What a spectacular change to the original Aero theme. This is what Microsoft should have done in the first place. All the colors and other elements go perfectly together. The transparency of this theme makes it feel lighter than air. Just a simple great theme.
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Another great Vista Royale theme. Nice Fall wallpaper and overall clean look of all the elements. Wonderful transparent topbars and taskbars.
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Ahhhh, alliteration. Anyway, just noticed that one of the other sites has posted the cheesy comment I referenced in my previous entry, Set the Priority of a Process By Name Automatically, in Vista - Part 2. So, both saw fit to post the comments (took a while for the one site, though) - the first stamped 2008-01-31 2:37 GMT, and the second stamped 2008-01-30 13:40 GMT. No sign of Part 2 on either of these sites, though… Hmmm…

Open regedit.exe through the start menu search or run box and browse down to the following key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\ Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters

Find the EnableSuperfetch key on the right-hand pane, and change the value to one of these:

• Cache Boot Files Only: 1
• Cache Applications Only: 2
• Cache Everything (default): 3

You’ll have to restart your computer before this takes any effect. You could consider clearing out the \Windows\Prefetch folder after making this change to start with a fresh cache, but keep in mind that the next boot will probably be slower since Windows will have to cache everything again.

Update: I left three separate tech service requests with Brigadoon Software, the makers of PCPhoneHome, two by email and one by telephone. The most-recent of those, the phone call, was five days ago and the oldest was more than a week ago. I have received no response yet.

It’s my current opinion that PCPhoneHome is an orphan - nobody home at Brigadoon Software. So what if my PC was stolen and it did phone home? I seriously doubt I would get any help tracing it. Apparently it’s still possible to order the product, but I won’t!

Now the problem is that it’s still phoning home, from my home, every day at least twice. Brigadoon’s documentation implies that it is nearly impossible to uninstall it without their help, and they don’t call back. Since PCPhoneHome puts other “hooks” into the operating system, I think I will try to uninstall it anyway before the trial period expires.

For the launch of Windows Live Wave 2 late last year, Microsoft together with the non-profit organization “Operation Smile” hosted an event in New York with a dazzling art installation featuring a 60-feet wide white sphere. On this sphere, they projected a dynamically-generated visualization of smiling faces with thousands of smaller pictures. The end result if nothing of a sheer visual spectacle. And because everything was rendered in real-time, attendees at the event could even upload their own face pictures into the pool of faces although I’m sure it’ll be one hell of a “Where’s Waldo” to find.

It was put together by creative studio “firstborn” using an open-source visual graphics platform called Processing. Check out their website for more gorgeous screenshots as well as a look at the behind the scenes wizardry.

This sure gives the Times Square NYE Ball a run for its money.