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	<title>The NeoSmart Files</title>
	
	<link>http://neosmart.net/blog</link>
	<description>Connecting Ideas</description>
	<lastBuildDate>Fri, 23 Jul 2010 11:27:43 +0000</lastBuildDate>
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		<title>Software with a (Subtle) Sense of Humor</title>
		<link>http://feeds.neosmart.net/~r/neosmart/~3/MgtTQjv7Sdc/</link>
		<comments>http://neosmart.net/blog/2010/software-with-a-subtle-sense-of-humor/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 23 Jul 2010 11:27:43 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Mahmoud Al-Qudsi</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Software]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[BetterZip]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Humor]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Macintosh]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[OS X]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://neosmart.net/blog/?p=877</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Every once in a while you come across something in a piece of software that makes you smile. In this case, it was trying to open a 60MB CHM file in BetterZip, the best OS X unzip utility out there. A lot of software out there tries too hard to be funny, and really doesn&#8217;t [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Every once in a while you come across something in a piece of software that makes you smile. In this case, it was trying to open a 60MB CHM file in <a href="http://macitbetter.com/">BetterZip</a>, the best OS X unzip utility out there. A lot of software out there tries too hard to be funny, and really doesn&#8217;t come across as such (I&#8217;m look at <em>you</em>, <a href="http://ic.tweakimg.net/ext/i/1238597241.png">ImgBurn</a>).</p>
<p>But here&#8217;s a very serious program that does some very serious stuff. It&#8217;s never cracked jokes at me before, and it&#8217;s been a dependable creature, all business thus far. But all work and no play makes Jack a very dull boy. And so that brings us to the sense of humor &#8211; image after the jump:</p>
<p><span id="more-877"></span></p>
<p><img src="http://grab.by/5yoT" alt="" width="634" height="167" /></p>
<p><br class="spacer_" /></p>
<p>(Apologies for the bad screenshot!)</p>

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<a href="http://feeds.neosmart.net/~ff/neosmart?a=MgtTQjv7Sdc:LwHZbm5lMeI:V_sGLiPBpWU"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/neosmart?i=MgtTQjv7Sdc:LwHZbm5lMeI:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.neosmart.net/~ff/neosmart?a=MgtTQjv7Sdc:LwHZbm5lMeI:yIl2AUoC8zA"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/neosmart?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.neosmart.net/~ff/neosmart?a=MgtTQjv7Sdc:LwHZbm5lMeI:F7zBnMyn0Lo"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/neosmart?i=MgtTQjv7Sdc:LwHZbm5lMeI:F7zBnMyn0Lo" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.neosmart.net/~ff/neosmart?a=MgtTQjv7Sdc:LwHZbm5lMeI:gIN9vFwOqvQ"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/neosmart?i=MgtTQjv7Sdc:LwHZbm5lMeI:gIN9vFwOqvQ" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.neosmart.net/~ff/neosmart?a=MgtTQjv7Sdc:LwHZbm5lMeI:dnMXMwOfBR0"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/neosmart?d=dnMXMwOfBR0" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.neosmart.net/~ff/neosmart?a=MgtTQjv7Sdc:LwHZbm5lMeI:qj6IDK7rITs"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/neosmart?d=qj6IDK7rITs" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.neosmart.net/~ff/neosmart?a=MgtTQjv7Sdc:LwHZbm5lMeI:D7DqB2pKExk"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/neosmart?i=MgtTQjv7Sdc:LwHZbm5lMeI:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.neosmart.net/~ff/neosmart?a=MgtTQjv7Sdc:LwHZbm5lMeI:-BTjWOF_DHI"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/neosmart?i=MgtTQjv7Sdc:LwHZbm5lMeI:-BTjWOF_DHI" border="0"></img></a>
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		<item>
		<title>Free Download: Timeline 2.1 Home Edition</title>
		<link>http://feeds.neosmart.net/~r/neosmart/~3/ndVuKZcazBg/</link>
		<comments>http://neosmart.net/blog/2010/free-download-timeline-2-1-home-edition/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 21 Jul 2010 08:07:41 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Mahmoud Al-Qudsi</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Software]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Backup]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Download]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Freeware]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Genie Timeline]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://neosmart.net/blog/?p=870</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Four months ago (though it does feel like much, much less than that!), we posted about the release of Genie Timeline 2.0. Timeline, in both its free and paid Home/Pro editions, has been well-received around the globe &#8211; the free backup software market is severely undersaturated, especially when it comes to good stuff that actually works. [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img src="http://neosmart.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/logo.png" style="float:right; max-width: 175px; max-height: 175px;"/>
</p>
<p>Four months ago (though it does feel like much, <em>much</em> less than that!), we posted about <a href="http://neosmart.net/blog/2010/genie-timeline-2-0-quality-free-backup-for-all/">the release of Genie Timeline 2.0</a>. Timeline, in both its free and paid Home/Pro editions, has been well-received around the globe &#8211; the free backup software market is severely undersaturated, especially when it comes to good stuff that actually works.</p>
<p>Earlier this month, Genie-Soft released Timeline 2.1 which fixed a number of issues and greatly improved the performance. For the next 24 hours (well, 23 actually as of the time in this posting!) Genie Timeline 2.1 Home Edition is available 100% for free on Giveaway of the Day.</p>
<p class="save">Download: <a href="http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/genie-timeline-home-2-1/">Genie Timeline 2.1 Home Edition</a></p>
<p><span id="more-870"></span></p>
<p>GTL Home Edition adds a number of good features to the already-neat GTL Free:</p>
<ul>
<li>Disaster Recovery (which can be booted from USB, virtual partition, or recovery CD!)</li>
<li>Compressed backups</li>
<li>More-frequent backups to disk</li>
<li>Purging of old backups to make sure you never have to get another backup drive</li>
<li>Backup of iPhone, iPad, iPod, and BlackBerry profiles</li>
<li>Advanced restore</li>
<li>Customer support</li>
</ul>
<p>You can read all about Genie Timeline 2.1 Home Edition <a href="http://genie-soft.com/home/Genie_Timeline_Home/overview.aspx">here</a>.</p>
<p><em>Disclaimer: I&#8217;m currently in the employ of Genie-Soft and am part of the GTL development team. I hope you enjoy our free software!</em></p>

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</div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/neosmart/~4/ndVuKZcazBg" height="1" width="1"/>]]></content:encoded>
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		<item>
		<title>Welcome to EasyBCD 2.0!</title>
		<link>http://feeds.neosmart.net/~r/neosmart/~3/f9QRperWZy4/</link>
		<comments>http://neosmart.net/blog/2010/welcome-to-easybcd-2/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 12 Jul 2010 11:43:34 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Mahmoud Al-Qudsi</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Linux]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Macintosh]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[NeoSmart Technologies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Operating Systems]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Software]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Windows]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[BCD]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bootloader]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Download]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[EasyBCD]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Freeware]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[GRUB]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[GRUB2]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[OS X]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Windows 7]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Windows Vista]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://neosmart.net/blog/?p=858</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Hello and welcome to EasyBCD 2.0!! It&#8217;s rather hard to believe, but EasyBCD 1.7.2 has been out for over 2 years now, and we&#8217;ve been working on Version 2.0 ever since. In that time, a lot has happened. Windows 7 has shipped, ext4fs is the new cool kid on the Linux block, GRUB2 is finally [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img style="float: right;" src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2716/4110038985_6ccf28791b_m.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<p>Hello and welcome to EasyBCD 2.0!!</p>
<p>It&#8217;s rather hard to believe, but EasyBCD 1.7.2 has been out for over 2 years now, and we&#8217;ve been working on Version 2.0 ever since. In that time, a lot has happened. Windows 7 has shipped, ext4fs is the new cool kid on the Linux block, GRUB2 is finally seeing some adoption, VHDs are the new wow, and everyone and their grandmother want a dual-boot between Windows 7 and Windows XP.</p>
<p>Worry not, we haven&#8217;t been sitting on our (not-so-proverbial) behinds this whole time. In fact, the entire NeoSmart team &#8211; developers, supporters, testers, and all &#8211; have been working around the clock to make EasyBCD 2.0 the biggest, coolest, greatest, and awesomest thing ever since the invention of the MBR. And now, over a 150 beta builds later and 2 years in the making, we&#8217;re super-pleased to introduce you to EasyBCD 2.0. It&#8217;s so incredibly overhauled and improved, so stuffed-to-the-brim with features, so much of a true one-click dual-boot experince, so customizable, so powerful, and so EASY that it took a lot of self-restraint to keep from calling it EasyBCD 10.0!</p>
<p>What&#8217;s new, you ask? We&#8217;ll get to it. But let&#8217;s just first give you the download link, because we know you just can&#8217;t wait to get your grubby, geeky paws on it ASAP:</p>
<p class="save"><!-- <a href="http://j.mp/EasyBCD"> &#8211;> <a href="http://download.cnet.com/3001-2094_4-10556865.html">Download EasyBCD 2.0.1</a> (1337 KiB)</p>
<p style="text-align: right;"><small>(Yes, it <em>really is</em> <span style="font-family: monospace;">1337</span> kibibytes in size. And, no, we didn&#8217;t do it on purpose. We&#8217;re just übercool that way!)</small></p>
<p><span id="more-858"></span></p>
<p>So, what&#8217;s new? Lots. Lots, lots, and lots of new. And lots and lots of improved. With less and less and less bugs, too. The <a href="http://neosmart.net/changelog.php?id=1">official changelog</a> is miles long, but here&#8217;s the stuff that we feel really shines. It&#8217;s so hard to sort them in a way that doesn&#8217;t leave one feature in the shadow of the other, but here goes:</p>
<ul>
<li>Complete Windows 7 support (including the pretty-boot screen!)</li>
<li>Total redesign of the user interface to make the stuff you use more often easier to get to and easier to understand</li>
<li>Automatic configuration and one-click setup of Windows XP dual-boots. No more mucking around w/ boot.ini and NTDETECT + NTLDR</li>
<li>Support for multiple top-level Windows XP entries. You no longer need to go through a second NTLDR menu no matter <em>how many</em> XPs you have installed!</li>
<li>Support for GRUB2 and ext4fs (we&#8217;re looking at you, Ubuntu *glare*)</li>
<li>Boot from ISO images and Virtual Harddisk (vhd) files!</li>
<li>Create bootable USB drives!</li>
<li>Change the boot drive on your system (including all the partition management stuff) with one click!</li>
<li>Rewritten OS X support (yes, again *sigh*)</li>
<li>EasyBCD BIOS Extender to let you boot from network devices, specific hard disks, USBs, and more even if your BIOS doesn&#8217;t support it (thanks to <a href="http://www.plop.at/">PLoP</a> integration)</li>
<li>Support for multiple top-level GRLDR entries (in the same vein as XP entries above)</li>
<li>Improved boot device detection, EasyBCD always runs, even if your boot device is inaccessible or the BCD isn&#8217;t installed!</li>
<li>Loading indicator for lengthy operations</li>
<li>Better support for loading and managing external BCD stores</li>
<li>Complete EasyBCD portability. Just tell the installer where to stick it, and you&#8217;re set!</li>
<li>Improved high DPI support</li>
<li>Ability to create safe-mode entries</li>
<li>Improved MBR repair, BCD repair, and more!</li>
</ul>
<p>It&#8217;s been a real blast working on EasyBCD 2.0, and we&#8217;re really excited to have something we can finally share with the general public. Before we leave you and EasyBCD 2 alone together, some final words need to be said: <strong>EasyBCD 2.0 would not have been possible without the help of the entire NeoSmart team, <a href="http://j.mp/EBCD2">testers</a>, and of course, <a href="http://neosmart.net/donations.php">donors</a>.</strong></p>
<p>A big shout-out to Terry (<a href="http://neosmart.net/forums/member.php?u=2082">Terry60</a>), Justin (<a href="http://neosmart.net/forums/member.php?u=3234">Kairozamorro</a>), Jake (<a href="http://neosmart.net/forums/member.php?u=5477">Coolname007</a>), Alex (<a href="http://neosmart.net/forums/member.php?u=69">Mak 2.0</a>), and everyone else that helped in providing support over the past 2 years. Crazy props to the Grub4Dos team and the PLoP developers.</p>
<p>And some links to keep you busy:</p>
<ul>
<li>EasyBCD <a href="http://neosmart.net/wiki/display/EBCD/">user manual</a> (it&#8217;s severely out-of-date, we&#8217;re updating it for 2.0 now)</li>
<li>EasyBCD 2.0 <a href="http://neosmart.net/gallery/album/view/neosmart/EasyBCD/EasyBCD+2.0/">screenshots</a></li>
<li><a href="http://neosmart.net/forums/">Support forums</a></li>
</ul>
<p><br class="spacer_" /></p>
<p><strong>Follow us?</strong></p>
<p>Keep in touch via twitter <a href="http://twitter.com/neosmart">@neosmart</a> or <a href="http://facebook.com/NeoSmart">facebook</a> for constant info and updates!</p>
<p><br class="spacer_" /></p>
<p><strong>A Token of Appreciation?</strong></p>
<p>Have we saved you a lot of time, effort, problems, and loss of limb, life, or worse? How much have you saved in support and repair costs? Do you want to say thank you? You can make a donation here:</p>
<form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post">
<input name="cmd" type="hidden" value="_s-xclick" />
<input name="hosted_button_id" type="hidden" value="6QZKTKK3HRPMN" />
<input alt="PayPal - The safer, easier way to pay online!" name="submit" src="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_donateCC_LG.gif" type="image" /> <img src="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/scr/pixel.gif" border="0" alt="" width="1" height="1" /> </form>

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		<item>
		<title>Intel C++ Compiler 12??</title>
		<link>http://feeds.neosmart.net/~r/neosmart/~3/OwmAq30o02c/</link>
		<comments>http://neosmart.net/blog/2010/intel-c-compiler-12/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 11 Jul 2010 09:44:51 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Mahmoud Al-Qudsi</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Corporate Talk]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Programming]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Software]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[C#]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Coding]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Compilers]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Intel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Microsoft]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Visual Studio]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Visual Studio 2010]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://neosmart.net/blog/?p=853</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 has been officially released for 3 months now (to the day), and to be pedantic, it has also been available in beta form since October 2008. Its bugs not withstanding, Visual Studio 2010 been a pretty successful hit. Besides the huge improvements to the .NET language and platform, big on the list [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img style="float: right;" src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4014/4643903279_39befe1046_m.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<p>Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 has been officially released for 3 months now (to the day), and to be pedantic, it has also been available in beta form since October 2008. <a href="http://neosmart.net/blog/2010/the-un-improvements-to-find-all-references-in-visual-studio-2010/">Its bugs</a> not withstanding, Visual Studio 2010 been a pretty successful hit. Besides the huge improvements to the .NET language and platform, big on the list of features for C++ developers is basic support for C++0x (the next standard version of C++, with lots of new &amp; revolutionary features) and plenty of IDE enhancements. <a href="http://www.intel.com/cd/software/products/asmo-na/eng/compilers/284132.htm">Intel&#8217;s C++ Compiler</a> is the industry-standard with regards to performance and optimizations, still doesn&#8217;t support Visual Studio 2010 or C++0x.</p>
<p>As numerous postings on the Intel forums indicate, a plethora of users are in pressing need of an update to the Intel C++ Compiler. Questions on the matter are brushed-off, with short and rather-useless replies <a href="http://software.intel.com/en-us/forums/showthread.php?t=73699">such as</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>&#8220;This question has been discussed several times recently.  The first such integration would come in a beta version of icc 12.0, which hasn&#8217;t yet been announced.&#8221;</p>
</blockquote>
<p><span id="more-853"></span></p>
<p>No one has seen neither hair nor hide of Intel Compiler 12, not in private form or anything else. There is no information on the Intel site to even indicate that such a release is forthcoming. And until that time, developers will have to either resort to using the built-in MSVC++ compiler or hold off on migrating to Visual Studio 2010<em> and</em> C++0x. Despite the information <a href="http://wiki.apache.org/stdcxx/C++0xCompilerSupport">floating around</a> on the net, the Intel C++ Compiler in its latest incarnation still does not support certain integral parts of C++0x such as r-value references (<a href="http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2006/n2118.html">N2118</a>) such that even if you were to attempt to manually compile your VS2010 project from the command-line by modifying the Intel compiler command-prompt to use the VC10 toolkit (as we&#8217;ve tried to do), you&#8217;ll find that it doesn&#8217;t even support the STL library headers that ship with VS2010. And linking to/against the VC9 headers results in DLL-hell with no way out.</p>
<p>The bottom-line of it all is that Intel still, almost a year after Microsoft made available development builds of VS2010 to corporate partners and TAP members, does not yet have anything that C++ Developers can use to build their solutions using features proposed and adopted for the next C++ standard years ago. And, perhaps even worse, there has been no corporate response to indicate when or even if such a possibility will happen. Intel&#8217;s customer support have been extremely vague on the matter of VS2010 support, have issued no official public statements on the matter, and are going out of their way to make their customers unhappy. Thank you, Intel. We really appreciate it.</p>

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		<item>
		<title>SPARQCode / QR Code Scanner for BlackBerry</title>
		<link>http://feeds.neosmart.net/~r/neosmart/~3/0hREnHYETDk/</link>
		<comments>http://neosmart.net/blog/2010/sparqcode-qr-code-scanner-for-blackberry/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 04 Jul 2010 18:21:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Mahmoud Al-Qudsi</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Hardware]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Software]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Android]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Barcode]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[BlackBerry]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[iPhone]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[QR Code]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Scanner]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[SPARQCode]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://neosmart.net/blog/?p=849</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[One of the most popular (and addictive) group of applications making the rounds on Android handsets these days are Barcode Scanners. Barcodes traditionally contain a very minimal set of information, namely just a product SKU that can be used to (somewhat-) uniquely identify items at the store or lying around your home. QR Codes are [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img style="float: right;" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/9b/Wikipedia_mobile_en.svg/150px-Wikipedia_mobile_en.svg.png" alt="" /></p>
<p>One of the most popular (and addictive) group of applications making the rounds on Android handsets these days are Barcode Scanners. Barcodes traditionally contain a very minimal set of information, namely just a product SKU that can be used to (somewhat-) uniquely identify items at the store or lying around your home. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_Code">QR Codes</a> are an extension to barcodes that have been updated for the 21st century: they&#8217;re specifically designed to be easily ready by the low-resolution cameras on mobile devices, quickly and accurately. SPARQCode itself is yet another layer of extension to the QR Code. It provides more functionality and adds support for extra usages.</p>
<p>A quick Google search for SPARQCode viewers for the BlackBerry fails to retrieve any interesting results. A similar search on AppWorld also shows no such luck &#8211; if you were to believe what you see, BlackBerry doesn&#8217;t (yet) have a usable SPARQCode viewer!</p>
<p>But that&#8217;s not true. It&#8217;s there, though the RIM Geeks over in Canada &#8211; in their infinite wisdom &#8211; put away that functionality in such an impossibly-illogical location. But it&#8217;s there.</p>
<p><span id="more-849"></span></p>
<p>If you saw that QR Code in the corner and said &#8220;Hey! That looks like the barcode I can scan to quickly exchange BBM PINs in OS 5!&#8221; you would be correct. BBM PIN Exchange in BBM5 is indeed an implementation of the SPARQCode. But not only does it use SPARQCode to make swapping PINs with your fellow CrackBerry addicts a lot easier, <strong>it&#8217;s also a fully functional SPARQCode scanner, too!</strong></p>
<p>Check it out. Just launch BBM, hit the menu key, and select the &#8220;Scan Group Barcode&#8221; menu item, as shown below:</p>
<p><img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4078/4761319814_580f582186.jpg" alt="" width="480" height="320" /></p>
<p><strong>Now, instead of scanning your friends BBM, point the camera on your BlackBerry to the QR Code in the top-right corner of this post. </strong>Move your BB back and forth (it&#8217;s not very good at this!), and&#8230; walla! BB will ask if you want to load the link to the mobile version of Wikipedia.</p>
<p>Want to test it again? Give this SPARQCode below a shot. It&#8217;s for my brothers&#8217; flight which will be arriving very soon &#8211; can you use this remarkably compact image to direct your BlackBerry to the flight details? Give it a shot, and post a reply with where the flight is coming from/going to!</p>
<p><img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4098/4764256234_e1458a60c6_o.gif" alt="" width="130" height="148" /></p>
<p>Bottom-line: BlackBerry <em>does</em> have an excellent SPARQCode scanner right out of the box (beat that, iPhone and Android!) but, unfortunately, it&#8217;s very well hidden.</p>

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		<item>
		<title>The Woes of Windows Vista/7 Mapped Network Drives</title>
		<link>http://feeds.neosmart.net/~r/neosmart/~3/CW86u1lKvrQ/</link>
		<comments>http://neosmart.net/blog/2010/the-woes-of-windows-vista7-mapped-network-drives/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 28 Jun 2010 12:34:18 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Mahmoud Al-Qudsi</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Operating Systems]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Programming]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Windows]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mapped Network Drives]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Microsoft]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Networking]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Win32]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Windows 7]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Windows Vista]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Windows XP]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://neosmart.net/blog/?p=847</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[One of the biggest, bestest, and most-hyped features of Windows Vista (according to Microsoft, that is) was the brand spanking new TCP/IP networking stack. Ask us, it sucks. Network performance hasn&#8217;t improved any over the ancient stack used in XP (nor should it &#8211; it&#8217;s not like there&#8217;s anything new in IPv4) though it does [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>One of the biggest, bestest, and most-hyped features of Windows Vista (according to Microsoft, that is) was the <a href="http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb878108.aspx">brand spanking new TCP/IP networking stack</a>. Ask us, it sucks. Network performance hasn&#8217;t improved any over the ancient stack used in XP (nor should it &#8211; it&#8217;s not like there&#8217;s anything <em>new</em> in IPv4) though it does add better IPv6 support out-of-the-box and ships with some even more functionality in Windows 7. But more importantly, Microsoft threw out decades of testing and quality assurance work on the existing Networking Stack and replaced it with something rather questionable.</p>
<p>We&#8217;ll be following up some more on this topic from a technical side later in another article, but for now, an example that most of you are sure to have come across if you&#8217;ve ever tried to map network drives before:</p>
<p><img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4134/4741620397_828e1a22f6.jpg" alt="" width="410" height="97" /></p>
<p>This popup is shown at system startup if you have any mapped network drives to UNC shares which are not protected with a username and password. If you map a network destination that <em>does</em> require authentication, Windows will map the drive OK. To further complicate matters: this message is shown <em>only when you startup from a cold boot!</em> If you restart your PC (vs shutdown and powerup), it won&#8217;t appear.</p>
<p>Resolving the issue is straight-forward enough: just double-click on the network drive in My Computer and it&#8217;ll automatically, instantly, and silently connect. Which makes one wonder why Windows couldn&#8217;t connect in the first place.</p>
<p>Good question.</p>
<p><span id="more-847"></span></p>
<p>While working an update to <a href="http://www.genie-soft.com/Business/genie_timeline_pro/overview.aspx">Genie Timeline</a>, I ran across this issue. Windows wouldn&#8217;t connect a mapped network destination at startup for some of our customers, meaning that our backup couldn&#8217;t continue (assuming you&#8217;re backing up to the network drive) until you manually intervened and opened the mapped drive yourself. Definitely not cool.</p>
<p>As an in-house R&amp;D test, we attempted to manually re-establish the connection via the command-line. By running</p>
<pre>net use Z: \\remote\path\</pre>
<p>we were able to re-establish the &#8220;disconnected&#8221; network drive. But when we tried to implement this in code, we came across a funny issue. If you try to run this<em> <strong>very early on</strong><span style="font-style: normal;"> during the logon procedure, it will fail with error code ERROR_FILE_NOT_FOUND &#8211; basically, it&#8217;s unable to contact the network path. The funny thing is, explicitly testing to see if we can connect to the network path [GetFileAttributes(networkPath)] doesn&#8217;t return any error. But Windows itself is unable to establish a connection. Using &#8216;net&#8217; from the commandline was just a workaround for R&amp;D purposes, so we turned to the trusty old <a href="http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa385413(VS.85).aspx">WNetAddConnection2</a> function &#8211; and it too failed with ERROR_FILE_NOT_FOUND even though the network path both definitely existed and was perfectly accessible as a UNC location!</span></em></p>
<p><strong>Attempting either of these techniques to establish a mapped network drive connection later on &#8211; say 2 or 3 minutes after logon &#8211; works just fine. As does attempting to establish a connection to a UNC path that requires authentication. Or attempting to connect to the network drive after a restart and not a cold boot.</strong></p>
<p>In the end, we resorted to calling WNetAddConnection2 at timed intervals after startup if the UNC path is accessible and the mapped network drive is not. It got the job done, but it really does speak volumes when developers have to run through hoops to address issues that have been out 2 OS releases and 5 years ago. We have no such problems with Windows XP.</p>

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		<title>Our List of Highly-Anticipated Upcoming Games for OS X (2010)</title>
		<link>http://feeds.neosmart.net/~r/neosmart/~3/3P27YuEzrWI/</link>
		<comments>http://neosmart.net/blog/2010/our-list-of-highly-anticipated-games-for-os-x/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 12 Jun 2010 17:38:20 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Mahmoud Al-Qudsi</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Macintosh]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Reviews]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Software]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Games]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gaming]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[OS X]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://neosmart.net/blog/?p=834</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[For too long, computer gaming has been a strictly Windows-only business. But that&#8217;s slowly but surely changing, as signified by the recent availability of the popular Steam platform for Mac, and soon, Linux. But what&#8217;s really exciting is that big game producers aren&#8217;t just porting old games to OS X *cough* Quake 4, Halo 1, [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>For too long, computer gaming has been a strictly Windows-only business. But that&#8217;s slowly but surely changing, as signified by the recent availability of the popular Steam platform for <a href="http://www.dailytech.com/Steam+Client+for+OS+X+Now+Available+Valve+Throws+in+Portal+for+Free/article18365.htm">Mac</a>, and soon, <a href="http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&amp;px=ODE3Mw">Linux</a>. But what&#8217;s really exciting is that big game producers aren&#8217;t just porting old games to OS X <strong>*cough*</strong> Quake 4, Halo 1, etc. <strong>*cough*</strong>, nor is the world of OS X gaming going to be limited to indie publishers and lame (though very much appreciated) games with graphics on-par with those from the 90s <em>on other platforms</em>.</p>
<p>We&#8217;ve compiled a list of our top highly-anticipated games for OS X, most of which are actually geared for simultaneous release on Windows and Mac, making it clear that Mac gamers will take a backseat no more. Honestly, we&#8217;re not going to bother ranking them or making this a &#8220;Top 10 Games for OS X this year&#8221; kind of article. This is just a geeky gamers&#8217; list of games to look out for, on a Mac, soon. We&#8217;re not including games that were previously available on other platforms, because that&#8217;s just sad.</p>
<p>And, without further ado, here&#8217;s NeoSmart Technologies&#8217; exclusive list of upcoming Mac OS X games, sorted by expected release date from the ones you can soonest get your grubby paws on to those you&#8217;ll have to not-so-patiently wait and pray for:</p>
<p><span id="more-834"></span></p>
<p><img style="float: right; margin: 7px;" src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4023/4693800824_379a4aa3d7_m.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<p><strong><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003E1UNSG?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=neosmart-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=B003E1UNSG">Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty</a><img style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=neosmart-20&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=B003E1UNSG" border="0" alt="" width="1" height="1" /><br />
 </strong>Developer: Blizzard Entertainment<br />
 Release Date: July 27, 2010<br />
 Platforms: Mac OS X and Windows</p>
<blockquote><p>Set in the 26th century in a distant part of the Milky Way galaxy, the game is built around three species: the Terrans, human exiles from Earth; the Zerg, a race of insectoid genetic assimilators; and the Protoss, a species with vast psionic power. Wings of Liberty will focus on the Terrans specifically, while the expansions Heart of the Swarm and Legacy of the Void will focus on the Zerg and Protoss, respectively. The game is expected to be set four years after the events of StarCraft: Brood War, and follow the exploits of Jim Raynor as he leads an insurgent group against the autocratic Terran Dominion. The game will include old characters from the original game, as well as introduce new characters and locations to the franchise.</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="text-align: right;">Source: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starcraft_II">Wikipedia</a></p>
<p>You can watch trailers of StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty on the Blizzard site <a href="http://us.starcraft2.com/movies.xml">here</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Pre-order <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003E1UNSG?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=neosmart-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=B003E1UNSG">Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty</a><img style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=neosmart-20&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=B003E1UNSG" border="0" alt="" width="1" height="1" /> from Amazon for $59.99 with a lowest-price pre-order guarantee.</strong></p>
<hr />
<p><img style="float: right; margin: 7px;" src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4003/4693165865_0f629249fe_o.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<p><strong><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0038TT8QM?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=neosmtechn-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=B0038TT8QM">Civilization V</a><img style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=neosmtechn-20&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=B0038TT8QM" border="0" alt="" width="1" height="1" /> <br />
 </strong>Developer: Firaxis Games<br />
 Release Date: September 2010<br />
 Platforms: Windows then OS X</p>
<blockquote><p>Civilization V will feature an entirely new game engine scripted in Lua, as well as a hexagonal map instead of the square tiles of earlier games in the series. The combat system will also be overhauled, including allowing only one unit per tile and giving cities the ability to defend themselves. Many elements new to Civilization IV and its expansion packs will be removed or changed in the game, such as religion and espionage. In addition, the maps will contain a number of computer controlled city states as non-player characters that are available for trade, diplomacy and conquest. A civilization&#8217;s borders will also expand more realistically, favoring more productive terrain, and the concept of roads will be changed.</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="text-align: right;">Source: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_V">Wikipedia</a></p>
<p>You can watch trailers of Civilization V <a href="http://www.gametrailers.com/video/debut-trailer-civilization-v/62388">here</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Pre-order <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0038TT8QM?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=neosmtechn-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=B0038TT8QM">Civilization V</a><img style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=neosmtechn-20&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=B0038TT8QM" border="0" alt="" width="1" height="1" /> from Amazon for $49.99 with a lowest-price pre-order guarantee.</strong></p>
<hr />
<p><img style="float: right; margin: 7px;" src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4041/4693800490_00d41086b6_o.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<p><strong><a href="http://www.nucleardawnthegame.com/">Nuclear Dawn</a><br />
 </strong>Developer: Firaxis Games<br />
 Release Date: October 2010<br />
 Platforms: Windows then OS X</p>
<blockquote><p>Nuclear Dawn is an upcoming post-apocalyptic video game that blends the FPS and RTS genres. It was originally announced in February 2006 as an amateur mod for the Source engine, but in April 2009 was revealed to have become a commercial project, still using Source, aimed at Windows PCs and the Xbox 360. It is unclear whether a retail release is planned.<br />
 Nuclear Dawn joins Counter-Strike, Day of Defeat, Natural Selection, The Ship, They Hunger: Lost Souls and Garry&#8217;s Mod as former mods of Valve products that have become commercial projects.</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="text-align: right;">Source: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Dawn">Wikipedia</a></p>
<p>You can watch trailers of Nuclear Dawn on YouTube <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZtLHUyeD0E&amp;feature=player_embedded">here</a>.</p>
<hr />
<p><img style="float: right; margin: 7px;" src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1279/4693800400_01e3c316fa_o.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<p><strong><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003INERXM?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=neosmtechn-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=B003INERXM">RAGE</a><img style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=neosmtechn-20&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=B003INERXM" border="0" alt="" width="1" height="1" /> <br />
 </strong>Developer: id Software<br />
 Release Date: Jan 4, 2011<br />
 Platforms: Mac OS X and Windows</p>
<blockquote><p>RAGE is an upcoming first-person shooter and racing video game in development by id Software. It will use the company&#8217;s new id Tech 5 engine. The game was announced on August 2, 2007 at QuakeCon. On the same day, a trailer for the game was released by Gametrailers.com.</p>
<p>Information available so far indicates that the game takes place in a post-apocalyptic world similar to that of films such as Mad Max 2. In an interview with GameSpot, designer Tim Willits revealed that the game is set in the near future following the impact of 99942 Apophis. Matthew J. Costello, who worked on the plot of Doom 3, is also working on the Rage plot. Influences on the driving and racing gameplay include games such as MotorStorm and Burnout, according to another Willits interview by Shacknews. Players will be able to upgrade their cars with money won from races.</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="text-align: right;">Source: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rage_(video_game)">Wikipedia</a></p>
<p>You can watch trailers of RAGE on YouTube <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a--zbG_K9kI">here</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Pre-order <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003INERXM?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=neosmtechn-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=B003INERXM">RAGE</a><img style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=neosmtechn-20&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=B003INERXM" border="0" alt="" width="1" height="1" /> from Amazon for $59.99 with a lowest-price pre-order guarantee.</strong></p>
<hr />
<p><img style="float: right; margin: 7px;" src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4044/4693800690_628b2848d6_o.png" alt="" /></p>
<p><strong>Portal 2<br />
 </strong>Developer: Valve Corporation<br />
 Release Date: TBA 2011<br />
 Platforms: Mac OS X and Windows</p>
<blockquote><p>Portal 2 will continue to challenge the player by solving puzzles in test chambers within the Aperture Science Enrichment Center using the portal gun (the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device), a device that can create two portals connecting two surfaces across space. Players solve puzzles by using these portals to move unconventionally between rooms or to use the ability to fling objects or themselves across a distance. The functionality of the gun has not changed between the games, but within Portal 2, players can take advantage of the bleeding of other physical effects through the portals.</p>
<p>Game Informer identified two examples of this: one was the ability to use air currents created by a series of transport pneumatic tubes through a set of portal openings to push a turret over or to draw objects into the suction. The second example was to use the power of tractor beams through portals to bring Chell or other objects to otherwise inaccessible areas. The game also introduces special paint that can be used to impart certain physical effects to a surface (for example, one identified by Game Informer is an orange paint that when stepped on will impart high speed to the player). The player will be required to determine how to transport that paint to appropriate surfaces using portals in order to progress. This paint can also be applied to objects, such as the Weighted Storage Cube crates that affect their own physical nature. In addition to the Storage Cube, there are new types of portable objects that assist the player, including Redirection Cubes with mirrored, reflective surfaces, Aerial Faith Plates that can launch objects placed on them, and spherical Weighted Storage Balls, which made a brief appearance in the original game in one of the advanced chambers.</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="text-align: right;">Source: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal_2">Wikipedia</a></p>
<hr />
<p><img style="float: right; margin: 7px;" src="http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1292/4693165639_034eac3dfd_o.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<p><strong><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00178630A?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=neosmtechn-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=B00178630A">Diablo III</a><img style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=neosmtechn-20&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=B00178630A" border="0" alt="" width="1" height="1" /> <br />
 </strong>Developer: Blizzard Entertainment<br />
 Release Date: TBA<br />
 Platforms: Mac OS X and Windows</p>
<blockquote><p>The game takes place in Sanctuary, the dark fantasy world of the Diablo series. This world was saved twenty years prior by a handful of unnamed heroes in Diablo II. Warriors that survived the onslaught of the armies of the Burning Hells have gone mad from their ordeals and it is up to a new generation of heroes to face the forces of evil threatening the world of Sanctuary. Players will have the opportunity to explore familiar settings such as Tristram.</p>
<p>The only confirmed NPC is Deckard Cain, who has appeared in both of the previous games. Cain&#8217;s journal on the official site brings the player up to speed on the events of the first two games. Diablo&#8217;s world map is composed primarily of two main continents with several small islands in the Northwest region.</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="text-align: right;">Source: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diablo_III">Wikipedia</a></p>
<p>You can watch trailers of Diablo III on YouTube <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQMBIRipp5A">here</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Pre-order <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00178630A?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=neosmtechn-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=390957&amp;creativeASIN=B00178630A">Diablo III</a><img style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=neosmtechn-20&amp;l=as2&amp;o=1&amp;a=B00178630A" border="0" alt="" width="1" height="1" /> from Amazon for $59.99 with a lowest-price pre-order guarantee.</strong></p>

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		<title>EasyBCD 2.0 RC1</title>
		<link>http://feeds.neosmart.net/~r/neosmart/~3/umVmtyNMs30/</link>
		<comments>http://neosmart.net/blog/2010/easybcd-2-0-rc1/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 11 Jun 2010 11:41:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Mahmoud Al-Qudsi</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[NeoSmart Technologies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Software]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Windows]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Beta]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Download]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[EasyBCD]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[NeoSmart]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://neosmart.net/blog/?p=830</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I&#8217;m pleased to announce that the EasyBCD 2.0 beta program, years in progress, has now reached a release candidate build with EasyBCD 2.0 RC1 Build 100. Please help us make the 2.0 gold release a perfect build by downloading and testing EasyBCD 2.0 RC1. There&#8217;s a very long list of changes, you can view the build-by-build changelogs [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img style="float: right;" src="http://neosmart.net/images/software/EasyBCD/EasyBCD.png" alt="EasyBCD Logo" /></p>
<p>I&#8217;m pleased to announce that the EasyBCD 2.0 beta program, <em>years</em> in progress, has now reached a release candidate build with EasyBCD 2.0 RC1 Build 100.</p>
<p>Please help us make the 2.0 gold release a perfect build by downloading and testing <a href="http://j.mp/EBCD2">EasyBCD 2.0 R</a>C1. There&#8217;s a very long list of changes, you can view the build-by-build changelogs in the link above.</p>
<p>If all goes well, we can expect a 2.0 RTM release in the very near future, God willing.</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>

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		<item>
		<title>Is Twitter Actively Censoring Human Rights Activists in Palestine?</title>
		<link>http://feeds.neosmart.net/~r/neosmart/~3/4ND9YwZMlaw/</link>
		<comments>http://neosmart.net/blog/2010/twitter-actively-censoring-flotilla/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 31 May 2010 09:14:54 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Mahmoud Al-Qudsi</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Blogosphere]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Censorship]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Human Rights]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Media]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Palestine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Twitter]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://neosmart.net/blog/2010/twitter-actively-censoring-flotilla/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Quick background: earlier today, IDF soldiers stormed a relief flotilla/convey headed towards Gaza carrying food, medical supplies, and other relief materials in an attempt to bypass a blockade of the Gaza territories. The raid on the flotilla resulted in the death of 16 aid workers. A post on twitpic earlier today asks Can’t get why [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><em>Quick background: earlier today, IDF soldiers <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/at-least-10-activists-killed-in-israel-navy-clashes-onboard-gaza-aid-flotilla-1.293089">stormed a relief flotilla</a>/convey headed towards Gaza carrying food, medical supplies, and other relief materials in an attempt to bypass a blockade of the Gaza territories. The raid on the flotilla resulted in the death of 16 aid workers.</em></p>
<p>A post <a href="http://twitpic.com/1sow9i">on twitpic</a> earlier today asks</p>
<blockquote><p>Can’t get why #flotilla is not trending; censored, why?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>and articles on the web search for explanations, since it’s <a href="http://dowzocalypse.com/2010/05/31/flotilla-aid-murder-twitter-censorship/">very clear</a> that flotilla is indeed a trending topic, going by the trendistic results (see below).</p>
<p>Some are saying that twitter needs to manually approve trending topics to prevent abuse, etc. but there’s something that doesn’t add up: <strong>why is twitter actively blocking searches for #flotilla?</strong></p>
<p>You can check it out for yourself: for the past hour or so, searching twitter for <a href="http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23flotilla">#flotilla</a> turns up the dreaded “Something is technically wrong” page <strong>but searching for any other #topic works!</strong></p>
<p>As they say, the proof is in the pudding (images after the jump):</p>
</p>
<p> <span id="more-824"></span>
</p>
<p><b>Update #1</b> İsrail is now appearing on the Trending Topics list, but the search for it also returns a technical error. Reports indicate that these searches are being blocked from the USA (LA-region), Middle East, Sweden, UK, and more. However, search is working from Germany and Denmark. Check back for more updates.</p>
<p><b>Update #2</b> According to twitter PR, it was a technical issue and they&#8217;ll &quot;post more info&quot; shortly. No sign of that follow-up info yet though.. makes it hard to believe.</p>
<p>   <br class="spacer_" /></p>
<p>Searches for #flotilla:</p>
<p>   <br class="spacer_" /></p>
<blockquote><p><img alt="" src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4001/4655726706_e703d13a79_b.jpg" /></p>
</blockquote>
<p>   <br class="spacer_" /></p>
<p>   <br class="spacer_" /></p>
<p>Searches for #somethingelse:</p>
<p>   <br class="spacer_" /></p>
<blockquote><p><img alt="" src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4026/4655726738_326cbb7c61_b.jpg" /></p>
</blockquote>
<p>   <br class="spacer_" /></p>
<p>   <br class="spacer_" /></p>
<p>Flotilla as a trending topic on trendistic:</p>
<p>   <br class="spacer_" /></p>
<blockquote><p><img alt="" src="http://dowzocalypse.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/flotilla.png" /></p>
</blockquote>

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		<title>Google Adds Support for Customizing Homepage Background!</title>
		<link>http://feeds.neosmart.net/~r/neosmart/~3/gs6GF4a0BvQ/</link>
		<comments>http://neosmart.net/blog/2010/google-adds-support-for-customizing-homepage-background/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 27 May 2010 18:59:27 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Mahmoud Al-Qudsi</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Design]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Google]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Web]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://neosmart.net/blog/2010/google-adds-support-for-customizing-homepage-background/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Google, ever the world’s biggest supporter of the minimal user interface, appears to be having second thoughts about the advantages of ascetic design and no-frill search pages. If you go to the Google homepage while signed into your Google account, you’ll be (pleasantly?) surprised with a small link in the bottom-left corner titled “Change Background [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Google, ever the world’s biggest supporter of the minimal user interface, appears to be having second thoughts about the advantages of ascetic design and no-frill search pages. If you go to the <a href="http://google.com/">Google homepage</a> while signed into your Google account, you’ll be (pleasantly?) surprised with a small link in the bottom-left corner titled “Change Background Image.”</p>
<p><a href="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3340/4645627080_4f3bbbd72c_o.png	"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3340/4645627080_abe0143cec.jpg" alt="" /></a> <span id="more-821"></span></p>
<p>Perhaps even more shocking than that link is where it takes you. One would expect it to show a nice selection of pre-prepared background designs showing taste and style. Perhaps some swirls, some modern art, some crazy tie-dye… Certainly not letting you choose and upload <em>any</em> photo of your liking to serve as your new Google background! Even more, the feature is directly connected to Picassa, letting you browse your own albums, the public Picassa uploads of <em>other</em> users, and more.</p>
<p><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3384/4645627082_dd564fa4c4.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<p><br class="spacer_" /></p>
<p><strong>Update: </strong>This appears to be working only on Windows, at the moment. Looks like Google is taking this for a test-drive.</p>

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		<item>
		<title>The Un-Improvements to “Find All References” in Visual Studio 2010</title>
		<link>http://feeds.neosmart.net/~r/neosmart/~3/0xcoSGB0ruw/</link>
		<comments>http://neosmart.net/blog/2010/the-un-improvements-to-find-all-references-in-visual-studio-2010/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 27 May 2010 09:42:57 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Mahmoud Al-Qudsi</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Microsoft]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Reviews]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Software]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bugs]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Visual Studio]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Visual Studio 2010]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://neosmart.net/blog/2010/the-un-improvements-to-find-all-references-in-visual-studio-2010/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A November 2009 post on the Visual C++ Team Blog by Raman Sharma delved into the improvements Visual Studio 2010 was purported to have made to the “Find All References” feature of Visual Studio. This feature is a must-have for any developer in almost any language. As a project grows in size and complexity, it [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img style="float: right" src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4014/4643903279_39befe1046_m.jpg" />
<p>A November 2009 post on the Visual C++ Team Blog by Raman Sharma delved into the improvements Visual Studio 2010 <a href="http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vcblog/archive/2009/11/17/improvements-to-find-all-references-in-visual-studio-2010.aspx">was purported to have made</a> to the “Find All References” feature of Visual Studio. This feature is a must-have for any developer in almost any language. As a project grows in size and complexity, it becomes a real chore to remember and locate exactly <em>where</em> a particular variable was defined – which is something that’s quite useful to know.</p>
<p>According to the VC++ blog post, VS2010 now uses a “speed-mode” by default to locate these references. It’s a bit less accurate in that it generates a lot of false positives, searching by name rather than by usage, but that this reduced accuracy comes with greater speed. And the option remains to further filter out results by having the compiler and the intellisense databases resolve the actual results and determine whether or not they indeed reference the search term.</p>
<p>Except that’s the way it’s <em>supposed</em> to work. In truth, that’s not what happens:</p>
<p>1) Visual Studio 2010’s “Speed Mode” of Find All References <strong>is slower than it was in Visual Studio 2005</strong>.</p>
<p>2) Visual Studio 2010’s “Speed Mode” not only generates extraneous false positives, it also <strong>fails to show items that <em>do</em> match the search term</strong>.</p>
<p> <span id="more-818"></span>
<p>On any project of considerable size, “Find All References” will cause <strong>a hang<em> </em></strong>of the Visual Studio 2010 user interface for up to a minute as it does nothing more than plain-text search for the selected variable or function. It blocks the main user thread, it hangs the UI, and it takes forever. Much longer than Visual Studio 2005/2008 did with its <em>more accurate</em> compiler-based variable references search.</p>
<p>And as for point 2, the time-lapse screenshot below (to show both the selection, the menu, and the resulting dialog) should speak louder and clearer than a thousand words.</p>
<p> <a href="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3320/4643878471_d11c193486_o.png"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3320/4643878471_dcd5fcf8b0.jpg" /></a>
<p align="right"><small>(Click the image for <a href="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3320/4643878471_d11c193486_o.png">a full-size screenshot</a>)</small></p>
<p>&#160;</p>
<p>Unfortunately, Visual Studio 2010 seems to be exemplifying the ongoing trend at Microsoft of slowly giving less and less attention to C++ developers as they continue to push .NET (now at version 4.0 and growing strongly) at the cost of everything else… while still refusing to embrace the .NET platform for their own technologies, leaving their once-content developer-base fighting against their own IDEs for life.</p>
<p><em>This is the first of several posts about Visual Studio 2010, it’s advantages, and its shortcomings. We love Visual Studio and despite everything else, its still the best IDE out there and a damn good one at that. But some things just need to be said in hopes that they will be addressed at some point in the future.</em></p>

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		<title>2048 Comments…</title>
		<link>http://feeds.neosmart.net/~r/neosmart/~3/CtgCVy5As14/</link>
		<comments>http://neosmart.net/blog/2010/2048-comments/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 11 May 2010 09:35:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Mahmoud Al-Qudsi</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Blogosphere]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[2048]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Geek]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Math]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[NeoSmart]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Numbers]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://neosmart.net/blog/?p=811</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Just a quick thank you to all our loyal readers, contributors, members, and commenters over the years. Our most popular blog post on the site has just reached the über-geeky number of 2048 comments in the 2 years 3 months and 23 days since it was posted. For more geeky conversions, read on. 2.31 years [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Just a quick thank you to all our loyal readers, contributors, members, and commenters over the years. Our <a href="http://neosmart.net/blog/2008/windows-vista-recovery-disc-download/">most popular blog post</a> on the site has just reached the über-geeky number of 2048 comments in the 2 years 3 months and 23 days since it was posted. For more geeky conversions, read on.</p>
<p><img src="http://grab.by/4jel" alt="" width="453" height="88" /></p>
<ul>
<li>2.31 years</li>
<li>2 years, 3 months, 23 days</li>
<li>27 months, 24 days</li>
<li>120 weeks, 4 days</li>
<li>844 days</li>
</ul>
<p>Obviously 2 years is a long time&#8230; but 2048 is an equally great number.</p>
<p>Thank you!</p>

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		<item>
		<title>Android: A Fragmented Platform or Not?</title>
		<link>http://feeds.neosmart.net/~r/neosmart/~3/t4U45W6TTEs/</link>
		<comments>http://neosmart.net/blog/2010/android-not-fragmented/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 01 May 2010 14:03:13 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Mahmoud Al-Qudsi</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Blogosphere]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hardware]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Software]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Android]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[BlackBerry]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Development]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[iPhone]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Operating Systems]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://neosmart.net/blog/?p=797</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[If you were to believe the latest headlines at Business Insider, Android is a fragmented mobile platform and has a negative effect on the applications, for developers and end-users alike. Android is currently in a heated battle with the other two big names in mobile technology (the iPhone and the BlackBerry being the other two), [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3059/4567570823_8f68e236e5_o_d.jpg" alt="Android Robot" style="float:right;max-width:175px;" />If you were to believe the latest headlines at Business Insider, Android is a fragmented mobile platform and has a negative effect on the applications, for developers and end-users alike. Android is currently in a heated battle with the other two big names in mobile technology (the iPhone and the BlackBerry being the other two), and this is a serious matter definitely worthy of discussion.</p>
<p>But Dan Frommer&#8217;s allegations <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/android-fragmentation-in-action-twitters-new-official-app-wont-work-on-many-android-phones-2010-4">in his latest post</a> on BI don&#8217;t really add up. Frommer contends that the official twitter app for Android, which only works on Android v2.1 and up, is proof that Google&#8217;s mobile OS isn&#8217;t as &#8220;unified&#8221; as the competitors, and that this is a sign of early-onset serious fragmentation that will only get worse down the line. The thing is&#8230; it&#8217;s not.</p>
<p>It&#8217;s true that Android, available for deployment on any device manufacturers are willing to bundle it with, faces certain compatibility issues. With a multitude of devices, each with its own mostly-unique set of hardware and features, creating software that will run the same for everyone isn&#8217;t as easy as it is on the iPhone. But it&#8217;s nowhere near as much of an issue as Frommer makes it out to be.</p>
<p><span id="more-797"></span></p>
<p>For one thing, his &#8220;proof in the pudding&#8221; example of the official twitter app being unsupported except on v2.1+ has nothing to do with fragmentation. As <em>any</em> platform grows, matures, and gains new APIs, backwards compatibility is never a guarantee (unless you are Microsoft, that is!). It&#8217;s only natural that developers will need to set a cut-off point for which devices and platforms will be supported. And this isn&#8217;t an Android problem &#8211; <em>every</em> device out there, be it a cell phone,  a laptop, or a mainframe suffers from the same problem. Take the iPhone for example. Apple&#8217;s own OS 4 will be completely unavailable on the original iPhone. And even on the iPhone 3G, it&#8217;ll be there only in a highly-crippled form <a href="http://www.macrumors.com/2010/04/08/apple-lists-iphone-os-4-compatibility-excludes-original-iphone-and-1st-gen-ipod-touch/">with no multi-tasking support</a>.</p>
<p>The thing is, minimum OS/hardware specifications are not an indicator of platform fragmentation. They have absolutely nothing to do with it. While Android definitely does have some issues related to the wide range of hardware upon which it&#8217;s deployed, even that doesn&#8217;t necessarily have to result in fragmentation.</p>
<p>So you have a device that has a GPS chip and another that does not. Obviously a mobile map routing solution written for the first won&#8217;t work on the second &#8211; but who would expect/want it to anyway? A game that relies on the presence of accelerometer? Well, it&#8217;s not targeting users without an accelerometer in their device anyway! The point is &#8211; so long as the code goes through a single API to access any particular feature &#8211; whether or not that feature is actually available isn&#8217;t &#8220;fragmentation&#8221; at all. It&#8217;s just economics: you get what you pay for.</p>
<p>What <em>would</em> be fragmentation is if a mapping application for one Android handheld w/ GPS support doesn&#8217;t work on another Android handheld that also has GPS support just because the chips are different. Or because it has different drivers. But that&#8217;s not the case here! Android gives you a non-fragmented API to access the functionality of the hardware beneath &#8211; <em>should your device support those features in the first place</em>.</p>
<p>And that&#8217;s just about it. Pointing out that twitter requires OS v2.1 and above is a silly reason to accuse Android of being a fragmented platform &#8211; it&#8217;s like saying the iPhone is a failed experiment because an application designed to take advantage of multi-tasking 6 months from now won&#8217;t run on a device released 3 years prior: who cares!</p>

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		<title>The ARM, the PPC, the x86, and the iPad…</title>
		<link>http://feeds.neosmart.net/~r/neosmart/~3/ZRZ1wB_tjBE/</link>
		<comments>http://neosmart.net/blog/2010/the-arm-the-ppc-the-x86-and-the-ipad/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 03 Apr 2010 18:17:09 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Mahmoud Al-Qudsi</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Apple]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Corporate Talk]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hardware]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Macintosh]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Windows]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Architecture]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ARM]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Chipset]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[CPU]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Intel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[iPad]]></category>
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		<category><![CDATA[MIPS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[OS X]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[x86]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://neosmart.net/blog/?p=783</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Hot on the heels of the iPad release comes news that Apple has just (very likely) purchased another processor design firm (via EDN).&#160; Intrinsity, the chip design company in question, is a designer of RISC-based CPUs and is rumored to have had something to do with the design of Apple’s new A4 processor. The A4 [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Hot on the heels of the iPad release comes news that Apple has just (very likely) purchased another processor design firm (via <a href="http://www.edn.com/blog/400000040/post/880053688.html">EDN</a>).&#160; Intrinsity, the chip design company in question, is a designer of RISC-based CPUs and is rumored to have had something to do with the design of Apple’s new A4 processor. The A4 is Apple’s key ingredient for a smooth user experience in the much-hyped iPad.</p>
<p>Those keeping track of Apple’s purchases will remember that, almost exactly 2 years ago to the day, Apple bought California-based CPU designer <a href="http://www.forbes.com/2008/04/23/apple-buys-pasemi-tech-ebiz-cz_eb_0422apple.html">PA Semiconductors</a>. However, PA Semi specializes in PowerPC-based designs – a platform <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%E2%80%93Intel_transition">that Apple abandoned</a> almost 5 years ago now. But Apple’s most recent acquisition is directly applicable to its current needs in the hardware market, and in particular, its forays into the ARM market. In <a href="http://www.apple.com/ipad/">the official iPad video</a>, Apple engineers and executives discuss their <em>need</em> for a custom CPU in order to let them dictate where the ooomph and power will go, and to what purposes the transistors will be biased.</p>
<p>With all these buyouts and different chipsets in question, it’s easy to get confused. <strong>So what <em>is</em> the difference between the ARM, the PPC, and the x86, and where does it matter?</strong></p>
<p> <span id="more-783"></span>
<p>The world of CPUs is a dark, deadly, and dangerous place. After all, the CPU is said to be the literal “heart” of the PC – and as such, it’s the single most-heavily engineered component. Billions of dollars and manhours have gone into the design of these various chipsets and they’ve all been researched, optimized, fabricated, and sold in order to make your computer… better.</p>
<p>The biggest difference between these platforms is the design dogma they follow. The x86 is a CISC architecture: <strong>Complex Instruction Set Computer</strong>. The other two (PPC and ARM) are RISC-based designs: <strong>Reduced Instruction Set Computers</strong>. What does that mean? Well, to the end user, mostly nothing. But to the CPU designers and developers, it makes a world of a difference. </p>
<p>CISC architectures can have up to thousands of individual commands supported by the processor that can be used in machine code. Each of these assembly commands can range from a single operation to several hundred or more in length. On the other hand, RISC-based CPUs understand only a handful of different instructions, the minimum necessary to get the job done.</p>
<p>However, this in no way means that CISC is more powerful or that RISC is limited. The difference in the amount of supported instructions is easily explained away by two factors: <em>supported modes</em>, and <em>wrapper operations</em>. All the data dealt with in any computer program is stored in the memory. But in order for the CPU to actually use any of it, it needs to place variables in super-fast (but small and limited) memory locations built into the CPU itself, called registers.</p>
<p>Imagine trying to run the following line of code:</p>
<p>z = x + y</p>
<p>Each of the three variables in the above example is located in the memory. But in order to carry out the operation, x and y will need to be copied from the memory to the CPU, the addition instruction carried out, and the result then copied from the CPU to the location of z in the memory. </p>
<p>A CISC-based CPU like the x86 would have a single instruction that – when given the address of X, Y, and Z in the memory – would do just that. But in a RISC-based CPU, the assembly code would have to explicitly spell out the individual steps: first copy x to a register, then copy y to a register, then add them together, and finally copy the result back into the memory.</p>
<p>At first blush, it would seem that CISC is a much better option. After all, one instruction and the entire line of code is done. But it’s not about operations, it’s about time. Sure, a RISC-based program will need to carry out four distinct operations in order to do the same, but that doesn’t mean it’ll take any longer. In fact, RISC CPUs are consistently <em>faster</em> than their CISC counterparts.</p>
<p>If CPUs were day laborers, it would make sense that CISC is more efficient. After all, a single instruction gets the job done. But, thankfully, CPUs aren&#8217;t underpaid interns, they’re over-engineered miracles. The simpler design of the RISC CPU allows it to more efficiently optimize and carry out long sequences of code. The way things are broken down into short, simple, and clear instructions lets it carry out multiple operations at the same time (pipelining) and with less effort.</p>
<p><strong>In fact, it’s now a universally accepted truth that RISC is better than CISC!</strong> Actually, because of how much more efficient RISC machines are than their CISC counterparts, most CISC CPUs convert their CISC instructions into RISC instructions internally, <em>then</em> run them! </p>
<p>So why are we still using x86? That’s mainly because of business matters. Intel had x86, Intel had money, and CISC won out. Today, with the optimizations and internal RISC conversions that take place, CISC vs RISC isn’t really about the performance any more. It’s about the business, the politics… <strong>and the power consumption</strong>.</p>
<p>The complexity of the CISC datapath and pipeline mean that it takes more power to get things done. Intel has worked some incredible miracles and accomplished some amazing things to get the power consumption down, ranging from dynamic scaling of the CPU clock to shutting-down parts of the CPU core when they’re not in use. But x86 remains a power hog. Intel’s Atom platform was an attempt at re-engineering the x86 to make it fit for mobile devices, but at the cost of performance.</p>
<p>There’s no reason that RISC can’t be used for the desktop. ARM or no ARM, there’s a plethora of RISC-based CPUs out there that can be easily adapted for desktop use. But the problem isn’t with the hardware: it’s with the software. Programs written for x86 aren’t compatible with anything else, even other CISC CPUs. That has prevented just about the entire world from trying any other platforms, mainly because Windows only supports x86 on the desktop. The last copy of Windows to support different CPU architectures was Windows NT, which shipped with versions for Intel’s x86, MIPS, Alpha, and PowerPC.</p>
<p>For anyone not on the Windows platform though, there’s nothing <em>really </em>binding them to the x86 platform. Apple chose x86 because, with PowerPC out of the running, x86 was the only viable option back in 2005. Keep in mind, just because ARM <em>can </em>run on the desktop, that doesn’t mean that ARM <em>will</em> run on the desktop: optimizations in the CPU world are always a compromise between performance and power consumption. And the current generation of ARM and other RISC-based CPUs is meant for portable equipment. </p>
<p>It would take some work to create a high-performance ARM CPU meant for the desktop, but that doesn’t mean it won’t happen. With Apple’s just-declared purchase of Intrinsity, it’s clear that it’s a possibility. With the tight grip Apple has over its platform and the strong hardware-software bond, it wouldn’t be too difficult to make the switch to yet another platform – after all, they did it 5 years ago and things worked out. But will they? Most likely not, it’s not exactly in their customers best interest and x86 really is a decent platform. But for the myriad of mobile devices that Apple is getting itself into, x86 isn’t the key. So look forward to more ARM goodiness for your iPad and iPhone in the years to come, but your MacBook is safe in Intel’s loving hands.</p>

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		<title>Genie Timeline 2.0: Quality Free Backup For All</title>
		<link>http://feeds.neosmart.net/~r/neosmart/~3/Ls6ADJ2nJp4/</link>
		<comments>http://neosmart.net/blog/2010/genie-timeline-2-0-quality-free-backup-for-all/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 31 Mar 2010 07:57:19 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Mahmoud Al-Qudsi</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Reviews]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Software]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Backup]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Backup Software]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Download]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Freeware]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Genie Timeline]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://neosmart.net/blog/?p=764</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A lot of people have been asking where I’ve been the past several months: why the blog has been void of updates, why EasyBCD 2.0 is taking so long, why the image gallery still hasn’t been properly updated, and so on and so forth. With university was over and done with, I was supposed to [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img style="max-height: 175px; max-width: 175px;" src="http://neosmart.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/logo.png" alt="Timeline Logo" align="right"/>A lot of people have been asking where I’ve been the past several months: why the blog has been void of updates, why EasyBCD 2.0 is taking so long, why the image gallery still hasn’t been properly updated, and so on and so forth. With university was over and done with, I was supposed to have more time on my hands to dedicate to NeoSmart Technologies. If I had to point the finger of blame, it would rest squarely on <a href="http://www.genie-soft.com/">Genie Timeline 2.0</a>.</p>
<p>For the past year, Genie-Soft (my current employer) has been working on a revolutionary new &mdash; and <strong>free</strong> &mdash; backup program. Anyone that has ever searched for a professional backup solution has probably experienced firsthand just how difficult it can be to find something fast, powerful, and easy to use… and forget about being free, too.</p>
<p>Timeline 2 pushes the idea of “constant data protection” with real-time monitoring of changes to your data and intelligently scheduled backups of your files. You don’t schedule backups, they just happen in response to the modifications you make. You just run Timeline in the background, and you’re instantly protected. Files are versioned, clustered, and indexed then intelligently purged as needed to save space.</p>
<p>  <span id="more-764"></span>
<p>In geek terms, Timeline most-closely resembles a hybrid between version control systems and backup software. Like any good version control system, GTL keeps versions of all your old files, uses block-level differential backup for larger files such as PSTs, and tracks changes on the individual file level. But the entire process is automated and the all the capabilities and features are hidden behind an ostensibly simple GUI, with a web interface that lets you search all backed up data instantly.</p>
<p>Of course, this isn’t an unbiased recommendation: I’ve been part of the Timeline development team from and am responsible for some of the lower-level components. Over the past year, I’ve learned a lot designing and implementing some really incredible features in Timeline. Don’t let the simple interface fool you, there’s a lot of technology and sheer power under the hood… and this is what’s been keeping me busy.</p>
<p>Timeline 2.0 is available 100% for free, making it a must-have for any Windows users out there looking to protect their data. With the price of external disks at an all-time low and the value of digital data skyrocketing upwards, there’s no excuse to not have backups of your software. Especially now that it won’t even cost you a dime.</p>
<p class="save"><a href="http://download.cnet.com/Genie-Timeline-Free/3000-2242_4-10967059.html">Download Genie Timeline 2.0 Free</a></p>
<div align="right"><small>[<a href="http://www.genie-soft.com/Home/Genie_Timeline_Home/Screenshots.aspx">screenshots</a>]&nbsp;&nbsp;[<a href="http://www.genie-soft.com/Free_products/free_timeline.aspx">specifications</a>]</small></div>
<p>Everyone at Genie-Soft has worked endlessly to make the Timeline experience as smooth and delightfully easy as possible. Of course, no software is perfect and while Genie Timeline may look deceivingly simple, it is incredibly complex under the hood. Please let us know what you think and share how your Timeline experience goes. </p>
<p><strong>I have <em>free</em> licenses of Genie Timeline Pro to give away to feedback and comments on the software &#8211; but you need to install it and comment below to qualify. If you liked or didn’t like Timeline, share your notes here, tell us what you&#8217;d do with your copy of Pro, and get a free upgrade</strong>. Free licenses also available for incoming links. <a href="http://www.genie-soft.com/Business/genie_timeline_pro/overview.aspx">Genie Timeline Pro</a> adds Disaster Recovery, advanced filters, encryption, purging, and advanced restore to an already powerful product.</p>
<p><strong>Update (4/12/10):</strong></p>
<p>The initial wave of free licenses is over. I still have several more licenses to give, but no guarantees&hellip;</p>

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