Author Archives: NeoSmart Technologies

CompleteRSS: Content-Complete Feeds Raring to Go!

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NeoSmart Technologies is proud to announce the release of CompleteRSS 0.1 Beta.
CompleteRSS is the only WordPress plugin used to guarantee complete article text in RSS feeds. Some of the things it does are things that end-users can change on their own (such as selecting full-text entries), but it’s biggest feature is a work-around for the much-contested ‘upgrade’ for WordPress 2.1: RSS and Atom feeds will not show text past the <!–more–> tag!

CompleteRSS is the only way to get WordPress 2.1 to display the full article content to display in your feeds, since there are no options to disable this ‘feature’ of WordPress 2.1. CompleteRSS is also the only way to display your feeds entirely free of the heavily-abused ‘content:encoded’ tags.

CompleteRSS has been implemented here on The NeoSmart Files, and you can check it out in our proudly FeedBurner-powered Atom feed: http://neosmart.net/blog/feed/

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The Real Deal with Microsoft Virtual PC

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Longhorn Blogs recently reported about the dismal lack of activity from Microsoft’s Virtual PC camp, and what they would like to see in it. But we think there is a bigger question afoot: why Virtual PC?

VirtualPC is dead. It has been dead since Virtual Server became free. Virtual Server is Microsoft’s ultimate virtualization framework; and the only real VMware competitor.

The only problem is: Virtual Server is made for enterprise environments and server-based implementations. Kind of like VMware’s ESX server, but without the linux. Virtual Server is relatively fast, definitely powerful, and supports a large variety of guest operating systems. Virtual Server isn’t anywhere near as user-friendly as VPC and most certainly not even comprable to VMware, and it’s much, much, harder to set up than either of them.

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NeoSmart IRC

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NeoSmart Technologies now has an IRC channel on SlashNet…
Our address: irc://slashnet.org/NeoSmart

This will be our temporary address until we find or write a decent IRC script to run from our local servers, but until then, please join us!

We also have a new userbar for EasyBCD:
EasyBCD Addict

Internet of the Future I: Blending the Browser

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Every couple of months a tech magazine will print an article about technology in the future, covering everything from wrist-watches to laptops to cable television, but no one ever discusses what the internet will be like five, ten, or fifteen years from now – because no one knows. This is the first of several articles NeoSmart Technologies is publishing regarding the internet of the future: how we’ll use it, what it’ll be like, and where it’ll go from there.

The growth and expansion of the internet and its associated programs and technologies can best be compared to that of a living species: the laws and theorems revolving around the expansion of technology provide sufficient evidence that its growth cycles can be interpreted in the same way as that of an organism – and from there we have our first glimpse at the future of the internet.

In studying the growth patterns of such a technology, it becomes apparent that the model being followed is one of heavy and very spontaneous growth fueled my innovation and necessity, followed by long periods of stabilization and standardization. The best example would be in the 1990s when the browser wars between Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator.

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EasyBCD DLL & API

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As you all may know, NeoSmart Technologies’ Computer Guru was head of the VistaBootPRO project, and now with the rest of the NeoSmart team is working on the EasyBCD project – both (the first is now deprecated) to manage the Windows Vista bootloader.

In writing these programs at the NeoSmart Research & Development center we’ve found the WMI ill-fit for interfacing with the Windows Vista BCD Store for anything other than grabbing information. The WMI is mainly an interface for getting information and not originally made for writing to the sources, making it too difficult for most BCD-related uses. In developing EasyBCD, our team started off by creating a programmatic framework for BCD interface that plugs directly into bcdedit.exe and does all the work from there.

This is just a ‘feeler’ announcement, to find out if any of Windows Vista programmers or general software developers would be interested in such a DLL (written in fully managed .NET code) that would have functions to add, remove, delete, and modify various bootloader options (i.e. do most things the EasyBCD project focuses on)?

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CSS & Vista's New Fonts

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As we reported and reviewed in our article “A Comprehensive Look at Microsoft’s New Fonts”, Vista has some spectacular new fonts – but we have a few issues with them now that we’ve tried them and implemented them with mixed success here on The NeoSmart Files and on the Forums, and here’s the problem.

They just don’t fit. The new fonts are mostly too small to be plugged right in to an existing CSS file. If you tweak the CSS so that it looks right for, say, Calibri; ten minutes later someone that doesn’t have that font is going to come around and ask your server for that CSS file – but since they don’t have Calibri installed, their browser will use the next one on the list, and unfortunately, your sizes are going to be all wrong.

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Announcing EasyBCD

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
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VisualBCDFollowing our “decomissioning” of work on VistaBootPRO by a series of under-handed tactics by PROnetworks culminating in a Cease & Desist on even using VistaBootPRO, we contacted NeoSmart Technologies’ legal advisors and asked thim if it would be OK to continue work on VistaBootPRO under another name.

Their response was slightly disheartening, but after a day of non-stop work, EasyBCD 1.1 has been released – a visual bootloader modification utility written from scratch and without referring to or copying from the VistaBootPRO source code. Not only is EasyBCD under new management and officially free of legal misgivings, it has also taken bootloader modification to the next level, with a much nicer, cleaner, and easier-to-use GUI; tens of new features; and all the bugs ironed out.

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GoodBye PROnetworks

Posted on by NeoSmart Technologies
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NeoSmart Executive Announcement!

NeoSmart Technologies has reached a parting of ways with PROnetworks. Since the release of VistaBootPRO, PROnetworks has become increasing uncomfortable with its agreed-upon role in the publication of VistaBootPRO and the ratio of attention and recognition for VistaBootPRO at NeoSmart Technologies compared to that at PROnetworks; and it seems as a result they have served NeoSmart Technologies a Cease & Desist order.

When VistaBootPRO was first released, the agreement was that the Computer Guru (NeoSmart Technologies’ founder) would receive full and unrestricted credit/rights as VistaBootPRO’s original author, creator, and maintainer; whereas PROnetworks would retain the copyright and sole publication rights to VistaBootPRO. Unfortunately, since then PROnetworks has decided to renege on its former position, and have served us with a C&D order asking us to

..which withdraws any right by you to claim to be the publisher and author of this application and you must Desist from using VBP, or attempting to distribute VBP under the aforesaid name.

This unfortunately poses a problem for NeoSmart Technologies. Continue reading →

Slow News Week – But that's not Stopping Us!

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It’s been a slow week for bleeding-edge technology news, it seems everything making the front pages of most sites is legal mish-mash or corporate talk – not exactly NeoSmart Material..

With that in mind, we’re just taking this chance to keep our faithful members posted on what’s happening at NST, so without further ado:

  • New FeedBurner URL – we are no longer on http://feeds.feedburner.com/guru/ but rather on http://feeds.feedburner.com/neosmart/. As always, the best way of keeping up-to-date is to subscribe to the redirect feed at http://neosmart.net/blog/feed/ – that way no matter where we go you’ll always be in touch.
  • Upcoming Story – “The Blending of the Browser,” we can’t say much right now, but here’s this: in keeping with the tried-and-tested NST tradition, it’s going to be really innovative and intellectually-inspiring (whatever that means!).
  • Upcoming Story – An alternate OS (not Linux, not Mac, not Solaris, and most certainly not Windows) is lined up and being readied – keep checking!
  • Product Release – VistaBootPRO 1.1 is slated for release sometime really soon – check the VistaBootPRO forums.

There’s more to come than this – but just in case you thought we were quitting or something we wanted to make sure our readers realized that NST isn’t going anywhere just because it’s been a slow news week!

Digg v3 and its New Algorithm

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Digg has a new design: it’s nice & clean. Digg v3 also has a new backend – that happens to be the exact opposite. It seems that in adding support for new non-tech categories and changing the algorithms to match the lesser traffic and activity in those sections Kevin Rose and his team managed to mess up the algorithm for the rest of the site, leading to much trouble.

The new digg algorithm seems to ‘solve’ something that had previously irked many people: the difficulty of getting a story on the homepage. But maybe there was a reason why it’s difficult. It used to be that a story posted by the right person and dugg by the right people at the right time in the right place could get to the homepage after 50 diggs. For everyone else it took a lot more – something closer to 100 just to make it to the homepage.

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