Google Maps Street view car spotted three times in Piraeus (Athens, Greece)

Last week I was on a well deserved vacation in the city of Athens, and on Wednesday (the 29th of April) we decided to go to the city of Piraeus, located on a peninsula just on the southwest of Athens, to have a very nice day at the sea.

And then, all of a sudden, I was lucky enough to see the Google Maps Street view car, not once, not twice, but three times!!! :)

1. Take one : April 29 2009 @ 11:34
   
   taken here
2. Take two : April 29 2009 @ 11:38
   
   taken here
3. Take three : April 29 2009 @ 12:35
   
   taken here

The shots are a bit blurry as this car drives around at a “normal” speed… not easy to shoot with a regular digital camera… You can click on the pictures to enlarge the pictures.
Note that the following hours (well… the following days) I was constantly looking around if I could spot this car again! :)

Now I’m wondering how long before Piraeus and Athens are indeed incorporated and available into Street view!

Xbox 360 "dead" battery can be revived?!

Not long ago, I started noticing that my favorite Xbox controller wasn't charging anymore. This was strange because this Xbox controller is not more than a year old and I really couldn't believe the life of the battery to be so short.

Was I maybe being punished because I had not touched my Xbox 360's controller for more than a month? (Vacation, busy at work and I was only using the media center remote control! ;)

Those were the symptoms:

• As soon as I disconnected the USB charging cable, the controller would immediately go off.
  
• The charging light was switching to green after 2 or 3 seconds and not staying on red like it used to.
  
• No need to keep the controller plugged in when the light is green, the controller will not charge. Green means the controller is fully charged.

As it appears, my controller was so empty that it did not accept a charge anymore. After approximately 30 days of no use, the battery was too empty and it was the battery's memory effect that was tricking my Xbox controller.

The trick is simple:

1. Plug the controller, the light is red (see picture).
   
2. Unplug the controller when the light goes green and immediately plug it in again.
   
3. You will need to do this repeatedly so the battery pack can get enough energy to accept a charge.
4. For me, after 4 or 5 times, the charging light stayed red. It had worked!!
   (I have read the story of some people on the web that needed to repeat up to 30 times for this to work...)
5. Leave the controller plugged for it to fully recharge until the light goes green again.
6. Just don't leave your Xbox alone for so long... ever!! :)
   

I'm not saying this is the solution to all problems but this might be worth checking out!

Our new Xbox avatars

One of the cool thing about this NXE (the New Xbox Experience) is that you can create a digital version of yourself. This was off course already available to Wii owners but now we can see ourselves in full HD.

A cool option for every web creator (and who isn't?) is the fact that you now have 3 URL's letting you integrate your avatar into every WebPages or social website you want. Those URL's are dynamically showing your avatar's current appearance, like the one shown next to this text. So if you come back to this page in a week or so, it may have changed clothes!

Here are the different URL's you may use:

• The large whole body picture:
  http://avatar.xboxlive.com/avatar/(gamertag)/avatar-body.png
• A large photo frame (64x64 pixels):
  http://avatar.xboxlive.com/avatar/(gamertag)/avatarpic-l.png
• A small photo frame (32x32 pixels):
  http://avatar.xboxlive.com/avatar/(gamertag)/avatarpic-s.png

Change "(gamertag)" to reflect your own Xbox 360 Gamertag.
I think it's pretty cool that Microsoft is paying attention to those little details...

List of best software and shortcuts

Here is a nice list displaying the best software and shortcuts according to polls runned during the last 6 months.

URL: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/poll-results-the-best-software-and-shortcuts-according-to-you/

By the way, AVG is the winner in the category best Antivirus software. It was already the case back in 2007.
Don't get me wrong, it still is a great (and free!) software. My only concern is that the new version 8 is making older computers a little too slow. There are too many features available and no options to disable some of them... I now prefer Avira or Avast when I need to install a free antivirus on a somewhat older computer.

Increase the performance of Windows Vista

Whaou!
Here's a nice list of 38 tweaks and tips you can apply to increase the performance of Windows Vista.
I must go through it to enhance my system...

Source: http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/81176-speed-up-performance-vista.html

Outlook Duplicate Items Remover

Aaaah!! Not AGAIN! noooo!...
I was trying to synchronize my Windows Mobile agenda with my Google Calendar using some freeware and all my agenda items all of a sudden got duplicated...
Why does an agenda item not have a GUID in it? An unique ID that would make it unique no matter what computer, PDA or web-agenda you have... mmm, OK. Apparently, it does exist: http://www.kanzaki.com/docs/ical/uid.html

So my freeware software simply was not paying attention during its "unique ID courses" and now I'm stuck with hundreds duplicate items in my agenda!! grrr...

Well, anyway, there is a solution: ODIR (a.k.a Outlook Duplicate Items Remover)
This cool tool installs as a plug-in in Microsoft Outlook and snuff through your stuff to remove any duplicates. (Based on subject, location, start date and end date).
And it will also find duplicates contacts, tasks, emails and notes...



Download link: http://www.vaita.com/Bin/ODIR.exe

Now this would be really neat if it was also available as a portable application!

Visual Subst - an easy way to create virtual drives

Visual Subst allows you to create virtual drives, mapping any directory on your PC or on the network to a drive letter.

• It is freeware.
• Drive mappings can be set to continue working even after rebooting the PC.
• It is fully portable.
• It is very light weight (136kb for the current version 1.0.6).
• It works also when network restriction prevents you from doing anything DOS related…

You can download it here.