Google Personalised Home Page - PC World article

Hands On: Google's Personalized Home Page

http://blogs.pcworld.com/staffblog/archives/003873.html

I should title this blog: "Wherein I transform the paragon of Web efficiency into a cluttered distraction."

What kind of idiot mucks up the spare beauty of the Google interface--the most famous home page in Web history?

That would be me as I Yahoo-ify Google by adding boxes and boxes of links through the company's new Personalized Homepage, one of two new services now available to anyone who logs into Gmail, Google Calendar, or any other Google account. The other new service, Search History, stores your searches on a Google server to make them available on any machine you use to sign into your account.

Upfront Privacy Alert: The option to enable Search History is checked by default when you sign up for a Google account, but some users of Google services may need to turn this feature on manually via the My Account link.

Google promises to keep your past searches private, and the company lets you pause the feature and delete specific entries in the history (click the Search History link to access these and other options), but storing your personal information on a Web server introduces new security risks just the same. Even with Google's promises of confidentiality, anyone using the Search History feature should consider their past searches semi-public information.

Let Google Fill In the Blanks

I've always been a fan of the pure Google design and felt no need to customize it. Out of curiosity, I clicked the Personalized Home link in the top-right corner and found a selection of news stories, my Gmail inbox, and my Google Calendar (if you’re not already logged into a Google account, you'll be prompted to do so to access this information). That's a nice trick, but nothing new.

After adding a Wikipedia search box, Google Map Search, and a tech newswire via the Add stuff link, my personalized home page was looking very My Yahoo-ish as sort of shown in the tiny screenshot below:

I started to feel like a bad cook who keeps adding ingredients to the stew in hopes of transforming it into something edible. It was reassuring to know that the good-old Google was waiting on the other side of the Classic Home link at the top of the page.

Then the "Add a tab" link caught my eye. Lots of Web portals let you drag various specialty content blocks onto your home page, but Google does the heavy lifting for you: Give your new tab a name, such as "computers", and Google fills in the appropriate content for you when you check "I’m feeling lucky." My eyes really started to sparkle after I created a "cars" tab and let Google retrieve images of the 2008 Bentley Brooklands and a 1999 Lamborghini Diablo VT Roadster.

My attempt to create a "March Madness" tab lead nowhere, but changing the tab's name to "NCAA Basketball" retrieved a link to the tournament bracket information I was looking for (on my break time, of course). Here's what it looks like (if you have eagle eyes to view small screenshots with):

It's too soon to know whether I'll come to miss the old Google and return to the simple search box look. Still, if you use Gmail and other Google services, and you want your home page to present you with a snapshot of your world, you won't beat the Personalized Google.

I'm a little concerned about the effect the new Google look will have on my productivity, however. I almost always head to Google (and every other search engine) with a specific question in mind. What will happen when I get distracted by a link to a news story about the big chicken fat spill that closed down a mile-long stretch of Interstate 20 in Louisiana?

By the time I learn that the Ouachita River is safe from the imminent threat of chicken-fat pollution, I will have forgotten what I was intending to search for in the first place.

Vista cracked - APC article

http://www.apcstart.com/5512/pirate_crack_vista_oem_activation


It's official: Pirates crack Vista at last
A genuine crack for Windows Vista has just been released by pirate group
Pantheon, which allows a pirated, non-activated installation of Vista
(Home Basic/Premium and Ultimate) to be properly activated and made
fully-operational.
Unlike cracks which have been floating around since Vista RTM was released
in late November, this crack doesn?t simply get around product activation
with beta activation files or timestop cracks - it actually makes use of
the activation process. It seems that Microsoft has allowed large OEMs
like ASUS to ship their products with a pre-installed version of Vista
that doesn?t require product activation ? apparently because end users
would find it too inconvenient.
OEM Emulation
This version of Vista uses System-Locked Pre-Installation 2.0 (SLP 2.0).
It allows the ?Royalty OEMs? to embed specific licensing information into
the operating system which Vista can activate without having to go back to
Microsoft for verification. The licensing components include the OEM?s
hardware-embedded BIOS ACPI_SLIC (which has been signed by Microsoft), an
XML certificate file which corresponds to this ACPI_SLIC and a specific
OEM product key.
Pantheon released a bundle which includes the certificate files from ASUS,
Dell, HP and Lenovo along with OEM product keys for Vista Home Basic, Home
Premium and Ultimate, and an emulator which allows the BIOS ACPI_SLIC
driver for any manufacturer to be installed without requiring the system
to be physically running that hardware. For example, you can install the
ASUS certificate information on any machine, not just an ASUS.
And yes, the crack most certainly works. You end up with an activated,
legitimate copy of Vista which passes all the Windows Genuine Advantage
checks.
The release of this crack does make a bit of a mockery of the whole volume
activation process. I was beginning to think the new activation process
introduced with Vista might spell the end of easy and large-scale Windows
piracy, and if the only way to activate Vista was to have it communicate
directly with Microsoft, then that just might have been a possibility. But
allowing such a workaround to OEMs just because their users might not like
it has introduced a weakness into the system. Pirate groups are well known
for exploiting any weakness no matter how small (as evidenced by the
cracking of KMS), so once this activation process became known it was only
a matter of time.
As the crack is tied to specific product keys, it remains to be seen
whether Microsoft will be able to do anything about shutting out machines
activated using this method. But their work will be made much more
difficult now that such machines have completely bypassed the online
activation process, and are connecting as legitimate copies of Windows.