Hi to all readers of this blog!

Wondering what I've been doing this past few days? Wondering why I suddenly seem stopped blogging?

Well, I've been busy on upgrading my blog. I've decided last month that its time to host my own blog. After sleepless nights of trying to make this work, its done! So I suggest you to update your URL's in your favorites (assuming that my blog is in your favorites list) or updating your RSS readers and point to the new location. Here it is!

http://webmag.mvps.org

I'll not be updating this (live spaces) blog site so please go to my new site. Don't worry, all of my past blog entries has already been ported in the new site. And also, I'll be needing your comments on this one to make my new site be one of your favorites! Remember that this is just my first release, I will be updating the site as time permits me. I've already poured much of my time for making this to work so I guess its time to release it.

To anyone who reads this, if you know me personally, a friend that keeps e-mailing me, someone who wants to know me better, someone who wants to ask some programming question, or simply a fool who collects email addresses then continue reading.

This entry is not intended for SPAMMERS. So if your one, which I doubt the refrain yourself from reading this (as if you really would).

My very first email account was in yahoo , it was named paul_freak17@yahoo.com and I've only used it for a couple of days (password forgetting person I am) and since then I've kept on changing my emails. But my longest used email address must be the last hotmail acount that I've created. And actually I'm still using it as a .Net Passport and Windows Live ID on some parts of teh Microsoft Site (specially on MSDN Forums).

Another thing to point out is that even though I have different email addresses I tend to use one as my primary address. Some of the mails that I've created on different providers were simply just to try and see what features these email providers has. I've made one in eudoramail, 3gig and some unknown email providers. I've even used my hotmail as my primary email add once but suddenly hated it for its lack of space. So that's when I shifted to GMail, google's email provider. Gmail offers a lot of features for a free email, I mean you can access it through POP3 and could do some mail forwarding. I've been using GMail for almost 2 years now and I'm quite satisfied with its performance.

But not until I've discovered mvps.org.

As you might have now known I was awarded the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional Award last January 2006. And as a recipient of this award gained me some good-stuffs from Microsoft. My new email is also one of the benefits that I have enjoyed, though this is not for microsoft. This mail server is being managed by some people who greatly values MVPs for their Technical contribution on the community. And with that, they dedicated some of their resources to provide a free email for the MVPs.

That's how I got my new email. I just informed the admin that I'm a current MVP and provide him my Microsoft Profile and MVP Lead. With that I'm now enjoying a full-featured email. Imagine 100mb storage (though you can have more), POP and IMAP access, mail forwarding, and other features that you would find in a paid email. Am I just lucky? Well, before I forgot here's my new email address:

pauldomag(DO NOT SPAM)@mvps.org [without the (DO NOT SPAM)]

Hey guys, don't forget to update your mailing/contact list. Although I'm currently forwarding all incoming emails from my gmail account to my new one. But I will be totally dropping my gmail account in the near furture, so I guess its best if you would use my new email add rather that the old gmail accoutn.. Thanks...

Being a Beta Tester of Vista could earn you benefits. Just like being able to be the first ones to have a copy of the new Vista RC1 (Release Candidate 1). Since Microsoft's release of the memory Hog Vista Beta 2 (the worst release to date), the software giant has been keen enough on hearing the community feedbacks. I myself had been able to use Vista Beta 2 and oh man it sucked! Being a little bit disgruntled on the upcomming OS, I haven't installed the later builds, but that was before the release of RC1. I am an avid fan of Paul Thurrot's winsupersite, and on one of his comments on the pre-RC1 release was very promissing. So I told myself to try RC1. And thats when I was shocked on the improvements that they had made.

One of the most complained about thing in Vista is being a Memory Hog. I mean you must virtually have a minimum of 1gb worth of RAM. But upon installing RC1 on my friend's (Vernon) laptop we were shocked to see the performance improve. We estimated it to be somewhat of a 40%-50% improvement. It's just like using Windows XP. And with that, my expectations on Windows Vista has just gotten much higher.

Upon using Vista, I have noticed major changes on the OS compared to XP (aside from the fact that it looks quite much cooler now). And I have made a simple list of what you may call "Cool Things" on the upcomming OS. Here it is (from 10-1):

 Save As Remember the old SaveAs dialog box? It has just been upgraded. It looks to be much more simplier. I really love the fact that they hide the Explorer part of the SaveAs dialog.

 Snipping Tool Have you ever wanted to capture a certain part of your screen? To do that, we must capture the whole screen (press printscreen) then paste it on MSPaint and cut-off the part that you want to capture. That's the old way. Now there's a tool to automate all of that. You could virtually select the area that you want to capture (by using your mouse) and it automatically generates the image.

Windows Mail Its an upgrade to Outlook Express.

Ink Ball An addition to the new games available in Vista.

Chess The game that I have been waiting for. And its in 3d!

Meeting Space Now this is an applicaiton that's gonna be useful in offices. This is an applicaiton that gives you the tools of having a virtual meeting. Its seems that this is the upgrade to NetMeeting.

Network Projector Vista now enables you to connect to a nProjector attached to your network and project whatever you want to. So there's no unplugging for the Projector. Just attach it to a computer in your network then voila!

Side Bar This is the most famous new feature here in my list. I was having second thoughts on placing it in here since many people already knew about this. But the hell, I really love this!

Media Center This is the application that would definitely WOW you. It manages all of your multimedia files. You can then view you multimedia here. The UI is just superb. Although its quite slow on this release, I really must say that Microsoft has gotta fix this.

Minesweeper it tops my list of favs since I am an addict when it comes to sweeping those mines. My best time in WinXP for this is (Expert Level) 73 sec. Now in Vista it has its needed facelift. But the game essence is still the same.

With this release from Microsoft comes hope that this OS would indeed make its time to be released this upcomming January. It holds our dreams of a very good  Operating System. And now I'm a believer.

Blogging is now a huge trend among personal usage. It serves as our own domain to express our own views or just make it our own digital diary.

Microsoft is quite aware of this, thus the creation of, for me the ultimate blog editor, Microsoft Live Writer. I know blog editting has been a pain in the ass for some of us bloggers. This is because of the poor word-editting that these blog sites has been offering us. But now, this problem is history.

Microsoft Live Writer is a one of the many upcomming products from Windows Live. It's main purpose is to provide bloggers of an excellent blogging tool. Here's screen shot:

As you can see the environment is just like Microsoft Word. You have the basic tools, you can insert pictures, tables and links. But the best part of this is that the environment that you are typing into is being mimicked by Live Writer. So that it looks like a preview of your blog before you publish it. And speaking of publishing, this tool automatically publishes your document to your blog! I know that some of you might think that this product only supports Live Spaces coz its a Microsoft product, hell no! It supports a wide range of blog providers. Here's a complete list (the list might grow since this is still in its beta stage):

1. Live Spaces (Obviously)
2. Wordpress
3. Wordpress (Custom Installation)
4. Type Pad
5. Blogger
6. Live Journal
7. Movable Type
8. Radio Userland
9. Community Server
10. dasBlog
11. Metaweblog API
12. Movable Type API

So, if your blog's on the list, grab Live Writer now! Its Free! Just a note, its still on its Beta Stage. But if you can't wait for the release you can download it here.

By the way, I'm writting this entry using Live Writer.

The hackers was traced into Pakistan. Although the entire server of his hosting server was hacked, only the web page of Mitnick was modified which means that its a personal attack to Kevin Mitnick himself (A challenge maybe?). Kevin Mitnick has been one of my inspirations on why I took up Computer Science in my college days. And I really hope that he could have his revenge on those guys! But that means another years in prison eh?!

So what was Mitnick's response to the attacks?

"When I was a hacker, I never stooped to defacing sites because that was more like vandalism; that wasn't any fun. It is more about getting in and being stealth and looking around and exploring."

Straight from the true hacker!