Windows 8 first impressions

Posted on April 22, 2012 by ET/Osky

Almost time for a new version of Windows! Microsoft has decided to stick to the numbering they started with Windows 7 so this time it’s simply Windows 8. If the name is something along the lines what we expected the new interface however isn’t.

I installed the Consumer preview a while back (perfect timing, the winter did an encore while my partner was out of town). Installation is really simple and you shouldn’t need any instructions there though it might be worth mentioning that it will require you to reinstall all programs and possibly some drivers as well. Personal files will be left untouched if you choose it but make sure that you have a back-up just in case.

First thing that greets you when you start Windows 8 is a new login screen. A nice update that looks good but it’s still just a login screen. What happens behind it is more exiting however. In Windows 8 you can add your MS Live account, just like you would add your Apple-account to your iPhone/Pad or Mac or your Google account to your Android device. This is actually quite cool and will probably do a lot for Microsoft in their struggle to have an eco-system just like Apple. Windows is the most installed computer operative system in the world and what they are trying to do (in my humble opinion) is to establish a feeling that you really should get a Windows Phone device to go with your computer (and a tablet of course…) instead of going to your local carrier and buy the new iPhone or Android. It’s to early to predict exactly where this will lead but already in this preview you can start synchronizing settings, installed apps (from the Windows Store) and more will likely follow. Next step here can be very exiting with even more information being accessed in the cloud .

Now, the new UI: Metro. We can call it the new Start-menu but that wouldn’t be enough, we could call it the new desktop but that would be very confusing since you still have a desktop. We should compare it to the UI on Windows Phone but since that won’t tell you much (unless you happen to be one of the early adopters, it’s interesting but not a big sale success yet). To me it’s a logical evolution, from Windows Vista with the Sidebar, Windows 7 and its widgets, iOS app concept and Androids desktop.

You get a tile-work consisting of normal shortcuts and active shortcuts which works a bit like widgets, displaying information from the app (latest e-mail or message and such). This takes some getting used to and I still find myself looking for the start-menu from time to time when I want to launch something but as soon as I stop using an older version at work I’m guessing that this will change. It looks a bit more modern, should adapt very well to touch screens (tablets anyone?) and more than that: Microsoft actually tries to bring something new, they don’t act on the competition from Apple by making glossy icons and changing the taskbar to a dock, they try to evolve how you work with your computer. Kudos! This won’t necessarily give them praise from the standard customer but in the end it might be exactly what Microsoft needs to dodge another “but why should I have to update again” debate. Somehow there is still something missing, it feels not beautiful. Some work to do yet for Microsoft.

The new Metro UI

All in all, my first couple of weeks with Windows 8 has been quite nice. I find myself using small clever functions in the UI (like the Alt+Tab similar feature of the top left corner) that didn’t thrill me the first time I found it. Much can and probably will change before Windows 8 is released in the end of 2012 but I already look forward to it.

However, Metro is not without flaws and I have found myself quite annoyed a couple of times. One thing that bugs me is the decision to make the setting entirely context based. That means that depending on the app your in at the moment you get different options from the settings link. Just like when working on a mobile device. Not only a bad thing but even on my 13″ laptop screen I can spare room for a link to the Control panel regardless of which app I’m in. By the way, you find it if you select settings in the “activation area” when your in the regular desktop.

The active area is shown on the right

Annoyance number two, the gap between desktop and Metro sometimes feels huge. Searching after the app or program you want to run is not very intuitive and finding the same app in the regular desktop as in Metro is not always simple. More than that, some apps can work differently in Metro and desktop for example Internet Explorer hides the address bar and navigation buttons in the Metro view. Not only that, IE will run in different instances if you start it both in Metro and desktop, Chrome also acts a bit weird and tends to start double instances now and then if I started it from Metro. So far I haven’t found a lot of Metro-fied apps that works great with mouse and keyboard but that can change well before release.

A lot of first impressions :)

If you’re running the preview and want the normal star-menu back:

Run -> regedit; HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\ Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer and change RPEnabled from 1 to 0

Electronic Arts: Keep fighting the dark side

Posted on April 10, 2012 by ET/Osky

Once again hatred is affecting the gaming industry. Since this is a blog about almost anything that could be considered IT/Technology I’ll give a quick support shout while writing on other stuff.

In the game “Star Wars: The Old Republic” by BioWare there’s apparently a gay romance in the story. Electronic Arts approved this and is now facing a anti-gay boycott.

I’m not very fund of hatred, specially not regarding love (feels kinda ironic in my humble opinion). I’m not into MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) so I won’t buy the game in support but I can at least help spread this great campaign: http://www.allout.org/en/actions/theforce

Revival

Posted on February 21, 2012 by ET/Osky

I haven’t forgotten about this blogg, I’ve just had a lot of stuff going on with higher priority.
I thought about what could be a fitting “first” post, now I found it.

The always kind Paul Wilcox asked me if he could link to my article about Android pattern lock. I of course said yes and since that article drives a whole lot of my traffic it felt suitable to start off with giving it some praise.

You can read Pauls very flattering public post on Google+ here: http://goo.gl/AeayV

(The original article can be found here: Unlock-Android-phone-after-too-many-pattern-attempts)

Google+ in the wild, part 2

Posted on July 20, 2011 by ET/Osky

One post does not make a series so here comes part 2. More on actually using Google+, this time with a focus on those Circles that everyone keeps mentioning and how you can use them when posting. If you haven’t read part 1 you can find it here.

Enforced sorting of friends and contacts

Do you remember the GMail slogan “Search, don’t sort”? Cool, now forget it. Google thinks that sharing and reading is better when your contacts are sorted in to lists, so does Facebook (if this was a scientific publication you would find a link to that Mark Z statement), the biggest difference here is that G+ has lists from the start. You will therefore be forced to place your new contact in at least one Circle, you could of course create one huge circle but no good will come from that so please don’t. Sorting people into Circles are surprisingly funny, it looks good, you drag and drop and get neat animations to keep you going.

As I should have mentioned last post but didn’t you will every time you share something decide who will see what. This is in my humble opinion very intuitive and I hardly notice doing it. Still it’s the same function that you have in Facebook with lists just enforced and more user friendly designed. This is how it looks (in Swedish, sorry bout that).

This post would be shared with “Circles” (that’s “Kretsar” on the left) and a circle called “Friends” (you guessed it, “Vänner” on the right). Note that since “Friends” is one of my circles, this post would be shared with them even without me adding it, I have already selected “My circles” where it’s included. So why did I bother adding them again? The little popup in the picture shows some settings that I can set for each circle unrelated to each other. This is very well though out if you ask me. It means that I can share this post with all my circles and it will show up in their stream (a.k.a Newsfeed if your that kind of guy/gal) but for the circle “Friends” I choose not only display it in their stream but also Notify them by ticking the check box. I can also select that for those in that circle that haven’t yet created an G+ account to get my shared post via e-mail. Nice! I’m guessing however that we’ll see some misuse of both these features so a quick pointer, don’t notify all your friends of everything you post. They will not be happy. Also, if your friend haven’t got G+, don’t e-mail share everything you post with them. They will not be happy. One could guess that Google are trying to draw traffic, users and continuously pulling you back…

Now it’s time to get into something very very important. If you don’t understand this you won’t understand Google+. Dramatic entrance eh? Plus uses what in fancy words are called “asynchronous friendlist” (I love that word! I’m using it several times a day right now). In simple words it means that your friends are not the same thing as people that are friends with you. There is no friend request in G+ you just add whoever you want. “What a!” I hear you screaming but hold on. What Google is trying to accomplish is a replica of the Twitter way of following people you find interesting, there is even a default circle called “Following”. If the person you found interesting enough to follow feels the same way about you, he/she can follow you back and put you in any circle applicable. So what does the following mean? Nothing really. Adding someone to a circle has two effects, you can easily follow any public posts they make and you can easily share with that person as described above. You will not see post with limited visibility (i.e. circles) and your posts will not show up in their stream. Your posts will instead show up in the separate “Incoming” feed for a person that you follow but that doesn’t follow you. Was that clear enough?

That’s part 2 folks, don’t know how many it will be but I have room for at least one more…
Oh! Almost forgot, now days you can +1 on any post here in the blog. Exactly what it does is not that clear, it will show on your Google profile, it might affect my search listings (but I don’t know how…) and I will get a bit happier. I consider it a tip-jar that doesn’t cost you anything to use :)

Google+ in the wild pt. 1

Posted on July 14, 2011 by ET/Osky

Not tired of reading about Google+ yet? Since I’ve been using it for a while now I figured I could share some thought on how it works, what you could do with it and maybe most interesting what Google need to do to make it work. First up, the conversations concept.

“Real life sharing and conversations, rethought for the web“

Catchy? You bet. Does it really differs from other services? Sort of.
Google does it best to convince us that Plus really is different, not another Facebook, not another Twitter and most certainly, not another Buzz. The use of “Circles” are one thing that is a bit different. Facebook has list and encourages you to use them, Google instead call this circles and enforces it. When adding a contact you have to put them in one or more circles. Those circles are then the basis on who you share with, what you read and how private you want to stay. All to mimic how you decide what group of people to sit with at the party and what story you will share with them. This is not a major different, no matter how many times it’s repeated that people don’t use the lists in facebook. Some do (me included) and others could. It’s how those lists/circles are used that is the difference (and to some extent the creating of circles that really is simple and quite fun, yes I like organizing things).

Because the conversation concept doesn’t stop there, just like I can tell you a story that you later on will re-tell for another friend plus will let you reshare a post to any of your circles. This means that what was once a private conversation could go very public. Google just reinvented gossip. The nice thing with G+ gossip is that you will be notified and you can also do a “this is a secret don’t tell anyone” by disable resharing. So far Google hasn’t found a way to stop your friends from spreading it manually i.e. copy it or just use good old fashioned verbal skills. Google should make the share/gossip possibilities much more clear. Not only because it’s a very nice feature but also, like it or not people are used to facebooks way of (not) dealing with resharing, it doesn’t matter how much better this is. I’m guessing that failbook.com are just waiting…

People will of course be upset, I’m sure we will at one time or another hear a threat about a class action suite. In my opinion the conversations/sharing concept is great but it has to be made very very clear, we all know that people don’t read the instructions carefully and that will always be somebody else fault.

I think I’ll take a brake here and let this turn into a little series of post. Looking at one thing at the time is much more fun :)

“Straight Male Gamer” told to ‘get over it’ by BioWare « No More Lost

Posted on March 30, 2011 by ET/Osky

Sometimes we see companies taking a stand, sometimes to get good pr and sometimes because it’s the right thing to do. I have no idea what’s the case here but BioWare does it. As with any good initiative it should be rewarded: consider this post my reward since I’m not really into RPGs.

Via: http://www.nomorelost.org/2011/03/25/straight-male-gamer-told-to-get-over-it-by-bioware/

Facebook goes fbmail

Posted on November 16, 2010 by ET/Osky

As everyone already figured out, Facebook is launching their own webmail service.
Haven’t tried it yet but the funny part is that I made some comments in discussions around the rumoured “Google Me” that what Google need is a decent dashboard/homepage, iGoogle just isn’t enough. I compared it to FB. Different services, one entrypoint. That’s what Facebook is good at, and Google simply isn’t.

Google obviously didn’t listen to me and I still use my different Google services very much separated from each other. Sure, I can connect everything with Buzz and that’s a small step in the right direction. Now facebook are taking a huge stab at one of Google’s user driving services. Where that will end up…I still have troubles seeing FB creating a better mailservice than Google given what they achieved so far but who knows?

For me its simple, no matter how big and powerful Google are/get, I still prefer trusting them with my data over Facebook any day. Trackrecords mean a lot and FB doesn’t have a cute one. We’ll see if I changed my mind in a year or so!

Google stole my blog post!

Posted on August 13, 2010 by ET/Osky

Well, maybe they didn’t steal it…but this is fun.

Yesterday I made a post about Chrome to Phone, at 12.00 PM Swedish time (CEST), at 19.25 PM (CEST) Google Mobile Blog (and Chrome and Youtube) made a post of their own…about Chrome to Phone.

Just proves that I’m always one step ahead! Do I get some commission now? :)

My blog post

Post made by Google Mobile

My post: http://einartysen.se/chrome-to-phone-a-preview-of-the-future/

Google Mobile post: http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2010/08/working-title-instantly-zap-links-maps.html (funny with the working-title as well :)

Finaly! FroYo OTA update

Posted on June 29, 2010 by ET/Osky

This is one good morning! I awoke, noticed my Nexus trackball was glowing and decided to check it out.

“System update available”

Now I’m finally running FroYo. Interesting is that I haven’t heard about anyone else going from EPE54B (“AT&T version”) to FroYo but right now I got FRF85B. I’ll post back when I’ve been using it a bit but I snatched some screenshots until then.

About Phone displaying my new Android version FRF85B: FroYo Homescreen

Android 1.6 baby!

Posted on February 26, 2010 by ET/Osky

Samsung said it can’t be done. Samsung said it won’t be done, because it’s impossible.

Donut for the orphaned Galaxy

Well shame on companies lying to its customers. Once again I had to turn to the small but great Android-Samsung community and Tada! My Samsung Galaxy now sports the sweetness of Donut (also known as Android 1.6). This is still old (Nexus One runs Android 2.1) but a huge step forward from 1.5, the Market is actually usable now.

Only bad thing is that I suddenly got my old keyboard trouble back. Swedish stock keyboard, or the in my opinion better HTC keyboard but then only in English. Never quite satisfied am I? :)

If you have a Galaxy and is out to root your phone Drakaz Galaxo ROM will do the trick. Just read the post below carefully (there are always a certain risk when rooting/flashing and it will always be your headache and no one else will take any responsibility for any trouble). Link to frandroid forum (parts are in french, but just scroll down and you’ll find English instructions: http://www.frandroid.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=116843

And whatever you do, don’t buy a Samsung yourself since the care for customers after purchase is literally non-existing.

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