What with the new version of Windows around the corner, and after announcing a release date of Oct 22nd, I decided to put one of my ideas into a more visual form.

Ever since the introduction of the taskbar and start menu, not all that much has changed. Sure they added some transparency and what not, but essentially it looks pretty much the same as it did back in the days of Windows 95.

What I would like to see is some real creative changes to the Start Menu, even multiple options on how it looks without the use of 3rd party software, I want those features built in.

Anyhoo my idea for a start menu was more of a circular method, where bars would extend from a central postion. This would mean it could practically sit anywhere on the screen, not just the sides or a corner and would fit in to the touch screen enviroment so well.

In this example I did opt for the standard corner position, but just imagine being able to plonk that just anywhere.

Click on the revolving Start menu

You will have to excuse the buggyness of the example, as it was only meant to be an example and not used for anything. It does tend to flip out on random clickyness!

How about you would be users/readers! What do you think of the current start menu ? Would you like to see some interface changes to windows as we know it ? Go go comment with your say!

Microsoft have been pushing their search engine again these days.  What search engine you say ? Oh, well that would be Bing, as they like to call it.  It’s their attempt at rivaling the monster, Google.

Who I am to question competition? It makes everyone work harder to produce something that little bit better! So, off I went to give it a whirl!

It wasn’t too long before I ran into trouble.  I did a simple search for “YetiKitn” and at the end of the 3rd page of results the problems came in.

As you can see, people are already on the case of passing off fake results to Bing using the keywords you’ve supplied.  So, what does this mean? At this point in time it’s going to be bloated with trash results, making your searching a nightmare.  The pages continued full of fake results using similar domain names.

As of right now I doubt this will touch what Google has.  It has alot of work to sort out before even being considered a usable platform for internet searches.

My recommendation for now… stay well clear of it, but by all means give it a test try or two if you’re feeling adventurous.  Just don’t go using it as your daily search engine ‘lest the ‘Bing’ sound you hear may be your virus alarm going off.

Ever since last year I have been trying to save for a big upgrade to the iMac I use as a PC (thank god for bootcamp!), and with this and that popping up all over the place, I wasn’t able to put my order in for a new PC.

Well, that came to an end when we managed to gather up enough pennies to fund the upgrade and saw it as an early birthday present for myself (seeing as it would cost so much).

Now, being an IT Techie as I am by trade, I could have bought all of the bits and put it all together myself, which I had been doing for years.  But this time, I thought, nah… let someone else do all the work and just plug it and go.

Lets just say next time, I’m going back to my old ways and building the system myself.
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When I first saw this app on lifehacker I thought, “Oh! how cool!”  So, when I got home from work, I went to the BumpTop website and downloaded the free app (the pro version costs $29).

First off, it’s a pretty small download at about 12mb, but I was slightly put off by the free/pro differences.  Now I’m not against there being such differences, but the one which really did it for me was the watermarking of pictures while using the free version… I mean, why?

After the install, it loaded itself up and the first thing I noticed for the supposed 3D desktop was how the side walls didn’t looks quite right, it was if they were kinda stretched in some odd way.  The perspective had the look of being off, even if it might not have been.  It skews the whole look of 3D, making the seemingly flat desktops we have now a better alternative.

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Last week I was looking through Lifehacker at some of the desktops they feature and stumbled over a link to a program called Samurize.  First off, it seemed like something I had tried before (Rainmeter) and wasn’t so impressed with.

What does it do? Well to put it simply, It shows you information you want, where you want.  What information depends on you, it could be system information or the weather.

What impressed me right off the bat, was the fact it included its own editor which really does let you tweak all the little doo dads with ease. Even if your not technically minded you could figure it out, as most of it is just click and drag.

Still interested ? Hit the read more link for more including a sample config I whipped up and am currently using!

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Hurray for Friday! a whole weekend with the Kitn!  Nothing much really to blog about other than there are some in the pipe work.  We have been busy with a paying project of late but sure enough there will be some posts coming!

So for today I leave you with a handy VBS script for removing network printers from a machine.  Handy for cleaning up with either a logon or logoff script.  Enjoy!

strComputer = "."

Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:\\" & strComputer & "\root\cimv2")

Set colInstalledPrinters = objWMIService.ExecQuery _
("Select * From Win32_Printer Where Network = True")

For Each objPrinter in colInstalledPrinters
objPrinter.Delete_
Next

Work decided to toss me a 16GB flash drive to store all my little worky bits on and stuff.  I decided looking at the standard Kingston in my computer wasn’t good enough!

So here we go, and all it takes is one little file.  Or two if you want to show a picture (icon).  The good old autorun.inf file (which sits in the root of your drive).

Sounds good ? if so, read on! if not then I am sorry

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If anything, I like this app just for its name!  It just sounds cool!

Right, back on track!   This is one of those apps I like to have on my windows mobile device and works on WM5 too.  As long as you have Wi-Fi this little app will scan for all wireless networks and keep track of all those it found on your travels.  The nice little feature about this is that you can filter out wireless networks which have encryption on them.  What this all means is that you can look out for those wide open wireless networks and happily surf the internet, especially if you’re on the move in areas where you’re unsure if there are networks available!

I found this application useful just for the fact it showed signal strength (I know from personal use) when tracing some access points at work and seeing the local wireless networks at home.  It’s kinda neat to see how many you can pick up while walking to the store!

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This application is really intended for one specific device, that being the Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 phone, so sorry if you were looking for something for your pda/phone (check the upcoming posts for those apps).

It pretty much does what it says on the tin, to be frank, it’s all about tweaking the settings on the phone, but for me it was a must as soon as I saw one feature on the list which I was trying to figure out how to get done… making the screen stay on while in call.  It may seem simple, but when you listen and then need to tap in numbers, like say when you call up your bank… it can be a pain in the butt!

There are plenty of other options too, including changing the default font, the default panel for when the phone starts, and even changing which LED’s flash for which event.  If anything I would say just go ahead and give it a try as there isn’t any options in there that could really mess anything up.

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As I managed to get a new gadget (Sony Xperia X1) and have been happily installing all kinds of apps to try out.  Although, one thing did happen.  When removing the odd app, the phone still tried to launch the app when it booted.

Just incase anyone out there has a similar problem on a Windows Mobile based device, there is a simple fix.

Open up File Explorer and navigate to : Device\Windows\Startup
Once you’re there, just delete the shortcuts to any apps which you have removed or don’t want.  This will stop you from getting error messages when the device boots up, or even speed up the boot up process if you dont want things starting when the phone does!

Happy mobile computing!