This looks like a reasonable time to launch the beta given that Microsoft previously said it would release it at the end of February.  For those on the official testing programme or who subscribe to their software via the MDSN website, with Windows 7 these groups received the beta around one week to ten days before so if this is repeated this could mean that they get delivery of the beta any time from the 17th of this month, which is what I was expecting personally.

The Consumer Preview will include many features not seen in the previous Developer Preview release, which Microsoft gave out publicly in September last year.  This is because many of those features either had not been written yet or were not finished.  One of the things that is set to change considerably is the new Metro interface, and several leaks in the last couple of weeks have shown that in some ways Microsoft has changed it significantly.

The Developer Preview has received some criticisms from business users and IT Pros, primarily because of Metro, but it remains to be seen how many of those criticisms are answered satisfactorily by the Consumer Preview.  Business users should not be concerned about the name “Consumer Preview” either as this is basically code for, “We’ve got developers excited [hopefully] but now we need to spur those developers on and make sure they’ve not forgotten about us by getting millions of members of the public excited as well.”

New features that have been demonstrated but not yet used by the public, including the new “Windows App Store” will open at the same time.  The final release of the operating system is expected later in the year around October.

Let’s look first at the missing IT Pro features in the Developer Preview and what this release was actually for.  Microsoft are going after the tablet market aggressively, frankly they have no choice to do this now or to wave goodbye to it forever.  This is why Windows 8′s new Start Screen and Metro apps have been engineered the way they have.  Nobody can blame them for this either.  As we all now know from smartphones and tablets, any platform will live or die on the quality and quantity of the apps available for it.  Let’s just look at what happened to HP’s TouchPad, with the same now beginning to happen to the RIM Playbook.

For this reason it is essential that Windows 8 have a critical mass of Metro apps available in the new Windows store on the day that Windows 8 goes on sale.  The only way to do this is to start early, and the only way to get developers writing for the new interface and platform is to give them a copy to play with.  It was far from essential therefore that anything other than Metro was actually working for the giveaway date at their BUILD developer conference last September.

This doesn’t mean that Windows 8 will be bereft of IT Pro features, it just means that Microsoft’s focus in the run up to September was finishing Metro and making sure it was stable.  Microsoft have told me privately that plenty of new features for IT Pros simply weren’t finished by then.  They are coming and will all be finished for the beta.  In fact that build of Windows 8 will already have been signed off by now and will be going into escrow this week.

Microsoft have a huge mountain to climb in the tablet market and they’ve got to create a buzz with the beta.  Some people at the company have admitted to me privately that the company made a mistake in releasing the Developer Preview publicly instead of just through developer channels.  People downloaded it, expecting it to be a finished product and it simply wasn’t.  This has resulted in the new OS getting large volumes of negative publicity and people damning the finished product when they’ve actually seen less than half of it.

So why Consumer Preview then if IT Pros hated the Developer Preview?  Microsoft need to get consumers worldwide downloading, installing and using the Windows 8 beta in their multi-millions.  They need people talking on blogs and forums and in the press about how much they love it to spur on developers in writing apps for the platform.  Microsoft haven’t released any figures yet about how quickly Metro apps are being written, but this could mean it’s off to a slow start potentially.  Generating excitement and press coverage then is huge.  This doesn’t mean that the IT Pro features won’t be there, just that Microsoft have got to get Metro off to a flying start from being three or four years behind the market leaders.

The company will also want to completely differentiate the latest release from the Developer Preview by indicating that they were both completely different builds and intended for completely different audiences.  Simply calling it the beta next month wouldn’t do this and many people might assume that it will just include a few tweaks and bells on top of what was seen in September.  Thus this differentiation is absolutely necessary.  Especially given Microsoft’s private admission that a public release was an error last time.

The other reason to call it a Consumer Preview is that, for a while at least, all the media attention will be on the new Metro interface.  Microsoft know this and will try to use this coverage to spurr on app developers.  In short it’s actually quiite a clever move calling it this.   It doesn’t mean, as I’ve already said, that it won’t include the ability to switch off the new Start Screen, or won’t include Hyper-V, new multi-monitor tools and much more besides.  It is, frankly, just a name and IT Pros need not be concerned any longer.

This was released, as you’ll remember, back in mid-September at Microsoft’s BUILD developer conference.  The aim was to get people excited about writing apps for the new operating system’s ‘Metro’ interface.  With the Developer Preview having been made publicly available at the time it was downloaded in huge numbers and it’s been interesting reading blogs from tech journalists who have been using it in anger.

So, with Windows 8 books to write, webcasts to give on it and talks already underway you’d have thought that I too would have been using the Developer Preview in anger, right?  Actually I do still have a copy installed on my Windows tablet, but only because I use my HP TouchPad for day to day use.  I did have a copy installed in a dual-boot system on my main PC, but soon got rid of it as I never used it, and I did have a copy installed in a virtual machine on my laptop, but never used that either and so it too is now gone.

If I need to get right under the hood of Windows 8 then, why haven’t I been using the Developer Preview?  There are several answers to this, the first is that the preview is, and many people have commented on this, pretty unusable for day to day work.  At the moment and especially without a working Windows app store there’s not much you can do in Metro and, as such, you need to spend all your time on the desktop.  This causes problems too because many of the features that will make working on the desktop pleasurable weren’t finished in time for the preview.

Then there’s all the things under the hood of the operating system.  We’ve been reading a steady stream of articles from Microsoft since September on new and sometimes even cool features coming for the beta.  None of these exist within the Developer Preview and to assume that for features such as Hyper-V which can be unlocked in the preview already have their final interfaces is perhaps a little foolish.  There really isn’t that much in the Developer Preview and it’s quite devoid of anything new or changed outside of Metro.

I’m looking forward to downloading, installing and using the full Windows 8 beta in anger.  I have already decided that I will blow away the copy of Windows 7 on my work touch-enabled laptop and use exclusively Windows 8 on the device.  As for my desktop I’ll see how things go.  With the beta however we can assume that Windows 8 will be feature-locked when the beta is released next month, and so this will be the time to start exploring the features and taking screenshots (though these might change slightly).

You might be of the same mind as myself regards the preview, in that you too might have tried it briefly, got bored of it and gone back to Windows 7 until something more stable and complete comes along.  For all the bloggers, writers and authors who say they’ve been using the Developer Preview in anger, I do wonder how productive they’ve been and how much they’ve actually been using it.

Suffice to say, the beta will be a very different beast and very complete.  I’ve been reserving judgement over Windows 8 until I see it, in the same way I have during the alpha and beta programmes for previous versions of Windows.  It might be genuinely exciting, it will certainly be extremely interesting but one thing is for sure…  It will for the very first time be properly usable.

I say confirmation in inverted commas because it doesn’t answer all the questions and does indeed throw up some interesting ones too.  Many people were expecting the beta to appear sometime in early to mid-January.  This is what happened with Windows 7 just after it was officially unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show in 2009.  This is also consistent with a release schedule that could see the final code released to manufacturing by July for release on new PCs at the end of August.

PC makers complained strongly about the Windows 7 launch in October 2009 because it had missed the important back to college sales period.  Indeed Microsoft had to issue vouchers to PC makers to give away with new PCs enabling people to get a free copy of Windows 7 later on.

However today we heard that the Windows 8 beta will be made available in “Late February 2012″.  This is much less consistent with a final release that will meet the late August / September sales deadline and if anything, more consistent with a January release as was seen with Windows Vista.

But it doesn’t answer all the questions.  For instance there will be private and public beta programmes as usual.  With Windows 7 these began only ten days apart but there’s no word yet on when the private beta will begin.  It also doesn’t explain why we’re looking at a late February beta release when January was the date expected by many people.  Microsoft received a great deal of backlash over the Developer Preview and had to re-engineer some features such as search and expand on others.  In blog posts Steven Sinofsky, the Windows chief at Microsoft admitted that many people had not been happy with the Developer Preview and Microsoft had to do more work.

Does this late February release then mean that the required work has pushed Windows 8 back and maybe even wrecked the original release schedule?  It is possible that the final release schedule will be announced at CES in January, though it is more likely we will have wait until some time in the spring before we get this information as we did with Windows 7.

If Microsoft miss a July RTM date then PC manufacturers, who are already feeling squeezed will no doubt be very angry and a voucher scheme will have to begin again in earnest.  If we see a late August / September RTM then a pre-Christmas release will happen.  If the schedule slips further into January 2013 then Microsoft will be in trouble, not just with PC makers worldwide, but also over their own finances.

When a new Windows release comes out the company want to say six months in how strongly it is selling, it helps with their share price.  With a release as “bold”, “risky” and “contentious” as Windows 8 to use just some of the words people both inside and outside Microsoft have used to describe it this will be even more important.  If sales of the new OS begin after the back to college and Christmas holidays sales periods are over then those figures will inevitably look weak.  This could reflect very badly on Microsoft overall.

It will be CES in January at the very earliest before we get answers to any of these questions.

In the invitation email the company say…

The Beta program is a fully functional antimalware app with ongoing updates to help protect your PC from viruses, spyware, and other malicious software.  In addition to ongoing virus and spyware definition updates, we’ll provide software updates to the Beta for download through Microsoft Update on a periodic basis. To have these updates installed automatically, you must be subscribed to Microsoft Update with preferences set to Automatically download and install new updates.

This edition, version 4.0.1111.0 comes in both 64 bit and 32 bit versions and can upgrade a current Security Essentials installation automatically.  The company also say that…

At the end of the Beta program, participants who are subscribed to automatic updates through Microsoft Update will be upgraded to the released version of Microsoft Security Essentials.

Which is news that will be welcomed by many people who simply don’t want to have to worry about it.

Microsoft have said that among improvements will be a much simplified interface, though on initial inspection it is very difficult to tell the difference between this and the previous version.

The new features are…

• Enhanced protection through automatic malware remediation: The Beta program will clean highly impacting malware infections automatically, with no required user interaction.
• Enhanced performance: The Beta includes many performance improvements to make sure your PC performance isn’t
  compromised.
• Simplified UI – Simplified UI makes Microsoft Security Essentials Beta easier to use.
• New and improved protection engine: The updated engine offers enhanced detection with cleanup capabilities and better performance.

This software, which is based on the company’s Forefront anti-virus engine for enterprise customers, has been receiving some criticism in the last year for dropping down the ranking in anti-virus tests.  This beta includes an improved scanning engine and Microsoft will be counting on this to put Security Essentials back in the top two or three for quarterly effectiveness surveys.

Microsoft Security Essentials is being built into Windows for the first time with Windows 8 and as such is bound to become a significant target itself.  If people aren’t to install other third-party anti-virus software in Windows 8 they need to be reassured that Security Essentials, currently badged as Windows Defender in Windows 8, is a quality product that will protect them.

This inclusion into Windows 8 will make Security Essentials a target for malware writers who will try and undermine its effectiveness.  The overall security features in Windows such as User Account Control will help minimise the surface for attack, but this must be high on Microsoft’s mind at the moment.

The download is 19.91Mb for both the versions (the 64-bit version is 11.04Mb and the 32-bit version is 8.87Mb) and runs on any version of Windows from XP with Service Pack 3 or later.  The version you install must match the edition of Windows you are running, 32-bit or 64-bit.

The public beta is available through the Microsoft Connect website at connect.microsoft.com and I should stress it is just a beta, so should not be considered bug free and it might include vulnerabilities that leave your system vulnerable to malware and viruses.

The new beta site can be found at http://beta.bbc.co.uk and displays an almost metro’esque sliding panel system with more traditional links in the bottom half of the page.  The whole web needs to move inexorably towards full and complete touch-friendliness in short order.  The amount of people using Tablets to navigate the web is already growing exponentially, and the forthcoming Windows 8 with it’s touch-centric interface will mean that by the end of 2012 touch-screens will be the norm on new PCs and laptops.

I myself am currently revamping my own website to make it completely touch-friendly and will be relaunching the new design within a week or two.  It’s noticeable however that the major players, including Amazon, eBay and YouTube haven’t yet caught on to the fact that traditional drop down menus, text links and crowded lists simply can’t be used effectively with touch.

This does raise interesting questions as to whether website UI components that we’ve come to know and love such as dynamic drop down menus and text lists can survive the transition to touch at all.  Any touch website has to be cross-compatible with every touch device, and many will work in their own unique way.  When it comes to touch on computers a proper standard is yet to emerge, if it ever will, about how swipe and touch gestures are interpreted.

The BBC haven’t got everything right when it comes to touch, but this is still a beta and with a website as utterly enormous as this, with literally terabytes of video, educational and article content sitting underneath it would be extremely difficult to create an interface simple enough and that included everything.

In part this is the biggest challenge that the touch web, and touch-screen apps as well, has to overcome.  For things to be truly finger-friendly you have to limit what is available and make clever use of screen real-estate, this is a challenge I had to content with as I too have ever growing libraries of video and other content on my own website.  For a small site like my own it’s easy to juggle things around, for the BBC and other major corporations however the challenge might simply be too big.

The new design is lovely, I think anyway and a radical departure from the current BBC homepage with it’s customisable and arrangeable tiles (circa Yahoo from some years ago).  The design will no doubt change slightly, indeed I have noticed changes being implemented within the last 24 hours.  It is great though to see this website, deliberately or otherwise being made finger-friendly.  Pressure now needs to be brought on the other major website owners to do the same, and do it quickly.  It is entirely possible however they they won’t even consider this until their visitor numbers begin to drop, and by then it might well be too late for them.

Bins is different as it combines the icons directly. How does it work? Taskbar icons are basically dragged on top of each other (more precisely, they are dragged on the icon first, a popup opens that displays all grouped icons and that’s where the new icon needs to be dropped). Bins indicates this with a small nub on top of the icon, and the fact that the original taskbar item is minified to make room for up to three other taskbar icons that have been merged with it.

The program can display up to four minified icons as one taskbar item. It is possible to merge more than four icons but four is the maximum number of icons that will be shown. All icons are accessible on mouse-over.

The original program can still be launched with a left-click on the new taskbar icon. All remaining programs are started by moving the mouse over the icon and selecting the appropriate program from the icon bar that opens.

Who benefits from Bins? Users with many taskbar items, especially with taskbars that are filled to the brim, could utilize Bins to free up room on the taskbar. Then there are users who like the idea of joining multiple pinned taskbar items into logical groups. Instead of having icons for Firefox, Opera, Internet Explorer and Chrome on the taskbar, one could merge them all together to access the individual web browsers from one icon on the taskbar. The same can be done for pinned websites for instance.

Icons that are part of a Bin can be dragged and dropped to the taskbar at anytime to ungroup them. Another option is to right-click an icon and select unpin from group. Bins is compatible with vertical and horizontal taskbars.

The settings can be used to enable or disable additional features. It is for instance possible to remove the indicator nubs that are placed above icons, move the AeroPeek display above the Bins’ popup or enable that clicking the taskbar icon cycles through all open programs that are grouped together.

Bins has a few limitations currently. The program has compatibility problems with jumplists and the developers recommend to leave all icons with jumplists that the user makes use of ungrouped. Taskbar Classic Users can use Bins, but some functionality, like the merged icon or the nubs on top of the icon are not available.

Verdict

Bins is a handy program for Windows 7 users, especially those with lots of taskbar items and those who like better manageability of their pinned icons. The implementation is superior to comparable solutions like jumplists.

The one thing that may keep users away from using Bins is the rather high memory usage. The Bins processes accumulated about 100 Megabytes of computer memory after installation.

Bins is currently in private beta. All users can request a beta invitation at the official program homepage.

Both Google and Mozilla are including HTML 5 support in their latest browsers too, but neither have managed to generate as much buzz and excitement around it as Microsoft have.  For now at least they own HTML5.

This is reflected in the popularity of the new beta version of Internet Explorer 9 which has now seen 6 million downloads since it was launched last month.

Microsoft are touting this success and in a blog post today said…

Net Applications’ browser usage share report released today shows IE9 Beta usage share at 0.25% for the two weeks after launch. The tech enthusiast community is observing a notable increase in IE9 activity:  LiveSide reported IE9 Beta users accounted for 25% of their reader base, IE9 overtook IE6 users at DownloadSquad, and Network World reported poll results showing 47% of people intend to try IE9 Beta.   Additionally, we saw tweets from the likes of Ed Bott who noticed, “Halfway through Day 1 of IE9 availability, 8% of my ZDNet visitors are using the beta. Steady increase all day, higher than IE7.”

Many people who are still using Windows XP on netbooks or older computers will not be able to use Microsoft’s latest browser as it relies heavily on graphics rendering technologies that were not introduced until the launch of Windows Vista, and that are used to power the Aero Glass desktop theme.  Mozilla have now said they will also be using these technologies to power their next browser too.

This could cause problems for the security of people using XP who Microsoft and others have been trying to wean off the buggy IE6 for years now.

Microsoft are saying that the number of downloads they have had for the IE9 beta is double that what was seen for the beta of IE8 during the same period, but it is a very exciting browser and IE8 debuted some new features that, frankly, nobody needed or used such as web slices.

Microsoft’s overall browser share grew 0.57%  in September but the final release of IE9 next year could see Microsoft gaining market share much more significantly in the future.

Live Sync is an excellent tool that I’ve come to rely on myself for automatically syncing files and folders across different PC, wherever they may be.  This could be in your home or between your home and your office, though not for corporate espionage ;)

Personally I use it to sync three PCs in my home.  Two desktop machines on which I need all my documents syncing and a media centre which I keep up to date with my photographs.

Microsoft say the new beta software will run on….

Supported Operating Systems: Apple Mac OS X; Apple Mac OS X v. 10.5 Leopard
Supported Operating System Versions: Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard, Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard Supported Processor Architectures: Intel-based Mac computers only

This means you can now synchronise your files and folders between any combination of PCs and Mac computers, which will be brilliant news for the many people who own both.

The official description of Live Sync describes it as…

In Windows Live Sync beta, you can:

• Keep your documents, photos, and other files up to date on all your computers, whether PC or Mac* – Select the folders you want to sync between computers. After they sync, your files are available on your computers even if you’re working offline at the moment. You can also sync folders on SkyDrive synced storage, so you can go to the Windows Live Devices website to access them on the web from any computer. To get started, see How do I sync a folder?

  * Windows Live Sync for Mac is available in English only.

• Connect to your computers remotely – Leave your PC online and run its programs or get to all its files from another computer. This is handy for “emergencies” when you might be at work and need a file from home. For more information about remote connections, see What are remote connections?
• Sync your program settings between computers – Keep your Windows Internet Explorer favorites and Microsoft Office settings up to date on all your PCs. For more information and to get started, see How do I sync program settings between computers?

This is an extremely useful program though I have found one bug in the beta.  If you want to sync a large folder, such as your music collection.  It will fill up your main drive with temporary files until it’s completely full.  Hopefully Microsoft will sort this out before the final release.

Windows Live Essentials is commonly described as being exactly that, essential, as it’s suite of add-on programs, including Mail, Photo Gallery and the blogging tool, Writer, are often considered not just programs that you really can’t be without, but also some of the finest programs of their type.

Mary Jo says…

the new beta will incorporate new icons, new features and many bug fixes. He didn’t specify any of those features or fixes. One fix I’m personally hoping for is to remedy whatever is kept Windows Live Messenger Wave 4 Beta 1 from working on my Windows 7 PC. I got it to work twice but then kept receiving messages telling me the service was unavailable. When I did log in, Messenger froze my PC. Microsoft officials didn’t have a suggested fix for me, so I’m back to the Wave 3 Live Messenger for now.

There’s no release date yet for the final version but it’s clear that Microsoft are storming ahead as it’s now been long since the first beta of the 2011 suite was released to the public.

The suite features the Ribbon interface first introduced with Office 2007 and later included in some Windows 7 applications such as the new WordPad.  The full suite includes the programs Messenger, Live mail, Writer, Photo Gallery, Movie maker, Live Sync (formerly Live Mesh), Family Safety and the Bing toolbar.  I would imaging that a future version of the suite would additionally include the free Microsoft anti-virus package Microsoft Security Essentials.

You can download the beta from this website.

The first thing you might notice about this new beta is the speed improvement, but you’ll also find additional browsing tools, such as basic form autofill, full page zoom, support for autoscroll, and a new way to drag tabs into side-by-side view.

That side-by-side view looks pretty good, although I don’t think it will be of any serious use unless you have a big monitor. I usually work on a 1650×1200 monitor, and I still find websites side-by-side distracting. That being said, this feature can be put to good use when researching. You can have same functionality in Firefox using Tab Splitter

Again, I have to say I like where Google is going. I still don’t believe Chrome is solid enough to use full time and I don’t like to use multiple similar applications, but it is getting there. What are those features which prevent you from using Chrome?

The pre-beta release adds several requested features to the web browser. Among the form auto-completion, full page zooms, a middle-click auto scrolling feature, user profiles and Greasemonkey support. The later still has to be activated by launching the Google Chrome browser with the -enable-user-scripts parameters. This is best done using a shortcut.

The release notes for this release contain all changes including interesting ones like the force SSL mode which will only load https sites in the browser. That’s a pretty clever method of getting rid of most phishing related dangers on the Internet.

Check out the instructions on how to download early release versions of the Google Chrome web browser.

I’m typing this is as I sit here waiting for the 134mb file to download so I can’t give you my opinions on the update yet but here are some views from nerds others who stayed up all night waiting for a software download for a scoop:

The surprising Live MovieMaker is sporting the Ribbon UI:

“Making its first appearance in the Windows Live suite, Movie Maker Beta is a solid new application lacking in basic features to make it actually useful.” – LiveSide

The vastly improved Live Mail:

We’ve been using Windows Live Mail to manage our LiveSide email for our individual accounts and for feedback and tips, and it already has been far superior to Outlook, even with the Connector, for managing multiple Hotmail accounts.  Now with better performance and a new calendar, we’re even happier” – LiveSide

The fantastic Live Writer:

Alot of what is in this new beta was seen in the Live Writer CTP back in June, like the SDK we have already discussed, and nothing is new from that point of view. Obviously the UI has changed to look more in line with the rest of the Wave 3 products” – LiveSide

The elegant Live Photo Gallery:

Photo Gallery had been a solid tool that does what it should do, and with additional features that helps you to better manage your photos and share them with the rest of the world… The software, although still in beta stages, is quite stable and functional. However, it is quite disappointing that it doesn’t have the consistent look and feel with the other Wave 3 application” – LiveSide

It also includes a new API which is going to be great if developers and online photo haring services begin taking advtanage of it:

brand new, simple framework that enables developers to create photo and video publishing plug-ins. The framework defines a set of interfaces that facilitate communication between Photo Gallery and the plug-in. The plug-in developer has creative control of the user interface of the plug-in and handles the details of communication with the 3rd party service” – LiveSide

The less advertising focused Live Messenger 9.0 has too much new stuff to describve in just a few sentences so download it yourself if you’re that interested!

looks awesome, despite reports about Microsoft backing away from a supposed WPF-based design” – Paul Thurrot

There are also updates to the Windows Live Toolbar and Family Safety software, but who cares about them?!

Haha, anyway enough of that. My download is finished so I’m closing Writer down to update and trying all of this for myself!

The terms ‘alpha’ and ‘beta’ have become muddied and confused over the years. Here is what these initial releases once meant:

Alpha Builds: Alpha releases where (and still are) largely internal builds used for evaluating the code. This stage of the product includes UI re-design, features being dropped in and out and lots of bug-fixing. Traditionally by the end of this stage the product would be code complete and usable.

Beta Releases: Either ‘closed’ or ‘open’. Beta builds were nearly feature complete and should be stable enough to be used. The point of a beta release wasn’t to discover any bugs in the software, but to discover bugs which the developers hadn’t yet discovered themselves through internal testing. Some of these are obscure and need wider testing.

Refresh Candidates: We see these less frequently these days, but a RC release is code complete. No new features will be introduced and all that’s left to do is find and fix the last few remaining bugs.

What these mean today:

These days I have no idea how exactly the development cycle works. Most developers seem to want to get usable software into users hands as soon as possible which is both good and bad.

ZDNet described this back in 2005 as:

Beta tests are getting longer, less restricted and more common, as companies tinker endlessly with their products in public.

The good is that many more bugs are picked up during the development cycle, user feedback can contribute to the project and it gives the software greater publicity then if they only tested internally.

The bad is that beta software can give a company or service a permanently muddied name. People expect beta software to be usable both performance and feature wise and anything which isn’t gets slammed. I have been guilty of this myself in the past.

When it comes to reviewing pre-release software, performance and stability should never be included as part of the review. Instead the focus should be on the possibility and promise of what the software is aiming to do.

I’ll try to remember this myself as I write and review products.

What you need to do is to follow me on Twitter so that I can invite you to Kwippy. Yes, that sounds pretty strange but from what I can tell the only real option to invite other users is to invite the Twitter followers. I’m also not sure if I can repeat that indefinitely or not.

So if you want an invite you need to follow me on Twitter. Use the following link to my profile. I’m not really sure about the differences between Twitter and Kwippy, if anyone is using both services feel free to post a comment to explain things.

The only valid reason for using any of them would be to receive tips from readers that way.

Update: I can also invite by email. Just discovered the option on my profile page. If you prefer that way let me know here in the comments. Below are two screenshots as requested by Dark Kosmos:

My public Kwippy profile for those who already have a Kwippy account and would like to follow me.

However I just discovered a very interesting blog today called UX.Unleaked which has been providing regular dialogues over the past month on the many builds and developments of the codenamed Windows Longhorn.

I have no idea what the credentials of the author are, but he has a lot of knowledge and insight into the history and development process of Microsoft. In fact he has a number of previously unseen builds on his blog and offers an in-depth commentary.

Longhorn was to contain every revolutionary technology Microsoft had envisioned for the next decade including the much spoken of WinFX. It’s been well documented that eventually Longhorn collapsed under it’s complexity and Vista was created instead using Server 2003 as a base almost completely from scratch in just 2 years.

It was a costly management mistake that has seen a dive in public perceptions and an ongoing struggle for Microsoft to hold a position of similar influence as it did at the beginning of the decade.

Although it was never completed Longhorn was not discarded. Many of the features and code inspired various Vista technologies and have been incorporated into Server 2008 and the upcoming Windows 7.

Looking through the various past builds of Longhorn can give an insight into both the development process and possibly what we can expect from future Microsoft operating systems.

Flock is built on top of Firefox and the team have been working hard over the last couple months to upgrade Flock to the new Firefox 3 base.

Flock 2.0 Beta 1 was released last night and is a substantial update to Flock 1.2. The official blog said the following:

The Flock 2 beta marks a very important watershed moment for us. And we have some amazing things planned for the remainder of the year, so please help us refine this product by running Flock 2 beta (one), and logging imperfections by using the ‘bug icon’ in the upper right of your browser.

Key changes are primarily to security, stability and performance and no key new features have been introduced. However improvements and enhancements are across the board and include some very welcome changes.

The biggest one for me has been to the People sidebar, previously in Flock 1.2 the number of supported accounts was causing the sidebar to fill up and for accounts to be lost past the border of the bar. Flock 2.0 changes this and makes it easier to see all the accounts at the same time, which you can see here:

Small changes yes, but necessary. It can become easy simply incorporating new features with every release but it needs constant review in order to assess how the existing features can be improved.

Bookmarks and tags are now located in a improved Favourites Library which improves bookmark management and organisation and is also significantly faster then the previous manager.

Performance has been considerably optimised, and Flock now has a larger system footprint, but improves memory management so having multiple tabs never gets out of control.

Aside from these you can also expect additional support for online applications Gmail and Zoho, a new download manager, the awesome bar (of which Flock already had a similar version), improved password manager and much faster page rendering.

To get an idea of what Flock page loading speed is like take a look at this test of Firefox technology compared to Opera, IE and Safari.

Flock is a worthwhile upgrade. Yes it’s buggy but not so much as to cause any major issues, get it here.

Have not tried it but I suppose it could be possible to grab the music right from the stream but it does not really make sense to do it that way instead of using other means like ftp.

The Reble client has a size of 13 Megabytes and users have to create an account from within the software before they can start adding their music folders and friends to it. The only other requirement is Java 6 or newer.

Friends are added by clicking on the friends button on top of the application. They are then listed in the left pane which also contains the playlists of the user. Playlists can be created from own songs and from songs provided by friends.

Streaming means that songs can only be listened to if the friends are currently online. If they go offline the music cannot continue streaming. The developers are working hard to create a Macintosh client and additional features like selling music which seems to be the revenue model they are heading for.

I personally do not like the Real Player that much and use the freeware Real Alternative to play the content of that player. There might be however some users that actually like the player and would like to tinker around with the beta version. According to Cybernetnews the beta was not supposed to come out until the end of June.

I can’t really say much about the changes that have been implemented. One feature is a video downloader that is capable of downloading videos from sites like Youtube directly and play them in Real Player afterwards. It will also ship with VCD / DVD burning options which are available depending on edition of Real Player that you use (have purchased). The basic free version seems to ship only with VCD burning options.

While it seems to add several new features I have not seen anything that can’t be achieved with other free tools. I can download the videos using several Firefox extensions or the Orbit Download Manager. Burning is of course more comfortable with real burning softwares such as Nero Burning Rom.

You can try the following two methods to join the irc server. The first would be to use a java client running on the site that gives out the beta keys. Just head over to worldofwar and the chat will try to auto connect to the server. The second method would be to either use the chatzilla add-on for firefox or a regular client for irc like mirc.

You will have to do the following if you choose the latter methods or the auto connect fails. Type in the following command and hit enter:

• /server irc.incgamers.com

Once connected you have to enter the channel where the contest takes place:

• /join #wow

Sometimes you get a message that your nickname is in use, to change your nickname type

• /nick anothername

The last command that makes you join the contest would be:

• /msg bc enter

Substitute with your email, with your wow account name and select either US or EU depending where you play the game.

You do not have to be present after you have done this few steps, just stay connected and hope that you are chosen by the channel bot.

The server seems to be flooding with people at the moment, I had troubles connecting, just try again if that happens to you. You will eventually make it. Remember the contest runs for 5 days.

Link to the contest announcement