Let’s play the game called “How many toolbar button types and sizes are in 2007 Office?” See screenshots.

Since there are many third-party programs that copy Office’s look & feel, I wonder, how many different GUI styles we’ll have for different programs when Windows Vista arrives? Let’s count:

1. Old-style Win95-like GUIs
2. Win95-like WinXP-themed GUIs (e.g. WordPad)
3. WinXP Internet Explorer-like GUIs (e.g. BlogJet 1.x)
4. Office 97-XP-like flat-toolbar GUIs
5. Office 2003-like GUIs
6. Totally skinned GUIs (e.g. Winamp) … n-1. 2007 Office-like GUIs n. Vista-like GUIs (is it consistent, after all? Will WordPad have the same toolbar as Windows Explorer?)

What do you think?

Tablet PC Actually Works:

“All my Mac friends are going to have an heart attack, because I am about to say something even I did not expect myself to say: I like Tablet PC!

[…]

Thanks to Activewords, Feed Demon and BlogJet, I have been able to do all the familiar tasks with remarkable ease.”

I received numerous reports about various “access violation” error messages and “Are you sure?” message when you launch BlogJet (Update: Please note that I’m not talking about ANY access violation message).

Why?

BlogJet, like almost every other shareware application, is protected using name and registration key. When you purchase it, you receive your personal registration key (and optional CD). Then you use this key to unlock BlogJet and make it full version.

Of course, there are people who crack software and give away unlicensed keys (and key generators). Like every other software developer, I my protect application from these pirated keys. For example, when I discover pirated keys, I block them. So if these keys worked for previous versions, they stop working in current release.

“Are you sure? (Exception)” message followed by “access violations” are only showed when you’re using pirated keys.

I deliberately wrote a few lines of code which break BlogJet when it had been pirated. It doesn’t make anything destructive, just prevents BlogJet from working. People who use legal version are not affected with this.

What to do?

I’m forgiving. I’m giving you a way to become a legal user:

1. Uninstall your pirated version. 
2. Purchase a license.
3. Install BlogJet again.

A few more words…

I seriously disappointed with the fact that people expect support from me while using pirated versions. Like Nick Bradbury said: “It never ceases to amaze me when people not only steal from me, but also expect me to spend my time answering their questions.”

Recommended readings:
 – Nick Bradbury: On Piracy (Part I, Part II).

Ray Daly just wrote me and said that HTMLjive, the first JavaScript-based HTML editor, celebrates 10 years today. Wow! Remember those days?

Read post in his blog…

We now accept PayPal orders “natively” – this means that you don’t have to pay extra and go to SWREG store – all payments are being processed by cleverbridge now.

Bob Walsh doesn’t like Yahoo Hosting with Movable Type:

Life is too short to spend your time waiting for pages to load on the order of 10-20 seconds a page when attempting to work through web hosting control panel; it’s too  short to wait two days for a email tech support request promised in 5-6 hours; it’s too short working with a blogging platform that I thought would be even better than TypePad, but isn’t.

Scott Hanselman included BlogJet in his 2005 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List:

BlogJet - I freaking love this little guy. Works great with DasBlog, supports spellcheck, file upload, makes clean HTML, and includes Music Detection support as well as posting of Audio to your blog.

Thanks, Scott!

Side note: It’s very cold here in Moscow region today… -33 Celsius (it’s about -27 F). Oh…

No, it’s not usual, as you may think (we usually have 0 – minus 20 Celsius on winter).

My car failed to start today… I wish I had this little pony that I saw once from my window:

(And no, seeing pony on the streets of my town is not usual too ).

Nick Bradbury released FeedDemon 2.0 Beta 1 – the new version of the best news aggregator (in my opinion).

I really like the new version! It’s a huge impovement over 1.5. Now we have tree (at first I didn’t like the idea of trees – I liked the original implementation of feed management better, but since now I’m subscribed to lots of feeds, I find it very useful). I also like the updated Surfer style.

Nick, thank you again for great software!