Daniel B's Tech Blog

I recently had the opportunity to test out an interest bit of software called Fishbowl (www.fishbowlclient.com).

Fishbowl is a Facebook desktop client designed for Windows. User are able to logged on to Facebook and view their Friends updates, photos etc via this neat little application.
While this software looks complete, uniquely this is only concept software simply just showcasing the potential of Windows 7 software development. However, it will not only run on Windows XP and up, it is usable software (see system requirements). According you the official MSDN blog, it has been developed using Microsoft Silverlight and Windows Presentation Foundation, which is similar to the now popular Adobe AIR platform.

Visually, it is very similar to the standard Facebook website. The familiar blue setting and similar layout will help user feel right at home.
Although this software DOES allow you to change its colours, it's nothing to get excited over. The colour selection is as follows; Fac…

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I have recently really gotten in to play the very popular Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 first person shooter game on the XBOX 360 (also available on other platforms) and finding that I was really sucking. My girlfriend has also become interested playing. That got me thinking what would be the best advise I could give her and everyone else when it comes to play most first person shooters online with multiplayer.

So what I have done is gone out on to the web and tallied up the top 10 tips that others believe are important when it comes to playing First Person Shooters (FPS) online/mulitplayer.

(Please note here that I am assuming that you have SOME First Person Shooter experience.)

Number 1: Learn your maps

It's agreed upon all over the web that it's important that you know your maps. Understanding and knowing your maps like th…

For some stupid reason, I decided to give my laptop a Disk Defrag using the built in Windows Vista defrag utility (which is still going by the way).

But... Where the f*ck is the progress bar? I see this as a big design flaw.

Microsoft (and other software developers for that matter), give me some idea how long this process will take.



This is a screenshot of the Windows Vista defrag window. Can you tell how long its going to be? Around a few minutes to a few hours is not good enough.

For a while now I have had the latest of the xbox updates particpating in the trial. Overall I have generally welcomed the update however there are a couple of design features that bother me.
The biggest thing about the update is the Twitter and Facebook as from the XBOX 360 console. Users are mow able to access and communicate directly from their Xbox. However typing your tweets or status updates can be a task in itself if you do not have the chatpad.

The Twitter and Facebook clients are run as separate applications. In other words, once you click on the Twitter screen it loads up a dedicated application. You are unable to tweet or upadte your facebook status anywhere else but within the applications. My problem here is that I was expecting to be able to tweet during game play. Or the xbox might be able to tweet when I have unlocked and achievement. But sadly no.

Users also gain access to the Zune video market place. Here users can rent and stream down a wide selection of movies. D…