Technology, Books and Other Neat Stuff

While I'm sticking with Google for search, Microsoft's Bing home page has some of the coolest imagery around.

It's good enough to want to use as a desktop background. I could just do the old "right click, save as desktop" thing in my browser, but that would mean visiting the site regularly (and remembering to do so). So what's the alternative for the lazy user?

It turns out that I actually have lots of options. I first tried a piece of software called ZapBing, but that wasn't a great success (mainly as it managed to violate many of the Windows security features added post-Windows XP). The answer to that problem was a nifty tool called John's Background Switcher.

JBS is one of those tools that does just what you want - and then some. Need to create backdrops on the fly from your photos? From Facebook? From Picasa? From Flickr? From any RSS image feed? It's all in there.

The RSS feed tools are what saves the day here. All you need is the feed from the Bing Image Archive, pushed out by Feedburner [RSS feed link]. You can then set the feed as a source in JBS, and, well, Bob's your proverbial...

[For the more technical of you, if you're running Windows 7, you can actually build a RSS-powered desktop theme following these instructions.]

And yes, that does all mean you can get a desktop feed from I Can Haz Cheezeburger.

Scott Hanselman's annual list of developer and power user tools for Windows is just out, and there are a lot of good tools in there - many of which I use every day. They range from memory joggers and notetakers to DOS emulators and deep debugging tools.

It's one of those lists that every time you look at it, you'll find something more and something that solves one of those nagging little issues (like the application that take a screenshot of your desktop every hour or so, so you can remember just what you were doing when...).

There's one area where Scott doesn't have some of the problems I have - working with more than one machine at a time. I try to keep distractions off my main screen when I'm working, so I have a laptop on an old monitor stand on my desk. I can just pull it out to type on when I need it. These days, however, I don't even need to do that.

A software keyboard mouse switch does the work for me, and all I need to do is slide my mouse of the side of one screen, onto another - in fact on to another machine. I'm currently on my third tool of this type. I started out with Synergy, but the project started lagging OS development and there hasn't been a new build for years. Then I switch to Multiplicity, but it too drifted off into the realms where updates are few and far between.

So I'm now using Input Director, which is one of those Ronseal applications, that just does what it says on the tin. It's easy to set up, easy to use, and works well with Windows 7.

That's me happy.

My workhorse machine is an HP 2710P tablet. It goes pretty much everywhere I go, and so it was the first machine (aside from my test PC) that I set up as a clean Windows 7 install, using the RTM build from MSDN.



First, the good news: Virtually everything works straight out of the box. There are Windows 7 graphics drivers ready and waiting for most of the machine's hardware, and even drivers for the fingerprint reader and the SD card slot.

Second, the not so good news: Some of HP's built-in tweaks and speciality hardware aren't supported yet, and there's some question over whether they will ever get Windows 7 drivers. That's always a risk when hardware pre-dates an OS. It's certainly a little annoying when the screen won't autorotate, and the slider volume control on the keyboard won't work - but there are workarounds using OS features such as Windows 7's Mobility Center (call it up with Windows-X) which gives you rotation and volume controls.

Third, the better news: You can get all those functions back using the latest versions of the Vista drivers from the HP web site.

So far I've been able to get back rotation and special keys (including the volume slider and mute button), the accelerometer-based hard drive shock protection and control of the WiFi and Bluetooth cards.

You'll need the following SoftPaqs:

SP43616 - HP Quick Launch screen rotation and special keys
SP38424 - hard drive shock protection
SP39734 - WiFi and Bluetooth manager

These will give you most of what you need. Some set up guides suggest using earlier versions of the Quick Launch driver, but this one works well for me.

You'll also find a couple of devices without drivers in Device Manager. These are part of the Intel AMT device management suite, and aren't really necessary for most users. If you do want to get them running you can find the drivers for these in these two SoftPaqs: SP38312 and SP38313.

The installers for these drivers won't run under Windows 7. However the files will unpack into folders under C:\swsetup. In Device Manager right-click on one of the two unsupported devices, and choose "Update Drivers". Choose to install from a local folder (and make sure the "use subfolders" option is selected). Pick C:\swsetup and let Windows install the device driver. Do the same for the other AMT device driver.

And that's everything you need for a fully configured Windows 7 machine.

Enjoy.

I found this forum thread very useful when setting up my machine

I've had an odd little egg-shaped Casio label printer lying around for a while, and decided it was worth hooking up to my PC to improve the labels on boxes in the office - seeing as we're making an effort to get things tidy and organised. It's not the newest of devices, the drivers in the box were Windows 2000 drivers - so I decided it would be a good test of just how old a device I could get working with Windows 7...

First I tracked down a newer set of drivers. The KP-C10 isn't technically a printer - it's a USB device with its own printing tools. Surprisingly Casio had actually delivered Windows Vista drivers, so I'd at least be some of the way to getting it working...

...or at least so I thought.

The software installed properly, but the drivers were no where to be found. It took me a while to track down the reason why - Windows 7 handles its driver cache very differently to earlier versions of Windows, and the installer wasn't having any luck getting the Vista drivers installed. It took me a while to realise what to do - and when I did, I kicked myself for missing the obvious.

The trick was to use Windows 7's compatibility settings to run the installer as if it was working with Vista. That way Windows 7 would put the driver files in the right place. Certainly I got a new set of dialogues, indicating that Casio signed drivers were being installed - something I'd not seen in my previous tries.

When the installer had finished running I plugged the printer in...

...took a deep breath...

...and waited.

Huzzah!

It worked - the device was detected correctly, the drivers were installed, and I was able to print my first set of sticky labels.

The day before yesterday I had to go into Putney to run an errand. I was passing the local branch of Next when I looked in the window. Now, if you know me well enough, you'd know that's something I don't normally do - unless of course it's a bookshop or a gadget shop that I'm passing.

I suspect it was because Next is right next to Waterstones, but that really doesn't matter. One of the dummies in the window was wearing a T-shirt I just had to have.

Anyone who's had their hands inside a car engine will probably have used a Haynes manual to guide their first fumbling tweak with a shiny new socket set. So when I saw a shirt that purported to be the cover of a Haynes manual for an Imperial AT-AT walker...

Three of my geekinesses in one item of clothing? What's to say no? And there was one in my size!



Now if only I had a socket set big enough.

IBM's just released an interesting little augmented reality application for Android: Seer.

It's an interesting little application, which works much like Wikitude, using the phone's camera, GPS, G-sensor and compass to overlay information on top of a cameras-eye view of the world (in this case, the All England Tennis Club). Or perhaps our office.



I can just about get it to distinguish between courts here in Putney, but I suspect if I were on site, it would be much more useful - as it mixes geocoded information with live feeds from the scheduling and scoring systems IBM runs for the competition. There also seems to be a feed from at least one IBM Twitter account in there...

It's a nice fun application, and a good example of the type of mobile service we can deliver right now.

Clearing out the spam folder on our mail server, I found a piece of spam that gave me a little twinge of nostalgia, taking me back to those heady days of 1994.

Yes, I got some Green Card spam.

Wow. Commercial spam is over 14 years old - in fact nearly 15 years. The spamgularity awaits.

Does the result of the recent vote in Congress mean that the bailout is now an EPIC FAILout?

Enquiring minds and all that.

"It's like watching a RAID array rebuild".

(29.4% Complete, Time Remaining 399.8 Minutes)

A 1927 navigation device. Scroll the map through the viewer to guide you on any of 20 or so pre-set routes.

Yes, I know, it's a link to the Daily Mail. And from a Guardianista like me, too. Sorry...