At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Microsoft's Chief Executive Steve Ballmer, demonstrated a new prototype "Slate" PC by Hewlett Packard (HP). His demonstration showed it running the Kindle book-reading software under Windows 7, taking advantage of its touch-screen technology (or "touch-screen experience" as he put it). Reaction to this product, and similar devices by Archos and Pegatron, was luke-warm.  Nobody was seeing anything new.  It didn't appear to be much more than the XP-based Tablet PC that Microsoft attempted to introduce way back in 2002. Personally, I have a Hewlett Packard hx4700 PDA running Pocket PC 2003.  This device was released as long ago as 2004.  I use it with Adobe Reader to read books that I have created from ... Tags: slate PC, tablet PC, Windows 7

Whether you're a professional programmer or a self-taught hobbyist, if you want your Windows software to be taken seriously it needs to have a proper Setup program.  It really does make the difference;  your software will look a lot more professional if the user installs it using the familiar Setup or MSI (Microsoft Installer). Additionally, when the user wants to remove the software from their computer, an uninstall feature must be provided in the Add or Remove Programs section of the Windows Control panel. If, as a programmer, you use Microsoft's Visual Studio you have the option to create an MSI installation program for your software.   If you've never created an installer before, this can be a little tricky to get ... Tags: programm installer, setup creation

For as long as I can remember we've been promised electric cars, but where are they? Setting the Standard I recently watched an interview with the head of Tesla Motors. Tesla are an American car manufacturer who make electric cars. They're not a huge company. They don't enjoy the economies of scale of companies such as Mitsubishi. They have, however, produced a very attractive, high-performance electric car that has a useful range. They quote the range as 244 miles, but independently verified tests have shown that this can be considerably more. performance is 0-60mph in around 4 seconds and the top speed is limited to 125mph. The car can be full charged up in 4 to 6 ... Tags: Electric Cars, Motoring

We all get spam. There's very little you can do to avoid it once your address gets known by anyone outside your circle of friends, such as when you sign up for something. What you don't expect is to receive spam from well-known, high-street corporates. But that is exactly what is happening to me. A few months ago, I was in a Brantano shoe shop in the UK. I was approached by a member of staff asking whether I would like to join their email mailing list, in which I would be sent news of upcoming discount promotions before they were made public, special offers etc. I filled in the form and returned it to them. I ... Tags: Brantano, corporate spam, Spam

Rupert Murdoch has said that Google are stealing content from his news sites and that they should pay for it. If you visit http://news.google.com/ you can see a selection of news items aggregated from a selection of news sources. When news items from any of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation sites appear in these pages, he believes that Google should be paying him. It seems that Mr Murdoch isn't seeing the big picture. All you see on the Google News pages are headlines a a single sentence from the editorial. To read the entire story, you have to click on the link which takes you to the originating site. So anyone wanting to read a story related to headlines ... Tags: google, rupert murdoch