amorphous enough concept that it's hard to find a simple definition to link to. Wikipedia has almost nothing to say about it. There are technologies and services built around it, like AttentionTrust and attention.xml. Meme engines (like TailRank and Findory, which personalize news based on user input - OPML import for TailRank, OPML import and click tracking for Findory) get close but aren't the full picture. Robert Scoble is excited about Attention, but he's too hung up on the commercial and marketing side of it. Steve Gillmor , Alex Barnett, and others talk about it pretty often, but without any real practical demonstrations of what they're talking about, it's still pretty theoretical at this point.
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[tip] Prevent Windows Automatic Updates from rebooting your computer
I recently wrote about how much I dislike the way Windows OneCare requires you to enable Windows Automatic Update to download and install updates automatically, since Automatic Update installations often automatically reboot my computer when complete. Jason Stangroome left a comment informing me that there are registry and group policy settings to prevent automatic reboots. I looked into both approaches (registry and group policy) and decided to go with group policy, since the registry settings require manually killing the Windows Update process .
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Windows OneCare, Automatic Updates, and Automatic Reboots
I've been beta testing Windows OneCare™ Live : "the all-in-one, automatic and self-updating PC care service aimed at helping consumers more easily protect and maintain their PCs to keep them running well."It integrates smoothly with Windows, consolidates firewall, antivirus, backup, and more. It's one of the better designed pieces of software I've used , and it puts the standard Windows security packages (Symantec, McAfee, etc.) to shame. I'm a thrifty consumer (readers of my blog will note my love of free software), and I think the price is very reasonable: the subscription price for up to three computers will be $49.95. If that seems pricey, consider that it does a lot more than the other antivirus packages, does it very well, and covers three computers. They're now in an open Beta period, so you can try it out free here.
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Runing IE7 Beta 2 Preview next to IE6 (the right way)
UPDATE: See this post for the latest release of IE7 standalone.