Straight from me!

That was the question proposed on gizmodo, Is Windows 7 going to be the best windows version ever?

According to Microsoft, the answer seems to be yes ! Though Windows 7 look much like Windows Vista it is said to have many improvements (mostly under the hood).

Here are some of the new improvements (from gizmodo):

• If an application or device runs on Vista, it should run on Win 7.
• If a system runs Windows Vista, should run Windows 7 even faster.
• Notebooks should get better battery life in Windows 7.
• Windows 7 will be more reliable than Vista SP1 from Day 1.

If the above turn out to be true along with some other improvements, then this might be the OS that bring Microsoft back up towards the top again. I as a result am lookign forward to this OS, I can not tell for certain though if its going to be good because a lot of people thought vista was going to be good but it turned out to stink.  I can how ever give my opinion on it more and explain if I think its good or bad after the OS becomes release as a developers only release, then I’ll go more indepth on comparing it to Vista

How do you keep tabs on your hoster for your website? Is your website down? Have you suddenly lost the chance to get that phone call because the person visiting your site got a blank screen and you didn’t know?

Well I along, with many other. have found a site called Basic State that checks to see if your web server (along with other types of servers) is up and notifies you if it suddenly goes down. It also in additions sends you a daily performance report of your website. I have been using it for some time now and it has notified me of a failure of my client’s web severs before I even knew and really saved me. As a result of knowing this failure I was able to provide less down time for the client and get that server back up and running faster because I knew there was a problem.  So try it out because you never know when your servers going to go down, whether its hosted by a small company out in no where or by some large enterprise, you better be safe then sorry.

Its no surprise to some that many people hate apple’s new notebooks.

“No FireWire — No Thanks.”

“The loss of FireWire is a deal killer for anyone wanting to edit video or audio or anyone needing to use Target Disk mode.”

“Even glossier display than before.”

“No FireWire. Bad move. Bottom line.”

“Due to the glass reflections it has to be at maximum brightness all the time to over-power the glare.”

“The new glassy screen is a glare nightmare.”

“Like everything, except lack of FireWire and glossy screen.”

“Glossy screen with sometimes annoying glare.”

“The highly reflective glass screen is a deal breaker.”

“They look and feel great…except for the glossy screen”

(Taken from CNET)

In addition to theses complains many other people say that the mac also has kinda of lost the apple feel because it look like a design kinda of like HP would do (for the new mac books). Now while not all apple consumers hate the new redesign some people like it. But we can only figure out if Apple’s Mac Book book redesign is a hit or a miss after some sales reports come out on it. I will be posting my personal opinions later now that the new Mac Books have been out and had some time for user feedback.

If any of my apps or site pages are running a little slow its because I have had to redirrect one of my client’s sites to there backup pages on my server in order to have there website suffer little down time. Its a high traffic website so this might cause more load on all of my websites and apps and stuff that u my server. So please beare with me till tomarrow wen its all fixed.

New ping.fm widget design is almost done and guess what this one features the ability to move the widget around. In addition the widget will also be coming out of beta and will now give you the option to change themes along with some other new features. SO look out for that.

All you have to do is hit the following keys and hold them down at once: (control)+(option)+(command)+(8). after you have done this your screen will appear as if it is a black and white photo negative.

To switch it back to Normal view just redo the key combo

Ever had a disc in your drive on your mac that won’t eject?  Will below are some tips on how to eject the disc if that happens:

“1) First, try iTunes. Sometimes the iTunes eject button will work, even if your Finder eject button, or keyboard eject button won’t.

2) Open Terminal.app and type “drutil tray eject” – this will eject the disk tray most of the time.

3) If you’re still having no luck, you can restart your Mac and hold down the mouse button. Keep your finger pressed down until the disk ejects, or the login screen appears.”  (Taken From MacTips)

If none of the above work then call up apple and see if they will help you get it out because that is one stuck cd or dvd.

12 challenge: Is Web 2.0 dead? on 12seconds.tv

I was browsing 12 seconds and was really intrigued by today’s challenge, IS WEB 2.0 dead?  Above is a video that I took from dickhollywood of 12 seconds and he takes the question kinda more funny based but I would really like to know do you consider web 2.0 to be dead, and if so what’s web 3.0?

I have had a 12 seconds account for a while now but I haven’t ever used it, but I have decided now to do a 12 second video on the topic of the day every day before school. In addition to blogging about it later. The idea popped into my mind while watching lockerhaxor’s video saying he was going to start using his 12 seconds account and I decided to to (thxs for the inspiration man.) Now today I’m not going to make a video recording today but starting tomorrow I will be. If you would like to look out or my videos on 12 seconds you can check me out on my profile on there:
http://12seconds.tv/channel/gamers600

Hope you like the videos I will be posting there.

- Anthony 

Got a question, comment, or a tip I missed, or would like to share some other tech stuff with me or ask a question contact me at anthony AT anthonykosednar DOT  com

You may also find me on twitter at twitter.com/gamers600 along with some other social networks (I will be posting a page for my social networks soon)

Since my purchase of my new mac book I have been using the thing like crazy. As a result of me also developing on the Mac I have used the terminal quite often for my developing. Some of the terminal commands I have found have been quite useful, others are just plain fun.  There’s one thing I am sure is that the developers of the Mac OS X operating system put a little fun into it and applaud them for that. I also would like to apologize because since my use of MAC I have been using it a lot for developing and not for some use that normal people might use it for, as a result this article is tailored for developers more. SO with out further wait heres some of my favorite terminal commands for Mac OS X leopard.

Mysterious Translucent Hidden Apps in Dock

defaults write com.apple.Dock showhidden -bool YES

This makes any application in the Dock that is hidden have a translucent icon. This is extremely helpful when you are developing and using hidden applications to do it. It allows me to quickly find the applications I am working with while developing. There is a down side though, their is NO WAY TO REVERSE this command so use at your own risk.

Widgets on the Desktop

This allows you to drag widgets out of Dashboard onto the desktop. Requires the dock to be relaunched to take effect, so type “killall Dock” and press enter. Now, if you click and hold onto a widget in the dashboard and press F12 to return to the desktop, the widget won’t disappear with the rest. Put NO at the end to reverse.

Now this has been an extremely helpful little trick. As a result I have been usign a lot of my apps sorta liek normal applications or like gadgets for Microsoft’s Vista operating system but its not all widget I put on the desktop are contained in one spot like on Vista and on mac I can move them around and keep some in the normal widgets display and some on the desktop.

System Stats at Login

defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow AdminHostInfo SystemVersion 
Displays useful system stats in the login window. More details here. Replace “SystemVersion” with one of the following for different stats:
SystemBuild 
SerialNumber 
IPAddress 
DSStatus 
Time
HostName

This is a good terminal command to do especially if you are a developer and have a lot of mac or several and need to know which one you are working on.

Getting rid of Crash Notices

defaults write com.apple.CrashReporter DialogType none
Disables the unexpectedly quit dialog that normally appears when an application crashes. Replace “none” with “prompt” to enable again.

This is very helpful when you are testing out an application or fixing errors or bugs or are just trying out some alpha software.

Find the Hidden treasure in OS X

defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
Shows hidden files in the finder. Replace TRUE with FALSE to hide hidden files again

Now you might not actually find hidden treasure in the hidden folder you see after you reboot but you might find a lot of stuff you haven’t seen before and can prove quite interesting. Please note though you must reboot before this will take in to affect like some of these commands, also please note that changing hidden files and folders can damage your system so use at risk. 

THE VOICE OF THE MAC TERMINAL GHOST

say Hello

Replace hello with the word you want Mac OS X to say.

This is by far the most fun command I have found so far. This thing doesn’t just popup a little box saying hello, No it says it over your speakers and to a tune of a song to.  Then combined this terminal command with Mac’s Automator app and then set your script to start at startup and you can create awesome welcome voice overs the I will show in a later video.  This by far is the funniest terminal command ever, and is something that show truly how fun and awesome the MAC team is.

Now with the addition to the Mac to my computer I can say by far it is my most favorite system, as it might show in my future article too.

Got a question, comment, or a tip I missed, or would like to share some other tech stuff with me or ask a question contact me at anthony AT anthonykosednar DOT  com

You may also find me on twitter at twitter.com/gamers600

My source for this article on how to use the commands and more about them for this article is http://www.macosxtips.co.uk/index_files/terminal-commands-for-hidden-mac-os-x-settings.html