John Lamansky

And say hello to “Windows Mail,” to be included in Windows Vista.

Finally! Microsoft will be renaming the basic email program included with Windows and Internet Explorer. The name “Outlook Express” has caused much confusion because of its similarity to “Microsoft Outlook,” Microsoft’s personal information manager, which also includes email capabilities.

The truth is that “Outlook” and “Outlook Express” are two completely different programs, even though they both email. Outlook Express even has a cool feature not found in the hundred-dollar Outlook 2003 or the open-source Mozilla Thunderbird program - OE can edit the HTML source of an email message.

Windows Mail will also be using the standard “eml” format instead of the proprietary “dbx” format.

Looks like the AskJeeves search engine will be firing the butler. According to this PCWorld article, chair and CEO Barry Diller of IAC/InterActiveCorp, the company that finished its purchase of AskJeeves this July, said:

“By the way, Jeeves will disappear, and we will be called Ask or Ask.com,” Diller said during the conference. “Not that I don’t like that butler. He’s actually a thinner butler now.”

It seems that the mascot was giving people wrong impressions about the search engine. Also from the PCWorld article:

…surveys revealed that users tended to pigeonhole the search engine as “old-fashioned” and appropriate for only question-based queries, Meakin said.

The company’s research has shown that use of the Jeeves character as the prominent symbol of the brand blinds people to recent changes and improvements in the search engine, the company said in a statement.

According to the CNN article “Texans flee colossal Rita,” residents in Texas are preparing to evacuate from the third most intense storm in history. Thank goodness this one won’t be aiming for the next state to the east!

Mozilla recently released a minor upgrade to Firefox: version 1.0.7. The upgrade is a security/stability release. For more info on what’s new in the version, check out the release notes. Visit the Firefox download page to download the new version.

Once this summer we were camping with our grandparents. We decided to play a game of Monopoly, since it was our custom to do so while camping with them. So we got the Monopoly game set up.

Then there were the bugs, flying around the picnic table on which we were about to play. My brothers and I didn’t really mind the bugs, but my grandma apparently did, so she decided to get her Deet-containing bug spray. Of course, I was automatically repulsed by the thought of using a Deet-containing bug spray, after hearing how powerful the chemical was and how it had been frowned upon by government health agencies. But I figured, “it must be okay; people use it all the time.” So my grandma sprayed it on and around our Monopoly playing area. I really would have preferred that she would have done it before our Monopoly game had been set up, but I couldn’t really protest; it was too late anyway. So we sat down to play.

Suddenly I saw something very frightening: the bugspray was apparantly eating right through the ink on the Monopoly board. (Whoops, there goes St. Charles Place.) The ink didn’t really smear (there was a little smeared ink on the dice, but that was it), it just seemed to vanish. Very disturbing. And they want you to put that stuff on your skin?!

Oh, now I know why they gave away free registration codes a couple of weeks ago…

Visit Opera.com for more info.

SuperSite for Windows recently published a review of the latest Windows Vista beta release: build 5219. And some of the new features made me say, “Oh, sweet.” To list all of the features and improvements would mean a humongous blog post, but one that’s really worth mentioning is the ability to increase your system’s available RAM by simply inserting a memory stick. That’s right: stick in a 1GB keychain memory stick and you get another gig of RAM and an instant speed boost; an “external RAM upgrade.” Sweet.

1. Water isn’t flammable.
2. Gravity pulls, not pushes.
3. There’s never been a nuclear war.
4. Garbage cans have no sense of taste.
5. Seeing a lightning flash gives us time to plug our ears.
6. Baby animals are so cute.
7. There’s such thing as open source software.
8. Air doesn’t have an unpleasant smell.
9. John Lamansky has a blog that’s enjoyable to read (fingers crossed in a hopeful manner).
10. Our system of counting is based on our number of fingers.

I found an interesting blog post by a former Microsoft employee who has recently switched to the Mozilla Firefox browser. He talks about the good things about Firefox as well as ways he thinks the browser can be improved. What makes the switch (and review) especially interesting is the fact that he had worked on developing Internet Explorer (mostly in interface design) from versions 1.0 to 5.0.

According to this SuperSite for Windows article, it’s possible that a podcast creation utility will be included in Windows Vista Ultimate Edition (see my article on Windows Vista Editions for more info about the different versions of Vista).

In the coming months we’ll see if this possible podcast creation utility turns out to be a competetive solution, a useless Windows accessory as primitive as Paint, or a non-existent feature.