Month: April 2007

Technorati tries again to imptove their support. This time they opened a forum.

Probably their plan is to drag more users to the forums and asking for help for their problems instead of contacting them directly.

Which is actually a good idea. Theit try to help me with a wrongly indexed post with my “Blogger in Beta” blog (this blog here just transformed to blogger in beta when it was still in beta) ended up in a “we don’t know” disaster and then just stopping to answer me.

Technorati tries hard to be nice but they are too much of a huge company and too few people behind to get the millions of user under control.

Technorati Tags: Technorati, support
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No more ICQ Support? Get active! Complain now!

Now the internet has some interesting places for Q&As for ICQ 6.

The ICQ Team released some offical Q&As at this place.

The most interesting facts:

“Why have you removed ICQ 5.1 features from ICQ 6?

We’ve been rewriting all of our features from scratch. Think of it as reinventing your instant messaging experience. Gone are the separate programs for chat, making a call, and using video. We’ve brought it all together into one package, where navigation is simple and organized

——–

Which features were improved?

Some of our features were improved to fit within our new layout, others were written from scratch.

New, improved and innovative features in ICQ 6 include:
Quick IM – letting the user send messages to contacts without opening a message window.
Easy message access – simple navigation between incoming messages.
Tabbed conversations – easy switch between ongoing conversations.
History – new design to search history of messages, files, calls etc.
Search – easy-to-use search through the Contact List, on the ICQ site, and on the web.
File sharing – quicker, safer and with auto accept of files from contacts plus option to close window while transferring files.
ICQ 6 now support up to 1000 friends in your Contact List.
Soundtrack – an all new soundtrack composed exclusively for ICQ by the progressive psy-trance duo Infected Mushroom.

——

Any new stuff planned in the future?

New updates are planned to be released througout the year. One of the aspects in future updates that we would like to focus on is user involvement, which is essential to the ICQ 6 experience. For example ICQ is looking into ways to enable users to create their own ICQ Xtraz features or languge packages. ICQ 6 updates are also planned to include new packages of sounds, emoticons, devils and tZers that can be easily downloaded and shared. Updates are also planned to include our own web 2.0 services, such as ICQ Pictures, ICQ Videos and a new ICQ Mail service.”

The most interesting feature is for sure the new limit of 1000 contacts in total! (remember: in past this limit was 600 contacts in total!)

They do not say whether the limit of 250 people per group has been exceeded, aswell!

The second intersting list is the list ofKnown problems and bugs (ICQ6), the list answers a lot of questions the official ICQ 6 Q&A doesn’t answer.
As I understood it, his forum is also a place for support. Which is a great idea considering that ICQ has No support anymore.

Furthermore, please notice my statement regarding the message history migration problems here.

Technorati Tags: ICQ, ICQ6
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No more ICQ Support? Get active! Complain now!

www.skype-watch.com has been put down by Jan Geirnaert because he received a letter by Skype lawyers asking him to do so. They gave him a slap on his hands for using “Skype” inside his blog’s URL. Just a question of time maybe till others will receive similar emails?

His blog is now accessable at http://www.webtown.typepad.com/.

A quote of the email he received can be read at this post.

A bit weird if you think about it noticing that other IM/voice companies often do not do it but like when people do -easy to find- promotion for their service. Maybe it was becaue he is always very critical and caring about topics like security.

AOL was once in a fight for www.icqplus.org, because it was an appplication that allowed ICQ skinning (a function which the ICQ Team wanted to implement themselves and finally did so in ICQ2003b).

(first source: here. second source and final decision: click). But that was 2001. Since end of 2003 till 2006, the domain www.icqplus.org leads to ICQ’s homepage.

Technorati Tags: Skype, blogs
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Next to other ICQ 6 skins I found, also Maxx Scharlatan started with this version. check it out.

Just one yet as of today, but probably he will also do more 🙂

Technorati Tags: ICQ, icq6, skin
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Opera has recently released an early Opera test build with integrate video into web pages, and native support for video in browsers. (info source and download), which means it allows homepages to display video elements right into the browser not requiring plugins.

Very Inportant notes about this build (source: Opera Fansite (German)):

Opera mustn’t automatically start from within the setup program but has to be started manually, only!

Technorati Tags: Opera, video
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No more ICQ Support? Get active! Complain now!

There are quite some people who experience ICQ 6 being slow, or Flash being slow and having breaks and whatnot, and Adobe even released a new version as written on the ITsVista Blog.

I am almost very sure that the problem is connected with the Windows Vista X64 drivers, RealTek released and which are also downloaded and installed from Microsoft Update once you run it on a fresh Windows Vista X64 installation.

By the history of this driver, you can follow definate changes in behaviour of your Vista installation once you run certain stuff playing sound.

Yet the RealTek drivers (on-board sound) seem to cause the following problems:

-MIDI files shudder, have breaks and do not play fluently in most situations

-Flash causes 100% CPU load in Opera, 88%-90% CPU load in IE7 (thanks to the new update of Flash as mentioned above)

-The driver/app component of the Logitech QuickCam software cause 100% CPU load when speaking into the micrphone while speaking in Skype (before the latest cam software, it was both ways) – Logitech is working on fixing this issue 100% since February (they have fixed it 50% so now I am waiting since 2 months for them to fix it when using webcam/mic in Skype, too).

I am trying since months to get a respond on this from RealTek so they would at least acknolegde, confirm, try to fix/improve the bug/problems in their driver or anything like that.
Years ago, I also tried to get in touch with them and they didn’t give a reply either.

I wonder whether any RealTek representative/worker will read this and do something about it!

Nvidia is also not better really. I reported the fact that their nForce4 chipset driver make my system incredibly slow!

After a couple of replies and me explaining the reasons, they simply closed my ticket.

Among the best support is really Logitech (just they take ages to fix the bugs I report/reported but at least they fix them!) and ATI USA.

ATI USA support is quick, helpful and they have fixed all the bugs I ever reported about their drivers in Windows Vista X64!

Technorati Tags: Windows, Vista, X64, Skype, Flash, ICQ6, midi, RealTek, support, Logitech Quickcam Orbit MP, 64bit
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Note: Posts about other wi-fi Skype phones: here

There is another Skype wi-fi phone (yes, it doesn’t stop!) that came to the market, and of course again the Skype Gadged blog reviews it (this time by Andrew Brennan).

The major differences between the others are:

“WIP320 also has the ability to update its software automatically, rather than having to connect it to a computer to install new firmware. This is particularly useful because with the recent release of Skype 3.2 Beta, Skype introduced Multi-Device Presence. This means that when you’re signed in to Skype on multiple devices, your most recent status is synched across the devices—hopefully Linksys will add this feature soon“

and

“Battery life was as expected – I could go 2-3 days between charges.”

The rest looks like being indentical to the other Skype wi-fi phones.

Full review (with photos!) at above’s link.

Technorati Tags: Skype, wi-fi, LinkSys, WIP320
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One of the most popular viewers – Irfan View now got a new update after a long while featuring official Windows Vista and Google Earth support (a button which shows the thing you have on the photo on pusing (if GPS data is available!) also some improvements for Windows Vsta have been made!

Technorati Tags: Vista, Google Earth, IrfanView
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Netgear released a firmware for T-Mobile (in USA only) login support for the SPH101.
As we remember the earlier firmware was not that useful, so looks like they have fixed it.

A quote from the site:

“Published: Mar 29, 2007.

Enhancements / New Features:
This new firmware provides the ability to login to T-Mobile hot spots within the continental United States using the Skype WiFi Phone (SPH101).
You can not log into any T-Mobile hot spots outside United States.
You should have already established an account with T-Mobile to be able to use this feature on SPH101. You cannot create a T-Mobile account using the SPH101.

How to use the T-Mobile features on SPH101?

After you have completed the upgrade procedure described below, follow: Instructions to login/logout of T-Mobile account on your SPH101.”

Hope they will also do it for other country’s T-Mobile Hotspots, too! 🙂

Note, it’s beta, so it still may have bugs!

Technorati Tags: Skype, firmware, T-Mobile, SPH101
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No more ICQ Support? Get active! Complain now!

And once again a quote from the Skype Dev Newsletter I just received a couple of minutes ago:

I suppose I should start by stating who I am what I do. My name is Morné van Dalen and I am a technical project manager in the Windows desktop team at Skype. And yes, you guessed it: For my sins Call Transfer is one of my projects and it is earmarked for the future release of Skype for Windows.
This feature has been one of the most requested/anticipated features for a long time, so it is important for us to make sure we get it right. We want to be able to offer a feature that not only matches functionality available on your landline or mobile, but be able to deliver an even better experience. That seems like a tall order, so how are we going to do it?
Functionality: between Call forwarding and Call transfer (read more)
Transfer methods: Direct transfer or Screening transfer (read more)
Which calls can be transferred?

*Skype to Skype (P2P)
*Skype to SkypeOut (P2P to SipOut)
*SkypeIn to Skype (SipIn to P2P)
*SkypeIn to SkypeOut (SipIn to SipOut)
*Skype to Group
*SkypeIn to Group

Will it be available to everyone? No. (read more)
Integrating with existing functionalityThere should be no problems integrating with existing functionality like call Forward and Voicemail. (read more)
Integrating with our developer partners/community
All the functionality is available via the Skype API. The restrictions on functionality available to SkypePro users still apply, as this “privilege” is verified on the back end, the library & the client UI. In fact the Skype to Skype capability has been in the API for a while now and people like Don Kennedy have already been playing with this feature.

read more…

Technorati Tags: Skype, Call Transfer
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