Bad Microsoft Design...

I speak with regards to Windows Live Messenger, a free download is available to all windows users. No doubt every single person who reads this blog will know of this program, and will have probably used it at some point in their life!

Well as some of you may know, I decided to reformat my PC and install Windows 7 RC to see what improvements had been made since vista (there are many!) but more on that in a later blog post. Anyway, as part of my testing / daily computer tasks I will be using WLM. So i downloaded the web installer and set to work, installation went like a dream so no problems there. The problems start when I run WLM for the first time, I was presented with this...

Yes, thats right, out of around 200 of my contacts I can see only 1 person. This is just completely stupid. Fair enough, Microsoft may have a new idea about how we should all organise our contacts, into groups and favourites and whatnot but seriously, the implementation couldn't have been worse. After about 5 minutes of tinkering I was able to make it look like this...

Now I don't know about the rest of you, but this is certainly what I would prefer to see immediatly after instalation. Maybe have a tutorial popup which helps users migrate their contacts to the new group and favourite system? Wouldn't that make more sense? I guess not, afterall what would a 19yr old fresher know about design...

How things change...

Well i've been wanting to blog about this for a long time now. It seemed like the right time to do it, just after i finished the new design for the blog.

When i was younger, i was into computers in a big way. This was largely influenced by my brother, who now works as a software programmer out in Sidney (Alright for some!). Anyway, he taught me the basics of how to make a website and i set about creating my very own space on the. then relatively new, internet! A few weeks ago, i stumbled across my very first website. It's still live on the internet! Click here to check it out or just look at the screenshot below...

After a while, i remember getting connected to our very own ISDN line. Back then, this was the best mainstream connection around and it was hosted by British Telecom. As part of the package, BT provided you with what seemed at the time to be a large web hosting space. In reality i think it was about 100MB! Anyway, i decided to make the most of this, and set about creating "Samsite II". Again this is still live on the web, and if you want to laugh at my youthful spelling mistakes then click here to take a look, otherwise the screenshot below will suffice.

Since that site has not been updated since christmas a few years ago, lots changed in the world of technology. More significantly static HTML web pages became a thing of the past. Dynamic web content was moving in, and strange terms such as "Blog" were being thrown about. Now i didn't really create one of these for a few years because i didn't have anything particularly interesting to talk about. However, come september 2008 that all changed as I moved down to bournemouth and started university. This is how we arrive at what you see today, appropriately named as "Sam's Blog" it moves away from the static typical webpage, and takes me into the 21st century. Just for continuities sake, i'll include a screenshot...

So there we have it, a summarised history of me on the internet! Whether you think i've improved or not is up to you, but i certainly know which one i prefer.

This blog has been incredibly useful at university, mainly because it allows me to let friends and family from back home know how I'm doing. This was the main reason for starting the blog. It's also become increasingly useful as part of my course, enabling me to showcase some of the work i've been doing, for example my promotional video.

Well that's all from me for the time being, I'd like to thank my regular readers, there may not be many of you yet but it is good to know there are people reading this, after all that's why it's here!