Ian Moulster's blog

It’s easy to lose track of how many add-ons you’re running in IE8 and how they can slow things down. An interesting experiment is to use the “-extoff” flag to disable all add-ons and see how zippy IE8 becomes.

To do this, create an icon for IE on your desktop (usually "C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe") and add “ –extoff” to the end of the command. So, if you’ve installed IE8 in the default location, the target/location would become:

"C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe" –extoff

Try surfing a few sites (you’ll be warned you’re running with extensions off). When I did this the speed increase was noticeable, suggesting that add-ons were having a reasonably significant effect on my browser speed.

To get an idea of which add-ons are slowing you down the most, go to "Tools” then “Manage Add-Ons” then, ensuring “Toolbars and Extensions” is selected, scroll right so you can see the “Load Time” column. Try removing any add-ons that a) aren’t particularly useful and b) have long load times.

I've been playing around with my Zune HD and having great fun with it. I was interested to see how well the radio would work in the UK and the answer is "not too bad". Assuming you adjust the radio options in the settings menu to "Europe", you get reasonable reception with a couple of things to be aware of:

1.  If the signal is strong enough it will pick up the station name and some additional information about the station. For example, see the image below which shows not only that I'm listening to BBC Radio 1, but also which programme is airing: 
   
   
   

    

2. There's no equivalent to the US station call sign, so you get a weird collection of letters eg "CFJM" in the above example. If you add the station as a favourite it adds it with this as the label unfortunately
3. HD radio doesn't work of course because we use a completely different system for digital broadcasts in the UK. However it doesn't affect your ability to listen to normal analogue FM broadcasts
4. It's worth being aware that the headphones act as an antenna, so make sure they're plugged in and preferably in your ears before trying to tune to a station

One of the best things about the Zune HD so far though? Get this baby out on a train or in any public place and you'll get people looking and wondering what this device is that's so cool but obviously isn't an ipod. Almost worth the entrance fee alone :-)

Ebay have just published a new IE8 web slice that I really like. Why? Because it’s a great example of what a web slice should be (if you need more info on web slices read here: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/features/easier.aspx?tab=0).

Every day eBay publish a special price for an item called, appropriately, the “daily deal”. Now, instead of having to visit the relevant eBay page every day to find out what it is you can now have IE8 notify you via a web slice. It’s simple but is exactly the kind of thing web slices do really well.

There is a version of the web slice for both the US and UK eBay sites, get them here:

• US: http://www.ieaddons.com/gb/details/shopping/Get_the_latest_eBaycom_Daily_Deals/
• UK: http://www.ieaddons.com/gb/details/shopping/Get_the_latest_eBaycouk_Daily_Deals/

With the recent news of email accounts being hacked there seems to be plenty of advice floating around for avoiding falling victim to scams and other attacks. One of the pieces of advice is to use a strong password .Even though there’s no evidence that would have helped in the recently-reported instances a strong password is definitely a good weapon to have in your security arsenal along with a solid antivirus product, firewall, a good dose of scepticism, a mistrust of links in emails, and common sense.

I thought it worth sharing some ideas of how to ensure that your passwords are secure as most people – me included – struggle to remember passwords that conform to the general advice of “strong” passwords: Mixture of upper and lower case, mixture of letters and numbers and even punctuation, at least 6 characters long and preferably longer, should not be made up of words you’d find in a dictionary.

So a strong password might be “ihbciaS1gafoa103” for example. Not particularly memorable? Well actually it might be. If you’re trying to think of a good password for your Hotmail account, think of a song with the word “hot” in the title. How about “Hot Blooded” by Foreigner (younger people are saying “who?” at this stage).

The first line of Hot Blooded is “I’m hot blooded, check it and see, I got a fever of a hundred and three”.

Now take a look at that password again. I’ve taken the first letter of each word of that first line, used an upper case letter on the word that’s stressed in the line (“see”), and the number 1 for “I” the second time it’s used in the sentence, and “103” for “hundred and three”.

It’s actually pretty easy to remember now, even if you have to sing it to yourself in your head to remember it. And believe me, that’s definitely a strong password.

What do you reckon? Does this work for you? And other ideas you’d like to share?

I didn’t realise until recently that you could search your hotmail inbox using keywords to narrow the search. I’m talking about the web version of Hotmail, not when you’re accessing it via a client application like Outlook.

For example, let’s say you wanted to find an email from your friend John Lyons, that will have been filed in a folder called “School”. Just type “from:Lyons folder:School” in the search box at the top right of your hotmail webpage:

It works with “to” as well, and of course you can search all folders by omitting the “folder” keyword.

[Update: "Subject" works too, so for example looking for emails with a subject containing the word "tickets", you would enter "subject:tickets"]

With my inbox having well over 10,000 messages, and multiple folders, this kind of search refinement is really useful to me.  It’s really quick too.

The latest Zune player has been reviewed in great depth elsewhere so I’m not going to go into it in huge depth here, other than to say it’s not just a pleasure to use but is very, very cool and aesthetically pleasing too.

But I did want to point out a tiny feature that I really like when you’re running it on Windows 7: The preview icon in the toolbar has controls that you can use right from the preview itself, such as play/pause, skipping tracks and marking as a favorite. This kind of little touch makes using it a pleasure, and is the kind of things that demonstrates the level of thought that’s gone into the product.

Oh yeah, and no adverse comments about my musical tastes please.

Over at the UK ISV blog they have just posted a really useful list of resources relating to Windows 7 application compatibility. If you’re an ISV it’s well worth a look: http://blogs.msdn.com/ukisvdev/archive/2009/09/23/windows-7-application-compatibility-resources.aspx

I've been using XP mode on Windows 7 for a while and it has been proving useful to have an old XP copy available for things like compatibility testing. One issue I had is that it comes configured with only 256MB of RAM available to the virtual machine which tends to make it limp along somewhat with the hard drive thrashing away as XP tries to shuffle stuff into and out of the swap space.

I had plenty of RAM available on the host machine but it wasn't immediately obvious to me how you could increase the amount of RAM available to XP. Here's how I did it, if anyone has an easier way please let me know.

Step 1: Start up the XP Mode Virtual Machine. One way of doing this is to type "XP Mode" into the Windows 7 search box when you press the Windows pearl at the bottom left

Step 2: Once the virtual machine has started up, select "Tools" then "Settings". You'll notice that the memory size is set to 256MB but you can't change it because the virtual machine is running.

Step 3: Click on the "close" option and select the "prompt for action" radio button to allow you to opt how you want to close the virtual machine. If you don't do this it will always hibernate when you close it which isn't what we want - you still can't edit the RAM value when the virtual machine is hibernated.

Step 4: Click OK on this screen, then - and this is important - choose "File" and "settings" again and leave the dialog box open.

Step 5: Choose "Action" then "Close", and choose "Shut Down" from the drop down box. Remember you must still have the settings dialog box open at this stage.

Step 6: Once the virtual machine has shut down, you will now be able to edit the RAM value in the settings Window that you left open.

Step 7: Once you've selected the value you want, click Ok then start up the virtual machine again.

With 1GB of RAM it runs a whole lot faster and smoother that's for sure.

This year, once again, I have the honour of being a judge in .NET Magazine’s awards. I’m sure you know .NET magazine – nothing to do with Microsoft .NET, the name is just a coincidence – as a world-class web developer magazine.

Voting is open now so take a look at the nominations and let your views be known: http://www.thenetawards.com/

Someone asked me how they could tell which build of Windows 7 there were on, as they “inherited” a machine from a colleague and weren’t sure if they were still on beta, RC or RTM.

You can find out via the registry, so click the orb in the bottom left of the screen, type “regedit” and press return. Use the navigation tree on the left to find HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion.

In the right hand panel you’ll see a long list of values, one of which is “CurrentBuildNumber”.

If this is 7600 then you’re on the RTM (release to manufacturing) version. 7100 or 7200 means you’re on the RC (Release Candidate) – this will stop working by June 2010 so you should be planning to move to the RTM version.

Anything earlier means you’re in never-never land.

We’ve recently launched the UK version of isvappcompat.com (see www.isvappcompat.com/uk), a one-stop-shop site for ISVs to either get their application compatible with Windows 7, or help tell the world about it if you’re already compatible.

Three specific things I’d like to call out:

1. We have teamed up with ChangeBASE and AppDNA, two world-class organisations that provide testing services to check compatibility with Windows 7. They are both providing free testing for your ISV application – you simply upload the app, it runs the test and sends you a report back that tells you whether it’s compatible or not, and if not where the problems are. This is a really easy, quick service that you can use to get an almost immediate snapshot of how compatible your application is with Windows 7. Register your application via the site and you’ll get access to these services.
   
2. We’re still accepting nominations for our ISV Directory of UK applications that are (or will be) compatible with Windows 7. Register via the site
   
3. We’re running local compatibility “clinics” and workshops across the UK, get details and dates from the site

Of course if you’re already compatible you might consider applying for a “Compatible with Windows 7” logo. The process is far easier than you might think, and free for ISVs. Take a look at this post for more details: http://blogs.msdn.com/usisvde/archive/2009/08/28/windows-7-toolkit-validates-against-all-requirements.aspx. As a logo partner, the Compatible with Windows 7 programme also offers you benefits such as co-branding, MS partner points, and premier placement on a variety of online consumer facing sites.

When I installed Windows 7 RTM on my machine at home I decided to go for a clean install rather than an upgrade because I like the cathartic feel I get from wiping my hard drive and starting from a fresh, clean install. It also meant that I could take a long hard look at the applications I install and make sure that I don't include anything superflous. It surprised me just how many applications I rely on and need to install - I'm still a long way from being able to rely on the web for everything, even though I do use a number of web-based apps (hotmail and mindmeister being two specific ones).

Here's the list of what I installed on my home machine as "must have" applications. It's almost certain to grow but it was interesting to see what's on my list. How does this compare to the apps that you install?

Acronis True Image
Clipmate
Corel paint shop pro
Foxit reader
FTP client
Live Mesh
Microsoft Expression Blend
Microsoft Expression Design
Microsoft Expression Web
Microsoft Lifecam
Microsoft Office
Microsoft Security Essentials
Microsoft Visual Studio 2008
Napster
Punch Architectural Series
Roboform
Skype
Snagit
Speedfiler
Spotify
Tomtom
Windows Live Messenger
Windows Live Photo Gallery
Windows Live Writer
Witty
Xara xtreme
Zune

I’m approaching 10,000 unread emails in my hotmail inbox. And amazingly there is not much spam in that (hotmail seems pretty efficient at removing my spam), it’s just the result of having the same email address for 10 years and not bothering to delete anything.

So here’s a little quiz for you: How much storage do you get for free with Hotmail? 5GB? 7GB? More? Less?

Well, if you said “unlimited” then go to the head of the class. Although you start with 5GB with a free Hotmail account the amount of storage available of you simply continues to grow as you need it, as long as you only add a reasonable amount per month. What does “reasonable” mean? It means that for just about anyone who is simply using email normally it won’t be an issue – you’ll continue to send and receive email as normal, and the space available to you will continue to grow. So you never need to worry about deleting an email  to “make space” again.

Take a look at http://www.windowslive.com/Tutorial/Hotmail/Storage/StepByStep for more details.

Do you sell an application that is already supported on Windows 7, or will be by October 2009? Are you UK-based? If the answer to both of these questions is “yes” then why not tell us about it? We’re compiling a directory of UK ISV applications that are compatible with Windows 7 that we’ll promote during our launch activities and taking part is really easy. Here’s how it works:

Send an email to Win7Directory@Metia.com with the following details:

• Your company logo in high-res format
• A short quote, approx 25 words or less, on why you felt it important to support Windows 7, or your experiences with making sure your application supported Windows 7
• Name and Job title of the person who you want to attribute the quote to
• Name of the application
• Industry sector applicable to the application (or “horizontal”)
• URL of your website or product page

This information will be used to compile an initial list, we’ll then be back in contact with you later (assuming you’re ok for us to do so) to flesh out the details about your application.

I’ve started to receive some photos of how people are using the Bing stickers I sent out. I sent out about 30 to various people around the world and I still have some more pending requests – I’m running very low now despite getting a few more in. And of course I must actually get on and do some work sometime… :-)

Here are the first two, starting with Ian Blackburn’s car:

And Mark Wisecarver has kitted out his custom Harley in fantastic fashion. See his website at http://msftwise.com/bing/ for more of these, here are just a few:

I’ll post more pics from people as and when I get them.

 Update: Here are some more

From Raj Rao:

And this one from Rob Margel:

Another one from Rob showing subtle use of a Bing sticker on his son's scooter:

Alan Smith sent me this rather scary "wheeliebing" picture, I'm sure there are negative connotations here but I'm blanking them:

John Price has pointed me at his blog post that has a number of pictures of Bing stickers on planes. And a lawnmower. No really.

Adam Selby showed me how he's showing some Bing love on his Mac: