It's always nice to see software vendors supporting XP x64.

Microsoft today released the Beta 2 build of IE 7 (the last released build was the Beta 2 Preview, in case you didn't know). This is the first build that installs on XP x64 and includes a native 64-bit version. Of course, as always, a 32-bit version is available for those of you using 32-bit versions of XP as well.

I've had the IE 7 beta builds installed on my laptop ever since Beta 1 was privately released on Connect. Now I can finally install this on my desktop and see how it performs. Microsoft seems pretty confident about the quality of this build; so much so that free phone support is being offered to users in North America, Germany and Japan.

For almost two years now, I've been trying to set up a seamless way to access my email, contact list and calendar wherever I go. When I built my desktop machine towards the end of last year, having such a system that would keep everything synchronized became all the more necessary. I tried a couple of approaches involving Gmail forwarding, Remote Desktop, and some other tools for a few months, but each "solution" was a kludge and simply wasn't cutting it.

Then about a month ago, I decided I was tired of all the hacks and makeshift solutions, so I took the plunge and set up an Exchange server. Now I can really see how Outlook and Exchange were made for each other. And Outlook Web Access, as I might have mentioned several times before, is a killer product. I can send emails and add/modify calendar events on any computer with a browser and internet connection, and the changes get propagated immediately to Outlook on both my laptop and desktop via Exchange.

As an added bonus, I also came to realize that the Intelligent Message Filter (IMF) in Exchange 2003 SP2 is a gem for server-side junk mail filtering. It was a breeze to set up, and it's amazingly effective. I used the performance counter to collect some stats recently, and out of 334 emails received (I believe this was over the last few days), about 26% of them (86 emails) were spam, and every single one of them was blocked.



Moreover, since junk mail gets archived on the server, it doesn't appear in my "Junk Mail" folder in Outlook, so I don't even have to see it until I remotely access the server and purge it all once a week, in one fell swoop. :D

I was impressed enough that I stopped using POP3/IMAP to access my UCLA mail account and configured it to forward all incoming emails to the Exchange server too. Now I get literally no spam, and all my email, contacts and calendar data is consolidated in one place for anywhere, anytime access. The search for the perfect solution has ended.

In my next post, I'll write about a recent "acquisition" of mine that's made all of this even more worthwhile. ;)

Quite often, it's the little things that make quite a difference.

As most of you know by now, Google Calendar (Beta!) was launched last week after months of speculation, leaked screenshots and so on. Now if you've tried 30 Boxes, which I mentioned a couple of months ago, you'll notice quite a number of similarities, including the "quick add" feature that uses natural language parsing. Yes, Google Calendar has a notably cleaner look-and-feel, but there's one feature that really caught by attention, and that has to do with Gmail integration. Check this out.


I sent an email to myself, with the line: "ACM General Body meeting this Thursday at 6:00PM in Boelter 4760." Gmail parsed the message, automatically discovered that the email body contained a reference to an event, and offered to add it to my Google Calendar. As you can see, it's not perfect yet and it misses some things at this point, but it's still very neat.

Outlook 2003 has some top-notch calendaring and scheduling capabilities, but this is one feature I'd love to have!

Frank Gruber over at TechCrunch has posted an article comparing the major online mapping services from Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Ask and MapQuest. Frank puts the Yahoo! Maps Beta at the front of the pack, but clearly acknowledges the unique and interesting features that each of the others contenders bring to the table.

I, too, have been using the Y! Maps Beta as my mapping service of choice ever since it was released in November last year. You can go back and read my initial opinions on it here and here. While satellite imagery was missing from the initial release, the multi-point driving directions and live traffic reports were much more useful on a daily basis. Surprisingly, neither Google nor Microsoft have incorporated multi-point directions into their services yet, even though it's an invaluable feature, especially when planning longer trips with multiple stops along the way.

That's not to say that Y! wins across the board though, and there's always room for improvement. I prefer the way Windows Live Local handles local searches, for example - the ability to add different types of "points of interest" to the map simultaneously is a very useful feature that's still unique to Microsoft's service. Moreover, Bird's Eye (Aerial) view is less gimmicky compared to the regular satellite imagery, since it actually lets you see what the area looks like rather than giving you a rather useless look at roof-tops. And of course, we have Google to thank for initially kicking off the whole next-generation mapping revolution, but interestingly, I don't find anything compelling enough in the service anymore that the competition doesn't also have now. I'm sure the folks at the Goog aren't sitting quiet though, and I suspect we'll see some interesting new developments from them in the coming months too.

And that's the beauty of the online mapping space - all the major players are doing excellent work in an attempt to win new users and hold on to existing ones. There's good, solid, healthy competition, and we, as users, get a slew of great services to pick and choose from.

So what's your preferred online mapping service?

Ramping up for the release of the much-anticipated movie next month, Sony Pictures has partnered up with Google and a number of other sponsors to launch The Da Vinci Code Quest, a series of 24 daily puzzles that fans can solve for a chance to win some really cool prizes, including paid trips to London, Paris, Rome and NYC, HDTV's, notebook computers, etc. 10,000 (yeah, ten thousand) finalists will also receive Cryptex replicas! :)

The contest begins tomorrow, April 17th, and is open to residents of the U.S., U.K., and Australia. Should be interesting. Check it out.

I know you're thinking the lack of updates since last weekend has something to do with that Xbox 360. That's actually not true. :) In fact, I left the 360 behind at home last weekend since I knew it was going to be one crazy week.

It was Engineering Week on campus, and I was working with some of the other ACM co-ordinators on an event. Last year, we gave away a Sony PSP and a bunch of other stuff. This year, the big prize was a Nintendo DS, and there were gift cards and other giveaways too, of course. Preparation for E-Week is never an easy task, especially when you want to put up a good event, so we ended up staying on campus until 4AM on Tuesday morning building our "riddle boxes" and getting everything set up.

The second week of classes just got done, and I'm actually enjoying all my courses this quarter so far. Apart from the three courses that I've officially signed up for, I've also decided to audit an Information and Computer Security course. For those unfamiliar with the term, that just means I'm sitting through the lectures, but not taking the class for credit, which means I don't sit for exams or turn in assignments. The class is being offered for the first time to UCLA CS undergrads, the lecturer is an industry guy, and the content is really interesting, so I'm looking forward to learning some cool crypto stuff.

I finally did get some breathing time after coming back home on Friday night. Plugged in the 360 again this evening and downloaded the demos of Burnout Revenge and Project Gotham Racing 3 from the Xbox Live Marketplace. Both of them are excellent, although it seems like Burnout Revenge might end up being more fun. I also tried Oblivion, and while it looks like a very engaging game with an interesting storyline and breathtaking graphics, I'm not really planning to get into it, simply because I know it'll take up way too much of my time, and I really don't have that kind of time to spare during the quarter.

Anyway, hopefully you won't have to wait until next weekend for the next post. I've had a few things that I've been meaning to post about, and I'm going to try to get back to the regular posting schedule that I used to maintain. This blog just turned three years old five days ago. :)

:)

The news about Apple's release of the Boot Camp Beta, which allows Intel Mac users to dual boot Windows and Mac OS X on their machines, was received with open arms by the tech community this week.

According to Apple's instructions, Windows XP Home/Pro SP2 are the only two supported versions. You'll need "a bona fide installation disc for Microsoft Windows XP, Service Pack 2, Home or Professional (No multi-disc, upgrade or Media Center versions.)," it states. However, Barb Bowman and Doug Knox figured out a way to get Media Center 2005 running as well. After all, MCE is still just Windows XP at the core. The instructions are pretty simple, and basically involve merging the two MCE discs into a single DVD. I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that Macs lack a physical eject button for optical drives, meaning that you wouldn't be able to switch CDs during setup?

Anyway, Barb's using an external USB TV tuner with MCE on her MacBook Pro. I'm thinking the Mac Mini would end up being a nice, compact, and relatively cheap PVR for the living room with a similar setup. Interesting possibility, eh?

GotAPI.com is a handy API lookup service for a variety of languages, including PHP and MySQL, Java, HTML and CSS, etc. Apparently, a C/C++ module is also in the works, which should make it even more complete and useful.

Note that the site is simply a better presented front-end for the standard, official documentation for each language, so the information is accurate as well.

Bookmarked.

As I mentioned last month, I was supposed to receive a Xbox 360 from Microsoft through the Student Ambassador program.

I received a Fedex tracking number earlier this week, and it looks like the package is scheduled for delivery sometime tomorrow. I don't think anyone's going to be at home during the day, so I'm guessing Fedex will re-attempt delivery on Friday. Either way, I think it should be at home by the time I go back on Friday night, so I'll try to put some pictures up this weekend...and tinker with it, of course. :)

Ok, missing one hour of sleep might not be fun, and missing appointments because you forgot to change your clocks might be even worse, but I actually like the DST switch at this time of the year. It's 6:30PM right now, and everything's still nice and bright outside. That's one reason the winter quarter have always been my least favorite one - darkness at 5:30PM is just dismal.

Anyway, so today was the first day of spring quarter classes. Spring break last week was busier than I thought it would be. Noticed the lack of frequent updates? :) I wasn't doing anything related to coursework, but I got a lot of other stuff done, and those nine days just blew by like they always do. I always plan to "do nothing" during spring break, but I invariably end up breaking that resolution and doing something productive. Guess it's just not in my nature to sit idle. :D

I have a feeling this quarter's going to be an interesting one. I've finished most of my CS theory classes (only one more to go...yay), so I'm now moving on to the much more fun and interesting (in my opinion) project-based classes. Taking both Operating Systems and Databases this quarter. Also taking an applied math course in Numerical Analysis, which at least sounds much more appealing (and more useful) compared to the pure math classes I've had to take all this while. This should be a good opportunity for me to get even more familiar with MATLAB as well.

Looking forward to getting started. :)