Spencer Scott

2011 in review

sscott — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 18:11:50 +0000

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 13,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 5 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Windows 7 Customizing Guide

sscott — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 01:28:30 +0000

Windows 7 has become very popular, and it is the top operating system that people use when visiting WinCustomize. With eyes already on Windows 8 I wanted to create the “definitive” guide to skinning Windows 7 based on skins, themes, and the best associated software you can find on WinCustomize.com. The items I list below will be a mixture of freeware and paid software, and links to downloads and product pages will be included.

There are also plenty of resources to show you how to use these apps in more detail. One of the best is theWinCustomize Wiki where there are tutorials and documents for all the applications mentioned here, plus many more.

Read the article.

http://www.wincustomize.com/article/409453/

So Long, Xbox 360….

sscott — Fri, 13 May 2011 12:48:41 +0000

Last night while getting ready to play the new LEGO Pirates of the Caribbean game, the screen got messed up, and upon reboot we got the dreaded E74 (hardware failure) error.

But wait….after spending a few minutes at the Xbox support site, I was relieved to see this.

I looked at the date, and glad that I was just 1 day away from having to spending money for a replacement. Just dropped it off at the UPS Store, so lets see how long it will take.

Kindle for Windows Phone 7 Launches

sscott — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 12:42:02 +0000

Amazon has released a Kindle app for Windows Phone 7. Available already for most other mobile platforms it didn’t take Amazon too long to bring it over to WP7. The WP7 app allows you to read all the books available in the Kindle store, syncing across devices, integrated shopping, and more.

Download from Zune Marketplace.

Clubhouse Tags: Clubhouse, How-to, WP7, Windows Phone 7, Mobile, Amazon, Kindle, App

2010 in review

sscott — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 21:34:03 +0000

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Fresher than ever.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 9,500 times in 2010. That’s about 23 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 23 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 232 posts. There were 31 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 3mb. That’s about 3 pictures per month.

The busiest day of the year was December 10th with 206 views. The most popular post that day was Christmas Countdown Gadget for Your Windows Desktop.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were blognatale.com, thongtincongnghe.com, makeuseof.com, k2c.vicongdong.vn, and clubhouse.microsoft.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for animated wallpapers, iphone 1.0, animated wallpaper, iphone os 1.0, and pirate theme.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

Christmas Countdown Gadget for Your Windows Desktop November 2009

Animated Wallpapers with Stardock DeskScapes February 2007

iPhone 1.0.1 Update Released August 2007

Convert Existing XP .msstyles for use with Vista March 2007

Christmas Countdown Gadget for Your Desktop November 2010

WindowBlinds 7.2

sscott — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 21:43:33 +0000

WindowBlinds is the application to completely change the look and feel of Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7. It has been downloaded over 16 million times on Download.com alone, and there are thousands of skins that can be downloaded from sites like WinCustomize.com.

Included in WB 7.2:

Added advanced glass support including new sections for SkinStudio
Improved compatibility with pre-release Firefox 4 and IE9 builds
Added new IE9 sections
Added support for per-skin custom colors
Optimized skin changing speed on 64-bit Windows

A free trial is available and can be downloaded from Download.com. More information about WindowBlinds can be found at www.windowblinds.net.

Christmas Desktop Wreath

sscott — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 19:15:31 +0000

I really enjoy decorating for Christmas, and that includes my desktop as well! This is a desktop gadget I created that puts an animated Christmas wreath on your desktop, complete with blinking lights.

No need for installation, and should work on any Windows desktop.

Download: http://www.wincustomize.com/explore/desktop_gadgets/7/

Created with DesktopX.

Clubhouse Tags: Clubhouse, How-to, Gadgets, Desktop, Christmas, Holiday

8 Fabulous Christmas Wallpapers

sscott — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 13:55:04 +0000

Tis’ the Season to get your desktop decorated for the holidays. There are tons of Christmas inspired skins on WinCustomize, and today I wanted to show off some of our great wallpapers!

Delivery Tracker Widget for Windows

sscott — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 13:12:55 +0000

I recently showed a widget and app for Mac/iOS that allows you to track delivery packages, perfect for this time of year. I didn’t want to leave my Windows friends out, so here is another awesome widget for your Windows desktop that will track packages for Amazon, UPS, Fedex, etc.

http://www.wincustomize.com/explore/desktopx_widgets/1939/

This is a beta widget, but works great and takes up very little space on your desktop. It even provides map tracking via Google Maps and integration with the Win7 taskbar.

Clubhouse Tags: Clubhouse, How-to, Christmas, Holiday, Widget, Desktop, Windows 7, Delivery

Windows Phone 7: First Impressions

sscott — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 13:08:00 +0000

My new Windows Phone 7 device arrived today and after playing with it for a few hours, I wanted to give my initial impressions with WP7. To give a bit of background first, I have been an iPhone user since day 1 with my last phone being an iPhone 3GS. After following the WP7 development for a while, and combined with a special sale on Amazon, I figured it was time to make the switch. I ended up going with the Samsung Focus, which seems to be the favorite among the Windows Phone 7 handsets currently offered.

Setting up WP7 took less than 5 minutes. Just answer a few simple questions and it is ready to go. I was excited to get to the home screen with the live tiles that you see so often. The screen on the Focus is simply beautiful, and just makes the WP7 layout even that much better. The one thing I immediately noticed is that the interface is very user friendly and intuitive. Using an iPhone for years, and not having any hands-on experience with a WP7 phone before today, I assumed I would have a hard time getting used to the layout and functionality. I was wrong.

Within minutes of using the device I was gliding through setting up more features like e-mail accounts, getting Facebook setup, etc. It really gave me the impression that there was little to no learning curve which I was very surprised at. Even though I’m not your typical user, I could tell that Microsoft really put a lot of effort into this aspect of WP7. My wife grabbed the Focus for a few minutes, and she was also browsing through the device like she owned it. A real accomplishment for Microsoft if I may say so.

The live tiles have to be my personal favorite so far. Being able to look at the screen and see what the temperature is outside without having to click through apps was refreshing. Reading and creating e-mails is a breeze, and the WP7 keyboard is a step above the iPhone’s. The People hub is quite an interesting concept, and they actually pulled it off quite well. The simple way to describe it is it’s an all-in-one view of your contacts from various places (Hotmail, Facebook, Gmail, etc.), with the added bonus of seeing their statuses and being able to interact with them like writing on their Facebook wall.

Xbox and Office integration are also great features. I haven’t spent a ton of time with them yet, so there’s much more to discover, but so far my initial expectations have been met. I’m really looking forward to exploring the integration with Skydrive and other Windows Live services.

Overall I’m very impressed and very happy with my decision to switch to Windows Phone 7 so far. I’m going to save my small gripes and suggestions for my next article, but every “issue” I have come across is minor, and I still need a bit more time with the device to get more experience with it.

Clubhouse Tags: Clubhouse, Story, Windows Phone 7, Microsoft, Mobile, Samsung Focus