On the Boxee blog I read some good news for all of you who’s waiting on the Windows version of Boxee to be released.

Some 200 people have signed up for the pre-alpha testing of boxee for Window, but I can imagine that number will grow rather quickly when word gets out more. Not sure how many testers they’re planning letting in though.

To the general we can add local media scanning, YouTube, Flickr, Picasa and CNN and Hulu. For me, local media scanning hasn’t been an issue at all, I’m just hoping that they address the network media scanning and improve that.

Right now, I’m tossed between the super fast network scanning by my Xbox 360 but inability to play all my file types, and the super slow network scanning by Boxee but ability to play all and everything I throw at it. And the fact that I don’t have an Xbox in my bedroom.

Oh hey, Boxee team! You should definitely have a look at the MtvMusic service. How cool would that be to have in Boxee? Buuuut like everything else, if you’re not in the States, you’re not allowed to watch jack. Damn it. They did however allow me to watch music videos for a while when they released the website. Then they slammed the door in my face.

Oh and people, if you like Boxee, you should nominate them for The Crunchies!

quick intro to boxee from boxee on Vimeo.

I was watching this demo video by Gotta Be Mobile’s author Rob Bushway the other day, where he was testing the Multi-Touch software for Windows 7, and it’s looking… well, far from usable.

But like I said, it’s all pre-beta on pre-beta, and it’s likely to improve drastically before either is released as a final product. It’s cool to see the Windows environment with the Multi-Touch screen, and I agree with Matt Burns that it does look good. But I’m not impressed. It looks incredibly “jerky” as Rob Bushway says in his article. But let’s be patient shall we?

To be honest, I did expect a better performance from a public beta release. I suppose one could argue that it’s the best way to get lots of feedback, but how do you think the feedback would sound on a beta release like this? I’m still hopeful though, and I’m sure like I said, improvements will be made.

But how funny is this guy? He shows us just how “jerky” it is, and sums it up pretty well… Although, I’d have to say that “the fruit” looks far juicier than the software in question.

If you’re running Windows 7 on a Dell Latitude XT, you can download the drivers at N-Trig.com and give it a spin. Please note the spec requirements “DuoSense technology enabled and the Windows 7 pre-beta version installed on your Dell Latitude XT“

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This video shows a short guided tour of the new, improved Taskbar for Windows 7, and I must say, it really looks good. Some of the features could really help improve productivity, if you’re the mouse-browsing type. Personally, when using Windows (XP), I tend to navigate through the system using the keyboard only, so the “Aero Peek” (a.k.a. “Peek” for short) would render rather useless for me. However, I tend to change my way of working with things every now and then. No matter what, it looks and works nicely indeed and I’m certain many will appreciate it. Check it out:

Update: I found this article on Gizmodo where they show us a “hidden feature” called “Aero Shake”. Not sure why it’s referred to as “hidden”, it could as far as I know always have been there and nobody noticed it. Or if you have to activate the feature as it might have been turned off for beta testers (hence “hidden”), who knows. I just think it’s truly awesome, a really really good idea. It’s one of those things that stands out, and might even think “Ha, not even Mac OS X does that”. Judge for yourselves:

Windows 7. Yeah I know, catchy huh? You know, I have to say I’m a tad bit proud of the Microsoft crew for taking this step… Naming it Windows 7, as it is the seventh release of Microsoft Windows.

/../ coming up with an all-new “aspirational” name does not do justice to what we are trying to achieve /../ Mike Nash says in his blog post, and I can only assume one of two things. A) They want to get away from anything that may remind their potential consumers of Windows Vista, which really didn’t do Microsoft any good at all. Or B) They’re simply trying to make sense. Either way, I believe it is a good name. Call it uninspiring, call uncreative, heck even unoriginal. But frankly, it makes sense. It sounds good. Not so pretentious.

Microsoft seems to be in a hurry getting the word about Windows 7 out, and pushing the operating system out to developers, as they within a few weeks are distributing a pre-beta version, a “developer only release” as they call it. It’s understandable that they try and ramp up the tempo for this OS, since XP is getting rather old and Vista really isn’t considered a viable alternative for many, making the last decent Windows OS seven years old! Hey, maybe it’s a celebration to their last success… Windows 7 (years since we did something good…).

The only actual planned release date mentioned is June 3rd 2009, but it’s expected to be changed during The Professional Developers Conference (PDC) on October 27th and the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) the week thereafter. I’m confident the June date isn’t even close to an actual release date, so we’ll just have to stay tuned.

At the very bottom of Mike Nash’s blog post, a comment posted by one “strevoir” pleads to, I have to assume Microsoft:

“Please dont call it Windows 7 Please!
Please dont call it Windows 7 Please!
In Hong Kong, 7 in Chinese sound like the word “Lame”
As a microsoft fans,I dont want mac fans joking about the name, It will be hell annoying!!!!!!!!”

That is just funny.

Via TechCrunch, SweClockers and Windows Vista Blog

I just wanted to mention this free piece of software called Par-N-Rar for Windows XP that I tried out today. I was looking to uncompress a large number of RAR archives, located in different folders and to extract the files into their original folder, and finally delete the RAR files. This is what this application does, among other things.

You can also have it idling in the background and uncompress any archives you might add to the location you are monitoring, including all its subfolders, and set an update interval for how often you want it to search for updates in the folder structure. Nifty say I.

So, I ran across this extremely easy (not a perfect-world-solution) hack, but usable. If you save your contact like this “John Doe,” (see the comma?), it’ll get saved properly, and at least for me, the comma disappeared! It’s not in my mobile device, nor in my Outlook 2007 after a sync. And the name displays properly, FirstName LastName.