Tim Anderson's ITWriting blog
Displaying 1 to 25 of 1011 archived entries.-
Published on 10 Jan 2005 by Tim Anderson
A guy called Frank just posted a comment to a review I wrote. He's just discovered that his new MP3 player won't play any music purchased from an online store, making it (according to him) worthless. He's blaming the device, but even if he had a DRM-enabled device, he could still get caught out. Let
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Published on 10 Jan 2005 by Tim Anderson
It's been widely reported that CD sales in the USA increased last year; see here for example. Some commentators, such as the Billboard spokesperson quoted in that article, see this as some kind of proof that the surge in downloads - both legal and otherwise - is not damaging CD sales. Don't believe
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Published on 09 Jan 2005 by Tim Anderson
I've been playing with a little extension to Word that will play an audio file, with the ability to stop, pause and navigate via keyboard shortcuts. This is ideal for transcribing interviews, and could also be handy for music. I soon threw something together, with VBA macros stored in Normal.dot. Ho
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Published on 05 Jan 2005 by Tim Anderson
As a journalist, I tend to record numerous press briefings and interviews, and sometimes I have the arduous task of transcribing parts of them. Some time ago I shifted from minidisk to a hard disk MP3 player/recorder (my review is here). Generally this works very well, and I much prefer working with
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Published on 21 Dec 2004 by Tim Anderson
SQLite is a small C library that is open source, free, cross-platform, fast, reliable, and well supported. Sqlite 3.0 adds some useful features, including BLOB support and the ability to create tables that support case-insensitive comparisons. I have been using a simple wrapper for Sqlite 2.0, and d
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Published on 16 Dec 2004 by Tim Anderson
I've just reviewed the iRiver H320, one of the devices which is trying to compete with Apple in the MP3 player market. Doing the review turned up some interesting anomalies. Microsoft is promoting a "Plays for Sure" logo, indicating devices which play DRM-protected WMA music and which work properly
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Published on 10 Dec 2004 by Tim Anderson
Let me put together a few thoughts. First, it's obvious that the future delivery mechanism for audio is the Internet. It's also obvious that the norm will be lossy compression, which flies in the face of efforts to maintain audio quality without any compromise. That strikes me as a sad reversal for
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Published on 10 Dec 2004 by Tim Anderson
The rumour is that Visual Studio 2005 will be released at the Microsoft PDC (Professional Developers Conference) September 13 - 16, 2005. I guess the gold version may still appear earlier, at least for MSDN download, but it looks like we now have a latest date for the final release of this long-awai
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Published on 04 Dec 2004 by Tim Anderson
The JET database may be rather aged, but Access has a great UI for browsing and managing databases as well as a decent report writer. But here's my number one wish. I often use the query designer, but I usually want to write my own SQL. However, when you choose New Query, it comes up with the visual
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Published on 02 Dec 2004 by Tim Anderson
It's December. And as I look at all the Game of the Year polls in the run-up to Christmas, I'm disturbed to see that games beginning Ha.. or perhaps GTA.. are in danger of obscuring other quality productions. All is set right in ITWriting XBox Game of the Year 2004, democratically selected by a comm
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Published on 17 Jan 2005 by Tim Anderson
Rocky Lhotka is spooked by this article on .NET versioning in Longhorn. Microsoft is apparently proposing to disallow multiple version of the .NET Common Language Runtime in Longhorn, though multiple versions of the Framework class libary will still be supported. According to Rocky, the implication
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Published on 19 Jan 2005 by Tim Anderson
Reviewing the iPod photo has highlighted for me some of the reasons why rivals are finding it difficult to compete effectively. The iPod is far from perfect, but it is highly usable and commands strong third-party support. It's quite possible that some other vendor will create an equally compelling
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Published on 19 Jan 2005 by Tim Anderson
I've reviewed the iPod Photo, a high-end model in the iPod range. It's stimulated a few thoughts on what is happening in this market; I hope to post these later today.
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Published on 20 Jan 2005 by Tim Anderson
Today I got the chance to talk to KD Hallman, Microsoft's General Manager for Visual Studio Tools for Office. Interesting stuff, especially what's coming in Visual Studio 2005. Perhaps the most remarkable feature (though not necessarily the most important) is the ability to treat a Word or Excel doc
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Published on 01 Feb 2005 by Tim Anderson
In the November/December issue of Application Development Advisor I wrote a column on Borland's Delphi 2005. Basing my words on a late beta, I was generally positive, and I still think it has a lot to offer. You can target .NET or Win32 from the same IDE and with the same RAD language; there is inte
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Published on 08 Feb 2005 by Tim Anderson
Last week I attended a press briefing to mark 7 years of XML. One of the speakers was Microsoft's Jean Paoli, Microsoft's XML Architect and someone who has been involved with XML since its beginning. I asked Jean why Microsoft does not submit its Office XML schemas, including WordprocessingML and Sp
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Published on 14 Feb 2005 by Tim Anderson
I've been writing recently about the importance of having Windows users run with LUA (Limited User Accounts) for security. In Windows XP, this means a "restricted" user, in the Users group but not the Power Users group. But how easy it is for developers to support such users? To test this out, I cre
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Published on 15 Feb 2005 by Tim Anderson
Brian Behlendorf is founder and CTO of CollabNet, closely involved with Apache, and a leading member of the open source movement. Late last year I interviewed Brian for Application Development Advisor. The interview was wide-ranging, and there was only room for a short extract in the magazine, so wi
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Published on 22 Feb 2005 by Tim Anderson
Interesting Slashdot thread on Mono, the open source implementation of C# and parts of the .NET Framework.It seems that Mono is winning respect even from people who are Microsoft-averse. Good news for the .NET platform, and a nudge to anyone who hasn't checked it out that it might be time to take a
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Published on 24 Feb 2005 by Tim Anderson
I have an old-ish XBox and today I received my replacement power cord. In case you've not followed this story, Microsoft announced that millions of XBoxs out there have faulty cords which in some circumstances could pose a fire risk, hence the replacement. However, this thing is not just a power cor
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Published on 26 Feb 2005 by Tim Anderson
Here's a guy who has such trouble with Windows that he abandoned it. An interesting read which prompts several thoughts. First, Robin's problems aren't as far as I can see anything to do with technical problems with Windows. The nub of it seems to be that he wanted to use Windows 2000 on a brand new
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Published on 26 Feb 2005 by Tim Anderson
Fascinating post by Danny Thorpe, Borland's Chief Scientest, on Where's my Delphi for .NET Compact Framework. The subject is why Borland doesn't support the Compact Framework with its .NET tools; but what's more interesting is Danny's take on Microsoft's internal workings. He sees a "new school" fac
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Published on 27 Feb 2005 by Tim Anderson
Scoble points to Jeremy Allaire's post about the next XBox, possibly called XBox 360. Jeremy focuses on its media capabilities, calling the unit "a networked Internet media device that can download and render secure audio and video content from PCs and the Internet." One of the reasons for the lackl
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Published on 03 Mar 2005 by Tim Anderson
From time to time I wander over to Jobserve UK, the biggest online agent for IT vacancies, to see which skills are in most demand. I started doing it in early 2002, to see what impact .NET was having in the business world. I keep a note of the figures, though I don't pretend that they are any more t
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Published on 07 Mar 2005 by Tim Anderson
Here's a hot potato. Long-time .NET author and expert Richard Grimes is giving up on the platform. He says the Framework is too big, too badly designed, and really just another Win32 wrapper. He also takes a lot of time to say that VB.NET is a pointless language (Grimes as I understand it is primari
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