Windows Live Writer Preview Cont’d
I just found a nice page on some guys blog about this, over here. Running that tool enabled tags and a host of other options for me, so it’s all rosy 
Windows Live Writer Preview
I found an article on ArsTechnica today about Windows Live Writer, which I used on my old pc quite a lot. Problem was, it doesn’t seem to support tagging in Wordpress format, and I can’t figure out why.
I mean, it does all these html tags for Technorati and all that stuff, but nothing that makes it send-able to Wordpress. Seems a bit stupid to me 
I’ve manually tagged this one after uploading it from WLW, and I’ll go find out if it’s possible to tag later.
Live writer is an excellent bit of kit, nicely made, and it works very nicely. It’s just a stupid pity that they didn’t manage to include tagging
Any advice on how to setup tagging on this would be appreciated, otherwise I’ll go googling 
And yeah, this is meant to be just for US residents. Nicely done MS.
SP1 Silliness
I’ve just upgraded to Vista SP1 on my laptop (late, I know, but it just showed up in the updater). Great.
My sound card stopped working, errors showed up left right and center, and system restore didn’t work. Not so great.
I’ve fixed it now, but it just goes to show how rubbish the Windows upgrade system is. I had a look around, and Windows even posted a knowledgebase article about it, apparently it’s a problem across the whole range. However, their steps for fixing it are entirely useless. Every single step failed. I ended up reinstalling the driver, but not through Windows’ own system, oh no. That failed, “Driver installer has stopped working. Close this program”. Update failed. Pretty much everything threw up errors of some sort.
Instead, I went manually searching for the sound card driver, downloaded it, and patched the original one myself. After about half an hour of trying to follow the Microsoft instructions. Nice one, guys.
What worries me is that I’ve got 2 other Windows XP machines to upgrade to SP3 soon. Not looking forward to that.
The Day The Music Died
The Day Microsoft Stole The Music / The Music Died
Is Vista Really As Bad As Everyone (Me Included) Says?
Well, I had a proper play with Vista over this weekend, instead of the last time, when I used it for about 5 minutes, and hated it (it crashed on me); and I’ll be honest, it’s nothing like as bad as I previously thought and said it was.
There are hundreds of thousands of people out there (a number which, up until recently, included me) who just go with the flow, say it’s crap, and it’s done a lot of damage to a system which really isnt that bad.
It’s not perfect, but the new features and functions, and more importantly, the new look, give it a great new feel, and for me (I was running it on a fast machine, though) it was pretty quick, and faster than I’ve seen XP on that machine (I think). It wasn’t one of my computers, actually my cousins, although I’ve just ordered my new one, which will have Vista on it :).
So, while I still think Ubuntu is probably better, Vista is getting there, and maybe with a bit more work (SP2, guys 
) It could really become a system people love, rather than hate.
For those who just went with the flow, try it. It’s not fair to slag it off without having a proper play with it first.
And, with regards to the post I linked to, I quite like the Aero interface. So there. 
Vista SP1 Is Out, And Already The Tales of Woe Come Rolling In..
Yep, another long titled post
Anyhow, Microsoft released Windows Vista SP1 recently, onto Windows Update, and today I read about a number of people who are complaining that it’s broken their computers.
“What a disaster! It exiled all of my Nvidia drivers to the Bermuda Triangle… they’re simply all gone. OK, no big deal, go to the Nvidia site, download the latest drivers, install and nada. Zip, zilch, nothing changes… the install fails… every time.”
And it’s rendered some peoples computers inoperable, useless, or not fully functional. Well done Microsoft. It’s times like these that I’m glad I’m still running XP
The Windows Vista release post is here
Sorry Microsoft, But No.
It appears that Yahoo will be rejecting the bid by Microsoft for it’s takeover, according to an article here.
The Journal source said the company would be unwilling to consider an offer below $40 per share, which would represent a $12 billion increase over Microsoft’s original $44.6 billion bid. It is unclear if Microsoft would be willing to increase its bid by such a significant amount.
This should put an end to many speculations on what would happen if the bid was successful, although I’m sure there will still be people out there, determined that Microsoft will raise it’s bid. Honestly, I don’t think they will, and MS should get off of their own backsides and work on Live, because with some simplifying, they could challange the great G.
If the bid had been accepted, Microsoft would have gone into debt for the first time in it’s existance, despite it’s massive backups of money. Microsoft’s shares have also dropped 13% since the announcement of the bid, and Yahoo’s have increased 51% in value.
If the bid was accepted, I’m sure the whole thing would be heavily scrutinized, as Google said:
“Microsoft’s hostile bid for Yahoo raises troubling questions. This is about more than simply a financial transaction, one company taking over another. It’s about preserving the underlying principles of the Internet: openness and innovation.”
That was the chief legal officer of Google
What will become of this? It’s become pretty messy, I guess everyone gets to wait and see if Microsoft push their prices up, to buy shares that will probably deflate when the purchase is complete :/
Microsoft + Yahoo = Google Killer? Somehow, I doubt it..
As most people know, Microsoft recently made a move to purchase Yahoo, saying that the general public needed an alternative to Google before it got too late, and I’m inclined to agree. Google does have total dominance at the moment, and some healthy competition wouldn’t be all bad
However, some people have been saying that if this merger goes ahead, it will form a ‘Google Killer’ , that is to say that it will be the downfall of Google. This I seriously doubt, because while it will leech some of the revenue from Google, the products they offer beat the other search engines by far, and most importantly, they are fastest. Google search takes fractions of a second, the homepage isn’t littered with crap like Yahoo, and it doesn’t try to go over-web2.0 on you, like live search does. Everything is simple, and fast, and that’s what makes it dominant.
There is also the thought that if Microsoft and Yahoo merger, there could be a serious loss in income as teething problems are resolved, advertisers might choose to jump ship to Google, and what would happen if Microsoft decides to force Yahoo Mail and YIM into Hotmail and MSN? There would be chaos, and amidst it, the Google would take yet more market share, which is exactly the thing that Microsoft have set out to take off of them.
If Yahoo accept the takeover offer, then the merger will have to be done very carefully, or chaos will ensue, I think.
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