Bullfighter is a utility to help you find and eliminate jargon in your Microsoft Word and PowerPoint documents. It’s free and will help you write clearer documents without BS.
Who wants a Windows Live Messenger beta invite?
Recently, I joined the Windows Live Messenger (the successor of MSN Messenger) beta. Now I got 5 invites to hand out. If you want to test the new Messenger, let me know (I need an email address, and I think it better be your Microsoft Passport (Messenger) address).
Here are some screenshots, in case you’re not certain whether this is something you’d like.
Joel Spolsky on The Perils of JavaSchools
Another well-written article by Joel Spolsky, this time about The Perils of JavaSchools.
Taskbar++
Taskbar++ (translated page using Babel Fish) is a great utility, which I have been looking for for quite some time. It lets you rearrange the buttons in the Windows taskbar (assuming you’re not using Windows’ “Group similar taskbar buttons” feature).
I’ve always wanted this ability. It’s very comfortable for me to have the taskbar buttons in the same order all the time, but sometimes a window crashes and to get the buttons in the same order I have to close and re-open the windows in the order I like.
I guess Microsoft realized the need for this feature as, for all I know, it will be available “natively” in the next version of Windows, Windows Vista.
(via Lifehacker)
10 Intermediate Ways to Speed Up Windows XP
Following a very successful Simple Guide to tweaking Windows XP, now comes the Intermediate Guide. Use it on your own responsibility – some of the advice there I wouldn’t do.
(via Digg)
99 Useful Windows XP Run Commands
A website called FixMyXP.com, which seems like a pretty useful place to go when you have Windows XP problems, published 99 useful Run commands (to use in the Start->Run… Windows dialog box).
(via Download Squad)
20 Windows 1.0 Facts
Download Squad has a nice little piece with 20 cool geeky facts about Windows 1.0.
My favorite is “Windows 1.0 included multitasking capabilities, but did not allow windows to overlap.” I assume the marketing reasoning for the fact that windows cannot overlap in Windows 1.0 was that “windows cannot overlap in reality, either.”
Google Base Launched
Google Base was launched today. And when I say “launched” I, of course, mean that it is still in beta as per Google’s policy of releasing stuff that is not completely finished yet works well enough to use.
So much has already been written about Google Base that I will only say that this is a service, which lets you store items, so you can search in them later on. Basically, it’s a free database to store your public data (information and images). For example, a private person can use it to advertise the car he/she is selling, or a recipe for fruit cake.
The reason I’m posting about it is because I want to see how long it will take for someone to develop a Google Base plugin for WordPress (the software this blog runs on) so you can post and backup in Google Base.
On a side note, check out what a search for “all your base are belong to Google” brings up.
User Interface Oddities #1
In MSN Messenger 7.5, the options window is composed of many option categories. In the “File Transfer” category the following option exists:
“Automatically share backgrounds and accept shared backgrounds”
I think this option shouldn’t be in the “File Transfer” category, as the user is not supposed to understand that sharing backgrounds requires a file transfer. If anything, it should be in the “Messages” category, where the smiley options (accept smileys or not) are.
Here’s a screen capture (click to see a slightly bigger version)
The International Obfuscated C Code Contest
Some programmers actually like writing messed up code. That’s why there’s a contest for it, which is called The International Obfuscated C Code Contest. The winners of 2005’s contest have been announced, but the entries are not on the website yet.
However, you can see the winning entries of years before. One of my favorites is this code, which “takes a single command line argument, transcribes the argument text into Tolkien’s Elvish letters, and writes the transcription to standard output as a portable graymap (PGM) file.” Another one is this code, which “translates ASCII text into semaphore code.” (take a look at the link to see an example. It’s pretty cool.)