Official Gmail Blog: Send mail from another address without "on behalf of"

If you use more than one email account in Gmail, you can now change a setting to have Gmail use the other account’s outgoing mail server instead of Google’s. I’m sort of surprised they weren’t doing this all along, and it’s just another annoying part of how everyone else has to cope with Outlook being a crappy product.

Sour Outlook – Jeffrey Zeldman Presents The Daily Report

Sour Outlook

The next version of Outlook takes a major step back in Web compatibility.

Halo 3: How Microsoft Labs Invented a New Science of Play

Halo 3: How Microsoft Labs Invented a New Science of Play

Neat article about how much work Bungie puts into testing games so that players get a good experience out of the game.

Font smoothing, anti-aliasing, and sub-pixel rendering - Joel on Software

Font smoothing, anti-aliasing, and sub-pixel rendering - Joel on Software

About the differences in how Microsoft and Apple handle fonts, as shown in the new Safari for Windows.

Microsoft to Support OpenID

Microsoft to Support OpenID

The Windows Shutdown crapfest

The Windows Shutdown crapfest

Response to “Choices = Headaches” by a member of the Vista team who worked on that menu.

Choices = Headaches

Choices = Headaches

Excellent piece on how offering too many choices (here, 17 different ways to turn off your computer on Windows Vista) is worse than giving people too few choices.

You pull, Wii push

You pull, Wii push

The Wii has a higher profit margin for retailers than the XBOX 360. Can you believe that stores only make $7 on an XBOX?!

IE 7

Microsoft officially released Internet Explorer 7 yesterday, which can be downloaded for free at microsoft.com/ie. The big catch is that it only runs on Windows XP SP2. In November it’ll start showing up in Windows Update, but there’s no reason not to upgrade now, except for the fact that there’s no reason you should be using IE at all as Firefox is still a better browser. C|Net’s review of IE7 is pretty good. IE7 plugs most of the security holes found in previous versions, has tabbed browsing, and does a better job of rendering webpages properly than it used to, but Firefox is still faster, more secure, and supports web standards more completely.

In Mozilla news, Firefox 2 will be out this month as well. It’s not a huge upgrade, but they’ve squashed a bunch of bugs and improved the app’s operation in a few areas.

Ricky Gervais For Microsoft UK

Ricky Gervais For Microsoft UK

Flip4Mac - Digital Media Tools for the Mac

Flip4Mac - Digital Media Tools for the Mac

Free plugin to let Quicktime play Windows Media files on the Mac now has official universal version for Intel Macs.

500 Hour Test of Tomorrow's Windows "Vista"| Tom's Hardware

500 Hour Test of Tomorrow’s Windows “Vista” | Tom’s Hardware

Absurdly detailed writeup of Windows Vista.

Daring Fireball: Windows: The New Classic

Daring Fireball: Windows: The New Classic

“The Boot Camp logo [is] a bastardized variant of Microsoft’s Windows logo, sans color, and with the whitespace between the four panels forming a hidden ‘X’, a la the hidden arrow in FedEx’s logo.” Great observation.

Urge

As expected, Microsoft announced today at CES a new music download service in partnership with MTV, called “Urge”. From the CNN coverage: The offering will include exclusive material from MTV, though it will not be compatible with iPods, which are currently the most popular MP3 player. Not that non-compatibility is a shock to anyone, anywhere, but I’ll ask the expected question anyway. Why? Why not make a service that peddles MP3s that will play on any player, including iPods? Why not set your goals on making the best download service there is that plays on every music player out there? (Of course, I’m no evil financial genius. I’m sure it makes perfect sense to Bill Gates’s people.)

Microsoft doesn’t ever want to win its customers by selling them the best, most reliable, most compatible product there is. They want to create the something and lock you into it. They want to be the HMO for the digital world, where if you want service you have to use theirs. (Of course, Apple’s guilty of this, too. You can’t play music you buy from iTunes on non-iPods, but at least they have the advantage of iPod compatibility.)

So why do I get so worked up about all this? I guess it’s because at the moment there’s still a chance that the bad guys won’t win. Given the choice between buying a song that only allows me to make x copies and one that has no restriction, I’ll take the one without the limits. No one wants DRM, but we’re paying for it anyway, and many people don’t even know it. It’s clearly to our advantage as consumers for Microsoft to release a music service that offers music that plays on all devices (as it would for Apple to release an iPod that plays all the music, for that matter), but Microsoft thinks it has the power to throw it in, anyway, and force us into it. It’s not like many other companies have the resources to strike up deals with record companies and produce competing products, so in the end we’ll be stuck with whatever we let them stick us with.

Also, “Urge” is a terrible name.

Abbreviate

I just read a CNET announcement of Windows Mobile, a new operating system for handhelds and smartphones. After discussing the new version of CE, the author goes on to discuss some new PDAs coming out. At one point, he mentions that one of them “has 64MB of RAM (random access memory).” Now how useful is that parenthetical? If the reader doens’t know what RAM is, is explaining what RAM is an acronym for really going to help, keeping in mind that most people call their computer tower their “hard drive.”

The Fourth Rail’s review of Hulk gives the film a very fair shake. It doesn’t include any major spoilers and should help anyone who isn’t sure if they want to see it or not. I may write up my own thoughts if I can scare up the inspiration, but my general recommendation would be to catch an afternoon showing or wait for the rental, though I did enjoy it a whole lot.

I didn’t win the lottery. To top it off the winning ticket was bought in Baltimore. I hate that city.