Oh CAB, how I have missed you and your pizza.

Last night I was reading News.com and found that Microsoft released a beta of their new anti-spyware software yesterday. I have been a happy Ad-Aware user, and I have recommended it to many people, so I wanted to see how the Microsoft app stacked up.

First thing to note – I read an interview with Gates or Ballmer a while ago, I forget which, and whoever it was said that Microsoft went and bought the best anti-spyware software there was. The new program is the result of 21 days of work since Microsoft bough Giant Software. I don’t know what the previous Giant offerings looked like, but the new program definitely looks like Microsoft.

Put simply, Microsoft AntiSpyware is amazing. I would easily recommend it over Ad-Aware. Not only did it find 22 more threats than Ad-Aware did, it also found three that were not adware but actual programs that I use, and it marked them as Ignored. I appreciate that it still wanted to tell me about the possible threat however. Messenger Plus was one of the applications, which might seem weird, but to its credit, Microsoft also shows Windows Messenger as a threat if you have that installed still. The UI is really nice, and the feature set is extensive! I changed my IE start page, and AntiSpyware showed a popup asking if I wanted to allow the start page to be changed. Other things include real-time protection, and the SpyNet community. Pretty cool stuff!

The only thing I didn’t like was that it seemed to take a lot longer to remove threats than Ad-Aware does. Aside from that however, its an excellent beta! Keep in mind that the software is beta – so you might have problems, and it might not always be free. If you want a good adware killer now though, go check it out. One thing I’d like to see them add is integration into the new Windows Security center in XP, that would be cool.

NOTE: The software only works on Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003.

Felicia does! I guess she started her blog quite a while ago, located at http://starfishi.blogspot.com. Apparently I was telling her some statistics back in October about how so many blogs die soon after they are started, and so Felicia is proud to post once a month to keep it going. For that reason, I told her that her blog is like PMS! She didn’t like that comment 😛

Wow, long time no post! Ah well, the holidays are over now, time to get back to business.

Just a quick post for all you Skype users out there – version 1.1.0.61 was released yesterday and includes a number of fixes/changes, including a slicker looking UI. Apparently it also includes a new version of the API, but none of the documentation has been released for that yet. Get it here!

Just came across this article at Wired that talks about wildlife and the Tsunami that rocked Sri Lanka. The waves apparently washed floodwaters two miles inland at Sri Lanka’s biggest wildlife reserve, yet no animals died:

“No elephants are dead, not even a dead hare or rabbit,” said H.D. Ratnayake, deputy director of Sri Lanka’s Wildlife Department. “I think animals can sense disaster. They have a sixth sense. They know when things are happening.”

Is that so? Maybe it’s not that animals have a sixth sense, but that humans are stupid. You’d never find a rabbit or an elephant standing around watching the water engulf them as they record it all on tape. Nor would you find a leopard heading into the water to retrieve his favorite material possession.

Okay so maybe I am being a little harsh, but seriously!

Happy New Year and all the best to you in the coming dozen months!

A follow-up to the Suprnova story I wrote about earlier, BitTorrent file sharing site LokiTorrent has promised to fight the attack launched by the MPAA:

LokiTorrent, a Web site and index of files available through a peer-to-peer technology known as BitTorrent, posted a letter from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) on its site on Tuesday. The letter states that the MPAA has filed suit in district court in Texas against the site and demands that Loki Torrent cease linking to video files that could infringe on studios’ copyrights.

“If you’ve ever benefited from this site or file-sharing in general, now is the time to show your support,” a message on LokiTorrent stated. “We are looking at a cost of $30K per month in fees.” So far, the site has garnered nearly $18,000, or about 60 percent of the total needed for a month, according to a bar graph on the site.

Read: CNET News.com

I have been programming like a mad man for the last few days, so I haven’t really had time to do anything else. Today however, I took a moment to update the feeds I subscribe to and man was there ever a lot of posts to read! In any case, I am feeling a little more caught up – though I still have a couple shows to post at BlogosphereRadio.

The most common type of post I read today was a 2004 year in review or something similar. So, not to be left out (how sad is that?) I will be posting my own in the next two days. Also hopefully a year in review show at BlogosphereRadio.com.

Thank you Megan and family for hosting my 21st birthday party yesterday! My actual birthday is not until tomorrow, but I think Megan picked a good date for the party, as we had a pretty good turnout (considering it is the holidays), including Dickson, Andrew, Lisa, Joe, Nick, Jill and Felicia. Thanks everyone for coming!

We started the evening, and continued for most of it actually, by playing XBOX. The gang gave me Halo 2 and NHL 2005 so that was wicked! We immediately put the NHL 2005 to good use – if there is no hockey on TV, we’ll make our own hockey! Dickson seemed to beat me every time, while Megan and Felicia were pretty evenly matched. Lisa caught on quickly and probably could have taken on Megan!

And we also played some less technical games too, using cards! There was lots of food, and of course, Coke. Megan baked a delicious cake that her Mom made the icing for – apologies for my terrible cake cutting skills! Ah yes, another gift I got was a bottle of Baha Rosa. It shall be put to good use on New Year’s Eve!

Anyway, it was lots of fun, nice to see everyone! Thanks again Megan. You can check out some pictures from the evening here.

Shown to the left is my Christmas present from my parents – thanks guys! It is a brand new, 20 GB Creative Zen Touch, and it replaced my iPod starting yesterday.

I had a first generation iPod, and while it worked well enough, it didn’t do what I needed. The battery life was terrible for one – the Zen Touch boasts a 24 hour battery life at 128 kbps (all my stuff is at least 128, most of it is higher). The main problem for me however, is that my musical life is spent inside Windows Media Player. Ever since version 9, I have used nothing else, and I really wanted a player that would work with WMP 10. The Zen Touch does, as do all WMA-enabled devices. It also has some really awesome features that the iPod was lacking, like creating and editing playlists on the go, deleting tracks without having to connect to a computer, and I like the Creative equalizers.

The TouchPad, which is where the device gets its name, does a good job of replacing the iPod’s ClickWheel in my opinion. At first it takes some getting used to, but only a single day after having it, I think I have mastered it – on the lowest sensitivity setting at least. It’s pretty easy to go through long lists of songs, and once you get the hang of it, it’s easy to move slowly one or two songs up or down.

Perhaps the only thing that I don’t find that useful right now is that the interface is USB 2.0 and not FireWire. This would be fine, except for the fact that I don’t have any USB 2.0 ports in my computer.

Anyway, the title of this post is about podcasting, so I should say something about that. I am going to be testing out the Zen Touch with Windows Media Player and Doppler for podcasting, and I’ll write about how it goes later. I can now finally test our WMA feed at BlogosphereRadio! I also plan to buy the Wired Remote for the Zen Touch, which adds and FM Tuner and a Microphone, so maybe I’ll even be able to podcast on the go!

Anyway, its a sweet player, thanks Mom & Dad!