MSN Messenger 7.0 is coming

Neowin.net public a lot of MM 7.0 screenshot, I think the beta release is coming soon too.
New features:

Winks: Winks allow you to send kisses, hearts and all sorts of silly cartoons to your contacts.

Nudge: Nudge allows you to send a "shake" to your contact. Both your own and your contacts MSN Messenger window will shake, much like how Internet Explorer windows shake using the correct javascript.

Download packs: Download packs will allow users to grab winks/emoticons/display pictures and backgrounds straight from MSN. As these currently don't work we were unable to test them.

Games: Chess Club, Bankshot Billiards Club are included if you're a Instant Games Clubhouse member. Standard Checkers/Solitaire Showdown/Bejeweled/Minesweeper Flags and Tic Tac Toe are still included.

Activities: Activities allow you to share files, calendars, photos and perform tasks such as remote assistance.

Deluxe Display Pictures: Although these are unavailable it seems like MSN are going to supply animated display pictures.

ACDSee 7.0 is OUT

The most popular photo viewer software, oh no, it's called photo manager now, ACDSee have released the new version 7.0 to public, I never use it, so don't expect for more news from here, just go to the offical website.
In fact, I most prefer the very early version of ACDSee such as 2.44 or 3.0, it's the real picture viewer, but now, you know what? I even cann't recognize this huge monster software any more.

What's New in ACDSee™ 7
• Acquire, organize, view and manage your images faster than ever—way faster.
• Save time using more batch image functions than you'll find in any other product.
• Share your photos instantly using SendPix, ACD's free online image sharing, now with mobile phone support.
• Compare similar images. Use ACDSee 7's side-by-side Image Compare feature to pick out the best shot.
• Use the Curves tool to correct exposure.
• Work effortlessly with multiple high-resolution images at the same time.
• Examine your images in their original RAW formats.
ACDSee supports Canon, Nikon, Fujifilm, Olympus, Kodak, Minolta and other major camera brands.
• Use the Create Disc Wizard to simultaneously burn image files to CD/DVD and create thumbnails of your offline CD.
• Publish your images to TiVo®'s Digital Photo Viewer and bring the digital experience into the living room.
• Expand your organizing and editing capabilities with more tools in the improved Image Basket.
• View all of your photos at once in the Image Well.
• View your folder contents in the Thumbs + Details mode, and specify which information to display.
• Optimize your workflow using the Context Sensitive Toolbar.
• Create PDF and Flash slide shows.
• Manage your images even better in ACDSee 7's improved Organize pane.
• Take advantage of ACDSee's support for MPV and HighMAT.
• View, browse and convert images in the JPEG 2000 format.
• Copy database information to and from your EXIF data.
• Maintain your collection with enhanced database tools.

Whatever, the Free Trial download is here:
ACDSee™ 7 PowerPack
ACDSee™ 7

The Mid-Autumn Festival

The Mid-Autumn Festival, which is also "Zhong Qiu Jie" in Chinese way, is celebrated on the 15th Aug of the lunar calendar. It is a time for family members and loved ones to share and enjoy the full moon, harmony, luck and Of couse the moon cakes, it can never be missed. You could just image that the whole familiy members all sit around the table eating the moon cakes while watching the full moon, old people often tell the ancient legends to the young kids, and to Chinese young peoples, it's a sweet day, they usually spend the day together with their loved one.

The text below is cited from other place, from which you can learn how does this traditional festival developed from the very beginning:

"Zhong Qiu Jie" probably began as a harvest festival. The festival was later given a mythological flavour with legends of Chang-E, the beautiful lady in the moon.

According to Chinese mythology, the earth once had 10 suns circling over it. One day, all 10 suns appeared together, scorching the earth with their heat. The earth was saved when a strong archer, Hou Yi, succeeded in shooting down 9 of the suns. Yi stole the elixir of life to save the people from his tyrannical rule, but his wife, Chang-E drank it. Thus started the legend of the lady in the moon to whom young Chinese girls would pray at the Mid-Autumn Festival.

In the 14th century, the eating of mooncakes at "Zhong Qiu Jie" was given a new significance. The story goes that when Zhu Yuan Zhang was plotting to overthrow the Yuan Dynasty started by the Mongolians, the rebels hid their messages in the Mid-Autumn mooncakes. Zhong Qiu Jie is hence also a commemoration of the overthrow of the Mongolians by the Han people.

During the Yuan Dynasty (A.D.1206-1368) China was ruled by the Mongolian people. Leaders from the preceding Sung Dynasty (A.D.960-1279) were unhappy at submitting to foreign rule, and set how to coordinate the rebellion without it being discovered. The leaders of the rebellion, knowing that the Moon Festival was drawing near, ordered the making of special cakes. Packed into each mooncake was a message with the outline of the attack. On the night of the Moon Festival, the rebels successfully attacked and overthrew the government. What followed was the establishment of the Ming Dynasty (A.D. 1368-1644). Today, moon cakes are eaten to commemorate this event.

The biggest game in the world, I think

《Myst IV: Revelation》, a new continus of the most famous classic adventure game Myst, could be the biggest game I have ever saw before, which release at double DVD9 capacity and need 12GB hard disk spaces to apply installation (to avoid frequent DVD-Drive reading). Aooooooooo........., I hate this way, I can never have 12Gb free space in my HD, which even bigger than any one of my HD partitions. So what should I do? To rush to e-marketplace and catch a new 160Gb HD in hand or To put this game in my cabinet and wait for a while, that's a really big question. ^_^

Notification from Adobe

when I was using Adobe Reader 7.0 beta today, I got this notification suddenly, and it said that this pre-release software contains confidential information of Adobe Incorporated, Wow...... It's so cool and what kind of secret could be hidden behind this leaked version software? Just kidding, :)

New changes in Gmail

There is a few different of Gmail today, I found the Spam folder, just same as the Inbox folder, have a count for the number of unread junk mails now, it's more convinient, and for us, it's no need to check the Spam everyday for the possibility of missing some emails that may be important.

For no reasons, I am most expecting to every new updates of Gmail now.

:-]

Google Chinese news have double standard?

Google News Chinese editon have double standard which depending on your locations, you may get totally different result by searching same keyword when you are at Chinese Mainland or overseas, It seems like Google news sources didn't include some forbidened website (such as DaJiYuan) if the search ones are inside China.
Let's begin our search at http://news.google.com/nwshp?hl=zh-CN&gl=cn, I simulated the oversea environment by using a Canada proxy, and my search keyword was "蒋品超" which is name of a Chinese poet who lives in USA. In this case, I got 4 search result (see figure.1), then I opened Google News without proxy and searched for the same keyword "蒋品超", what happened? Zero result returned (see figure.2), so it's all clear now, Google truly distinguish its costomers to different groups with different search reslult by their location.

Figure.1 Searching outside China	Figure.2 Searching inside China

* Note * Do not search the high profile keywords like Falun Gong or "religious freedom" if you are inside China, they will trigger the Great Firewall in China and disconnect you from Google or the proxy you are using.
If you triggered the keyword blocking, you can try to find another proxy or change your IP by redialing to Internet.

WindowsXP SP2 CD

After waiting for almost 3 weeks, finally I received the free Windows XP Service Pack 2 CD (English Edition), which was sent from Frankfurt German. But the funny thing is that this compact disk is made in Singapore, wow... Microsoft, totally a transnational corporation. :-)
I found three component in this disk, "Microsoft .net framework 1.1" (I don't know why Ms coudn't integrate this one into WinXP SP2 itself), "Symbol files for Microsoft Windows XP with Service Pack 2" and of course, our Star, "XPSP2.EXE".

Adobe Reader 7.0 beta

I cann't find any detail at the offical website, but the new beta release of Adobe Reader is really here.

Preparing to setup (see Beta)

After installation finished, I didn't see any beta mentioned in the version splash window, which only show us that the version of this release is 7.9.0.

　　　　　

　　　　　

The text below is quoted from the help files:

New features overview

As with earlier versions of Adobe Reader, the free Adobe Reader 7.0 software allows you to open and read any PDF document. But Adobe Reader 7.0 also offers significant new features and enhancements that greatly extend the flexibility of Adobe PDF documents. If the creator of an Adobe PDF document has assigned it additional usage rights, more tools and features are available to users of Adobe Reader, allowing you to fill in forms, sign documents, participate in email and browser-based document reviews, and attach PDF and non-PDF files to a PDF document. If you open a document that has these additional usage rights, a yellow Document Messenger Bar displays the additional tools required to work with the document.

Language support has been extended, a new autosave feature guards against losing your work in case of a power failure, and new accessibility features make Reader even easier to use for motor- and vision-impaired users. Depending on your preference settings, Adobe Reader can automatically download updates in the background, even while other web transactions are occurring.

After tring a short while, I found the new version really improved the speed of file open, and also Adobe add a new feature that looks same as Microsoft Smart Tag:

F1. Select some text

F2. The tag shows when cursor moved on the selected text

F3. See the menu when mouse on the tag

Download Links
* Note * It's a beta version and for test purpose only.

Another chance of Blogger.com?

It seems like the Government have dismissed the blockade to the blogspot.com, now everyone in mainland China could see my blog without overseas proxy or special softwares, I don't know the actual reasons, so I will keep watching it.

P.S. I can not open the www.blogger.com at all in normal case now, did they Great Firewall just change their policy to block www.blogger.com instead of blogspot.com?

*Update* they blocked the blogspot.com again, :-<, Bad Great Firewall, I believe that they must have some mistake yesterday, how ridiculous! HuoHuo......

Three Laws of Robotics

• A robot may not harm a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
• A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
• A robot must protect its own existence, as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

-- Isaac Asimov

Three Laws of Robotics, aha, actually it's very hard for me to have the future vision of the relationship between Robot and Human being, but so many Hollywood motion pictures give me a lot of virtual experiment of the future, the future that the Human and the Robot fight with each other instead of live together in peace, such as "The matrix", "I, Robot" and "Terminate episode 1, 2 and 3" etc.

I am wondering that is there any chance for Robot to have their own intelligent? We can just pretend that they have, so in Robot Social, do they use any kind of currency? Even more, do they have murder, kidnapper or something else? If they have, then what's the different with Human Social?

Oh my God, I must be mad now! So leave me alone, LOL.
:c)

Google turns 6 today!

Happy Birthday, Google.

Microsoft Calculator Plus v1.0

Conversion interface

This application includes mathematical and conversion functions.

Overview
This application allows you to complete many different types of conversions; it also includes all the mathematical functions offered in Microsoft Calculator.

Important Notes:

1. This application is a free product and is not supported by Microsoft PSS.
2. Use of the Microsoft Calculator Plus ("Calculator") is completely voluntary on the part of the end user. The information, calculations and/or conversion estimations generated from use of the Calculator are for informational purposes only and Microsoft makes no warranties, express or implied, with respect to the Calculator or the accuracy of any information, calculations or conversion estimations generated as a result of its usage.
3. Exchange rates are downloaded from the European Central Bank.
4. The application is optimized for Microsoft Windows XP or above.

Download

Fuck Chinese Government.

中国政府官员 = 猪
Chinese government official = Pig

Some free Gmail invite

Sponsored Links at bottom

Google must be crazy now, so many Gmail invites are flowed out in recently days, 6 invites give out, another 6 come again, a guy even said on a forum that he has 100 eggs, what's going on? Someone say it's a signal that the publication day of gmail would be came out soon, and I don't think so, Google still have so many bugs in their list, which the important one, Multi-language support, doesn't solved at all, I do believe that Google just want to further spread out current Gmail users count because they are still tring hard to find a best way to let the users pay more attention to the Sponsored Links Ads, it's a obviously proof that some account's Sponsored Links moved to the bottom of the pages as the image shows to us, It's better, isn't it?

The multi-language interface support, the multi-language mail search, the Sponsored Links multi-language recognizer etc. They just have a long way to go.

P.S. Those are some invites links, first come, first serve. ^_^
http://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-106ebc2f9f-8dd08ef6ba-1f96a46d4c
https://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-942c014d3-96fcbd82e3-2fd4a14bfd
https://gmail.google.com/gmail/a-f8421fb426-a4b8f50502-3caa8c7625

WMP10 on Windows Server 2003

Microsoft released the WMP10 yesterday, this version is for Windows XP only so it means that you can not install it on Windows Server 2003, although the rest version of WMP will be came out soon, we still want to test it first, is there anyway to do it? the answer is yes, you just follow those steps below and enjoy the WMP10 on your Windows Server 2003.

1. Download the WMP10 at Microsoft website (filename would be "mp10setup.exe").
2. Click "Start" and select "Run..." from start menu, type "sfc /purgecache" in the "Run" window and click "Ok" (clear your system backup files for prevent Windows auto-recovery replace your old WMP9 files back).
3. Extrat the file you downloaded at step 1 to a folder by WinRar.
4. Download this compress package. Extract it and copy all the files in this package to the folder created by step 3, replace the existing files.
5. Go to the folder you just created on step 3, Select all the INF files except "wmp10.inf", Click right mouse button on the selected files and click "Install", if any windows popup, just select "Cancel", if ask for restart, just click "No".
6. Click right mouse button on the file "wmp10.inf" and select "Install".
7. Import the "WinS2k3.reg" into your registry.
8. Run "setup_wm.exe".
9. Delete those 29 files at your system disk root folder (if your Windows Server 2003 was installed on Disk C, those files will be at C:\):
   01_Music_auto_rated_at_5_stars.wpl
   02_Music_added_in_the_last_month.wpl
   03_Music_rated_at_4_or_5_stars.wpl
   04_Music_played_in_the_last_month.wpl
   05_Pictures_taken_in_the_last_month.wpl
   06_Pictures_rated_4_or_5_stars.wpl
   07_TV_recorded_in_the_last_week.wpl
   08_Video_rated_at_4_or_5_stars.wpl
   09_Music_played_the_most.wpl
   10_All_Music.wpl
   11_All_Pictures.wpl
   12_All_Video.wpl
   Favorites -- 4 and 5 star rated.wpl
   Favorites -- Have not heard recently.wpl
   Favorites -- Listen to late at night.wpl
   Favorites -- Listen to on Weekdays.wpl
   Favorites -- Listen to on Weekends.wpl
   Favorites -- One Audio CD worth.wpl
   Favorites -- One Data CD-R worth.wpl
   Fresh tracks -- yet to be played.wpl
   Fresh tracks -- yet to be rated.wpl
   Fresh tracks.wpl
   High bitrate media in my library.wpl
   Low bitrate media in my library.wpl
   Music tracks I dislike.wpl
   Music tracks I have not rated.wpl
   Music tracks with content protection.wpl
   Revert.wmz
   Compact.wmz
10. Restart your computer (recommended but not necessary).

*IMPORTANT*, It's works properly to me, but I can not promise that it will perform perfect to you too! And those operations have some dangerous threat to your system, which may cause of serious unstable things, if you are not sure of that, please don't do it alone!

Windows Media Player 10

WMP 10


MSN Music Service

An unconfirmed news show that the new version of Microsoft's free media player is out with the final build 10.00.00.3646 now, it looks like this final build has leaked of the Redmond before the offical release, and I will post it out when new report is confirmed.
From current information, we know that a high quality MP3 encoder will be included into the new version of WMP 10, which is something microsoft never done before, and also, the MSN Music will be launched live with WMP 10, we could precise expect that the online music market will get into intense contention in the near future, at least, it's a good news for customers.
This version of WMP10 can only be applied to WinXP now, so I cann't install it on my computer for further test, I believe that Microsoft will release the version for rest of windows system soon.

*Update* It's came out!
The following news comes from Neowin.net

Not long after we reported it leaked, Microsoft officially released Windows Media Player 10, which sports many new features and a new user interface.
This release hosts a new User Interface that is cleaner and lesser cluttered, but the basic layout appears to be mostly the same. The player comes with a default skin not based on any previous versions of Media Player. The skin, which is mostly of a glassy-blue gradient has received many negative reactions as Microsoft seems to be 'going blue' on most of their recently released applications.
As we reported earlier, Microsoft has shipped the player which integrates to online music stores. Not only is MSN's Music store available, but also a variety of their stores include Napster, Wal-Mart and Music-Match. This is Microsoft's first step in going online for music, after Apple's footsteps with iTunes.
Microsoft also promises easy Syncing procedures with many portable devices, and they have announced future compatibility with soon to come Windows Mobile–based Portable Media Centers, which includes Creative's next generation of audio/video player, the Nomad 'Zen'.
Folder Synchronization is featured in this release, which basically monitors your choice of folders which contain your media for changes in files, which will automatically reflect to the built-in playlist. Also, as we mentioned, possibly one of the most spectacular feature of this new version is the ability to encode music into high bitrate mp3 format.

I am very happy today!

Hehe, finally I get rid of the shadows of her, so as the titles, the unsatisfied feelings for past three years are all going out now, I found that it's extremely same to talk to her and talk to other peoples, I can post my real side to her without the love feelings, it's part of reason, I think.

Anyway, we are still friends, that's the most important thing!