This weekend I spent much time on creating a Flash projector for a menu based installation of Office and other programs. The screenshot below explains better what I was trying to accomplish, when someone clicks on the button named Engelsk (Engelsk = English) I wanted setup.exe to launch with a transform file applied to it.

I spent a lot of time playing around with the FSCommand EXEC, but it would not work. This was how you did it in previous versions of Flash. So after some trying and failing I started to google the problem and it turned out that the FSCommand EXEC is no longer working as it used to in Flash CS3.

So I needed to find another solution, I then came over a great tool called Proxy from Northcode that solved all my problems and the best thing: It’s free

Here is a summary from Nothcode’s blog about why this tool was developed and how it works;

A typical requirement you’ll run across when developing CD based Flash projects is the need to open documents from your Flash projector. You can use getURL to…

Windows Vista operates external hard drives that are connected with USB differently than internal drives. Write caching is disabled so that you can safely remove the drive at almost any time. This is a great feature for USB thumb drives that are frequently inserted and removed from your computer. But if you have a large hard drive that is in an external enclosure that you never disconnect from your computer, write caching is also disabled which can decrease performance.

This tweak is going to show you how to increase the performance of your external hard drives by turning write caching back on as well as activating advanced performance. Let’s get started: (more…)

advanced performance, computer, device manager, external enclosure, external hard drives, Hardware, hard drive, optimize, reboot, thumb drives, tweak

I closed out this week speaking with Nigel Keam, Architect, and Mark Bolger, Director of Marketing for Microsoft Surface.  Both are very proud of their product and have every reason to be.

Microsoft Surface is a 30-inch display in a table-like form factor designed to bring friends and family together through the sharing of technology.  Users can share photos, play games and complete everyday tasks by using hand gestures, touch or other physical objects with Microsoft Surface.  This new custom software platform runs atop Windows Vista and is a good way to highlight the flexibility of the new OS in conjunction with new hardware and applications designed specifically for Windows Vista.  Although it’s maybe hard to imagine all that Surface will be able to do in the future, I have to say that today, even in its infancy, it’s astonishing!

It all started with the idea of blending the physical and the virtual worlds through technology, because although technology might bring us closer together in some ways, it can isolate us in others.  Family members often use computers in separate rooms and email or instant message each other to communicate (how many of you can relate?). 

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I closed out this week speaking with Nigel Keam, Architect, and Mark Bolger, Director of Marketing for Microsoft Surface. Both are very proud of their product and have every reason to be. Microsoft Surface is a 30-inch display in a table-like form factor Read More……(read more)

In this episode of “The Never-Ending Quest for Better Server Performance,” we follow our heroes’ journey through the dangerous and murky woods of PHP opcode caching engines, where they aren’t content with just installing an opcode caching engine, but <gasp> becoming one with it too!

Yep, you heard that right. We’ve just released two new plugins for the WordPress users out there, that take opcode caching to the next level. If you haven’t already installed an opcode caching engine like XCache (our favorite!), eAccelerator, Turck MMcache, Memcached, APC, or PHPA then you really need to do that right now before even continuing this article. Really, what were you waiting for!?

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When Microsoft shipped the “Microsoft industrial design toolkit” to over 70 original equipment manufacturers last year before the launch of Windows Vista, Microsoft hoped to get rid of the “beige box” ideology and turn PCs into objects of desire. More than a year on, as charming John Hodgeman might be, the sad fact is that most OEM PCs today with a few premium exceptions are still bulky boxes with just as many stickers are wires connected.

It might probably take more than a year for an industry thriving around function over form to do the opposite, but Apple’s iPod and iMac demonstrates most people are even willing to sell body-parts to look good. Apart from the minority who likes to tinker with the hardware, there’s no reason why the PC can’t be more compact and integrated.

Today I stumbled across Carbon Design Group’s portfolio, a Seattle-based industrial design company who’s worked on many Microsoft projects including the X360 controller, racing wheel, LifeCam, Laser Desktop 6000 and Windows Home Server. One other was the “Vista PC“. A set of 9

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