Like everyone has done these days and some (like me) are still doing: a random review of 2009 and a preview on 2010.

2009 (in order of magnitude)

• My first ever energy-efficient lamp broke (I must have been using it about 7 or 8 years). So these things can die!
• The basement scene with John Malkovich and the fitness owner in Burn After Reading was probably the best movie scene I ever saw.
• Together with Jan from JAMA Webcreations I built the most user friendly content management system in the world. Be sure to contact Jan for a demo and partner with us.
• I got hooked (if I wasn’t already) on a lot of Google applications: Analytics, Apps, AdWords, Mobile Gmail and Wave.

2010

• While I must admit it isn’t that hard as some people want it to be, I will stop testing projects in Internet Explorer 6. It doesn’t make that big of a difference since IE 7 often has the same quirks.
• I plan to move all hosting to Linode. Their service just can’t get better. E-mail accounts will probably be handled by Google Apps.
• I hope to (re)launch a considerable amount of the projects I work on (on a Linode of course).
• Maybe I should also try to get the Zend Framework certification but I also want to take the Google AdWords and Analytics exams.

Have fun in 2010!

After being forced to upgrade to the latest Windows Live Messenger version yesterday, I had to find a solution for the wlcomm.exe error reports I kept getting with this version.

I kept using the old (8.5?) version ever since a new Live Messenger version came out earlier this year because in these new versions I couldn’t sign in: a Windows error report would be generated with each sign in attempt.

The error report showed:

AppName: wlcomm.exe     AppVer: 14.0.8098.930     ModName: crypt32.dll
ModVer: 5.131.2600.5512     Offset: 0000ed05

Several possible solutions failed to fix it for me (and with a search for messenger + wlcomm.exe clearly for a lot of other people too).

While there seem to be different causes, if you have a NVIDIA chipset and use their driver package, the solution is to uninstall the NVidia ForceWare Network Access Manager and you are good to go!

Apparently it is some kind of firewall software for the NVIDIA chipset.

Looking for a new hobby? Enjoyed playing with Lego when you were little?

The Google Reader sign-in page can be addictive: the poplar blog posts that appear there are often funny and interesting. Like this one yesterday: Introducing the Illuminato X Machina.

Apparently Liquidware is a company/organisation that manufactures electronic components in an open source spirit. You have all kinds of components that you can plug together and that are programmable with the available C++ IDE for Windows or Mac.

Their latest product is the Illuminato X Machina from the blog post above, which is basically a small motherboard with a 72 MHz CPU, storage and interfaces and which can be attached to other cells to increase computation power.

A early funny (geeky) example of the possibilities:

You can order any component separately or in starter kits from the Liquidware shop. I believe Christmas is on it’s way!

After getting rid of my Windows Live address, I started to move my domain e-mail to Google Apps (GMail).

Before I moved to Google, my domain e-mail (strictlyphp.com/strictlyphp.be) was handled by my hosting company and I also maintained the e-mail address my ISP provided and the GMail account I checked once in a while.

This has certainly wasted many hours in the past.

Google Apps to the rescue: you create an account, add your domains, point your MX records to Google “et voila”. After everything is set up, you can access your e-mail just like a regular GMail account. This means that you can set up POP3 or IMAP access from within your preferred e-mail client and you can set up your account to fetch messages from external accounts (the ISP account and the regular GMail account I already had in my case).

I had only one difficulty actually: the choice between POP3 and IMAP. I first picked IMAP but I soon realised this was not the optimal choice if you process many messages and maintain many folders. Because it is a synchronization protocol, it is not optimal for offline usage and is of course slower than an offline storage (which is the case for POP3). POP3 on the other hand is not ideal for multiple clients or multiple locations, but you at least don’t need to be connected to search your mailbox.

Because I fetch mail from my laptop, desktop and mobile, the Google Apps mailbox is configured to keep a copy of each message which is unnecessary and can become rather large. There seems to be no solution though: a setup with the setting “leave a copy on server” while fetching e-mail doesn’t work with Google.

Like you may have noticed, you can also not merge your existing regular GMail account with Google Apps and I wouldn’t recommend deleting it either, since the Apps accounts aren’t fully compatible with all Google services which you currently access with your GMail account.

If you doubt about Google Apps in terms of e-mail, maybe the other applications can convince you: Calendar, Mobile, Contacts,… Possible downtime may be the only drawback, but the Premium account (50 USD per year per user) with a 99.9% uptime guarantee provides an answer.

In an attempt to simplify things, I’ve eliminated my Hotmail address (which I mainly used for Windows Live Messenger) and created a new Live account based on my Gmail address.

Since I have used the Hotmail address for more than 10 years, it’s a bit of an emotional moment. Bear with me.

But, back to business. If I didn’t add you already, feel free to add my new me: sam.hauglustaine(at)gmail.com.

In case you switch Windows Live Messenger accounts often: it’s possible to import and export contacts.

Up next: link my MX records to Gmail and use it as my single inbox.

Some may already do this, whether on paper, in Excel or online, but creating todo-lists is a great way to focus on what you have to do (first) and use your brain for other tasks than remembering your agenda.

Actually, it is no replacement for an agenda. Todo-lists are the small task lists you would also write on paper, like grocery lists. You can keep writing them on paper but since we’re in the digital era, there are great replacements. One of them is the free Ta-da Lists from 37 Signals. Another well-known is Remember The Milk. But even the “famous-all-round-application” Excel does the trick for many.

The key to improve your productivity is to write everything down you need to do. This makes sure you don’t need to remember each single thing and gives you the possibility to handle task by task.

Certainly when working on projects (of any kind), you will have a todo-list for each of them. In development environments a bug-tracker partially takes care of this, but in numerous situations you’ll need to use todo-lists separately.

The basic rule you have to live by in creating successful lists, is this: split up your todo’s in as many small tasks as possible. Then take care of them one by one at the appropriate time. When using one of the mentioned online tools, you can mark them completed and they will disappear from your list (which gives some kind of satisfaction).

And don’t feel awkward if you start to create lists of lists. This is perfectly normal and provides you with a global overview while still having small tasks at the bottom level.

I believe the use of todo-lists is part of the methodology “Getting Things Done” (or GTD). I have not really thoroughly read anything about GTD, but I assume it is a useful practice (for some more than others, like with everything).

Related post on Enso.

In case you didn’t already read about this on one of the Google blogs: Virgin and Google (amongst others) sponsor a one-person rowing trip around the South Pole.

Olly Hicks, the one that will row the dedicated boat from Tasmania to Tasmania (with a few months over-wintering in Argentina or the Sandwich Islands, depending on his progress), will face the harshest weather on earth in the Southern ocean.

The trip is as much tied to Google services as possible: a Blogger blog, Picasa image gallery, Google Maps route tracking,… And of course: a dedicated YouTube channel. The initial video gives a nice impression at how Olly will live for the next 18 to 22 months.

It will sure be a lonely trip!
(unless you ask him a question, that is)

A clearly commercial post from time to time doesn’t hurt anyone.

Especially if it is about such a controversial device:

Today, Amazon released the second version of their Kindle. It has many improvements, including a better integration of the previously annoying paging buttons.

While some people can’t see the advantages in a device like this, you must admit Amazon is trying its best to build a useful replacement for “dead-tree” books. I have never seen one, but the “E-Ink” paper-like screen technology makes the screen readable everywhere (even in bright sunlight) and consumes significantly less power than a regular LCD.

Sadly, the price is still outrageously high.

Once in a while you buy something you’re extremely happy with and this belongs certainly to that category.

The Logitech Wave keyboard.

Great feeling; ergonomic, but not to the extreme. Useful special keys but not too many. And it is wired (I don’t understand the use of wireless keyboards and/or mouses).
Note: an Azerty BE version is also available.

In the 8 months that I’m using it, the letter S is a bit worn off (hrmm… what would be the cause of that) but it has been worth every cent for me!

The biggest Belgian movie theater group, Kinepolis, has had a terrible history when it comes to their website. But today I was really amazed how they scr*wed it up this time.

I must admit, I usually don’t have time to watch movies so the site may have been brand new. I tried to have a look at which movies run in my local cinema and when you click on the listing of a theater, you get a page like this.

While one would expect this is a (X)HTML listing, their web company actually managed to develop this in Flash. Let’s assume they had a solid reason for this. Maybe they were on the edge of bankruptcy and Adobe promised them a bailout in return of a commitment to Flash applications. Must be something like that.

Anyway, I want to be forgiving and look past the use of Flash. But the worst thing is it could have gone by without my notice if it didn’t try to middle-click the entries in the list. Because it’s Flash, it causes a scroll cursor to display instead of opening the movie in a new tab!

I am probably not the only person that uses new tabs a lot to compare links. Even if there are only a limited number of people with a middle-click-autism like me, it’s a sad sad sad thing for Kinepolis.

Since I still don’t know which movie I want to see, let’s have a look at what their competitors have to offer.