This week, Vista enthusiasts and the Microsoft blogging community lost one of its most insightful enthusiasts, Benjamin Aaron Lucas, or otherwise more popularly known as Utakz.

I must admit, we’ve had our differences, especially on the heated debate about the existence of Aero Diamond (which will have an end soon). But nevertheless, he had his fair share of scoops and inside information. If you wanted the latest screenshots of an Vista internal build or build just to be released, he had it, and he also had all the nitty gritty facts about what’s new since the last builds. No doubt he was someone who knew their stuff.

Today when I learned of his and his sibling’s tragic death, Josh proposed the idea of a website badge to show our tributes to him. So I decided to make this badge as my way of remembering his hard work and dedication. I must admit, I drew inspiration from Donavon countdown gadget.

If you would like to use this graphic too, then copy/paste the following HTML:
<img loading="lazy" src="http://istartedsomething.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/utakz.png" width="130px" height="152px" alt="Remembering Aaron Lucas 'Utakz'" title="Remembering Aaron Lucas 'Utakz'" />

This is not a good week. Rest in peace.

No, I’m not talking about the operating system.

A few minutes ago, our shop’s front windows were smashed by a mob of drunks. There goes a few thousand dollars. 🙁

Filed a police report at 2am. The police was actually following this group, trying to prevent something like this happening. But it happened anyway, and the police only managed to capture a few. They didn’t get the suspect who actually smashed the windows with a shopping trolley, and none of the captured would speak out.

Life is full of surprises. 😐

Have you ever selected a bunch of files, started dragging them, and then only to accidentally drop them on the desktop, making a load of duplicates cluttering your desktop which you have to clean up later? No? Just me? 🙁

Luckily for me (and me only), Windows Vista bring a some minor but powerful enhancement to the drag and drop interface. Vista actually provides visual feedback about what actions will be applied to the files you have selected. It might sound simple if not stupid at first, but sometimes you really don’t know what’s going to happen and its good to have some reassurance you’re not making 500 duplicates of the same files.

If you’ve ever used Windows Vista, then you might have seen these little icons on the side of your cursor when you move your sensitive documents around the hard-drive. There are 8 different types in total, collect them all to unlock hidden Ultimate Extras! Find the secret 9th type to win a trip to space!

This feature as described in the patent “Rich drag drop user interface“, attempts to solve this simple problem, “when performing a drag/drop operation, it is not always clear to the user what action is going to be taken upon completion of the drag/drop operation. It can be even more confusing when multiple files for dragging/dropping have been selected together.”

So the inventors have created a table of all the possible actions you might want to do with files and folders depending on where you drag them to, and provide appropriate visual feedback on the actions performed if the files are to be dropped.

Like me, if you don’t want to refer to this table every time you want to drag and drop some files, just remember to look for those little icons next to your cursor before you release your folders of Tux Penguinography on an unsuspecting icon.

Windows Vista is suppose to be a fresh new start for Microsoft’s partners. The level of quality demanded from Vista-related marketing has been upped compared to previous Windows releases, with most partners complying to a higher standard of websites to showcase Vista. But one company decides to take Vista back to the stone age.

This is what you get when you type “Windows Vista” into the search box on Newegg.com.

I wouldn’t be surprised if this mini-site was proposed, drafted, designed, published and signed-off solely by a intern. The whole website has been sliced and diced in Adobe ImageReady with CSS standards and accessibility thrown out the window.

Newegg also suggests to customers to disregard Microsoft’s system requirements for Newegg’s own specifications to sell more high-end hardware. “So go ahead and glance over what Microsoft suggests and then jump over to the hardware requirements that Newegg recommends.” Ridiculous system specifications include a 64-bit CPU, DirectX 10 graphics card and a 250GB hard drive. Sneaky.

Microsoft should keep a closer eye on what Frankenstein marketing mash-up some of their partners have created such as this. This site creates a pretty poor impression to customers about Windows Vista, and I wouldn’t doubt there are more like this.

Windows Vista sounds recording session with Robert Fripp.

Ten Microsofties + 10 sound designers.

Today, Fast Company released an article from their February issue about how Microsoft created the new Windows Vista startup sound. Appropriately titled “twenty people, four notes“, the article explains how it took 18 months, 20 people and over 500 variations to pick just a four-note melody that will be played over and over again for years to come. Personal note: I quite like it.

The article explains, “according to studies by branding guru Martin Lindstrom and market research firm Millward Brown, sound has a 41% chance of influencing how people perceive brands.” which is all well and good considering how beaten up the Windows brand can be. But if it takes that much time and resources to create something so fundamentally simple, then how does a less-resourceful open-source development like Ubuntu deal with it?

Projects like Firefox and Ubuntu can deliver quality software for fractions of the development time, cost and resources compared with what companies like Microsoft spend. Thousands of people work on Windows, but it takes only somewhat 250 Ubuntu freelance contributors to come up with a solution I would consider as an alternative (if it is a sin in your religion to use Windows).

So I went on a hunt to find out exactly how many people work on the Ubuntu startup sound, and to my surprise, there was only one. User Pete Savage is the sole contributor and composer to the “UbuntuSounds” project which is currently deciding on the new sound scheme for the next release of Ubuntu.

So far, it took just under a month for Pete to come up with 11 different samples which other users are providing feedback on what they like and don’t like about each sample. Most of them are unique and pretty good, however a bit long for my likings.

If a team of one can compete with a team of 20, then I’m beginning to wonder if the cost of development is worth all that? I appreciate how much effort they’re putting into attention to detail, but I’m sure Oscar-winning sound designers don’t come cheap. I know I’d very much prefer a cheaper (or lesser-bugged) operating system than a startup sound even by multi-award winning composers.

I wonder how much a copy of Windows Vista would cost without sounds? Maybe it’s time for a pay-as-you-go operating system!

Update: Steve Ball, one of the people behind the sound, gives some more internal insight behind the decision process.

Update 2: Steve Ball has posted an excellent response (or email actually) to the topics I brought up on this post. Well worth reading for the inside thoughts and processes behind the new Vista sounds.

Whilst most of the Vanishing Point participants are losing enough sleep over just the chance to win a trip into sub-orbital space valued at $192,000, but some very enthusiastic and intelligent people want something different. They want the priceless chance for their name to be forever engraved on a computer chip, of course until 2 years later when these chips are out-of-date and thrown out in the garbage.

The meta puzzle bonus is something you can’t copy and paste from the Vanishing Point Wiki. It will be awarded to first and only person to solve the mysterious puzzle. This puzzle is so concealed that even white boxes barely the size of several pixels are providing important clues to solving this puzzle.

Loki has said “I will print your name on the actual casing of every AMD Athlon 64 FX computer chip manufactured between now and March 31, 2007.” but after contacting AMD about this, they have said they’re only doing a special run of 1,000 highest-performing (at the time) FX processors with the winner’s name engraved. Who do we trust? An imaginary figure or the company actually producing the chips?

These processors will be sold in unmarked processors-in-a-box (PIB) packs where AMD PIBs are commonly sold. These PIBs have a clear plastic window on the side so you can easily identify if the chip has been engraved or not. But if you ever find one, it might be worth putting on eBay since the winner may not actually get a complimentary processor themselves, so I bet they’ll be hunting these down too.

In other news, 42 Entertainment has finally fixed the spelling of “Australia” on the Vanishing Point website. So far, I’ve seen at least two accounts of “Australia” spelled with an extra “i” (Austrailia) during the course of Vanishing Point. I urge 42 Entertainment to double check their geographic locations in the future before thousands of enthusiasts rush to some small island nation in the middle of the Pacific Ocean thoroughly searching every beach for clues in the sand. Oh how amusing that would be. 😛

Not long to go now, before someone finds Loki’s vanishing point.