Last week, I finally switched my main work PC from Vista to Windows 7. Installation was easy enough, and I really enjoy the subtle improvements in 7. One thing I’m not too fond of is the Windows 7 artwork. The default wallpaper is a little too bright and blue for my taste, and while you can easily change it once logged in, it persists on the logon screen.

I know this is a minor gripe, it takes only seconds to log in, but it turns out there’s a really easy way to fix it. There are plenty of guides to be found online that walk you through the neccesary registry tweaks, but there’s really no need to get your hands wet. Tweaks.com offers a very easy to use utility that lets you change the logon screen wallpaper in a few clicks. No need to install, simply run the executable, select an image and go.

I don’t make a habit out of “reblogging” or linkdumping, but since a lot of WordPress people seem to be finding their way to my blog, I wanted to write about this. I got an email regarding a new WordPress plugin called BlogPress SEO this morning. Normally, I would have considered reviewing it, but fortunately I’d already read Joost de Valk’s review-of-sorts. And so should you. BlogPress SEO is spam. It’s a link farm, and goes against every rule Google and other search engines have about linking. Read all about it on yoast.com.

I was approached by Mastiware, a new game development studio founded by four French students, to take a look at their first game, “Joe the Worm – Escape or Die”. As a casual gamer, currently hooked om a poorly made but very addictive Bust-a-Move clone on the iPod Touch, I’m absolutely not a gaming expert. But I decided to take a look anyway, and now I wish I hadn’t.

In “Joe”, your task is to keep a little worm alive. this wouldn’t be very hard if not for two complicating factors. First, Joe is very hungry. You need to point it to fruit scattered around the screen. But at the same time you have to keep him away from two intersecting “beams” that move across the screen randomly. This means our little worm is either constantly hungry, or in risk of serious harm. Fortunately, there are several powerups, which you get when you complete a “recipe”. Certain combinations of fruits unlock things like increased speed, or the ability to stop the beams temporarily.
More Helping Joe the Worm escape is not easy

I’ve been following the development of Google’s Chrome OS for a while now, and have played around with some of the early builds that have been floating around online. It’s well on its way to becoming a stable and usable operating system, but I’ve been getting the feeling recently that it may have been been surpassed by that other Google OS, Android. Especially since Android comes with a very good browser.
More Does Chrome OS still make sense?

There’s been a lot of controversy over Apple’s decision to ban Flash (and Java for that matter) from the iPhone since the day it was released. Now, with the iPad about to hit retail, there’s been more debate on whether this was a technical decision or not, and whether it’s a severe limitation for the devices, or a blessing. Being both a Flash developer, an iPhone OS user an open source advocate, I thought I’d weigh in on the conversation.

Before I get started though, let me point out that I’m not a fan of Flash. I think it’s a real shame that there’s no open, official standard that lets web designers do the things Flash can. Adobe has the web in an awkward stranglehold right now, and I’d love to see that change. But the reality is that Flash is an integral part of the web today.
More My thoughts on Flash and the iPad

It’s been a while since I blogged about Chrome OS. Things have been pretty quiet around the Google-supported operating system for netbooks and tablets. But Hexxeh, a 17(!) year old developer who’s been supplying pre-built versions of the OS for a while now, released an new version yesterday, and it’s a lot more polished than earlier builds. It boots in seconds and runs pretty smoothly for a pre-alpha OS. If you’re curious about Chrome OS, this is the perfect opportunity to give it a try.

Not only is the ‘Flow‘ build very easy to use, there are complete setup instructions as well. The OS is installed on a USB stick or an SD card (provided your target computer has a card reader it can boot from). It runs off of that drive, so nothing is left behind on the computer’s hard drive. Simply take out the SD card and boot up to get back to Windows or whatever you were using before.

I stumbled across MiserWare MicroMiser a couple of days ago. It promises to shave 10 to 30 percent off your PC’s power consumption, without you even noticing. All you have to do is download and install the program. I have to admit this sounded a little too good to be true at first, but considering how I’m really into low power computing, I decided to sign up for the beta program and give it a try.
More Can software really reduce your computer’s power consumption by 30%?

I while ago I wrote about how Gravity, a native Twitter client for Symbian added some much-needed sexiness to that somewhat outdated operating system. But what Symbian was really lacking was a good, modern browser. And it seems like Opera has just fixed that.

Symbian’s built-in browser is painfully slow to use. It loads pages and then seems to re-render them using the attached style sheet (meaning it’ll first show you part of the page’s content and then appear to start all over again). It also does not play well with modern web apps that use lots of javascript and AJAX. I used it only if I had no other option, and greatly preferred the browser on my iPod Touch.
More Opera just made browsing on Symbian fun again

Yesterday, one week to the day after the release of Windows 7, Ubuntu released version 9.10 of their Linux distribution. It’s got all sorts of new features that have been talked about extensively all over the web, but I just found out it also fixes a bug that’s been bothering me ever since I first got into Ubuntu. Under ‘Karmic Koala’, the video tearing on Intel graphics adapters is finally gone.

Intel’s integrated video adapters have long been recommended for Ubuntu users with modest graphical needs. If you’re not into games and don’t need the absolute best possible video playback, going with an onboard video adapter from Intel was a safe bet. I have two machines that use Intel’s GMA 950 chip, and I found them to work quite well, except for this one issue.
More I could just hug Karmic Koala!

My main work PC still runs a copy of Windows Vista. I’ve tried switching to Ubuntu, but I still need Windows-only software too often for that to work out. So for now I’m stuck with Windows, and as long as I am, I figured I might as well upgrade to ’7′. But as I found out today there’s a catch.
More Upgrading your Vista could severely limit Windows 7