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From BerryReview.com:

RIM and Microsoft have tied together to bring tighter integration between Hotmail/Messenger and the BlackBerry. Just look at the promised features in the press release.

This is an awesome announcement – up until now, Bell in Canada and T-Mobile in the States have been the only carriers to offer MSN Messenger to their subscribers. Part of my work at RIM involved instant messaging provisioning and testing the Windows Live Messenger component in preproduction, so it’s awesome to hear that the service will be coming out on a wider scale. I expect it’ll be similar to Facebook’s deployment and this is a huge marketing chip for carriers like Rogers and Telus.

(I know a lot of people on Telus from HowardForums have tried to get the MSN Messenger client working, and you can’t do it without getting a Connection Error 65 – RIM has to enable your SIM or device for it. It’s not just a service book issue.)

Congrats to the teams at RIM and Microsoft on getting a deal worked out – MSN/Windows Live Messenger is definitely one of the most popular services here in Canada.

Additionally, this announcement will take Hotmail/Windows Live Mail from a second-class citizen (you had to pay for Hotmail Plus to access it on your device, ordinarily) to a top-tier mail account with push access. In effect, when using BIS, you’ll get the message on your device as soon as it lands in your inbox, and not from 2-15 minutes afterwards. Other providers with push email on the BlackBerry are Yahoo Mail and Gmail, and some GoDaddy hosted accounts.

With the release of the 9000Bold and this news, things are looking good for the future with BlackBerry devices.

January 16/09: This post has been modified to avoid giving the impression that I’m an appropriate contact for support. Please contact your carrier or BlackBerry technical support for the correct method of reporting issues.

This post discusses tools that can, but are not designed to, aid copyright infringement. Leaving aside potential legal issues, this post is intended to serve an educational purpose and merely describes already available services and software.

As part of my consulting business, I’m often asked to suggest alternatives for popular P2P programs like Kazaa and Morpheus. The first thing I mention is that I no longer support LimeWire, which is a P2P client that uses the Gnutella network. Unfortunately, most search results for any popular keywords contain pornography, trojan executables or MediaSentry “fake” files. Executing one of these files can do significant damage to a system, on the level of installing “MSN Block Checker” or similar software.

Just a note, for those reading: “MSN Block Checker” is a trojan that preys on people wanting to find out who blocked their account on MSN/Windows Live Messenger. There is no way to do this, since online status changes are sent by Microsoft. You can’t find out who blocked you with client software.

MSN Block Checker and its ilk necessitate a complete Windows reinstallation, and generally you can’t run a “repair” procedure. Systems can become reinfected just by viewing an old Windows folder with a shellcode exploit. We recommend a complete system wipe (deleting the original partition) and reinstallation for this particular problem, followed by disabling MSN file transfers and applying a limited user account for the teenager involved.

There are three P2P alternatives that I generally offer to clients who ask. Continue reading

It’s been slightly over a week since I moved into the new place and things are working out well so far. One of the major changes is that I haven’t had as much time to sit down and develop: instead, the roommates and myself tend to be more social in the community area. Unfortunately for the screaming fans of XenonMKV, though, this means I haven’t had a chance to deliver on some bug fixes and requested features. I hope to have something new by the end of the month on that end.

On the technology front, I haven’t had as much luck getting 1:1 pixel mapping on a KDS-55A2020 television as the KF42E200A, but it’s still quite usable for movies without any overscan. I’m using the default nVidia drivers on Windows Vista, and using the “Adjust HDTV desktop size” controls in the nVidia Control Panel applet. There were some promising threads on AVSforum but they all seemed to deal with Windows XP and Powerstrip, both of which are needed to create and display custom resolutions.

I’ll likely have a new Judge Jake episode out within the next week or so, as well.

From Mashable: America’s Got Talent… on MySpace.

WHAT IS THIS GOD WHY.

Seriously, I’d have a hard time thinking of a worse combination of words. Any takers in the comments?

(If you’re reading this from the front page, click through to see the horrendous image that accompanies this post.)

Over at the Consumerist, there’s a recent piece debunking a Boston Globe article on writing “See ID” or some variation of the phrase on the back of credit cards. I admire what popular consumer advocacy site has done for the average person who’s gotten screwed by a large company, but some of their posts definitely suffer from the Gawker formula. In the effort to crank out content persistently every day, editors inject significant personal bias and non-news into the stream of articles.

Unfortunately, the Consumerist takes the anti-fraud prevention stance pretty significantly. Not that I’m advocating fraud: a large number of people write in who have experienced identity theft. As a result, the editors’ viewpoints trend towards “being safe than sorry” all the way up the ladder to blatant fearmongering. The latest contribution towards the fearmongering effort (which also contributes towards the page view effort) is to talk about the advantages of writing “See ID” beside your signature on the back of a credit card.

Continue reading

A WordPress plugin that actually does what it advertises? Sign me up for Dean Lee’s Permalinks Migration Plugin, which properly 301 redirects your old permalink (example.com/year/month/day/postname) structure after it’s been updated. (I’ve swapped this site to use just a jakebillo.com/postname structure, so consider this my seal of approval.)

Penny-Arcade has a delightful comic about people who overuse Twitter, the service that has essentially replaced the LiveJournal-style “and then I ate some fish, and it was good” missives. Now, instead of just being angsty to your closest friends, you can be angsty AND deliver your every bowel movement to the Internet.

After reading today’s xkcd I actually laughed out loud at work – which was surprising because the comic had been rather lame until the last frame. Gotta love Python – the language that takes everything and still manages to spit out functional programs. Too bad the lead up was weak.

Hit the link for the full comic.

xkcd – “New Pet”

The new track is called Discipline and was released straight to radio stations yesterday, this track was whipped up by Trent Reznor and tossed out in short order from what I’ve heard. Its not readily available on the net yet, so who knows how long we’ll be able to offer it!

Take a listen to the full song here:

[audio:http://chaser.homeip.net/music/discipline_full.mp3]

Can’t say its the best song from NIN, but its new and its not really out there yet [hence the low quality]. Hit the link for a download.

NIN – Discipline [mp3]

Update: Added a new category for music and fixed the tags.

From the Metaquotes community at LiveJournal, likely found through Boing Boing: Shakespeare meets Pulp Fiction.

J: How passing strange, for I have traveled far,
And never have I heard tell of this What.
What language speak they in the land of What?
B: What?
J: The Queen’s own English, base knave, dost thou speak it?