Today’s Wallpaper:
I’ve decided to reinstate apps of the week- with a few changes. Firstly, I will do it on Sundays and Wednesdays. Secondly, instead of listing 10+ apps with a brief description of each, I will do a longer review of 1 or 2 apps. And finally, with the exception of major upgrades (such as FireFox’s recent 3.0-3.5), I will review each app only once.
Today’s app is TeraCopy, an alternative to Windows file copying. I am yet to compare its performance to XP’s, but I have found that it easily outstrips Windows 7’s when copying large files or large numbers of files. When copying a few small files, however, it lags behind somewhat. It easily makes up for this though with much more open canceling, overwriting, and renaming during file transfers. TeraCopy allows you to cancel files that can’t or shouldn’t be copied in the middle of a transfer without canceling the whole thing- fixing the biggest problem with Windows File Transfer Utility. Teracopy also has a very small footprint, even during large transfers. I would recommend it to anyone working with a Windows machine.
These are some shots from my recent trip to Hawaii- the first is a view of Honolulu from the top of Diamondhead, and the second is a shot of the sunrise/Mt. Rainier from the plane. The latter is a little grainy, so it may not be wallpaper-worthy for the more discriminatory of you readers, but it’s still a cool pic. Vote if you want a widescreen version of either of these- if I votes get enough I will post one.
I have been lax in my duties as a blogger lately, and it’s about to get worse. I’m leaving for Hawai’i soon, so I won’t be posting for at least 10 days. You’ll just have to do without your daily (or lately, weekly) dose of awesome wallpapers. I will return with plenty of tight pictures though, several of which I will no doubt turn into wallpapers for your exclusive enjoyment.
My favorite all-in-one media player, VLC, has finally reached a 1.0.0 release! For those of you not already using VLC, start today. Though it does have a tendency to tear video on occasion, the compatibility and small footprint easily outweigh that.
For those of you familiar with the Netflix Prize, the 10% improvement barrier was broken yesterday by Bellkor Pragmatic Chaos! Just as I had started to consider entering, too. The math is somewhat arcane to me, but I’m learning quickly. I’m going to continue working on it even though the competition is over just because AI is so cool. And I want to see if a highschooler can do close to as well as a team of professionals. But since that’s no longer really a viable option as a contest, I think I will concentrate my energies on Extend Firefox.
