WIND, Canada’s newest cellular operator, is eyeing the Nexus One, Google’s first phone and is hoping to be the first operator in Canada to carry it, a move which they hope will put an end to contracts for good. There are no reports on how the talks are going, but Chris Robbins, WIND’s CCO says ”We’re trying,” but since the company is pretty much brand new it’s harder to negotiate a deal. “Canada’s a small market to these guys. We’re not getting a lot of face time,” he added.

Why would an upstart company that only launched service in December be the first (or even exclusive) avenue for getting the Nexus One? There are a few reasons that make sense. First, Google has been very clear they want to offer the phone directly (even though it will be still available for cheaper on a T-Mobile contract). One of WIND’s core philosophies is the “no contract” policy, which fits in perfectly. The second and more important reason is that Google’s phone only has 3G capabilities on the newest AWS network, and WIND is the only operator in Canada (except for another Quebec-specific company) that is on that network, meaning that Bell, Telus, and Rogers networks are too outdated. T-Mobile is also on the AWS network, hence those two companies would be the ideal choice for North America. If one was to buy the phone and run it on Rogers, for example, they would only get 2G service.

You can see now why WIND wants so hard to be able to offer the phone, it’s about time that consumers realized the Big Three are not investing any money in advancing their networks, but would rather keep the money for themselves.

WIND is a trademark operated by Globalive Wireless Management Corp. and in addition to Canada, the brand name has also operated in Greece and Italy for over 10 years. The company has received a major investment from Orascom Telecommunications, one of the biggest telecommunication companies in the Middle East and is based in Cairo, Egypt.

Adobe has just released Flash Player 10.1 as a Beta. What’s so special about it? You guessed it – it now offers hardware acceleration for videos, which means those crisp YouTube HD videos will look even better and less jerkier. Bad (good for me) news is that it’s only for Windows, sorry Mac and Linux fanboys. In any case, don’t fret too much I am sure it will get released soon anyways.

For now, grab the new player from Adobe Labs:

• Flash Player 10.1 Download

Windows 7 is out and it’s really solid. It has out-of-the-box support for most popular audio and video formats. In fact, the only two I was missing was MKV (Matroska), and FLAC. The latter is easy to fix, the former not so much. If you do a Google search you will find over 8 MILLION hits, and pretty much all of the top hits did not actually tell you how to (successfully) get MKV support easily. The forum posts ask you to download codec packs, splitters, containers, use your imagination.

What you really need are two simple links:

• The DivX Tech Preview and
• The AC3 Filter (Full)

The first one gives native version of the DivX MKV framework for the newly introduced Windows Media Foundation. Anything else you download at the moment does NOT utilize the WMF. The problem with that is you lose hardware acceleration and everything needs to be transcoded (converted to another codec on the fly). If you use DivX’s codec you get a crisp picture that is not overexposed.

The only problem with the DivX tech preview is that sound didn’t work for any of my HD files. That’s where the AC3 filter comes in – it installs the necessary codec for you to get the sound. That is also what all the forums I came across failed to mention.

DivX Plus on Windows 7

So install those two and you are set for playing almost anything you can come across on the Internet without sacrificing quality or installing 3rd-party players like VLC (Which I tried and failed to configure to reproduce the same quality as Windows Media Player for any video format).

Every now and then something comes around that really makes you wonder and puts things in perspective. For example, we all know how quickly the Internet has become THE most important communication medium. But what does that really mean? Is it just a fad? Is it all going to be completely different in 2 years? 5 years? 10 years? These are questions that most of us wouldn’t even think to ask, and would rather just go with the flow.

Do yourself a favour and spend the next 10 minutes watching the video below. I say 10 minutes, because you will want to see it at least twice, just to make sure your eyes are not deceiving you (and secondly because the soundtrack is Fat Boy Slim’s “Right Here, Right Now”)

Impressive, no? If you want even more, I have another one for you, this one came out just recently:

Not exactly news, but I thought I might as well post it on here. Microsoft’s DreamSpark site offers a number of valuable software products for free, as long as you are a student in a recognized institution. The majority of the software is for software developers, such as Visual Studio 2008, XNA Game Studio, as well as Windows Server 2008 and Expressions Studio 3.

Register today and take advantage of this great offer.

In case you are wondering why Windows Media Player runs in 32 bit mode when you have a 64 bit Windows 7, and how to run the 64 bit version, read on. It seems that by default Microsoft decided on running the 32 bit version, perhaps for codec compatibility. However, the 64 bit version is already included. To use this instead (the quick and easy way) do the following 10 second fix:

1. Unpin the WMP icon from the taskbar (assuming that’s where you started it from)
2. Open C:\Program Files\Windows Media Player\wmplayer.exe (Notice it’s not the C:\Program Files (x86) folder).
3. Just pin that version instead and you are set.

Here’s the result:

My Digital Life blog has posted a rather complex solution that modifies the registry. However, this does will not work if you still have the 32 bit version pinned to the taskbar and you use it from there. Much simpler than running all those registry hacks is to run your 64 bit version and associate all audio and video files with it.

I find that the performance is at least moderately better, especially when loading my immense music library. WMP 32 bit seems to freeze up for at least 5-10 seconds, whereas x64 just takes a second or two. The 64 bit version seems to take up about 7-8MB more RAM, but not that I care now that I have 4 GB to spare.

Just in case some of my readers here didn’t know, there’s actually a way to completely remove all ads in Windows Live Messenger (or any other Messenger) very easily, plus many more customization options. The tool is called A-Patch and is 100% malware free. Give it a shot at their site.

Microsoft has finally came out with the final version of MS Security Essentials, a security software that complements Windows’ built-in firewall in XP and Windows 7 and offers antivirus, antispyware, rootkit detection, and trojans – all for one great price – free!

That’s right, you no longer need to shell out $80 each year for your (crappy) antivirus software (if you used ESET NOD32 or Avira Premium, disregard the crappy part). So what’s so exciting about another free antivirus? Well, for starters it doesn’t have annoying ads like Avira Free, offers decent detection rate (greatly improved compared to OneCare), and is pretty light on resources (about 8 Mb for me in the background).

I’ve been using the Beta for a while, and the final version (1.0) is available in both 32 and 64 bit. Quite happy with Microsoft lately. Get your hands on it while it’s hot: Microsoft Security Essentials Download

I’ve been having a problem with my battery for my Thinkpad T61 for a while, and since it’s out of warranty I thought I will need to shell out a $150 for a new one.

Luckily, I decided to check the lenovo forums in case there’s others with a major battery problem (completely dead a month after warranty expired), and turns out it’s an “unofficial” recall for a LARGE number of batteries:

Lenovo has released a software tool to evaluate whether your battery is eligible for a free replacement. Note that this tool is not the same one as the Battery Recall Program (which is safety-related).

There is a catch, though. Most of the time, even if you are experiencing a noticeable problem with your battery, the tool will fail to detect it because it has to talk with the ThinkPad Power Manager. On mine, the Manager said my condition is “Fair” and thus unable to qualify. What I did to get it working is a battery gauge reset, which remeasures the voltages of the battery and hopefully would detect the problem. If it doesn’t, give it a few more tries – but beware – every time you do that it takes a toll on your battery life (deep discharge). Only do that if your battery is crap anyways.

Once you get the “Poor” status, run the tool again and you will be directed to a free replacement order form.

Good luck.

I just got my hands on the most amazing deal for software I’ve ever had, which is a Windows 7 Ultimate for less than $10 through my university’s software program. Since I was already using Windows 7 RC1 for months and the license is set to expire spring 2010, I was more than happy. However, I realized that Windows 7 installer won’t let you upgrade to the final version so I would have to do a clean install. But I DON’T want to. Thankfully, I stumbled across this article on HowToGeek that has a simple 2 second fix to that whole problem.

Enjoy the best OS ever made!