Stardock has released an update to its popular freeware dock program -- ObjectDock.

ObjectDock 0.99 (still in beta) is a program that combines task managing and program launching into a single "dock" that can be placed anywhere on the screen and customized to look and feel very differently from system to system.

Docks are a powerful UI convention made popular first on NeXTStep and later found on other OSes such as OS/2 and more recently MacOS X.

ObjectDock 0.99 is a significant departure from past versions as Stardock has begun to try to take the dock on its own path.  Apple recently shut down development of a popular dock program called y'Z dock which closely emulated the MacOS X "Aqua" dock.  Stardock intends ObjectDock to stand on its own with the goal of being the most versatile and customizeable dock available to meet a wide variety of user goals.

New in version 0.99 is:

+ Docklets. Users can now create their own docklets to put on the dock. Docklets are basically plugins that can display informatiom (weather, time, disk space, RSS feeds, etc.).

+ Dock item backgrounds. You can now control what the background of a dock item looks like.

+ A host of new effects for the attention animation (i.e. say an instant message has arrived, the IM icon can bounce or spin or rock).

+ Suport for attention items. When a running task is on, a graphic shows up under the icon letting you know it's in use.

+ Control of whether a new instance or existing instance of a program should be launched when a program is clicked on.

+ Lots of polish and performance tweaks to make it faster and easier to use.

+ Reduced memory usage

Stardock expects to release ObjectDock 1.0 in September as a freeware program. Stardock also makes the popular desktop extension suite, Object Desktop which can be found here: (www.objectdesktop.com).

You can download ObjectDock at www.objectdock.com.

There is an article that is making its rounds on the net today from CDFreaks.com that has some discouraging news:

CDRs have a relatively short lifespan. It appears that within 2 years of their making, most CDRs become unreadable.

One has to wonder what that means for DVDs as people start putting their home videos onto DVD-R or DVD+Rs.

Scrappleface is a website that has satire stories that reflect the real world. How do these worms get started in the first place? Sadly, this satire is probably more true than it realizes.

The Register has an update on the future of Microsoft's Outlook Express. Last week it was reported that Microsoft was not going to update it. There's been an update to this worth reading..

Stardock's Chief Technologist has taken a close look at Microsoft's early concept for their secure PC initiative (NGSCB for Next Generation Secure Computing Base). You can read the full article here.

Currently, third parties can extend Windows by having their program create a hook into the OS.  Hooks come in many forms (system hooks, shell hooks, keyboard/mouse hooks, etc.).  What they do is allow developers to intercept an OS call and divert it somewhere else temporarily and then return. Basically, they are created for the case when the developer needs to add a feature to the base OS.

For instance, want to add a new button to the title bar? You add a system hook for that.  You want your mouse to pulse when a mouse goes over a link (like the Logitech mice do), add a hook. Most of Object Desktop exists thanks to the power of system hooks. They allow developers to seamlessly extend Windows in innovative ways.

Unfortunately, they can be used to create trojans and viruses. And to that end, Microsoft's proposed solution seems to imply that secure apps won't allow any sort of hooking at all. This would not be just a disaster for ISVs but for users as well and ultimately Microsoft.  The "innovations" that ultimately make it into Windows wouldn't exist without hooks.  Instant Messaging? Would never have happened without a hook to be able to sell if a user is using the keyboard and mouse (to determine if they are "away" or not). Would Windows XP have a skinnable UI without hooking? Nope. In fact, the XP theme system uses hooks. And of course, would there have been an XP theme system in the first place without WindowBlinds in the first place that showed how it could be done?  Basically, any serious OS related innovation created by a third party relies on hooking the OS.

A system that does not allow for legitimate software developers to extend the operating system would essentially lock down the OS to being able to do only the things Microsoft thinks of. This would certainly make Linux advocates happy since corporations and individuals that want to do things with the OS that Microsoft hasn't thought of would be forced to that OS.

What is really needed is moderation. The worm viruses we are running into right now aren't due to hooks, they're due to things like scripting being allowed from Outlook Express (that program Microsoft recently announced wouldn't be updated further). Or people clicking on attachments. Or network security holes. 

Any serious solution to the security issues of Windows requires taking a careful look at what is causing these problems. If I were Microsoft, I would start looking at the network security issues (such as programs having pretty free reign over the network resources). I suspect if you polled IT managers, they are more concerned with programs that send out data over the net without the user's knowledge than the theoretical concern that someone might use system hooks to plant a virus on the system.

System hooks need to be recognized as being a crucial feature of the OS. I would go as far as to say they are a basic feature of any modern operating system. The ability for applications to cleanly extend the feature set of an OS drive innovation in future versions of Windows and keep closed source operating systems like Windows competitive with open source based OSes like Linux. They are not anywhere near the security threat represented by worms and network viruses.

My wife and I saw "Finding Nemo". Early on, the mother fish dies. This isn't a spoiler as the more we thought about it, the more we realize that mothers are pretty disposable in Disney films.

Let's take a look:

Move	Fate of Mother
Finding Nemo	Mother dies in movie
Aladdin	Aladdin's mother dead at start. Then again, so is Aladdin's girlfriend's mother. Both fathers are alive.
Bambi	Mother killed late in the movie.
Snow White	Mother dead (wicked step mother)
Cinderella	Wicked step mother strikes again (father also dead but died after mother)
Lion King	Mother not dead but an amazingly minor character
Little Mermaid	Mother not present, unmentioned
Lilo & Stitch	Mother dead (so is father)
Pinochio	Literally no mother, only the father.
Hunchback	Mother killed early on

Clearly, the life expectancy of a mother in a Disney film is not good.

ObjectDock 0.99 will be released imminently. Amongst its new features will be full support for docklets (dock items that can display things like the time, weather, and other information).

Stardock has released the full Docklet SDK on how to create ObjectDock docklets. The SDK includes full documentation, source code for several example docklets, and more.

I must admit that it's pretty cool seeing the Galactic Civilizations community coming into its own.  Besides there being various "empires" of users now with their own websites to discuss strategies and exploring the GalCiv universe, there's now a regular comic strip for it.

Ah the Drengin and Torians.

You can visit MetaJinx, the home page for all the various strips and other goodies.

The Canon Elura is quite fantastic so far but I've only had it a few days.  It is tiny. Really tiny. The screenshot doesn't do it justice. It's not much bigger than my Little Elph camera that Canon makes (sheesh, you'd think I worked for Canon, I guess they're just on the ball). What I don't like about it is that it is a bit too complex. It's a little awkward to control since it's so small.  My biggest gripe with it is that it is not easy to record video to the computer.

I was naively expecting that it would include a Firewire cable (it has a port) that I could just hook up to my computer and immediately create a .MPG file or something of my film to archive. As you can already probably tell, I'm a total newbie when it comes to video editing. But I can tell you this, it's a mess. A gazillion little codecs with no in your face standard.  As a casual user, I want to be able to hook a cable to my computer, choose my resolution and have it save as some friendly standard modern video format. .AVI just seems so primitive today. What's the deal with MPEG?

What bummed me out was that I could not save my video at a higher resolution than 320x240. I only was able to do that because I happen to have a WinTV USB that I could hook up the S-video to (that I got from my aborted Snapstream experiment). 320x240 wasn't what I had in mind. I want whatever the maximum I can do.

I went to a useful site called http://www.vcdhelp.com/ that made me realize that the whole video on the computer thing is still in its primal stages. It'll be years before someone like my wife is going to mess with this. It's still far more convenient to just save it to a VCR. And that's a real shame because I would much rather have this stuff on the computer. 

Got a lot of gadgets still to write up about. As fast as I type, it's not nearly fast enough to get everything that's in my head onto paper.

I've got a neat headphone MP3 player to review, some noise canceling headphones to review, software goodies, and a few other things. Will get to them as soon as I can.