Windows Media Player 11 And Codecs

Windows Media Player 11 that comes loaded with Windows Vista is certainly great… lot more features and interesting look and feel… but wait a minute… Does that mean I don’t have to use Winamp any more… not exactly… again its based on our personal comfort feeling… I have been very comfortable with Winamp… I thought the new version of WMP will make sure that I do not require any third party tools to play my media files… But soon I realized I needed my Winamp back to quickly load and play my MP3s with better quality.

Then it was about video files… I have a huge collection of my favorite movies in my external hard disk. It was of all kinds of file types starting from dat to rmvb, avi and mp4. Most of them didn’t work in WMP. Some played just the audio track. After spending a good time on googling for suitable codecs to make it work the way I wanted, I ended up downloading DIVX and FFDSHOW. That did the trick. Now my WMP plays all kinds of video files. It just need some breathing time in the beginning to change to proper codecs. Then there was REAL ALTERNATIVE to play all RealMedia files without the need of installing the actual Real player with nagging registration forms.

Modifying Windows Gadgets

One of the things I like to be on my desktop all the time is my ‘To Do List’. It keeps on increasing, and hence having a look at the list everyday is necessary to remind me that I still need to do those things.

Windows Vista comes with a cute and tiny Notes gadget with a sticky note kind of look. But it was too small for me and I wondered why they never had settings to decide its size.

I tried downloading some similar gadgets, but none was satisfying. They either lacked features or were too clumsy. After reading a white paper on gadgets, I found it was very easy to make a gadget of our own. But it was easier to modify an existing one with the features we wanted. :)

I took a copy of the Notes gadget source files from C:\Program Files\Windows Sidebar\Gadgets\Notes.Gadget and placed it in C:\Users\Sameer\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Sidebar\Gadgets\LongNotes.Gadget folder. Edited the settings.html file to add a text box for height and modified the javascript files to change the height of notes according to the settings. It was that easy and I had the ‘Long Notes’ I wanted.

My Windows Vista Experience

As Microsoft promised, Vista really made me say Wow! Everything looked pretty and clear. It was easy to find and manage things. The glass like Aero looks were impressive. Flip 3D feature wass interesting.

Already Windows is known for working slowly and I hated loading it with more utility software… But those Windows XP days, it was necessary… Windows Search was the slowest and hence I ended up using Google Desktop Search. For picture management, there was Picasa. Another utility I loved from Google was their side bar with useful gadgets.

Now it looks like Microsoft has integrated all these utilities as Windows features. Search box is everywhere and it works instantly. Windows Sidebar looks stunning with lots of gadgets available for download. Windows Photo Gallery works exactly like Picasa and gives more control on folders and displays more information about pictures.

Speech Recognition is well integrated and I managed to open a notepad file and write some sentences without touching the key board or mouse. But I had a tough time making the computer understand what I really meant (thanks to my accent!). It kept on wondering ‘What the heck you are talking?’

And the Vista Security feature of popping up a window with ‘Cancel or Allow’ question whenever I try to run something, makes me laugh again and again… after watching that Apple Mac’s new ad.





So what is the sad part of it? Well… with a Core 2 Duo Processor and 2 GB RAM, I expected my laptop to perform with supersonic speed. But it is not. Sometimes it takes really a good amount of time to get things loaded. Other than that, everything looks great. I will write more as I explore more features.

Have you heard about AGLOCO?

It was in the air since 2006. But I just heard about it through a forwarded mail that was no different from the normal spamming mails that tell you about making money from internet. But I was curious to know what that word meant (coz it sounded funny?!) and followed the link. I had to do a lot of googling to see that it meant 'A GLobal COmpany'. And their logo looked pretty cool and the motto was also interesting. "Own the Internet".



There were lots of such scams like this including the offer to own a piece of land in moon. I was always against these ideas and used to delete such mails just by getting an hint from the subject line.

Just in case, if you want to know more about what I found out by spending (or wasting) more than an hour on this, read on...

AGLOCO is a new internet startup promising its users to pay money for the time they spend surfing the net. It works on building up on the pyramid model where one user refers another one and benefits from the referral. You also need to install a browser toolbar which will be available later.

I always believed that there is no such thing as free money from internet. But further reading on AGLOCO showed that there was a similar venture named AllAdvantage and it actually paid its users, though ultimately it fell victim to the dot-com bubble burst.

Considering that Ad-words model from Google is now a successful model (and one of my close friends confirmed that he started getting money from Google by having Google Ad-words advertisements on his site) and the same Stanford MBAs behind AllAdvantage are the leaders of this startup, there is a chance that this could take off well.

If you google for AGLOCO you will find lots of sites and blogs, some supporting it and some against it. But nobody is saying that it is not worth trying.

So for the first time in the history of my internet usage :) , I decided to try it out and signed up using an email id I rarely use and using a referral code I got. If you also want to try this out use my referral code link by clicking at http://www.agloco.com/r/BBCQ8478

I also would like to hear what you think of this.... :)

Some links for your reference:
AGLOCO site: http://www.agloco.com
Venture Beat comment > http://venturebeat.com/2006/11/20/agloco-luanches-wants-to-pay-you-to-surf-the-internet/
Wikipedia about AllAdvantage: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AllAdvantage

My First Personal Laptop

Once you have a desktop of your own, the next thing you wanted to have will be a laptop. And these days the laptops are no more a status symbol which only hi-fi guys can afford. But I never had a compelling reason to buy one as I had good desktops at both office and home. And I knew that laptops are much cheaper and better in US than in India. So I kept telling myself that I will buy my first laptop when I reach US one day.

When I landed here few months back, company gave me a laptop to work. This was the first time I was using a laptop for my day to day work. It wasn’t that exciting as I thought and soon I started having wrist pain. The only advantage I found was the mobility (which is of course the main purpose of laptops) that helps me use my computer from any where. Now I use external keyboard and mouse to make working on laptops more comfortable. I even wear a wrist-pad to reduce pain and also to prevent things like carpel tunnel syndrome.

Now that my wife is also here, need for another computer came into my thoughts. There were lots of things to consider when I was finally ready to buy my first laptop. The biggest question was whether I should wait for Vista to launch so that laptops come with pre-loaded Vista. This was important as the Vista was much dependent on hardware capabilities and I should not end up having a laptop that cannot support latest OS. The next thing was the screen size. I never liked those bigger laptops which makes carrying them around very difficult though the screen helps in better movie watching experience. But I wanted a wide screen where the screen can accommodate all my ‘Code Window’ even though the ‘Properties Window’ is made visible in Visual Studio.

Regarding the brand, I never had a second thought. Dell was the number one choice for value for money. It had good and reliable laptops at very reasonable price. Deals2Buy (http://www.deals2buy.com) had many Dell deals displayed regularly and I kept watching till Dell started shipping laptops with Vista.

I also compared different editions of Vista and found Business as the best one that suites me. Ultimate had extra features like bit encryption which I am not going to use any way.

On 2007 January 28, Dell site started displaying laptops with Vista. So I placed the order online from home. I chose the ‘Dell Inspiron E1405’, which was smaller and had RoadReady design. The Dell site offered choosing components and I picked the best available options in each section. But the next day when I discussed this with my colleague I noticed that I missed to notice the processor type. It was ‘Core Duo’ and not Core 2 Duo’. I called Dell immediately and requested for a change and the additional cost was just 50 dollars.


So here is the final specification:
Dell Inspiron E1405 Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T5200 (1.6GHz / 2MB L2 Cache / 533MHz FSB), 14.1 inch wide screen LCD Panel, 2GB RAM and 120 GB Hard Disk, with Genuine Windows Vista Business. I have the complete details at http://wayfarer.bizhat.com/about/laptop1.html

On 2007 February 05, this laptop got delivered at my apartment here in Dallas and I immediately fell in love with that. I will write more about my usage experience later on.