Indeed it had. The RSS folder icon in Outlook 2007 was no longer an RSS icon. It was simply a folder icon, just like the rest of the folders. Additionally, right clicking on the RSS folder would no longer give me the option to add an RSS feed. I only the same options as for regular folders: copying, moving, deleting… 

So I just gave up on it for a while. Until today.

Committed to find a solution to this problem, I did. It seems that some files Outlook 2007 uses for RSS purposes and for establishing a connection to the Common Feed List in Vista had become corrupted. The solution was to simply delete these files, restart Outlook 2007 and let it rebuild these files with “fresh” ones.

See this article for more information: Outlook 2007 RSS Feeds not Updating — a Solution… - Realtime Windows Server.

So I did. But that fix didn’t do anything at first. 

It occured to me that upon restarting Outlook, it was launching just too fast. And the files I had removed were not being rebuilt. I closed it again and brought up Windows Task Manager (Ctrl+Shift+Escape) to check the Processes tab and make sure that Outlook was not running anymore. But it was still running although I had exited the program! I right clicked and selected End Process and launched it again. Outlook started normally, the files were recreated, the RSS folder icon was back to normal and Add a New RSS feed was again available as an option in the right click menu.

Oh joy!

There is one trick however to getting authenticated feeds to work in Outlook 2007. Make sure that Outlook 2007 is not set to synchronize with the Common Feed List.

When you first start it, or when deleting the files mentioned above, Outlook 2007 will prompt you with a window asking whether you want it to synchronize with the Common Feed List. You should answer No. If answered Yes or if you no longer remember what the setting is, go to Tools/Options click on Other tab and then Advanced Options: Sync RSS Feeds to the Common Feeds List should be unchecked.

Then, you can add rss feeds by right clicking the RSS Feeds folder and selecting Add New RSS Feed. Paste the link to the feed and then you will be prompted to enter the username and password for the feed.

Enjoy your (restored) Outlook 2007 RSS Feed functionality.

Some of the suggested solutions are as follows:

- Try a high-powered USB port, one that is not on your keyboard or other device but rather directly on the computer itself.
- Uninstall Apple Software Update, Apple Mobile Device Support and iTunes , reboot and then reinstall iTunes.
- Disconnect any other USB devices that may be conflicting with the installation, like webcams and such and reinstall iTunes.

Many people reported having fixed the issues by simply reinstalling iTunes as described above, yet many others, including myself, still experience the same issues after reinstalling 20 times. So what to do? Well, that’s where it becomes blury for most and tricky therefore to fix it.

I concluded that the problems must arise from certain software of services that are running and preventing iTunes to install properly. To isolate this problem, you must disable any non-essential services and programs that run at startup. Do that by running ‘msconfig’ from the start menu (open Start menu, type msconfig and press enter).

I won’t go too in depth as to what you need to disable and what not, since services and software vary widely from computer to computer. Also, be aware that your computer may have problems loading Windows if you disable some service or software that you shouldn’t disable, so you’ve been warned.

On the services tab, check Hide all Microsoft services and then click Disable All. This will disable, theoretically, all services that are not essential to the running of Windows. Now go to the Startup tab and go through the list and disable by removing the checkmark from the entries that may not be required for a one time clean boot. Software like antivirus, cd-burning, acrobat, printer drivers, webcam drivers and software, etc. Once you’re done, click Ok, and reboot the computer.

I should specify again, that this step (of disabling services and startup items) should be done after you have uninstalled Apple Software Update, Apple Mobile Device Center and iTunes, thus allowing you to boot clean(er) and install iTunes without risking other software or drivers to interfere.

Assuming you booted clean as described above, install iTunes (latest version) and pray that it will detect your iPhone when you launch it. If it does, you’re good to go and now you just need to restore and enable the services and startup items that you previously disabled and reboot your PC. The msconfig utility has a column that shows when an entry was disabled so that will make very easy for you to know exactly which ones you disabled a few minutes ago. After restoring the services and startup items, assuming iTunes installed correctly and detected your iPhone when you booted clean, iTunes should no longer have trouble detecting the iPhone afterwards.

If iTunes still doesn’t detect your iPhone, well at least you tried. If you do find another fix, post a comment here and i will update this post. Good luck!

Quick list of useful Vista shortcuts:

- Show Sidebar: Windows Key + Spacebar
- Cycle through Sidebar gadgets : Windows Key + G
- Cycle through open programs using Flip 3D: Windows Key + Tab
- An alternate way to use Alt + Tab: Ctrl + Alt + Tab (lets you use the keyboard arrows or the mouse to select an open program)

View a longer list of Vista shortcuts on Microsoft’s site: Windows Vista Help – Keyboard Shortcuts

Since tonight seems to be shortcut revelation night, here’s another one that will hopefully make your day seem shorter: use a keyboard shortcut to quickly change to another search engine in Firefox’s search box.

Why would you want that? Because, typing something in and then moving your hand to the mouse to select another search engine from the list (like IMDB) and then moving the mouse again to the search icon to click it or your hand back to the keyboard to hit Enter, can be tedious. So here’s the shortcut: make it easier by simply typing in your search term, then pressing Alt + Arrow Down until your desired search engine is selected, then hit Enter twice (once to select the search engine and second time to execute the search). Much faster and simpler, isn’t it…

In Windows Vista, this seems to be caused by Speech Recognition which enables the menu bar and hides the “hide menu bar” button. If you’ve enabled Speech Recognition to run on startup, try disabling it and see if that fixes it. Some users report mixed results where the problem randomly appears and disappears by itself. Closing Speech Recognition doesn’t seem to restore the functionality, while a reboot may just bring it back.

See this link for more details: http://www.msghelp.net/forumdisplay.php?fid=10

Update: In many cases, going through the following steps has restored functionality of the hidden menu:

- While you have Windows Live Messenger open , start Windows Speech Recognition (do not enable it however)
- Exit Windows Live Messenger (don’t simply sign out… close the program entirely)
- Exit Windows Speech Recognition
- Start Windows Live Messenger (you should now have the normal messenger window back, without the ugly menu frame around it).

Since I do have Vista, i haven’t had a chance to actually try this out myself, but sure looks promising.

What you get:

Vista Transformation Pack will replace many of the resources in Windows XP/Windows Server 2003. It can change such things as:

• Boot screen
• Welcome Screen / Logon Screen
• New msstyles files (visual styles)
• New desktop and file icons
• New toolbar icons
• Progress Dialogs
• Sounds scheme
• System Tray icons
• New Wallpapers
• Windows Media Player Skins
• And much more

These steps, while not too many or complex, can be skipped by using some useful shortcuts. While browsing the guide, you can hit Ctrl+R on the keyboard to tag the select program for recording. Pressing Ctrl+R a second time will schedule recording of the entire series. To cancel recording alltogether, press Ctrl+R a third time.

Alternatively, while browsing the guide, just hit the record button on the remote control to schedule recording of the selected program (instead of Ctrl+R on the keyboard). Press the record button again to schedule the entire series, and a third time to cancel the recording.

Now go practice it.

This article shows a simple registry “hack” that changes the functionality by moving to the up channel when pressing the up arrow… thus fixing the problem.

Here are the steps:

1. Click on the Start menu, choose All Programs, then Accessories
2. Right-click on Command Prompt and choose Run as administrator
3. Click Allow to launch an administrator command prompt
4. Run reg add “HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Settings\VideoSettings” /v ChannelBrowserArrowUpMeansChannelUp /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f

Now, if you are like i was, when i first read the steps… puzzled, that is, by the gibberish in the step 4 above, read on for the translation.

Step 4 above simply modifies an existing registry value by changing its value from 0 to 1. It does so via the command line, using the “reg add” command. This command is built-in and you can find more information by typing “reg add /?”. Here’s a breakdown of the parameters:

/v – value, under the selected key. In this case, the ChannelBrowserArrowUpMeansChannelUp under the “…/Settings/VideoSettings” key.
/t – type of the value; here being a REG_DWORD type.
/d – the data to be assigned to the value.
/f – A parameter that simply forces overwriting if the value exists (which it does).

Evidently, you don’t have to do this via the command line if you don’t want to. You can also simply do the following:

1. Fire up regedit via Windows Key+R (to bring up the Run… window)
2. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Settings\VideoSettings
3. Double click the ChannelBrowserArrowUpMeansChannelUp value
4. Change the value to 1 and click OK. (leave it as hexadecimal)

To reverse the “hack” and make the mini-guide function as it used to by default, repeat the steps above but instead set ChannelBrowserArrowUpMeansChannelUp to a value of 0 (zero).

You will have to restart Media Center for the change to take effect. Enjoy.

NOTE: You may actually want to go back to the default way after applying this fix. While this somehow fixes an annoyance, it does create another. The slide-in effect that you see when moving from one channel to another (in the mini-guide), slides channels in contrary to what you would expect. I suppose this is why they made it work wrong in the first place and allowed for it to be changed (easily) via the registry; to compensate for the unintuitive slide in/out effect.

More precisely, when pressing arrow up, after applying the fix, the next/higher channel slides in from below… rather than from above. Instead it should slide in from above, as if going up and down a list which has entries arranged in a decreasing order (higher values higher, lower values lower). Try it and you’ll see…

Now if that could also be fixed, then I’d be a really happy camper.

(Had I been a Program Manager at Microsoft, this never would have happened )

What is that, you say? Quicker loading programs? But why? Why? Well… because of SuperFetch.

While SuperFetch will or at least should make your life… easier, it will put a lot more strain on your hardware; more specifically, your system’s memory. As a result, all your enjoyment could come to a (temporary) halt by a dreaded blue screen crash…

So if you’ve gotten some of those crashes lately with Vista, and particularly those that give a MEMORY_MANAGEMENT error message, wait before you decide to change out memory sticks. They may still be good but just a bit overwhelmed by all the new requirements… and need a little more juice to keep them working properly.

To fix the blue screen crash problem, you may try the following: go into the BIOS and see if you can adjust the memory voltage manually. If you can, increase it by 0.05v. Save and reboot and see if the crashes still happen.

If they still do, you may try to increase by another 0.05v, but proceed with care. Increasing voltage will also increase the operating temperature of your memory sticks which can possibly lead to them burning if you don’t monitor their temperature.

Needless to say, playing with the voltage supplied to the different parts of your computer is fairly hardcore for some, so do this at your own risk. Other than that, enjoy…

If you’ve tried to increase voltage by up to 0.1v and the crashes continue, you really may have a memory problem.. or a temperature problem… or a driver problem. Try to cool those sticks off first or ultimately try different sticks; or wait for driver updates. Good luck.

UPDATE 09/30/2007: This memory management blue screen in vista may also be caused by overclocked memory. So check your BIOS settings and make sure your memory is running at its default speed. If it is overclocked, either bump it down a notch and then see if you still get the blue screen, or to isolate the problem quicker, run it at its default speed.

Some motherboards allow you to asynchronously overclock your processor and memory. That means that you may run the cpu at one frequency and the memory at another. In my case, i discovered that while having my cpu overclocked and the memory at its default speed, the memory was still running at the processor’s overclocked speed. I believe that was the cause of the memory management blue screen errors. Running the cpu at its default settings, caused the memory to also run at the default settings, solving the memory management blue screen crashes. For those interested, this issue occurred on a Asus A8N-SLI motherboard.

Download it here: http://gallery.live.com/liveItemDetail.aspx?li=49c22971-b1ab-46ee-b5aa-6069923ac240&l=1

Granted, it would be nice if it allowed to easily resize each polaroid by dragging one of its corners so you can have different sized polaroids all over. Maybe in the next update…

And remember this:

Place photos on your desktop, rotate them and give them captions. Double click to start rotation, then click once to stop.

On a similar note, if Polaroids are your thing, you may want to give the Polaroid-o-nizer™ a try:

http://polaroidonizer.5gigs.com/

UPDATE (April 2009): The new address is here: http://polaroidonizer.aequitas.be/

To top it all off, here’s a tiny screenshot of my desktop: