The problem is that Weave tries to sync with the server EVERY time I start Firefox, and I’m the kind of person who regularly forgets to do stuff, and I have to open Firefox again. Every time I open Firefox, I get the same turning icon in the corner of my screen and some jerky behaviour from Firefox itself. If you close Firefox while a sync is going on, a window will continue the sync while the firefox main window is closed. This is all well and good but if you then re-open Firefox again, when the sync completes in the separate window it will completely close all instances of Firefox, regardless of whether you’re using it or not.

Below is a list of completely basic things I want fixed before new features are developed.

• Stop completely closing Firefox when the sync window closes.
• Only perform sync if it has been at least 10+ mins since the last one.
• Don’t completely block off Firefox when a manual sync is initiated.

Other than that it’s good software, and for most of the time works seamlessly.

Wow they’ve changed a lot. A lot of the changes come to the UI, as Skype looks completely different. For example, the whole Skype window is set out more square, and has two parts to it: your contacts sidebar and the chat pane, and all of the call stuff goes on in the right chat pane along with some store stuff.

There are other noticeable improvements too, such as much faster starting and signing in speeds (the whole cycle is about 5 seconds for me), and the whole application seems more responsive. When you call someone Skype immediately does it, you don’t get a couple of seconds delay like with Skype 3.

The UI seems more consistent with the Skype website design, and looks much more awesome than any previous version did. I can’t see a tab for Skype Live in sight, which in my opinion is a good thing.

You can grab the beta for Windows here and try it out for yourself.

My blog started out as a small site that served as an outlet for my thoughts, bust has grown into something much more than that. My blog is getting quite big, both traffic wise and content wise. A quick look at Mint tells me I get around 50 unique hits per day on my blog, and also interestingly on labs. I only hope this number will increase in the future, as I add more and more stuff to this site.

For now though, getting under the 1.5 million mark is a big achievement for me in itself.

See the page here: http://www.google.com/reader/next?go=noitems

I was looking for what the “Description” column was for while I was looking around one of my folders using the Apache directory listing, and I came across the documentation for Apache autoindex. It turns out there are some cool options you can use to customise the look of your listings. The AddDescription directive is an awesome setting that allows files and folders in a directory to have a description, using htaccess.

An example of what can be achieved using the setting is over on my download subdomain, http://download.alanedwardes.com/. I’ve given each of the directories descriptions and made the width of the “name” and “description” colums fluid, so nothing gets cut off. All this can be achieved easily using only the “AddDescription” and “IndexOptions” directives in a .htaccess file.

In the case of my download folder, this is the code I’ve used:


AddDescription "My first WordPress theme called Crisp." crisp
AddDescription "A dark style for Shaun Inman's Mint." dark-pepper-mint-style
AddDescription "An app to hide the remove hardware icon." hide-remove-hardware-icon
AddDescription "My second WordPress theme. Uses PHPGD for headers." lime-juice
AddDescription "A PHP script to pull random images from Flickr." php-flickrstream
AddDescription "An example of PHP intergrated with Flash." php-in-flash
AddDescription "A pretty random post redirect script for WordPress." pretty-random-redirect
AddDescription "Pretty search script for WordPress." pretty-search
AddDescription "Comparison of video quality on video sharing sites." screen-test
AddDescription "Search forms and how to create them in flash." search-form-in-flash
AddDescription "A demonstration of Windows Movie Maker HD in Vista." windows-movie-maker-hd

IndexOptions DescriptionWidth=*
IndexOptions NameWidth=*


The format of AddDescription is to print the description you want in quotes, then to put the folder or filename after it.

AddDescription "Testing the folder descriptions" foldername

The IndexOptions DescriptionWidth=* and IndexOptions NameWidth=* make it so the columns for name and description are fluid, meaning that they will not get cut off if the content is longer than a few words (the default cut of length).

Using these options you can avoid using bloated PHP fancy listings that overcomplicate a simple folder listing, not to mention make it much faster that using such a method.

Most online virtual worlds don’t let you live a virtual life with a job, mayor, prime minister and the constant threat of invasion, but one game begs to differ. Erepublik is the virtual browser game with it’s own economy and society complete with politicians, military and real towns and cities. It’s the “biggest online historical experiment”, complete with beta status.

I’ve been playing the game since April, and I have to say it is nothing like any other game i’ve played. It is more realistic, and best of all like any good game is completely free. Find a job, train for the day, or even start your own company - the possibilities with Erepublik are quite literally endless and limitless.

I’m guessing this is either a love it or hate it game, but if you’re willing to try it I would advise signing up and becoming a citizen of the eRepublik world. - Sorry, forgot it was invite only. I have a few invites left if anyone wants one - email me.

eRepublik: http://www.erepublik.com/

The “Mojave Experiment” is an experiment Microsoft carried out to test if the hatred of Windows Vista was created solely by the media and other people’s opinions by asking a whole bunch of people who hadn’t used Vista to try “Windows Mojave”, which in actual fact is Windows Vista. Of course, the people asked loved the OS, and found it to be much faster and better than Windows XP.

This will always be an argument until Windows 7, but the real fact is that Windows Vista is better than XP. I don’t take into account the stupid opinions of people who say it’s slow, because quite frankly if you find it slow on your PC you may have to consider getting yourself some more up to date hardware.

Check out the Mojave Experiment: http://www.mojaveexperiment.com/

The site is amazing - the homepage has a really awesome live suggestion system and looks very sleek. The whole site design and interface is neither intrusive or old looking, and the search results themselves are displayed in a way that i’ve never seen from a search engine before. The whole site just feels right, and although I’m not familiar enough with it to use as a Google replacement this site proves that search engines can have great designs, and still be functional.

Unlike Google’s list layout for results, cuil displays the results in a sleek grid layout, and lets you select whether you want a double or triple column view.

I think this type of search engine will eventually be the future, but while Google offers much more than plain searching they will always be a major contender to the new and slick search engines appearing all over the internet. While Google and other big search engines have the resources for bigger and faster, the modern style and less popular search engines have the capabilities to be slicker and more experimental with their features.

To quote an example from Wikipedia, your average server at http://208.77.188.166/ will become something like http://[2001:0db8:85a3:08d3:1319:8a2e:0370:7348]/, which to me looks way more messy than IPv4. Although the address space for the new protocol will be 2¹²⁸, I sure will hate the new addressing system. To me, they look more like MAC addresses.

Although deployment is slow, it is actually going on. Because of this, a public IPv4 <-> IPv6 gateway service is available at http://ipv6gate.sixxs.net/, along with the ability to try out IPv6 using the tools on their site.

1. Uninstall the Pointless Stuff.

This can be done really easily - just point your cursor to Start > Control Panel > Programs and Features (Vista) / Add/Remove Programs (XP). Here you can find a list of all the software that is on your PC, and there is bound to be stuff you don’t need.

2. Using Autoruns

Although Microsoft bought out the guys at Sysinternals who created autoruns, they have preserved the software well. Autoruns is a program that lets you see EVERYTHING that starts up with your PC, and this is a main area that slows down your PC, as the programs often run in the background all of the time.

So, firstly, download it from here. The software is small, and works both for Windows XP and Vista.

When you’ve extracted the files from the downloaded “Autoruns.zip”, run autoruns.exe. At this point it’s worth knowing that you can do some considerable damage with this program so go easy on stuff you’re not sure of. A really useful thing to do is to hit Options > Hide Microsoft Entries so you don’t get one of the good guys by mistake. I would also work on the “Logon” tab because that is where the bulk of the start up programs will be.

To disable an item, just uncheck the box next to it’s name on the list. My start up list is relatively empty, all I have is QuickTime and Window Clippings. I want Window Clippings, so i’ll uncheck QuickTime.

3. Get More RAM

This is the simplest way to speed up your PC on a hardware level, and possibly the cheapest. RAM is really cheap now, so if you have a new-ish PC you’re bound to be able to get some cheap RAM from somewhere like http://www.play.com/. Just contact your manufacturer if you aren’t sure what to order.

4. Clean your registry

There are numerous programs out there that clean the registry, some do a lot more in the way of optimizing performance on your PC. An example of some great software that cleans your registry is CCleaner.

5. Defrag your drive

Sometimes defragmenting your hard drive can speed up opening of programs and files - but usually doesn’t do anything noticable. Stuff like Windows Live OneCare defragments your hard drive on a regular basis, so generally you don’t need to do it yourself. If you do so feel compelled though, type “defragment” into your start menu search to get up the app.