Head of Technology at Endemol
Now this is a pretty neat plugin:
Wordbook allows you to send your wordpress blog posts directly to your Facebook mini feed without any cut and paste nastyness - fantatsic if you tend to used wordpress as a blog and Facebook for networking rather than the other way round 
You can get the plugin here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordbook/
Well, even if I don't make it into space in my lifetime, I can rest assured "knowing" that my blog will.
When I came across this by accident I just had to sign up for it, and whether it's real or not I don't really care, the concept's a great bit of fun: www.bloginspace.com
Who knows, if ET reads some instructions on how to install red5 maybe he'll broadcast something back!!!
Recently when using my new laptop I noticed a small icon in Internet explorer that I hadn't realised was there before, this icon was for windows live writer which I'm actually using to compose this blog post.
Basically it looks as if Microsoft have pulled the new blogging components out of Word 2007, beefed them up a bit and made a free standalone blogging application out of them, which seems to be really quite good.
I've used desktop blogging software before, w.bloggar, ecto, etc. but none of them feel as useful and as neat as this one.
You can install windows live writer as part of the new windows live pack which includes things like windows live messenger, desktop search etc. And though I wouldn't necessarily use all the programs in the live pack, live writer and obviously messenger live are two great products.
I'm not one to evangelise about Microsoft, and it's rare that I notice something they've done that really adds to my day to day computing experience but today they have, and if they continue along this route with a few more well thought out, useful, stable applications maybe I won't convert to Linux full time...
Update:
I've just found a slightly more indepth review which readers of this post may also find useful:
http://www.easywordpress.com/labs/offline-wysiwyg-wordpress-editor-windows-live-writer/trackback/
Recently I bought a new cheap Toshiba laptop which came preinstalled with windows vista home premium.
Being a cheap laptop the battery isn't great and only lasts for about an hour if it is left to run as setup by the pre-installer.
With some tweaking, turning off obvious unnecessary programmes, etc. I was able to extend the battery lift to 1hour 30 minutes max.
I was quite happy with that as it's just enough for me to use the laptop for work on the commute in and out of the office with a second charge while at work.
I'd like to use Linux as a replacement for windows if I can, and sometimes it's useful for testing server applications so decided to make the laptop dual boot vista and ubuntu using the following tutorial:
http://apcmag.com/5046/how_to_dual_boot_vista_with_linux_vista_installed_first
This worked great and I now have a full ubuntu install as well as my tweaked vista.
While installing ubuntu I started to think of all the unnecessary garbage windows runs and how this may impact on the battery life, so I decided to do a little test which had a fairly shocking result.
I had expected some battery performance gain simply due to the nature of Linux as an OS BUT a full ubuntu install gave me 2 hours 40 minutes of battery life, compared to vista's initial hour.
Fantastic for me - on daily journey's I'll continue to use vista as it's more in tune with the office but for longer journeys I'll be using ubuntu!
This start to make me think though...
Vista uses up the battery roughly twice as fast as Linux meaning that roughly it uses twice the power just to run.
Which means that any computer using vista and probably other versions of windows may be using at least twice as much power as they need to.
If this is the case and large organisations want to cut their energy expenditure they could potentially halve their bill for running PC's at least by switching to a Linux alternative.
Also half the energy used means half the carbon footprint of the running pc's which is better for the planet all round.
Nowadays desktop Linux is as usable as windows if not more so and as such I'd implore anybody who can to make the switch over as soon as they can.
Not only that, but there are Linux distributions out there styled to act like windows and therefore the switch would be even less painless.
And lastly, due to Linux being free, the exorbitant license fees paid to Microsoft simply disappear.
| Omaha Poker |