VistaJuice

A couple of months ago I invited a bunch of people for an internal beta test of a new project I created for my clients called ClickaPost. Today I am proud to invite many more of you to our first Public Beta. Don't let the "beta" in the name confuse you. The site is very much ready for public, beta only means a lot more cool things are coming very soon!

What is ClickaPost anyway?

It is an on-line classifieds system, similar to Craig's List and in some ways to eBay, but with a twist. It is really pretty, free to use, and you may include both pictures and videos with your posts. People can leave comments about your post and if they wish to talk a bit more about it - we provide an integrated Forum for this! All forum posts can be easily linked to "ClickaPosts" so everyone always knows what you're talking about.

While you can upload your own videos directly, if you already have them somewhere else on the Internet (say YouTube, Blip.TV, WellcomeMat, MetaCafe, etc.) you can easily embed them into your posts.

What can you post?

Pretty much anything! We separated over 400 different subcategories into the following 9 categories: For Sale, Vehicles, Services, Community Events, Real Estate, Personals, Jobs, Resumes and Wanted.

If you are selling a laptop or looking for one, getting rid of some old books, looking for a babysitter, organizing a community event, or simply looking for a job - ClickaPost.com is a place for you.

What now?

Head over to ClickaPost.com and register. If you already registered while we were in private beta - your account is still there so you may simply log in!

If you like what you see please tell your friends and family.

If you need help - just reply to this post and I'll help you out with anything.

If you have any feedback - we're all ears. Especially now ;)

Note on web browser compatibility...

While in beta, ClickaPost is best viewed using either FireFox or Internet Explorer 7. Support for Internet Explorer 6 is coming very soon! If you do not have FireFox installed, you can get it for free. FireFox 3 has just launched today and it is by far the best and fastest web browser ever made!
You may download it at the following address:
http://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox-3.0&os=win&lang=en-US

P.S>
ClickaPost.com is a project I developed for my clients from New York.
Need PHP development? Check out Peconi.com and give us a call!

We're all eagerly awaiting Vista's Service Pack 1 to come out. I tested the latest beta, as reported about 2 weeks ago, and I noticed some improvements. There were less of those annoying pop-ups, and Vista was finally able to see my 4GB of RAM in computer.

Overall it did seem a little bit snappier than usual too, and this was just a beta. I bet this new Service Pack will greatly improve stability of the overall system and (finally) user's satisfaction with Vista. I do still prefer XP when it comes to working on Windows.

Oh, and the main thing about SP1, while still not fully available from Microsoft as a download (they shipped the RTM to manufacturers first), you can get it on the lovely Torrent Network. PC World reports on the stats of that right here: http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,142231-pg,1/article.html

While I do not support illegal downloading of software, Vista's update belongs to you if you have Vista anyway, so fire up those torrent applications ad get yours.

Here's the best torrent search engine you can find, click the logo ;)

Good torrent programs:

• For Windows: utorrent
• For Mac OS X: Transmission

There aren't any visual improvements with Vista's SP1 (that I've noticed in the first hour of playing with it), but I did notice the following:

• It does seem I am not being asked as much for a permission to do some things (finally)
• I LOVE that Vista now sees 4GB of RAM (the correct amount) and is not showing it as 3GB... It's nice to be able to use what you paid for :)

When I see more things I'll let you know, but for now ... it seems fine :)

It's been some time since we've all wanted an SP1 for Vista. The not-so-final version, but mostly good enough for public testing has been released today.

As with every "beta" software, you should be careful and not install this on any mission critical systems, but if you are like me - you won't care less and just go for it and see what Microsoft's kitchen has in store for us.

Here's the download link: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=529d992a-d69e-4c73-9213-7a7f3852c0ca&displaylang=en&tm

Also, you might be interested in reading up about it first on ZD-Net: http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1106

P.S. Is Microsoft trying to show us how good Vista is meant to be just a day before the MacWorld 2008? :)

For the past couple of days I've been having strange issues with Vista on iMac. Namely, if I leave the computer alone for 5 minutes, it would go to a blank screen (all black) and never come out of it until I restart.

This was annoying the living hell out of me... I disabled the Dream Scene package and now it all works like a charm. Also, with the Dream Scene out - I do not get the random Windows Manager restarts due to some video driver failures.

So, if you are having some issues - try getting the Dream Scene out. It sucks without it, but what can one do? I rather have a stable system than 5 minutes of pretty animated desktop :)

P.S. - Scratch out where I said Dream Scene works in last post. :)

Wow, it's been a really long time since I wrote on VistaJuice! I left the blog running since even with the latest tip being dated July 26th, 2007 - this site gets at least 400 unique visitors every single day! It was clear it is helping people with the tips that were already there which was the main reason for Juicing the Vista in the first place.

Why wasn't I writing anything for such a long time? I am not a hypocrite; I wrote about Vista when I was using it and while I still expected Microsoft to fix those little issues which were found mostly everywhere.

In the meantime I even moved to Mac - the moment I got my first iMac (the day Aluminum iMac came out) I never looked back. Leopard came and I fall in love :)

Also, since I cannot live without some kind of Windows - I used Windows XP (with SP3 beta lately) on the iMac in Boot Camp... It works like a charm! I've always used Windows machines for my web development taks, and Mac and Leopard have opened my eyes to ease of managing all of my Multimedia, from Music to Movies and Pictures. Nothing comes close to Mac when it comes to this; for everything else there's Windows :)

So, why am I writing today? Well, I am back in the Vista World! I think right now is a Really Good Time to get back to Vista. A lot of little issues and bugs have been solved, those Ultimate Extras I paid for long time ago are slowly crawling in (at least DeamScene seems to work good now). Hey, drivers work finally too :)

Also, with the news of Vista Service Pack 1 coming out within a month or so - I'm ready to give it a try.

The main reason though is the amazing WACOM Cintiq 12WX Tablet I got which combined with Vista's Tablet PC features makes my life SO WONDERFUL!

Vista's Tablet PC features are simply amazing. I love using the Wacom tablet, but I also love being able to write with the digital pen instead of typing. Not that it is more practical, but any change is welcome.

So, I will try to bring you some more news and tips about Vista when the time permits. Now that I am using it again, I bet I'll stumble upon something eventually.

Happy New Year Everyone!

- Great Wacom Review by Jesus Diaz on Gizmodo: http://gizmodo.com/338021/wacom-cintiq-12wx-lcd-pen-tablet-video-review-verdict-simply-amazing-updated

Two of the biggest battery hogs in Windows Vista are the flashy Aero user interface and the gadget sidebar. So it stands to reason that if you want to get the most out of your laptop's battery life you'll disable these features when running on battery power.

Get your groove on: http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/tamir/archive/2007/07/24/Vista-Battery-Saver-Beta-2-is-available-for-download.aspx

Via: Download Squad

Even though Palm was supposed to publish the Vista compatible Desktop software when Vista came out, it's still better later than never.

All of you Palm lovers can now go and enjoy Vista without too many issues. It's still in Beta after-all so good luck :)

Via PalmBlog

Hmm,

According to ZD Net, Microsoft is to issue a long awaited Vista Service Pack 1 next Monday. Surely, this one will be in Beta stage - with final, real SP set for some time in November.

Now, all this might simply not happen - but heck - it's nice to hope for something at least. I long lost hope for any ultimate Extras coming any time soon - so an SP would be nice :)

Via: http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=559

Hey guys,

Long time no see. I've been really busy lately starting up Peconi Group, LLC. and expanding PeconiHosting.com that I really did not have much time to write on Vista Juice.

Truth is - not much is happening with Vista at the moment. Some updates here and there, still waiting for the real deal on those nice Ultimate Extras.

Microsoft is making some changes to the integrated Start Menu search since Google sued them ... Wthell? Only in America can someone sue you for making your own product better...

Other than that - same ol', same ol'. I am still a bit pissed that MS is not updating some things in Vista: #1 annoyance is when you open a folder full of photos, thumbnails load only on those you are seeing at the moment. All those other photos which are just a scroll-down away do not have thumbnails available until you actually scroll all the way to them... What a hell with that? I work with thousands of photos every single day and this has been one of the main reasons I am still under the old - Rock Solid - and trusty XP. That was also one of the reasons I stopped writing for VJ - I just did not want to be a hypocrite - praising the OS I am not really using all that much right now. I did for months, but I had to go back to gain a bit on my productivity.

If there are any of you who are interested in becoming Writers for Vista Juice - please contact me at peconi at peconi.com. I'd definitely like to get the blog running. Since we're not Engadget - you won't get any revenue from this really (I don't either except for those REALLY NICE Chip ins by couple of you guys! Thanks so much, I really appreciate it!).

So, that's it for now just so you all know I'm still alive :)

Oh, and it seems that iTunes now finally works fine with Vista :) Let's hope that iPhones don't start dying in Vista while synching like some iPods did, haha ...

Leter guys....