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personalization posts

Filed under: OS Updates, Windows, Microsoft

Microsoft adds 14 cool new themes to Windows 7 gallery for launch day


Windows 7 adds several cool, new desktop personalization features. Whether it's tweaking your Aero Glass color or subscribing to an RSS feed for new wallpaper images, customization is easier than it ever has been on Windows.

A while back I mentioned the arrival of an official Ferrari prototype theme (which will no doubt be appearing on some shiny new Acer laptops very soon). It's now been added to the Microsoft Personalization gallery along with 13 other themes.

Gamers may want to take a look at the Gears of War tandem, and our friends at Autoblog now have two more options: Infiniti and Porsche. There are also three Zune-based themes (a nice companion for your new Zune HD) and packs from Pepsi and Coca Colca.

My favorite is probably the Bing theme, which taps the collection of amazing images you've been seeing on their search page (assuming you've tried Bing, of course).

Installing new themes is easy. Just visit the gallery, download the theme(s) you want, and double-click the .themepack file to install it. Windows 7 will automatically activate your new theme!

Want to make your own theme? Microsoft will show you how to do that, too!

Filed under: Windows, Microsoft, Op-Ed

Is this really all Microsoft is doing with the Windows 7 gadget gallery?


With the impending flood of Windows 7 into the retail channel, you'd think that all related initiatives from Microsoft would be gearing up. After all, this looks like it will be the biggest launch in Microsoft history.

Based on the number of Vista systems I see on my workbench that don't even have the sidebar enabled, gadgets are likely a low-priority item. For most users, personalization is more about changing color schemes and wallpaper and Microsoft has definitely provided plenty of theming options for Windows 7.

Still, if you're going to display gadgets as part of the personalization site shouldn't you provide some more compelling examples?

Date and time? Outlook Upcoming Appointments? Blogger Buddy? Come on, shouldn't that last one at least be preempted by a Live Spaces option?

And to list only six, well heck, there are four sideshow gadgets available. How many laptops have you seen in the wild that even have a sideshow compatible screen?

I'm not a big gadget user anyway, but maybe if someone (possibly the company who created the OS) put together a selection of really impressive ones I'd actually start utilizing them. Right now, gadgets kind of feel like Microsoft put them there as a "We can do that, too!" retort to OsX.

What's your take on Windows gadgets? Do you bother with them? Take the poll after the break, and chime in with your comments!

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Filed under: Mozilla, Open Source, Beta, Browsers

With Jetpack, Mozilla stokes the customization fires

Firefox may never catch up to Chrome in the speed tests, but Mozilla has a huge lead when it comes to customization. The newly-announced Jetpack project might well ensure that they stay well ahead of the pack.

Jetpack aims to make browser addons easier to create by allowing developers to do so using only HTML, CSS, and Javascript (newer tags like <canvas> <audio> <video> are also supported, as is AJAX). And of course, Jetpack integrates well with Bespin (video clip after the break), which will make it easy for developers to create addons and roll out future updates.

You can see just how easy writing a Jetpack addon is in Mozilla's tutorial and by taking a quick look at the API reference.

If you add Jetpack to your Firefox install, don't expect perftection. It is, after all, only release 0.1.1. The two demos - GMail checker and UnAd - work just fine, but the position of their statusbar icons needs to be tweaked slightly.

The Firefox community loves their extensions, so making them easier to develop and accessible to a much larger group of developers is an excellent move by Mozilla. The simplicity Jetpack brings should allow for some exciting developments in a very short amount of time.

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Filed under: Business, Finance, Games, Internet, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Blogging, Web services

SpotBack - a customizable news aggregation site

SpotBackI'm personally tiring of all the news aggregation sites that have popped up all over the web, and am frustrated and dismayed that as of yet the holy grail of personalization seems not to have been achieved successfully. It was with some trepidation then that I followed James Kendrick's advice (he co-runs the wildly popular JKOnTheRun blog with Kevin C. Tofel) and decided to check out SpotBack, the latest in the line of news aggregation sites.

Right off the bat I was impressed with the pleasant and easy to read user interface. It's not overdone, just attractive and approachable. Clicking a headline opens the article in a new browser window or tab. Rating stories is achieved through the use of an interactive slider; slide it to the left to rate a story negatively, or to the right to give it a positive rating. Interestingly, if you give an article a positive rating, SpotBack will immediately display a related article immediately below the one you just rated, giving you the opportunity to get more information about a subject you've shown an interest in. Slick.

The categories range from things like Computers and Internet to Sports, Business, Science, and even include a Blogs category.

It remains to be seen how well the personalization engine works in SpotBack, but based on my first experience with the site, I'm willing to give it a shot.

Filed under: Audio, Web services, Yahoo!

Yahoo! Music offers Personalized, DRM-free MP3 download

Yahoo Music logoNow this could turn into something big...

According to this post on the Yahoo! Music blog, Yahoo! is offering a double-first for the service - a Personalized & DRM-free MP3 download.

Now, before you get your hopes up, the downside is that it's Jessica Simpson and is priced at $1.99 (blamed on the personalization).

However, the post continues to make the case for DRM-free downloads in the future - like eMusic does. As it mentions, I've always resorted to burning my purchased tracks to a CD and ripped them back into digital format so I can play them on whatever I want.

DRM on Yahoo! Music and Y! Unlimited is a constant sore spot on the Y! Music Engine Group - people frequently have issues with the licensing, and I've lost count of how often my Roku Soundbridge displays a padlock instead of just playing the track.

Cheers to the Y! Music team for keeping the push for music consumer rights in the spotlight.

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The World's Hardest Game 2.0 - Time Waster

So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do. Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game. The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...

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