Adam Scheinberg Archive

Gadgetzone.com has an interesting artcile on 20 things Windows 7 MUST include (their emphasis, not mine). They begin "Despite its enhanced security, improved CPU scheduler and excellent stability, it's still the flawed gem in many critics' eyes. But can Microsoft win back the XP crowd with its upcoming Windows 7 offering? The fact is, they have to." My Take: Not sure I agree with them all -- do home users really care about WinFS? -- but some, like home user licensing and simpler management of startup items would be really compelling features for upgraders.

This article walks you through the steps of retrofitting a Web 1.0 shopping site with Ajax techniques. In addition to Ajax techniques and best practices, you learn how Ajax can improve your user experience through principles of progressive enhancement, usability, and user experience design.

In 2006, Microsoft released Windows Powershell, a new command line shell that, via cmdlets, scripts, and executables, allow core system administration tasks to be scripted. While this functionality has been available on Unix-type systems for decades, Microsoft's version will almost certainly, within a few years, be available on several hundred million PCs. So how does the Powershell stack up against Linux favorite bash? MSDN links to this Bash vs Powershell article.

According to job postings discovered by Microsoft-centric blog UX Evangelist, Microsoft is already thinking Windows 8. The good news? Most of the jobs are technical roadmap and planning jobs, which suggests that Redmond is starting their thinking well ahead of time. We should be able to update you on how successful this job search turns out to be sometime in about 2012.

"Last week's news about Apple's use of SproutCore triggered a lot of discussion about the future of rich Internet applications, run-time environments, and JavaScript frameworks. While SproutCore has been referred to as "Cocoa for the web," its developer Charles Jolley says that the framework was "inspired by Cocoa," not really a port of Cocoa. But what if someone ported not just Cocoa, but also an Objective-C runtime the runs entirely in JavaScript via a browser? Well, the developers at 280 North did just that." Ars has the entire story.

Ryan Cartwright at Freesoftware Magazine has a hot little tutorial for anyone who wants to master some very fantastically useful (but lesser known) keyboard shortcuts in OpenOffice.org (for Writer). Read the full story at FreeSoftwareMagazine.com.

The AIX operating system and other UNIX-like operating systems need a way to communicate with the kernel. This is done through the use of a shell. The Korn shell is the default shell used with AIX. Discover how to automate many tasks and save a great deal of time by writing your own Korn shells scripts.

A new major release of Novell's community-supported distro openSUSE 11 is now available and can be downloaded from the mirrors. Linux Format has a hands-on look at the new installer, SLAB menu and Compiz Fusion, and weighs up whether the distro can fight competition from Ubuntu and Fedora. Is this the start of a new era for SUSE?

Application virtualization veteran Citrix, who last year purchased Xensource, today announced their intention to deliver XenDesktop, based on their thin client technology, for the iPhone. While similar applications exist in the form of VNSea, Citrix is a major player in virtualization and this certainly bodes well for those who want to connect to remote devices via their iPhone. Citrix demo'ed their wifi-only application at the Citrix Application Delivery Conference in Australia this week.

BetaNews reports that popular news aggregator Reddit has gone open source. The Reddit source code is available now and is written largely in Python.

Michael Crider at Freesoftware Magazine has written a fine, detailed howto on using Mail Merge in OpenOffice, full of useful tips and screenshots. This is one of the better OpenOffice.org tutorials.

In this instalment of Automation for the people, automation expert Paul Duvall explains how you can use open source tools to automate the generation of Unified Modelling Language (UML) diagrams, build figures, entity-relationship diagrams (ERDs), and even user documentation.

Microsoft has introduced its first-ever embedded OS for portable devices that use GPS (global positioning system) and maps to get people where they want to go. Windows Embedded NavReady 2009 is aimed at companies building handheld electronic navigation devices and includes several features to make them Web-friendly, such as easy connections to online services and the Internet, as well as links to mobile phones via Bluetooth, and to Windows-based PCs. The aim of the new OS is to spread the popularity of portable navigation devices (PND) by adding or enhancing new features such as Internet connectivity and services. PNDs are among the hottest electronic devices this year.

RoughlyDrafted magazine has been investigating the details of Apple OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard" operating system revision. Last week, they shared an article outlining "what's new in Snow Leopard. They are also outlining myths of Snow Leopard. Although very few details are available, it certainly has not resulted in a shortage of discussion of the next operating system from Cupertino.