I didn't ask to be opted into a mobile phone directory but with all the information sharing that goes on between websites and social networks, chances are I was opted in without being aware of it.

To opt out of the UK's first mobile directory service (that is become ex-directoy) go here 118 800 Ex-directory.

I'm guessing a lot of people are not aware of this URL.  It doesn't help that Facebook does not make it very obvious to everyone how to get to it.  (Call me paranoid, but I've long suspected Facebook's real business is profiling and personal data!)

To control which elements of your Facebook profile can be accessed by Facebook applications used by your Facebook friends, use this URL:

http://www.facebook.com/privacy/?view=platform#/privacy/?view=platform&tab=other

The settings on this page control what profile data can be seen by applications that your friends use, not you.  By default if your friends add an application to their Facebook profile, that application can see your profile data without your consent.

More about Facebook malware threats, Sohpos.

Google hosts this handy, although far from thorough, utility for checking a website's safety record.  Change the site= parameter in the query string to the URL of the site to check:

http://safebrowsing.clients.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=thepiratebay.org

Google Webmaster Tools

Better late than never. I’m one of those people that checks in on my Facebook account haphazardly. I’m also a devout Windows Mobile user (nine years!) so this application is a welcome addition. Finally I might just be able to keep up with my friends and associates.  Seriously!  How do you all find the time to keep Facebook updated???

Microsoft has clearly given some thought to mobile display ergonomics. The 480×640 pixel real estate of my Acer DX900 is compact and yet the application works to good effect. I also like that they have not tried to directly mimic the Facebook web layout, that would have failed big time. The Windows Mobile layout neatly brings together all the essential updates with easy to use navigation between profiles, messages and photos. Right click actions are also logically associated with the information being displayed.  As you would expect from Microsoft, photos and videos can be uploaded directly from the phone's local storage or captured directly using the phone's camera.

Must have for all Facebookaholics using Windows Mobiles.

Download Facebook for Windows Mobile

Installed Windows Virtual PC Beta for Windows 7 but wasn't very impressed with it.  It appears to be optimized for Windows XP SP3 and Vista SP1 or better.  The performance of my Windows XP SP2 virtual machine was very poor as was a virtual machine with Windows Server 2003 R2 SP1.  It allowed me to install the new Virtual PC Integration Components for the Windows Server 2003 virtual machine but, if aything, it made performance even worse!

Fortunately Windows Virtual PC Beta can be uninstalled and Virtual PC 2007 SP1 re-installed with no fuss.  (Both cannot be installed together.)

However, after re-installing Virtual PC 2007 my virtual machines kept causing Virtual PC 2007 to crash!  Soon worked out that this was because the virtual machines still had the new integration components installed.  To remove them you have to start Virtual PC 2007 in compatibility mode so that it stays stable long enough to uninstall the new integration components from the virtual machines and re-install the original Virtual PC 2007 Virtual Machine Additions.

Hopefully the final product will have better support for older versions of Windows XP and Windows Server.

<sigh>

I installed the 32bit Ultimate Edition on my main everyday computer, a Dell XPS M1330 laptop with 4Gb RAM.  Install went flawlessly and took about 45 minutes (I did a fresh install and blew away my Vista install).  All hardware correctly identified and configured.  Only the nVidia display driver was not installed, but not for long as the initial Windows Update downloaded the new nVidia drivers for Windows 7.

Likes:

• The new smoother and faster desktop manager
• Faster startup and shutdown times
• New Windows Media Player user interface & configuration
• New Windows Media Center (iTunes never again!)
• New taskbar and taskbar previews
• Full screen preview from taskbar
• Desktop wallpaper slideshow
• All the many new keyboard shortcuts
• Power management features like display dimming
• Cleaner system tray
• Aero transparancy effect retained for maximized windows
• Wordpad now reading and writing OOXML format
• Ribbons for Wordpad and Paint
• Show desktop strip in task bar
• Native support for XviD, DivX and x264 in Media Player
• Dolby Digital Plus support in Media Player
• Windows Explorer Libraries
• Windows Explorer now remembers which navigation categories were expanded or collapsed, so now Network will be expanded if it was left expanded previously
• Removal of optical drives from the Windwos Explorer navigation tree, which makes sense, why have infrequently used items there
• Faster network discovery
• UPnP device discovery at network level
• Home groups and automatic printer selection based on network
• Fewer processes in memory atfer initial logon than Vista or XP
• Memory utilization lower after initial logon than Vista or XP

Of course there are all the performance improvements under the skin as well that aren't seen but can be felt in everyday use.  In general, everything appears to be now better organized around user workflow rather than product features for the sake of features.  I guess twenty plus years of user feedback is starting to really affect user experience design.  It's clear a lot of thought has gone into user experience, more so than ever before I'd say.  It's the little touches that make the difference; like how the consolidated taskbar icon for Internet Explorer 8 shows download progress:

Most of my applications are portable versions so I didn't have to do much in the way of re-installing applications, just re-pinned their shortcuts to the Start menu.  I had no problems re-installing Virtual PC 2007 which I use to virtualize Microsoft Office and other environments.  The virtual machines worked just as before.

Didn't like so much:

• Not being able to tile Control Panel icons as before
• Losing the little globe on the network icon to indicate internet connectiviy (you can still hover over it and get a tooltip)
• x264 transcoding* in Media Player not quite as good as PS3MS
• Having to download Windows Live Essentials, should be included by default!
• Windows 7 Virtual PC (application virtualization is welcome but prefer the OS support of standalone Virtual PC 2007)

Initial impression?  Best version of Windows yet. The Linux hippies can shout "free" all they want and Apple can add as much gloss to MaxOS as it wants, I'm a PC.

*I was able to stream a x264 video in a Matroska container simply by installing the Haalia Matroska Splitter and a registry tweak to enable Media Player to recognize and add MKV files to the media library.

Useful tweaking tools, such as fixing TCP half open limits and removing watermark, found here deepxw.

How I missed this for so long is beyond me, though I'll put it down to not being very active recently on this topic. PS3 Media Server is a god send to us Playstation 3 owners.  It's a killer app as far as media servers go for the simple reason that it will stream just about any audio or video file format. 

Until now the only way for me to watch videos in Matroska (MKV) containers was to connect a laptop directly to the home theater system.  No need for that now!  PS3 Media Server will transcode MKV files in real-time.  It'll even transcode DTS to Dolby Digital (AC3).

Anyway, I could go on praising its abilities but it does lack a few features for those of us that are never content with using what's given to us.  These aren't a big deal and it's understandable why such things are not priority. 

First, the default icon sent to the PS3 when then media server registers is a simple "green arrow".  Would be nice to be able to choose a custom icon.  Second, the default caption for the media server as it appears on the XMB cannot be changed either.  However, here's a workaround for both of these; made possible because PS3 Media Server is written in Java (well, the UI and controller rather; the underlying engines are binaries native to which ever operating system is in use).

To change the caption:

• First make a backup of pms.jar
• Rename original pms.jar to pms.zip
• Explore the zip file and navigate to the resouces folder
• Extract the file PMS.xml
• Edit PMS.xml using Notepad
• You should easily spot the text that is displayed in the XMB
• Change the text
• Save the file
• Copy the PMS.xml back into the zip archive
• Rename pms.zip back to pms.jar and relaunch the application

To change the icon (or any other graphic elements):

• First make a backup of pms.jar
• Rename original pms.jar to pms.zip
• Explore the zip file and navigate to the resouces/images folder
• Extract the image you want to customize or create your own from scratch first
• Make sure that the image is saved in PNG format with 24 bit color depth and is also the same dimensions as the original
• Place your modified image back into the zip archive
• Rename pms.zip back to pms.jar and relaunch the application

One other thing worth mentioning since it's not stated anywhere is that PS3 Media Server can trick the PS3 into playing H.264 movies encoded at profiles higher than 4.1; saving yet another demuxing/remuxing task :)

Useful little tweak to the registry:

 HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Safety\PrivacIE

Create the key path and a DWORD named StartMode if not already available and set the value to 1. Now Internet Explorer 8 should start with InPrivate Filter enabled as default.