Not that I hadn’t read this before, but Ars Technica has the official word on the death of Ultimate Extras:
Permalink: The Death of Ultimate Extras (RIP)
*chirp just got updated and renamed to blu. TinyURL integration is available in the new version. Just paste in the URL and it’ll convert into a TinyURL. It’s really that simple. The performance also seems noticeably faster in blu than chirp. chirp used to hog around 110 MB of memory for me, where as blu just uses 36 MB.
Permalink: *chirp updated and renamed to blu
Google Chrome looks as good on XP as it does on Vista. I like the blue title bar that shows up for Chrome in XP. I had been wondering how to get that theme in Windows Vista as well. If you use the Vista Basic theme, you can use Chrome with the blue theme in Vista as well, but after much research, I found out this relatively simple trick to revert Chrome to the XP theme in Vista, without turning off Aero.
Permalink: Use Google Chrome’s XP theme in Vista
I’ve always been a fan of thirteen23, and loved the interfaces and experiences they create. I’ve also had the chance to use some of their previously-available-for-download applications and wished to use the ones not available for download. So, I’ve been using *chirp and tweeting and using the inertia scroll madly over the past few days. But, my curiosity got the best of me and I started searching around for more about this WPF wonder. Turns out that this WPF client has been in the making for a around 6 months, if the date on this blog is to be believed. That blog belongs to Hal Saville, a designer behind *chirp. I also found a few initial designs of *chirp in beta, which although looks similar to the released final version, but has many more features. So, until I’m able to find out more information, drool over the images. I’m sure there’s much more to come for *chirp.
Permalink: So, you think you know *chirp?
I’ve been using various Twitter clients over the past few months ranging from Tweet Deck to Destroy Twitter. While I absolutely loved Destroy Twitter, *chirp by thirteen23 has totally blown me away! It’s the kind of application that’ll make you proud of being a Windows user and jealous if you’re not. Built on WPF (Windows Presentation Framework), *chirp gives you an experience that really surprises you from the word go. Indeed, thirteen23 know how to show the awesome potential of software. Granted, it’s low on features, like no tinypic integration or tinyurl, but what it lacks for in features, it makes up for them in the experience department. Read on for a review of this coolest Twitter client yet.
Permalink: *chirp – Best. Twitter Client. Ever.
Call it the best feature or worst of Windows Vista, but the Sidebar is undeniably very useful. I find it more useful than OS X’s Dashboard or Yahoo Widgets to an extent. Although, it’s a fact that the sidebar takes a lot of memory in Vista and slows down the boot so it’s better kept disabled at startup. In 7, the sidebar is integrated into the shell, and no longer as a separate application. Also, it seems to run faster and doesn’t slow down boot.
One gadget I’ve always liked since I started using Vista has been Network Utilization meter. It’s a nifty little gadget that beats all its competitors by a long mile due to its features and ease of use. It’s so useful that it should be available in the default gadgets for Windows 7. The network utilization gadget does exactly what it says. It shows you how much transfer speed you are getting from your network, whether it’s Ethernet, Wireless or Bluetooth. It’s great to have the current transfer speed of your network or Internet connection at your fingertips
, and it can also be used to shut up those ‘innocent’ ISP support dudes who just load up Google or Yahoo and claim your Internet is working fine, when it’s not.
This gadget includes both bar and line graphs, with different interval choices, as well as a bar view that shows on double clicking the gadget. The update interval/refresh rate of the gadget can be changed through the options as well. I personally keep mine at 0.5 seconds which is the minimum it offers, 10 seconds being the maximum. The Scale can be changed from 56kbps to an STM-1 connection and all different types in between. If you’ve got multiple network adapters, you can manually select the currently active one too. If you click on the resize button, it can also double up to its size. Even that option is configurable as you can change the size from 50% to 200% of its original size.
Permalink: Network Utilization Gadget for Windows Vista and 7
Sarah from Channel 10 blogged about Microsoft Answers (beta). It’s a 
website aimed at those who need help and support for rather mildly technical issues they encounter with Vista. Clearly, it’s aimed at novices from the questions I’ve read on it so far.
You can post any query you have and the community at Microsoft Answers will help you in the best way possible. There are already a lot of questions answered so you might just find the solution through some googling searching.
Windows 7 is already way faster in terms of boot time, responsiveness and performance. And since, Windows 7 is touted as a will-be-able-to-run great on netbooks OS, I checked the space usage of both operating systems.
Permalink: Difference between Windows 7 and Vista storage space usage
I come across this a lot, when I have to transfer files from my notebook to my PC. I use Vista Ultimate Edition with SP 1. If anyway thinks that SP 1 solved issues, well, they didn’t solve enough issues. On the contrary, if I use Windows 7 or TeraCopy, the transfer is relatively faster and reliable. Still, people defend Vista. Annoying Amazing, isn’t it?
