Re-Imagineering Disney

I am a big fan of theme parks/amusement parks etc, and always enjoy visiting them, but in my opinion, the Disney parks (and Universal's Islands of Adventure) stand above the others.

This is because they are more than just a collection of rides, they provide the full themed experience. Each ride aims to tell a story, and each 'land' is distinct, from the architecture, to the sounds, to the shops, all designed to provide a fully immersive experience. To transport you away from everyday life!

However, if you look at some of Disney's more recent projects, a lot of people feel they are not up to scratch. For example the Dinorama area of Animal Kingdom, and the Walt Disney Studios and Californian Adventure parks in Paris and LA respectively. I've never been to DCA, but I visited WDS in Paris soon after it opened, and although there are some good attractions (eg the Rock n Roller coaster and The Lights, Motor, Action show) the whole park is too small, and represents a car park with the amount of concrete everywhere. There's no real attempt at theming anywhere, with the possible exception of the entrance building!

On this theme, there is a great blog from current Disney Imagineers talking about where things have gone wrong in the past, and what can be done to improve for the future. Be sure to read the comments with each post, as these really continue the conversation! I think I agree with pretty much all that is being said here, with perhaps the exception of criticising Mision:Space. I think that's a great ride, even though it could have been better with a full 'pavilion' around it!

There is renewed optimism surrounding the Disney parks now, partly from the recent changes in management, and things are being done. Both DCA and WDS are getting new rides and other improvements for example!

I just hope that these people continue to blog their thoughts and hopes and dreams for the Disney parks, after all, to quote Figment

A dream can be, a dream come true, with just a spark, from me and you!

and if they continue to always strive to amaze and astound us Disney will have "A Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow" to look forward to for many years to come!

Vista Delayed Again!

Microsoft announced last week that Windows Vista wont be out this year after all (well not for us consumers anyway)!

Instead it should be on general release by the end of January 2007!

This is a bit disappointing really, as I have been looking forward to getting a new computer later this year, and was planning on waiting for Vista to be released.

I guess it's better for them to release a quality product rather than meet a deadline though!

I think I will just wait and see what happens nearer the time (and see if they ever release any hardware requirements info).

Hopefully they will offer free upgrade options for PCs bought during the Christmas period.

Either way, I would think the PC companies aren't too happy right now, with no big release to push over the important holiday sale period. Regardless of how Microsoft try and spin it that the delay is for their benefit!

Office 2007 UI

I've mentioned the radical changes to the new office UI before, but a lot of new information has come out recently on Jensen Harris' great blog. For example, check out the screenshots on this post, and the video linked form this one .

This is definitely a change from the current UI, but I think its going to be a major improvement. Of course I can't be sure until I get round to trying it! :)

I think its great to be able to read blogs like Jensen's, as they give a great idea as to not only what's being done, but more importantly why these changes are being made.

Microsoft are definitely one of the best companies around for blogging about what they are doing, and it sure is getting me interested in their products! :)

GMail's American Bias

I have been using GMail for quite a while now, and am impressed by the service. It's very easy to use, I love the way it groups conversations, and best off all it's fast!

However, I had been starting to wonder when the new features that have been announced (eg Web Clips , Google Talk integration , or even the delete button ) a while ago now would appear.

I asked around and found out that a lot of people already had the features, so I started looking in the settings for the switch to turn them on.

It turns out that this switch is actually the language setting. Set this to English (US) and all the features are there, but set it to English (UK) and they disappear!

I can't see anything specific to America in these features, so really can't understand why this setting is being used to control them. Perhaps they just don't like us Brits! :)

Writely now part of Google

Writely is a web based word processor that I've mentioned before, and it has now been bought by Google for an undisclosed amount!

Writely is pretty good (I now use it for writing my blog posts), and so this acquisition has been seen by many as the start of Google's plans for a web based competitor to Microsoft's office suite.

But personally I think this is a bit premature. We may well end up using a fully web based system, with all our data stored remotely etc, but I think there are a lot of hurdles to overcome before we get there, and I think it's a long time away.

As good as Writely is for a web based application, it is still far away from the like of Office, and so will only be a replacement for a small number of users or situations.

I think it is much more likely that Google have bought the product as a replacement for their text editors in products such as GMail and Blogger as some people are suggesting. That's what I'm currently using it for, as the blogger tool isn't very good - the spell checker doesn't even work right!!

I also think what Phil talks about on his blog sounds a good idea: The Online Offline future

In this situation, you're documents are always available, but depending on what you have available you get a different view of them, ie Word if that's installed, or Writely if you only have a browser. This is still some time off yet, but I could see that fitting in with the Google Drive that's been talked about!

My Thoughts on Origami

Microsoft's Origami project has been generating a whole load of talk recently, and now that the details are known, I thought I'd give my opinions of it.

As far as I can tell, an origami or UMPC device is basically just a small tablet PC. It runs the full windows XP tablet edition OS (and Vista when it comes out) but on a much smaller device with a 7 inch screen!

While this is undoubtedly neat and quite impressive technologically to fit a full PC into such a small device, I can't really see myself ever having the need for one!

Currently, when I go anywhere, I take three things with me, my phone, wallet, and keys, all of which fit in my pockets! Microsoft and partners are pushing these devices as ultra mobile, but in order to carry one around you're gonna need a bag for it - They're just too big to fit in a pocket, and there lies the problem.

If you've got to take a bag anyway, why not just buy a full tablet PC? You'll then get better specs, a bigger screen, and a full keyboard! The cost of the UMPCs is not yet known, so this might be a factor, but you can get lots of tablet PCs for under a grand, so there may not be much in it!

Personally, I don't want to be carrying anything that wont fit in my pocket, so I'm looking to upgrade my phone to a more fully featured one, and don't plan on buying either a UMPC or a tablet PC any time soon!

Still waiting for my next phone

A few months ago, I wrote about my plans to upgrade my phone to a new Windows Mobile 5 one.

Well I still haven't bought anything as I decided to wait for the 3G version HTC Hermes.

Whatever phone I get will have to last a good couple of years, by which time I can see 3G being in more common use, so I thought it was probably best to wait. Some people have moaned about the processor in the Wizard being too slow, so the improved speed of the Hermes CPU was also a consideration.

Anyway, at the recent 3GSM conference, some more details about the Hermes have come out, and I still think this will be my next phone. Msmobiles is reporting that T-Mobile still expect to release it in May, and that it will also support HSDPA (the so called 3.5G) :)

PocketPCItalia has some more specs, along with some pictures (Google Translation). The only slight concern here is that the processor seems to have changed from a 400MHz XScale to a 300MHz Samsung one, but this is still faster than the Wizard one, so hopefully will perform OK.

Office 2007

Yep, that's right, the next version of Microsoft Office (known as Office 12 until now) will imaginatively be called Office 2007 when its released later this year! :)

I wonder how much their marketing department gets paid to come up with these names??? :)

The details of the different packages available can be found on the Microsoft website here , along with their pricing information .

I am looking forward to the new version, as I am still using Office 2000 at the moment. I would probably look to get the main 4 applications: Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook, which is the Standard package, but the $399 price tag seems a bit steep!

This is especially true if you compare it to the 'Home and Student' version which replaces Outlook with OneNote, but goes for just $149. You could buy this and Outlook for $258 - just over half the price of the standard package, and including the extra OneNote program!!

To be honest I don't know what OneNote is or what it does (time for some searching I think :) ) but this seems the way to go to me, especially as Paul Thurrott says that this version includes a licence to install it on up to three different machines !

Multiple Monitors in Windows XP

I recently received a new graphics card for my work PC to try and setup a dual monitor system and was pleasantly surprised by how easy it was!

My machine was currently using the onboard video, so I bought a cheap PCI card (a Radeon 7000 64MB PCI for £23 from dabs) to provide the second output. This was because I had read that using an AGP graphics card prevents the onboard graphics from working as well.

Once the new card was installed, it was detected fine and windows automatically installed the required drivers for it.
I then had a moment of concern when I realised Windows was no longer detecting the onboard video, but this turned out to be because the BIOS had automatically disabled it. A quick change of the BIOS setting fixed this problem, and Windows could see both graphics adapterss correctly.

It was then a simple matter of going into the Display Settings and choosing the 'Extend my Windows desktop onto this monitor' option for the second (onboard) display.

Having got the 2 moitor setup working correctly, there were two things that stood out that I wanted to fix. The first was to have the windows taskbar on both monitors (ideally only showing the windows displayed on that monitor), and the second was to get a nice panoramic wallpaper that displayed across both monitors.

The UltraMon product does solve these problems along with providing lots more features, but it isa commercial product and I didn't really want to spend any money so I started looking for some free alternatives. :)

Oscar's Multi-Monitor TaskBar from Mediachance solves the first problem. This free tool provide a new taskbar for the second monitor, and ensures that only the windows displayed on each monitor appear on the associated taskbar. This tool also provides buttons to easily move a window between monitors. The only problem with it is that it doesn't really fit in with the XP look and feel!

In order to get a wallpaper to display across multiple monitors, I read that if you choose the 'Tile' setting it will do this. However, as a consequence you need to make sure that your image has the right resolution, as no scaling will be applied. I found a great collection of suitable images from deviantART in their multi display wallpaper category.

Overall I'm impressed with how easy this was to setup. I'm only just working out how best to make use of the two monitors at the moment, but I'm sure that once I get used to it I wont want to go back! :)

24 Season 5

The new season of 24 started last night (at least here in the UK) and after just 2 hours I'm totally hooked! :)

I think it's the fast paced action, and the fact that nobody is guaranteed to survive (except Jack of course) that keeps me interested, even if the stories are a bit similar.
I really wasn't expecting Palmer to get shot pretty much straight away, and then to kill off Michele & Tony as well!! There gonna need a whole new cast! :)

It's just a shame I've got to wait a week to see the next episode, but I'm glad I've got the PVR to fast forward the adverts! :)