pc – 'Cross The Breeze

Clean install

I picked up my copy of Office 2010 on Friday (was still on the beta which was about to expire) and decided to do a full clean install instead of just re-installing Office. Here’s an overview of all the stuff I installed, do you think there’s a piece of software I’m absolutely missing?

Windows 7 64-bit
Office 2010 Professional
Seesmic Desktop 2
Dropbox
Windows Live beta (Messenger now incl Facebook chat, Photo Gallery, Mail and Writer)
Microsoft Security Essentials
Chrome 6 (and extensions – Awesome Screenshot, Delicious, Instapaper, Postrank and Twitter Reactions)
Paint.NET
Adobe Reader
Zune

You’ll see no iTunes on my laptop. I am using it (much against my will though) for the iPhone and iPad but have it installed on a Macbook Pro for that. Have had a Mac for the last 15 years or so but don’t use them much.

Geek pranks

In times when every single blog around the globe feels the need to think of some joke to post on April Fools Day, there was actually only one post that made me smile today. Lifehacker Gina Trapani posted a top 10 of harmless geek pranks and they look like pretty good office fun indeed.

Whether you install the Blue Screen Of Death screensaver on a colleague’s pc, replace the desktop with a fake version or rather customize the printer’s console message this is a post you should bookmark for whenever you’re up for some geek fun.

Read the full post at Lifehacker.

My ooVoo day

Last Saturday evening I took part in the My ooVoo Day promotion that Jaffe‘s agency Crayon set up for their client ooVoo.

“Have you signed up to participate in My ooVoo Day yet? My ooVoo Day lets 20+ bloggers, podcasters and digital media makers from around the ‘sphere connect with their communities in a series of 6-way video chats. Sound cool? Want to join in the fun. Head over to http://myoovooday.com, find a favorite blogger and register to attend.”

The ooVoo software (for PC and Mac) allows video conversations like in Live Messenger, with one big difference that you can have video conversations with up to 6 people at the same time. No better way to show that then by setting up these blogger chats so people have a reason to try it out… and blog about it :) So great job of the Crayonistas, although I must say I received a bit more messages about this promotion through email, FB, … than I wished for.

Anyway, when I saw they added Drew and Gavin to the planning to talk about Age of Conversation, I put my name on the list immediately. And so we ended up with a half hour conversation between myself, Gavin Heaton, Drew McLellan, Luc Debaisieux, Paul Mcenany and J Erik Potter which was good fun. And the quality of the video was quite good as well, with an interesting option to record the conversation from within the client by the way.

I don’t think I’ll be using it much though, it’s the 4th or 5th IM client on my desktop and that’s more than enough. But whenever I want to have a video conversation with a few people at the same time, ooVoo will definitely be what I’ll be using though. Thanks for the conversation guys!