Users of the Microsoft Windows Genuine Advantage feature, just about all XP and Vista users, could have come face to face with a lovely pirate message from MS over the weekend. A major outage on the servers that handle the WGA process meant that users of XP and Vista may have been unable to validate their legal copy of the OS if they attempted an upgrade or installation. The ‘invalidated’ PCs would not have shut down but the OS would have had its functionality reduced, features such as Aero would have been turned off. Phil Liu, the WGA Program Manager, selflessly stated on the MS forums that

I will personally resolve this issue before I go to sleep - whether or not it is Tuesday I sleep. My goal is to identify a FIX for this issue - afterwards get you all what you are looking for, an explanation and cause.

Fortunately for Phil the issue was fixed on Saturday and according to the WGA blog

We’ve been receiving reports on our forum and through customer service starting last night that Windows Vista validations have been failing on genuine systems. It looks now as though the issue has been resolved and validations are being processed successfully.

If there’s anyone out there who had an issue with validating their Windows OS please share your experience here at Our Picks.

I noticed an article over at PocketLint stating that Mozilla has admitted only 25% of users who download Firefox have become ‘active’ users. As Firefox is one of my favourite pieces of software - however I do use IE from time to time before the Microsoft zealots get started - I decided to try and dig deeper to find out a more info on this intriguing stat. Searching led me to Jack Schofield’s blog on the Guradian’s website, where he states

Firefox’s claims to success have been supported by clocking up the number of downloads, encouraged by payments from Google, but it turns out that 75% of the people making those downloads don’t “continue to use it actively.”

However I was still unable to find any reference to a quote from Mozilla themselves in his post or any reference to this stat on Mozilla’s website. This annoyance aside - Schofield does point out quite correctly that 25% take-up from downloaded free software is a very good result - I was still bemused by the validity of this stat, so I decided to make up research some of my own.

Whilst I have no way of providing you with any stats regarding Firefox download usage, I did manage to find some usage stats over at counter.com They showed, based on their clients data, Firefox usage at 13% for July 2007 compared to 10% for the same month last year. Whilst IE, both 6.x and 7.x flavours combined, dropped from 82% last year to 71% currently. Make what you want of the IE drop but Firefox increased its browser share by 30% over the last year, and that’s not a bad stat in anyone’s spreadsheet analysis.

So what does all this mean? Perhaps there’s a bit of Firefox bashing going on in the blogosphere, trying to make it all sound doom and gloom when it comes out that 75% of their downloads end up in the Recycle Bin? It seems a bit strange to highlight this (non-existent?) stat when all appears well with usage overall. What do you guys think?

Looks like Bill Gates has jumped aboard the Google-bashing train once more. In an interview with the NY Times Gates stated that Microsoft were not concerned by any attempt by Google to penetrate the mobile phone software market. Microsoft currently has 10% of the market and Google have announced to be preparing to enter this arena. However rather than just say that he wasn’t worried, Gates launched a wee pre-emptive strike about the guys at the plex

They’ve introduced about 30 different products; they have one profit-making product. So you’re now making a prediction without ever seeing the software that they’re going to have the world’s best phone and it’s going to be free?”

I’m not sure to which products Bill is referring but even if they have 30 products which suck (financially speaking of course) obviously the big one is providing them with a healthy enough income to report a billion dollar profit in the first quarter this year. I just think this is Bill trying to be bullish about Google so that the MS faithful doesn’t lose, err, faith.

If Google do indeed enter into the mobile software market then I’m sure, even if their products are unprofitable, those products will be of Google’s usual quality and hopefully pricing structure! ;)

Source: Reuters

We all know there are a few issues with Windows Vista, it runs oh so slowly on a ’standard’ PC, the startup time and it, well, just makes your PC look like a Mac ;)

Fear not, the guys at SuperTalent have come up with the Exelerator, a ReadyBoost drive for your Vista disabled enabled PC. Nothing new, eh? Well the Exelerator sits inside your PC. Yep, no nasty dangly bits hanging from your USB ports, this sucker hides away inside your PC case.

Whilst there it makes use of the Vista ReadyBoost feature which speeds up Vista by using the drive to cache some data rather than the sluggish hard drive.

Now Tom’s Hardware goes into greater detail on how ReadyBoost all hangs together and indeed on how to set up a USB 2.0 ReadyBoost capable drive on your PC. Over at Legit Reviews they too have a great article specifically on how to set up the Execlerator in your PC. However they conclude that unless you have a spare ReadyBoost capable drive lying around then you are better off installing more memory on your PC to get the best RAM bang for your buck.

For the record my USB 2.0 1 GB thumb drive is NOT ReadyBoost capable, which I find quite ironic as I bought it as part of a package when I bought my Vista-shackled laptop. Go figure.

Now we’re talking, this is about the most useful thing I’ve seen the iPhone do since its release. Nate True over at cre.ations.net has modified the open source software VNC so that all the Apple fans out there can access their Windows desktop via their snazzy new iPhone.

From his write-up of the VNC mod it sounds as if you are presented with a list of open windows on your desktop and by selecting one of them it is displayed on your iPhone. It also seems to use a funky text box input system for keyboard input as your desktop is viewed as a series of jpeg images and therefore no direct input is possible.

I do wonder how secure your VNC password would be, especially as you’d probably be using your iPhone to do this over someone else’s Wi-Fi network. But the theory is good and it sounds as if Nate has done a great job with this mod for VNC judging by comments on other blogs. Well done mate.

Source: The Boy Genius

Only three days after its release on Windows, Apple have released a new beta 3.0.1 of their browser Safari for Windows XP and Vista. A number of security issues were found with the browser and these have now been patched. These issues included a “command injection vulnerability”, unexpected termination of the browser and a Javascript exploit.

Kudos to Apple for getting a patch out there so quickly but that won’t remove the egg from Steve Jobs’ face that came with the announcement of the security vulnerabilities within 24 hours of his launch of the browser.

There’s also a report over at I4U that the browser doesn’t render Korean language sites correctly.

Source: Slash Gear

In Steve Jobs’ keynote speech at the WWDC, he announced that there is a free beta version of Safari available for XP and Vista at Apple downloads. Safari commands a decent 5% of the browser market share and a Windows version will significantly increase this figure.

Not one to complain at being able to play with some free software, I downloaded the beta and had a look around. There’s nothing ground breaking, but I guess Mac users knew that already, the standard multi-tabbed browsing, a funky snapback facility and the usual bookmark, history functionality we’ve all come to expect from a half-decent browser.

However, the main push of Safari for Windows is based on its speed. According to the Safari download page it out strips the other three main browsers in HTML & JS performance and on launch speed. I’m not too sure if that’ll play a major factor in whether the average Windows internet user picks Safari as their browser of choice but more competition has certainly got to be good.

As a web developer I wouldn’t use it that much as I’ve got too many plugins hooked up to Firefox but obviously testing my sites in Safari has now become a whole lot easier!