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Filed under: News, Windows, Macintosh, Linux

Windows market share reaches new low - 89.6%


Windows Market Share
If you gauged the market share of various operating systems by counting the number of Macs vs PCs you see in the typical urban coffee shop, you'd probably believe that Apple and Microsoft were duking it out like Republicans and Democrats in a close US presidential election.

But the truth of the matter is that Microsoft is the dominant company when it comes to consumer oriented computers. In fact, according to Net Applications, a company that tracks these things, Microsoft had more than 90% of the market share. Until last month, anyway.

In November, 2008, Microsoft's market share dipped to 89.62%. Which is to say, Microsoft's Windows operating systems still dwarf the nearest competitors, Mac OS X and Linux. But a slightly smaller percentage of people who visited web sites tracked by Net Applications in November were using the operating system.

Net Applications reports that OS X has also seen a slight jump in usage, and that Windows Vista use is up while Windows XP use is down. More than 20% of computer users were running Windows Vista for the first time in November.

[via Computer World and Slashdot]

Filed under: OS Updates, Windows, Microsoft, Ask DLS, Beta

Ask DLS: Vista SP2 Beta released: Does the public care?

While most people probably don't care what Microsoft does to patch or improve Windows Vista any more, Service Pack 2 is now available to Technet and MSDN subscribers and is slated for public release on December 4th.

Could SP2 actually take care of some of the irritations that have plagued other Vista users? Perhaps more importantly, does anyone really care? Vista has been taking such a beating in the media that it seems as though no one will. Prevailing sentiment seems to be that Vista should be ignored and left to die while development on Windows 7 continues.

While enhancements like Windows Search 4.0, native Blu-Ray media burning, improved wireless, and Bluetooth 2.1 support are great, I've yet to see any perception-altering features mentioned.

Personally, I've never hated Vista, and I've been able to work through or disable any of the annoyances I've encoutered (like UAC). I recently installed Ultimate x64 and I've been enjoying quite a bit. Photoshop CS4 runs like a dream, and Eset recently released a beta of my favorite internet security suite.

My Vista install is running just fine right now, but if SP2 can tweak my system's performance or squeeze a few more minutes of battery life out of my laptop, then I'm all for it.

What are your thoughts? Do you think Vista SP2 will do anything to really improve the OS, or does it stink of a last-ditch effort to "salvage" the experiment?

Filed under: Audio, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Mozilla, Freeware, Open Source

Songbird 1.0 released

Songbird 1.0
Just over a month after the first release candidate made its ways to the masses, Songbird 1.0 is available for download. Songbird is an open source music player built on Mozilla code.

The cross-platform music player comes in Mac, Windows, and Linux versions, and can handle playback of most music formats. Like most Mozilla-based software, Songbird supports plugins, including a QuickTime Playback plugin that adds the ability to play music purchased from the iTunes store. There's also a plugin that allows you to sync your music with portable media players including an iPod.

Songbird is much more than a music player. It's also an online music browser. You can visit web sites using the built in browser and automatically stream or download MP3 music from those pages. And thanks to the Last.fm integration, you can get additional information about songs and artists you're playing, or stream related songs from Last.fm.

Filed under: Productivity, Web services

A few days later, a better notifier: Ding, It's Up


It seems like only yesterday that I was writing about Notify Me When It's Up, a site that lets you know by email when a website comes back online. Actually, it was a few days ago, but someone has already built a fancier version of Notify Me. It's called Ding, It's Up, and it adds SMS and Twitter notification options, and tells you when a site goes either up or down. Despite my praise of Notify Me's minimal approach, I am forced to concede that Ding outdoes it.

I previously commented that it was nice that Notify Me keeps things simple, even though it could have added more features, or incorporated the functionality of Down For Everyone Just Me. I guess the creators of Ding, It's Up are basically sticking their tongues out at me, because they've done just that, and it's actually pretty neat. Just don't use it to sign up to receive updates by Twitter about when Twitter is down. You might want to use Is Twitter Down? for that.

Filed under: Internet, Web services, Microsoft, Search, Web

Microsoft adds similar images feature to Live Search Images

Live Search Images
When you're using a search engine to find what you're looking for, you're probably used to typing a query, looking at the results, and refining your query. Every now and again you might even click a button that says it will show you similar results. Now Microsoft has added a button with exactly that feature to the company's image search engine.

When you conduct a search using Live Search Images, you can hover your mouse over any image and click the "show similar images" button. To be honest, it's a bit tricky to tell exactly what this does. Because if you've searched for something like "stick" you're probably already looking at a window filled with pictures of sticks. If you click the similar images button, you'll wind up on another page with images filled with sticks. That said, when I said I wanted to see similar images to a stick bug, I did get another picture of an insect - and several pictures of deodorant, glue sticks, and stick figures.

If you're looking for a more advanced image comparison service, check out TinEye, a beta site that allows you to upload a picture and find images on the internet that are compositionally similar.

[via Google Operating System]

Burn downloaded videos easily with DVDCoach Express

One of the most frequent questions I get asked by retail customers is "Where can I get a program that burns my movies?" Nine times out of ten they actually mean "the movies I downloaded with Limewire." If you're in the same boat and need a nice, simple app to convert and burn your downloaded video files to DVD, take a look at DVDCoach Express. It's a free application for Windows that utilizes...

Drawminos: domino knockdown simulator! - Time Waster

If you're like me, you rarely played dominos properly as a kid. Instead, you just built elaborate chains and knocked them down, Domino Rally style. Drawminos is a site that lets you virtually relive those fun times, building and saving different domino setups, so you can watch them fall whenever you want. The best part? You don't have to set the dominos back up when you're done. If I have a...

Find, play, and download web music with Songbeat

Songbeat is a desktop application for accessing web-based music search and discovery services including Seeqpod, Project Playlist, SpoolFM, and Last.fm without a web browser. When you fire up the application you're greeted with a search box. Just type an artist or song title and Songbeat will attempt to find songs from the music search engines mentioned plus a few more. Or you can click on the...

MySpace, Flock and Vidoop release OpenID for Flock plugin

OpenID is a really great concept. The ability to use a single digital identity across the web and avoid having to sign up for yet another user account is a real productivity boon. More and more high profile sites and services are adopting OpenID, but the project still hasn't gained the traction that many of us think it deserves. This is partially because it still isn't easy to use OpenID -- or...

WinFlog powers up your Windows context menus

WinFlog Extreme is a tiny Windows utility that lets you add a handful of useful items to your right-click context menus. That includes the ability to turn Aero desktop effects on or off in Windows Vista, eject a CD or DVD, or turn on the Flip 3D Windows switcher in Windows Vista. You can also add an option to turn off your display from the context menu. Don't worry, it will come back on as soon...

Featured Time Waster

Forumwarz - a potentially offensive time waster

I pwn UAfter spending the better part of an hour on Forumwarz I still can't decide if it's just sick or if it's kind of fun. It's a bit like a car wreck on the highway. I know I shouldn't be looking but I can't quite turn away.

It's sick, it's twisted, it's the internet on it's worst level and darn it, it's kind of fun. At least for a little while.

Forumwarz is a parody role-playing game that takes place on the internet - or at least the Forumwarz version of it. Your goal is to complete missions that are given to you through a mock up of GoogleTalk called Sentrillion.

Your first "friend" is ShallowEsophagus who begins giving you missions to pwn various forums by being a troll. Depending on the character type you are assigned at start up, you have tools like drooling on the keyboard or bashing your head on the keyboard that you can use to destroy forum threads and eventually, pwn a forum.

Future missions involve buying illegal software from the Russians, pwning more difficult forums and other internet oddness.

Completing missions gives you cash, called Flezz in game, and items that you can pawn or use in other missions. The game is NOT for those easily offended. It's crass, coarse and there are frequent f-bombs in the fake chat sessions.

This is also a game for a more mature audience as it requires you to shop at the Drugs R Fun store to get various concoctions to improve your playing, engage in certain cyber activities to get more Flezz and just generally use a more adult perspective.

If you can get past that, here are the more enjoyable and time-wasting aspects.

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