Like the competitors, IDrive offers personal and business plans for syncing to their servers. With continuous backup, every 10 minutes, modifications are uploaded over 128-bit SSL for security. In addition (for data security), files are stored using 256-bit AES encryption with a user-specified key that is never retained by IDrive’s storage servers. For larger files, or if you choose to disable the automated “Continuous Data Backup” feature, you can set schedules and no data on the server will be changed until you run a synchronization.

IDrive transmits files securely AND stores them safely.

The desktop app also makes it easy to restore old versions of files — up to 30 revisions are kept, and all versions except the newest don’t count towards the storage limit. (Isn’t that cool?)

Automatically keep track of old revisions of files so you can "go back in time" before a disastrous edit or deletion.

The basic free plan includes 2 GB of storage, while the the personal plan includes 150 GB for $4.95/month, or $49.50/year on a yearly plan (essentially two months free).

IDrive is available for PC and Mac, and there are even apps to backup and synchronize contacts with BlackBerry, Android and iPhone devices.

One of their advanced features that I find very enticing is the ability to backup WordPress sites via a plugin:

The WordPress backup feature will keep copies of the site’s database and content files, extremely useful in the case of a server crash or hack. Note: it looks like the WordPress backup feature is free and does not require a paid membership.

If you’re looking for online backup, it looks like IDrive offers it all.

Disclosure: IDrive sponsored this post. However, all opinions are my own.

Synopsis

While the initial controversy about the Thesis-not-being-under-GPL issue was focused on themes and derivative works, an unclear area that probably needs to be resolved in court, it seems there is a far sounder reason why Thesis has to be released under the GPL: it blatantly copies WordPress code.

It all started with this tweet by Andy Peatling (@apeatling):

Not a clear GPL violation, because it’s extending WordPress classes, which, in effect, copies WordPress functionality into Thesis.

Code analyses

Andrew Nacin (@nacin) started going through the code of Thesis and started to make some encouraging/discouraging tweets:

I just found a line of code I wrote for #WordPress, but in #thesiswp. Funny, when I wrote it, it was under the GPL. #

And then, an initially uncorroborated claim:

This is really pissing me off. I’m up to a few hundred lines directly lifted from WP. A part of me is crushed. #thesiswp #

And then Drew Blas (@drewblas) did an automated analysis (like I suggested ) and found clear evidence of copied WordPress code:

Clear evidence of GPL code in Thesis

Impact

At this point, it seems clear: Thesis isn’t merely building on top of WordPress, it literally incorporates WordPress code through copy-paste.

That makes Chris Pearson liable to fulfill his obligations under the GPL and distribute GPL derivatives under the GPL.

Most damning

Andrew Nacin eventually found this in Thesis:

* This function is mostly copy pasta from WP (wp-includes/media.php),
* but with minor alteration to play more nicely with our styling.

GPL test case? YES.

Chris Pearson indicated during his interview that he is fundamentally opposed to the GPL and will absolutely refuse to license Thesis under the GPL. By the end of the dialogue, he was practically saying “sue me”.

Matt Mullenweg responded:

Matt: Are you saying you want to be a test case for the GPL? You want us to sue you? I mean, that would break my heart. I’d rather you be part of the family.

While the themes = derivatives basis might have been shaky for a legal trial, I think the fact that there’s copied code clearly indicates one outcome in the end, in favour of the GPL.

Temporarily back to the case for themes = derivatives

WordPress isn’t the first community to issue the directive that extensions (themes, plugins) are derivatives. Joomla! did so a few years ago (I recall because I used Joomla! before finding WordPress) and Drupal makes it extremely clear.

If this matter can’t be determined by the GPL’s applicability to themes/plugins, maybe WordPress should just re-license, starting with a future version, with GPLv3 and add a specific requirement that themes/plugins are licensed under GPL.

Background

To provide some background, WordPress is a blogging platform licensed under the GPLv2, which specifically forces all copies of a work licensed under GPL, as well as derivative works, to be licensed under the GPL:

2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Program, and copy and distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that you also meet all of these conditions:

b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License.

The Free Software Foundation explicitly addresses plugins in its FAQ, making it clear that plugins that share data structures with the main program and make function calls to each other are derivative works to which the GPL also applies.

Themes were an uncertain matter prior to last year’s legal opinion from the Software Freedom Law Center, because these works from third parties certainly build on top of the WordPress platform, but often extend it with original artwork and programming. The analysis states clearly that:

… it is our opinion that the themes … contain elements that are derivative works of the WordPress software as well as elements that are potentially separate works. Specifically, the CSS files and material contained in the images directory of the “default” theme are works separate from the WordPress code. On the other hand, the PHP and HTML code that is intermingled with and operated on by PHP the code derives from the WordPress code.

Though almost all of the other theme foundries have adopted the GPL license for their PHP code, Chris Pearson stands nearly alone in asserting the GPL’s viral clause is inapplicable to him.

Initial controversy

On a live webcast with both Chris Pearson, the developer of Thesis, and Matt Mullenweg, the founder of Automattic and the WordPress project, Chris expressed his personal belief that the viral nature of the GPL goes against his personal freedoms and rights as a developer:

Chris: One, it would require me to make a concession about something that I don’t think that I need to concede to. Why should I change? I’m protected right now. My work is protected, which it should naturally be. I want to retain that right. If I go GPL then I am ceding that right. The number one issue for me is the personal concession that I would be making. Not of any real impact to my business. I don’t want to make that personal concession, because I don’t have to. Okay?

Note: it is possible, in terms of the GPL’s legality, that Chris never had the right to prevent users from redistributing his code; if the GPL applies, a developer cannot restrict redistribution.

Matt, on the other hand, debates to defend the applicability of the GPL to themes and plugins:

Matt: … If you build a module for Drupal or a module for WordPress or a theme for WordPress or anything like that, the license says that you do have to follow the GPL. I think that it’s just a matter of choosing the platform. If you disagree with the GPL, just use a platform that doesn’t have the GPL.

I listened to all of the long back-and-forth encounter, which was interesting until Chris began to assert his importance in the community:

Chris: I’ve done great things with WordPress since 2006. I have been arguably one of the top three most important figures in the history of WordPress. You, Mark Jaquith, and myself, are the three people that I am talking about.

Wait, what? A developer whose theme accounts for such a small fraction of WordPress’s usage puts himself in the top three figures in WordPress history? Jane Wells had a similar encounter with his ego.

» See the top 10 figures in WordPress history.

Analysis of this part of the controversy

The crux of the controversy is summarized by Chris’s sentences here:

Chris: I think the license, the GPL, is at odds with how I want to distribute my software and what I want it to be. I don’t think that it necessarily should inherit WordPress’ license when over 99% of the code within Thesis is Thesis code based on the actual process of building a website.

As someone who also contributes to open source software, I can certainly understand his sentiments on the ‘infectious’ nature of the GPL, which forces derivatives to inherit the GPL. It’s pretty hard to release projects under even more permissive licenses (for example, the Apache License), or in Chris’s case, extremely restrictive proprietary licenses, when so many open source projects enforce the GPL.

That really is, though, the purpose of the GPL: to keep open source open by prohibiting its inclusion in fully closed-source or proprietary (and restrictively-distributed) projects.

Are themes derivative works?

A lot of the open source advocates and lawyers seem to think so. After all, themes do things like:

<?php if ( get_comment_pages_count() > 1 && get_option( ‘page_comments’ ) ) : // Are there comments to navigate through? ?>

and

<?php if ( $wp_query->max_num_pages > 1 ) : ?>

which show clear integration with WordPress core functionality, much like a program in C would use the MySQL library with

mysql_real_connect()

Granted, the MySQL developers explicitly allow derivatives to use non-GPL licenses even though MySQL is GPL, through an additional license exception. The reason such an exception is necessary is that they understood that works which link to library code are derivatives.

The biggest problem is that the GPL was written with compiled code in mind, where derivatives would have to bundle the libraries (e.g. DLLs or SOs) in their releases. It’s sort of unclear for interpreted languages like PHP; is it an indication of derivation if one piece of code makes a function call to another?

It’s a bit unfortunate WordPress wasn’t licensed under GPLv3, because version 3 is much clearer about what it means to make a “modified version” or a work “based on” another work. It would also make for a better court case.

Caleb Jenkins (@CalebJenkins) iterates an interesting point: dependent != derivative. While I can see this being an interesting legal argument, it would have a lot of implications for open source in general, completely contrary to the way things have been operating.

If using a dependency is not being a derivative of that work, then it is conceivable that one can produce a C application which links to a GPL library (for example, the FOSS-licensed version of the MySQL client library) without bundling it and is released commercially under a closed-source, restrictive license. It is conceivable that a PHP program might require() WordPress to use its functionality, but simply not bundle WordPress, and would then avoid classification as a derivative.

I’m afraid I can’t entirely lend my support to that argument.

People have argued that making function calls to WordPress is akin to making system calls to the underlying operating system. Unfortunately, only GPLv3 is clear about distinguishing the system and compiler libraries from other general code; of course it doesn’t make sense that every application on the GPL Linux kernel must be open source. It’s a valid argument.

However, I agree more completely with Matt’s contention that a dependency = derivation when it gets to the point that a WordPress theme without WordPress will not work (just try loading any theme’s index.php in a browser) while WordPress without any themes will still function — it won’t show anything, but its backend is still fully functional.

Chris Pearson is wrong when he says “I think that what I’ve done stands alone outside of WordPress completely.” Interestingly, read the context of this quote:

Chris: How is that? I think that what I’ve done stands alone outside of WordPress completely. Why should I respect that? It’s not that I don’t respect WordPress. I do. I only build on WordPress and push people in its direction…

» Now here: Part 2 of Tracking the #thesiswp matter.

» Also read: Why WordPress Themes are Derivative of WordPress by Mark Jaquith (@markjaquith), a lead developer.

I’ve been using a subset of the new Essentials suite (beta) for the past few days. There are good things, and there are bad things. In this post, I’m only going to focus on the new Windows Live Messenger, about which I have numerous complaints.

Overall UI

Messenger has been cleaned up a lot since the previous version. The look is brighter and simpler — I dare say, cleaner. Microsoft went with a simple, bright white look instead of the faint blue gradient that was featured in Wave 3.

Full (social) view

The default look in Messenger is a large window showing contacts on the right and a wall of updates on the left relating to status messages and social networks. Windows Live profiles can now aggregate content from Facebook, Twitter, Digg, other networks, and even RSS feeds, and this full view seems to support Facebook and Myspace.

The full view takes up a lot of space with things I could care less about

I dislike this view a lot, because in my mentality, Windows Live Messenger is an instant messaging application; I could care less about status updates. Certainly, I do not want status updates to take up more of my screen real estate than my contact list. Of course, if you link WLM to Facebook, you get a slightly more useful updates as follows:

When Facebook updates are shown, the space is used more effectively

As a result, I use the compact view. There is a button in the main window to switch between the two views.

Use this button to switch between views

Compact view

This look is more akin to the old-fashioned contact list we’re familiar with. The view here, of course, is customized to my liking. While I appreciate the no-nonsense look here, the ads at the bottom are just slightly distracting and annoying.

Compact view is essentially the traditional contact list

One of my minor complaints about the new look is the coloured ring around the display pictures of contacts. In previous versions of Messenger, they were bright and distinguishable. Now, it’s rather difficult to distinguish the green of ‘online’ from the blue of ‘offline’ and the orange of ‘away/idle’ from the red of ‘busy’.

The faint colour of these rings is difficult to scan quickly

Tabbed chats

This is one of the best innovations in this version of Messenger, and it conveniently eliminates the need for unofficial hacks like Messenger Plus (although Messenger Plus is still useful for encrypted chat logs, which Messenger does not support to this day).

Chats with new messages flash in a highlight colour

Unfortunately, I don’t seem to be able to drag a tab and detach it from the window. Ars Technica reports that it is possible to do so only by right-clicking a chat and choosing to undock it, but it is not possible to then combine undocked chats to create separate windows for separate categories of instant messaging dialogues.

Windows 7 integration

It was extremely annoying in Wave 3 that Messenger was identified as 2 windows by the taskbar (and by the Flip 3D window switcher). Wave 4 has fixed this issue and added better taskbar integration, with coloured icons to change one’s status.

Windows Live Messenger has better support for Windows 7's taskbar

The right-click menu on the taskbar icon in Windows 7 also has quick options to start chats with favourite contacts, sign out or exit the application. This is really useful when the main window isn’t open, and is also a quick way to terminate Messenger (there’s no Exit option in the File menu of individual chats).

Windows Live Messenger Wave 4 has a capable and useful right-click menu on the taskbar

Critical changes that may make me stop using Windows Live Messenger

Handwriting

In previous versions of Messenger, there was always a Handwriting tab in instant messaging chats so that one could quickly and conveniently send ink messages. I don’t think anybody uses it nowadays for handwritten messages (considering the small number of Windows-based tablets in the market) but it has come in quite handy for mouse-drawn sketches.

I’ve used it extensively for illustrating simple graphs, diagrams, or even flowcharts. Example: curves in economics:

Windows Live Messenger used to support handwriting / ink messages

Not having this in Windows Live Messenger Wave 4 means: not only I can’t send them, no one can send any to me — even if they really are just sent as images.

Update (June 27): there’s a thread on one of Microsoft’s sites where this is discussed; a Microsoft representative explained why it was removed.

This is inconvenient to the point that I need to draw things in Paint and send them over photo sharing or look for 3rd-party online whiteboard tools.

Link redirection

This is the biggest issue I have with Wave 4. It seems that clicking on links in Messenger chats sends me through a transparent* redirect through a Microsoft-owned domain called rdir.us. Generally, it turns a hyperlink like http://www.google.ca/ into something more like http://rdir.us/?l=http%3a%2f%2fwww.google.ca&h=P7EAwkjXoRug38Nw8P6JID7b86dBALSnm4DSbAQcGQs%3d&p=1.

* transparent only in certain instances. On other occasions, harmless URLs (like this one) have an intermediate page: (all of the following screenshots are from Mozilla Firefox)

This is an annoying instance of unwanted interference

I can understand why this redirect may be necessary. For example, when I click on a malicious link, the redirect prevents me from going through and instead shows a warning screen:

rdir.us blocks me from visiting an unsafe URL

However, this is worrying for a few reasons. First, I have no idea what that hash in the URL is; does it identify me or the person who sent the link? Secondly, is Microsoft logging all the click-throughs, and knowing what sites users visit? (I suppose they could do this already by keeping records of all instant messaging chats, but this takes it even further.) Thirdly, why is this redirect necessary, if most modern browsers (Firefox, Chrome and even Internet Explorer) already have this filter?

I don’t want Microsoft to intercept my visits, nor show me a Bing search bar whenever something breaks.

Shameless promotion of Bing.

Conclusion

While I readily admit that Windows Live Essentials Wave 4 has made strides forward in certain areas, like integrating social networks, I also think Microsoft has made some pretty notable blunders in their conscious decisions to add link redirects and remove handwriting support. If you want to avoid these things, it looks like you need to stay on older versions of Windows Live Messenger.

For more reviews, read Ars Technica on Messenger Wave 4 or Paul Thurrott’s Supersite for Windows.

There are so many computer features that we’ve become accustomed to. Who hasn’t used Ctrl+F to search for text on a Web page or a document? Who hasn’t used Ctrl+C & Ctrl+V to copy and paste something? (…obviously, I’m not targeting people who have never used a computer before, or who manage to use them without a keyboard)

If you could have any of these keyboard shortcuts as a real-life (super)power, which one would you want? Vote below.

So far, the results have been interesting. Looks like most people don’t want to deal with real life.

Technology

Windows has entered a new era

The decade—indeed, the century—began with Windows 2000, which I consider the first great version of the operating system. XP was the version that brought widespread success, and people just seem to refuse to upgrade; even today, almost three quarters of the computers on the net are on XP.

Despite the dismal failure of Windows Vista, it too brought change, which was followed by the enhancements of Windows 7. Compare my desktop today to the ugly screens of a decade ago:

Apple deserves an honourable mention for the ground-breaking work they’ve done on the Mac, elevating it to a newly trendy status.

Portable media players have completely changed

A decade ago, CD players and tape-based Walkmans were still the norm for ‘portable’ audio players. The iPod, launched in 2001, entirely changed the game. (I suppose this and the iPhone were the “comeback of the decade”.) It was no longer a device that played removable media. That was followed by thousands of other portable media players, to which the public generally refers inaccurately as “MP3 players”, reflecting the popularity of the 15-year-old MP3 format that has also been notorious for illegal file sharing (see below).

Cell phones and mobile devices have become ubiquitous

These devices used to be ugly, huge and heavy objects. As we move into 2010, cell phones have become more compact (usually this means thinner and lighter) and more powerful.

In China, about 739 million people have cell phones; that’s more than there are Internet users in China (which is about 360 million).

Mobile devices have become truly powerful. The iPhone, purportedly the most popular cell phone of 2009, is one of the biggest platforms for software development. And it has a touch screen. RIM’s BlackBerry, initially launched in 1999, is the most popular smartphone among business users.

Ordinary people begin to embrace ultra-portable netbooks for lightweight computing. The move to mobile is probably the most noticeable trend in end-user gadgetry in this decade.

Illegal file sharing has emerged

I don’t personally think of torrenting itself as a major problem, and it’s difficult to sympathize with big companies when the RIAA is being stupid. At the same time, it’s pretty easy to see how having hundreds of movies, TV shows and music albums distributed through torrents can take away from earnings for content producers. (Some dispute this and argue that those who pirate movies and TV shows are those who will purchase related memorabilia or boxed sets.)

In any case, it is virtually undisputed that new technologies have made distribution of such content much easier. In the previous decade, pretty much everyone was on dial-up Internet and only the students at universities with blazing connections were able to do it (think about the controversial Napster).

The best known site for illegal content

YouTube happened

YouTube and hundreds of other video sites have revolutionized the way we watch video. What used to be distributed on tapes and discs has moved onto the Internet in a way that allows ordinary folks—not videophiles or geeks—to share their multimedia with the world.

YouTube is also the icon of the so-called Web 2.0, which is oriented on user-generated content. (Flickr deserves an honourable mention for high quality pictures, just like Vimeo for high class videos.) It has made it possible for teens with crazy personalities and high-pitched edited voices, artists who post music videos, and crazy dancers who travel the world to reach out to a vast audience. Above all, it’s a legitimate new form of entertainment.

Following the success of online video, major content producers began to license music for online distribution (think Pandora or Last.fm, not to mention Internet radio) as well as movies and TV shows (think Hulu).

Click here to view the embedded video.

Open source projects have become worthy challengers

More than a decade ago, in 1996, the Apache HTTP server became the most popular web server in use; today it has surpassed 100 million web sites served.

Mozilla Firefox, having risen out of the ashes of the Netscape browser, although not the most widely used browser in the world (it’s 2nd), is apparently used by 32% of the market analyzed by StatCounter.

While I still use Microsoft Office, OpenOffice.org is also a notable alternative to the proprietary and dominant office suite, especially on non-Windows operating systems.

And then there are the programs used by geeks, like the Eclipse IDE or Aptana Studio, that are depended upon. (For all of you multimedia geeks, there are open source programs that do the job much better than their closed source counterparts; think about Handbrake, VLC…)

Businesses can now also depend on open source projects like Sugar CRM that build their revenue model around support and premium features.

News has moved onto the Web

My primary news source  now is the Web. Google News is one of my frequently visited sites, as it is a fantastic aggregator of headlines. I subscribe to e-mail summaries from the Toronto Star and breaking news alerts from the New York Times. ArsTechnica and TechCrunch are my sources for technology-related news, and occasionally Mashable and Neowin. Those pesky short links in the tweets of people I follow also make for engaging news articles.

Wikipedia happened

At the beginning of this decade, I was researching in books and print encyclopedias. The conventional wisdom today of “just Google it” didn’t work so well then. And certainly there wasn’t a Wikipedia for the wealth of human knowledge that it now contains.

Today, I can near-instantly read up on the history of Wal-Mart or read up on the Beslan school hostage crisis and its media coverage. If I truly need it, Wikipedia connects with Wikisource, the free library and Wikibooks where I can read Anna Karenina online (and I wouldn’t, because Constance Garnett’s translations are really lacking).

It’s truly amazing that the sum of all human knowledge can be collaboratively archived and updated through the likes of Wikipedia. Perhaps they need your support this holiday season!

What do you think? Did I miss out on something big that happened in this decade in the world of tech? Write a comment!

(I did, however, intentionally exclude social networking—i.e. Facebook—because I don’t think it’s been revolutionary in any major way. Sure, it has connected people in new ways, but it’s still relatively fresh and more time is needed to see where it goes. Similarly, I omitted touch because it hasn’t entirely caught on yet; tablet PCs were a dismal failure a few years ago and I haven’t yet seen their widespread success. Furthermore, I omitted cloud computing because it doesn’t directly affect a large number of people. Feel free to disagree with me in the comments.)

Worldly Matters

I think September 11, 2001 marked the start of a new era of warfare and international affairs. The terrorist attacks, inasmuch as they have been abused to justify ill-advised battles, did shock the world.

I recommend you head over to the Big Picture where you’ll be dazzled by splendid photos of this decade, including commentaries on the World Trade Center attacks and war. And dozens of other things like natural disasters (remember Katrina, or the Sichuan earthquake?), the Beijing Olympics, and terrorist attacks in London.

2009 has been a fantastic year. I look forward to the future.

Happy holidays and all the best in 2010!

Free 2GB cloud storage

As a free user, you get 2 GB of space to start, and files in those 2 GB will be synced not only to your other computers, but also to the cloud. You can access those files anywhere you can open up a browser to the Dropbox Web site, and you can even share links to files in your Public folder to help collaboration with others.

PCs, Macs, Linux and the iPhone

The desktop software works on PCs, Macs and Linux machines; updates with great improvements come out often. For example, some of the recent versions of the software added LAN syncing, which speeds up the sharing of files between computers on the same network by connecting directly to one another instead of uploading and downloading from their servers in the cloud. Moreover, there’s now a Dropbox app for the iPhone that syncs your files on the go.

Free extra 250 MB

Try it out for free; there’s no cost to getting started. You can get a free account (2 GB) with 250 MB as a gift from me for signing up. Reliable sync and backup has never been easier.

There is reasonable hype about Office 2010, but I don’t recommend using pre-release versions — at least until a new one comes out — and I will also be uninstalling and going back to Office 2007. (I’ll note, of course, that I’m usually a bleeding edge software user who ignores the warnings that “pre-release software is unsafe for production use”. Windows 7 RC is my main machine’s operating system, I’m using the dev channel of Google Chrome, and I use pre-release versions of Firefox.)

In short, I’m not going to write any more about my experiences with the Technical Preview.

I’ve gotten to use it a lot more in the course of daily business, which has opened my eyes to some astounding features.

In any case, I’ve been very busy and will continue to be busy until next week, which is when I plan on publishing Part 3.

To stay updated, you can:

1. Subscribe to the RSS feed
2. Subscribe via e-mail to get new posts in your inbox
3. Keep checking back
4. Follow me on Twitter

For your convenience, sign up for e-mail updates right now.

This company is clearly harvesting WHOIS data in violation of their ICANN agreement to send official-looking “expiration notices” to domain owners, many of whom unwittingly send in payment, unaware that the “Domain Registry of Canada” is merely a company attempting the entirely unethical practice of domain slamming.

Since 2001, this company has been soliciting domain transfers under the guise of renewing the registration with the existing registrar. Of course, their prices are ridiculously expensive — $40 per year for a domain name — and that’s part of why I didn’t fall for it, since I operate my own domain registrar and I know the value of domain registration services aren’t that high.

An early example of the domain letters from 2002 is published online.

In 2003, the Federal Trade Commission settled with the sister company “Domain Registry of America” to stop their misleading business practices. The way they decided to comply was by adding a little blurb that blended into the text, one that few people seeing an official-looking letter would read.

They’ve changed it a bit now, to uppercase and bold text, but the premise of their operations is still the same.

The letter comes in an envelope that almost looks like it's from the Government of Canada; my address is redacted

The envelope is misleading. Indeed, the colour and layout of the envelope nearly exactly matches that of an official Canadian government letter, except for the return address in the top-left. And there they’ve neatly placed a maple leaf, knowing that it is associated with the country, and by extension, the government.

Even the NAME is misleading.

The letter has been changed in recent years, but still carries the same layout that I recognize from as early as 2005. The prices are ridiculous; a .net domain isn’t worth $40/year. (I know; I was selling them for $7.99 last month.)

The letter is sure to make inexperienced domain owners panic.

That letter just irritates me. Sentences like “take advantage of our best savings” when you actually pay $30 more, misleading phrases like “You must renew your domain name to retain exclusive rights”, and worst of all:

“Failure to renew your domain name by the expiration date may result in a loss of your online identity making it difficult for your customers and friends to locate you on the Web.”

It’s rare for me to be this angry. But it’s a ripoff.

• Interface improvements
  • Aero Glass
  • Ribbon
  • Backstage
  • Animations tab

I’ve had about 4 days now to play with the Office 2010 Technical Preview, which, according to Ars Technica, is actually a slightly older build than the most current one, and for which testers were “hand-picked”.

I did end up installing both the 32-bit and the 64-bit editions of the software, realizing that I wanted to see whether 64-bit was stable (and it seems to be). When I discovered that Office 2010′s PDF export functionality is terribly inferior to Adobe Acrobat (more on that later), I went back to 32-bit so that the Acrobat add-in would work, but discovered to my horror that it crashes Word (but more on that later).

Let’s get started with some fresh content about interface improvements. LOW-BANDWIDTH WARNING: there are a LOT of screenshots.

Interface improvements

Indeed, Office 2010 is even prettier than Office 2007, at least in my opinion. The splash screens are now animated, as demonstrated below.

Click here to view the embedded video.

On Windows 7, the titlebar blends seamlessly into the application, taking the Office 2007 look a bit further by merging it with Aero Glass. It’s a nice change.

Applications with the ribbon now integrate seamlessly into Aero Glass on Windows 7

Tip: on my blog, you can click on any image that links to the picture to see a larger version.

Some people don’t like how the colour is now white, but I don’t mind it at all. I just wish the colour schemes were actually available. In Office 2007 there was a choice between Blue, Black and Silver.

Seems the colour schemes aren't available in the Technical Preview

Ribbon, Ribbon Everywhere

The ribbon (also known as the Fluent UI) is now extended to Outlook and Publisher as well. (In Outlook 2007, messages and composing would take place in a window with the ribbon, but the application itself was ribbonless.)

Outlook 2010 has a ribbon now

Unfortunately, the ribbon seems to complicate Publisher, allocating valuable screen space (of which people have tons these days) to tools that will be used once or twice in the life of the workflow.

Too much space is dedicated to the colour schemes

More follows the jump.

Backstage area

One of the most major changes is the new Backstage view, where the Office button leads to something that covers the entire window as opposed to a menu. (The screenshot below was taken in Microsoft Word. Interestingly, new features must have been added to the .docx format, since a .docx file from Word 2007 shows an option to “convert” it to enable the 2010 features.)

The main Backstage view for Word 2010

The Backstage view enables one of the coolest UI improvements: printing. Instead of a pop-up prompt for printing and a separate option for print preview, the Print view integrates both into one beautiful and easy-to-use screen.

Printing in Word 2010 is a streamlined process

One cool thing about Backstage is that it’s colour-coordinated with the applications’ icons. Word, which has a blue icon, naturally has a blue Backstage area, whereas OneNote, for example, has a beautiful purple one.

OneNote's Backstage area is a beautiful purple

Quite unimportant indeed.

New Animations tab in PowerPoint

In PowerPoint, the animations and transitions have been separated into independent tabs, making it easier for users to add and change animations.

A new tab makes it easier to add animations

The drop-down shows neat graphical representations of the animations.

The animations dropdown has neat illustrations

More about actual feature improvements is being drafted right now; that’ll come in Part 3!

Appendix: gallery of screenshots used in this post

Legal notice: since this isn’t a private beta, I am allowed to discuss the preview and my experiences with it. However, I am not allowed to share product keys, installer files, and documents to which I have access by virtue of the invitation. The contract that binds me with reference to the technical documentation quotes as follows:

You […] agree: (a) to refrain from disclosing or distributing the Confidential Information to any third party for five (5) years from the date of disclosure of the Confidential Information by Microsoft to Company/You; (b) to refrain from reproducing or summarizing the Confidential Information…

Thankfully, there’s a public pressroom for Office 2010 information, from which I was able to get equivalents of the stuff in the confidential documents. Here’s some information for you.

System Requirements

Office 2010 is designed to work on computers with very limited resources; after all, many businesses were concerned that they would once again need to upgrade their hardware. Office hasn’t really necessitated hardware upgrades in the past; Office 2003 ran very well on old Dell OptiPlex machines on Windows 2000, and Office 2007 ran quite well on older XP laptops.

The specific details are in the FAQs document.

Office 2010 System Requirements; click to see full image

The installers are rather compact; the Technical Preview 32-bit/64-bit installers for Office 2010 Professional are no more than 600 MB each.

64-bit editions

I’m currently on Windows 7 RC 64-bit edition, but I resolved ultimately to install the 32-bit edition of Office 2010. This is due to the following reasons:

• The 64-bit edition of Office 2010 does not support most add-ins.
  Users of software with add-ins in Office programs will find that most of them do not work with the 64-bit edition of Office 2010. Software vendors are expected to release newer 64-bit add-ins, but users must use the 32-bit edition for compatibility with older add-ins.
• One cannot upgrade Office 2007 to Office 2010 64-bit.
  According to the technical documentation, “2007 Office system cannot be upgraded to native Office 2010 64-bit.“
• I don’t work with spreadsheets greater than 2 GB in size.
  The documentation listed a number of benefits of using the 64-bit edition. The central point was being able to open large Excel spreadsheets. Since I don’t do this, the benefits of the 64-bit architecture are insignificant when it comes to Office 2010.

Screenshots of my installation will come in the next installment of these posts. That is, after I manage to install it. At the moment I’m getting the following error with the 32-bit installer, after customizing the install and even going through a few minutes of the installation progress bar.

The error I'm getting with the installer

If this persists with the 32-bit installer, I may have no choice but to try the 64-bit installation.

Update: the installer has now succeeded. More will be coming!

Finally, I've managed to install it.

Update: Part 2 is here, with screenshots and commentary on interface improvements!

VIPRE claims to be “high-performance security software” that performs better than traditional suites like Norton Antivirus. That much is very believable; after all, we all know how clunky and laggy the established ‘leaders’ in antivirus are. But my personal antivirus favourite is ESET NOD32 — and I’ve always gotten the impression that it’s fast — so I was really surprised that internal testing showed VIPRE to be even faster and more resource-efficient than NOD32.

VIPRE: Scan in Progress

At this point I wanted to see what some credible sources had to say. CNET UK had essentially the same reaction that I had when first presented with this product: “never heard of it.” But after their own use, they had this to say: “we’re pretty impressed and will continue to use it — particularly on netbooks, which don’t have much power to spare.”

Credible sources that give software positive reviews always influence me. That’s why I think (and this personal opinion isn’t influenced by the sponsorship of this post) you should try Sunbelt’s new Antivirus Software, especially if you don’t have antivirus software already. Install the 15-day trial and decide for yourself whether it’s worth using. (I would have done the same myself if I had another PC to use for testing.)

Sponsored by Sunbelt Software

To create my WordPress plugins, Simpler iPaper and Simpler CSS, using SVN has been a must; after all, the only way to release new versions of the plugins is through SVN. I also keep this site’s WordPress installation up-to-date on the development version using Subversion. Additionally, in my current efforts to develop a working solution for HDTV’s in business and organizational settings, Display UI is being developed using Subversion for version control.

You get the idea. I use it on a daily basis, and for practical purposes. I don’t claim to understand the fine details, but hopefully this post gives you an idea of how I use it and how you can, too.

So what is version control? Simply put, it’s a way of keeping track of the changes made to files. It’s often impractical to make manual backups of a file before every set of changes to it, so version control systems like CVS and SVN emerged to help people — especially developers and programmers — keep track of their files, share changes with team members, and prevent stupid mistakes.

Accidentally deleted your code? Revert your changes. Came up with an ingenious way (that works) to do something? Commit your changes. Need to get the latest revision of all the files? Update the working copy.

Perhaps the most practical application of systems like Subversion is in team development. When three or more people are working on the same set of files, it’s useful to be able to merge the changes seamlessly, see the changes others have made, or even work separately on branches (kind of like forks) and tags (usually released versions that are being maintained).

I did write that I don’t claim to understand the fine details. If you really want to understand Subversion, I highly recommend this book by members of the development team: Version Control with Subversion, or the book online.

Let’s talk about how to use it. Hard-core programmers often choose to use the command line tools, where they type commands like svn up to update the files. Beginners will be glad to know that there are implementations with GUI‘s, like RapidSVN and TortoiseSVN. Eclipse users may use Subversive or Subclipse, “team providers” that let coders easily perform version control tasks inside the IDE.

Subversion tasks can be done in Windows Explorer

Assuming that you’re using the command line binaries — which you can get from the Subversion site, and I recommend official CollabNet builds where possible — most of the basic tasks are rather easy.

Instead of right-clicking and picking options from a menu, tasks are done by typing commands.

First of all, a ‘repository’ is a hosted location containing all of the code, revisions and metadata. Often, one can access a repository via HTTP, as in the case of WordPress, which is found at http://core.svn.wordpress.org/ .

To ‘checkout’ a repository means to make a local copy (known as a ‘working copy’) of the contents. That’s what we have to do first when working with an established project: get the code from the repository.

To do so, type the following at an open shell (on Linux/Mac OS X) or command prompt: (don’t type the ‘$’ — that’s just what you should see at the start of every command line in Bash)

$ svn checkout http://core.svn.wordpress.org/trunk/ wordpress/

Windows users would do the same, but at a command prompt — again, without the dollar sign.

That command invokes the svn executable and tells it to checkout the WordPress trunk directory to the local folder wordpress.

Once you’ve done that, you’ve got a working copy, which you can update to the latest at any time after making sure your current directory is the working copy

$ cd wordpress
$ svn update

svn update can be shortened to svn up.

Now go ahead and delete the index.php file in the working copy. It’s conceivable that one might accidentally do this at some point. (On Linux/Mac OS X, one would type rm index.php, whereas on Windows, the del command is used instead.)

No worries. You have an option here: revert or update. Reverting will simply undo your local changes to the last downloaded revision, while updating will fetch the newest version of the deleted index.php file from the repository. Go ahead, get it back!

$ svn revert index.php

What about making some changes to the files and committing them to the repository? In these examples, we’ve been using WordPress, to which anonymous users don’t have write access. I’ll still show you how a change is committed, regardless.

After making your change, type the following (where filename is, obviously, the actual filename).

$ svn commit filename

This usually opens up the system default editor (often vim on Unix systems), into which one enters a log message; that’s used as the log message when you save and quit the editor. In case you’re on Windows or some weird Linux distribution, this might not work for you, so you’ll have to specify another flag.

$ svn commit --message="Change summary" filename
Sending        filename
Transmitting file data .
Committed revision 1234.

(Here the dollar sign is useful to indicate lines of user input vs. lines of output — the second to fourth lines are output, without the dollar sign.)

By this point you’ve done the most common tasks with Subversion: committing and updating. What about adding new files to the repository? After all, you’ll have to do that at some point.

After, for example, creating the file asdf.txt inside the working copy, we only need to make Subversion aware of its existence. Type the following command, and you’ll get the desired result.

$ svn add asdf.txt
A        asdf.txt

To remove the file, it’s best that the removal is done through the Subversion executable, since it needs to keep track of all the files and could be confused if it can’t find the file. (Here I’m using the --force flag because the change hasn’t been committed.)

$ svn rm --force asdf.txt
D        asdf.txt

That’s as much as most beginners need to know about Subversion. Of course, I make use of properties all the time, occasionally tag releases, and sometimes lock and unlock files.

If you want to learn more about the specifics of Subversion, try reading the book I mentioned online. It’s an excellent resource, and can be complemented by other books such as Practical Subversion, Second Edition

… that was a long post. I hope it enriched your knowledge.

I am also accustomed to my taskbar being set in “Combine when taskbar is full” mode, which is a compromise between the dock-resembling Windows 7 taskbar and the older taskbar style with which XP and Vista users would be familiar. This looks something like this:

An alternative taskbar look for Windows 7

Today, I decided to see if I could get accustomed to the Windows 7 taskbar look, which involves taking out those labels and showing merely the icons. Screenshot by Paul Thurrott:

The default Windows 7 taskbar style

This is when I discovered something cool yet shocking about my browsers.

Firefox in the taskbar

Mozilla Firefox is a nice browser; that’s why I use it most of the time. Google Chrome is lightweight, fast, and aesthetically pleasing; that’s why it’s my default browser.

But neither of them seem aware of Windows 7. Their browser icons are plainly represented in the taskbar, even when I’ve got multiple tabs open. In the screenshot to the right, Mozilla Firefox only gets one taskbar thumbnail when I mouse over the icon, even though I have 4 tabs open. The icon, too, doesn’t reveal anything about how many tabs are open.

Chrome has the same issue

With Google Chrome, the exact same thing happens. The thumbnail is one of the application, not the individual tabs open, so it would appear that Windows 7 isn’t aware of the individual tabs nor is Chrome taking advantage of the new taskbar.

Internet Explorer has no issue with this; as soon as more than one tab is opened, the taskbar reflects this change. Note: the same change occurs for Chrome and Firefox if multiple WINDOWS are opened.

Windows 7 recognizes tabs in Microsoft's browser

The shocking thing is, Apple’s new browser takes advantage of the taskbar. Perhaps one expects this from a company that focuses on user experience and aesthetics. But this just makes Safari awesome.

The taskbar actually recognizes the individual tabs in Safari 4

You’ll notice that the thumbnails aren’t of the browser, but of the individual pages loaded in tabs. This means that I can click on a thumbnail to go directly to that tab — an excellent convenience, thanks to the Windows 7 taskbar.

I’m very surprised that Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome, two of the most common browsers among people who are on the cutting edge of software technology, aren’t taking advantage of Windows 7′s new taskbar. After all, according to Wakoopa (which tracks software usage), Firefox and Chrome are the 1st and 3rd most used browsers on Windows. Come on, Mozilla developers, make your browser more Aero-aware and taskbar-aware! Even Chrome looks nicer on Aero Glass by default.

Chrome looks really attractive with an Aero Glass interface

Taskbar thumbnails are really useful when the taskbar items don’t have labels and when the icons are combined. It’s no longer necessary to read the labels to determine which item to click on; I can just mouse over, quickly scan over the thumbnails, and click on the one I want. Kudos to the people at Microsoft who came up with this intuitive interface!

If you’re still on Windows XP — noting that it is nearly 8 years old — or on Vista, Windows 7 is a major step up in terms of the user interface. It might take a bit of adjusting, but in the end, I am certain you’ll like it.