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Today I got invite to private Hulu.com Beta. Looks like they are expanding their beta user base, and I was lucky to get in on this next round. Though, pretty soon they will go public, I’m sure.

So, first impressions are positive! The navigation is pretty intuitive, though I did not see an easy way to navigate to other seasons of things. These are very minor, the important positives are:

• High Quality — Duhh!!! This is a single most important issue today for streaming video on the web, and so far I am very positively impressed with hulu!
• Streaming — On Demand TV is here, for real, finally!
• Huge Library — Since it’s an official effort by several major studios, they actually have Quality Content! OMG! Simpsons! House MD! Journeyman! Monk! Pretender! The list goes on and on. It looks like they are mixing old classics with new favorites, great formula, if you ask me!

Stop the presses! I can embed entire episodes or show snippets in my blog!!! This is so big that I worked hard to modify the layout of my blog and make it wider to accommodate their excellent wide-screen video size.

And now, without any further delay, check out this funny Simpsons episode! Which, hilariously enough, investigates Tivo and the demise of traditional TV model.

Remember! You saw it here first!

PS: After additional confirmation, I see that video embedded on my blog appears to be slightly lower quality than the one you would get to see on hulu.com, plus the Full Screen feature only available on Hulu.com

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But First - Happy Thanksgiving everyone, and special Thanks for reading!

While browsing Amazon’s Black Friday Deals, I stumbled across a Pre-Order page for the revolutionary game called Spore. Will Wright, one of the best known game designers, who created titles like SimCity and The Sims, is the creative Genius behind this one.

This game attempts to simulate an entire Universe within your Computer and then uses the Internet to extend it even further. You play the coveted role of God, the creator of all things, or at least one planet and one species, for starters. You get to help your species evolve through the ages, from a small cell organism to big Star conquering Civilization. Obviously, such grandiose game was years in development and until  today no-one knew the release date. But, Voila, it’s coming! Enjoy the video below and you can read more about it on Wikipedia and Gaming sites!

And looks like the Universe is giving me a Birthday gift! Why else would the release date be March 3rd, 2008? It must be a hint, and it also means that this will be yet another one of these few precious Gem games that we purchase on the release day, the last one being Sims 2, ironically.

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I am continuing to encounter strange Adobe Flash problems in Internet Explorer 7. We have a bunch of PCs here at home, and after upgrade to IE7 several had broken Flash. I had to search all other the web and try many different things before fixing it.

Few days ago I noticed that Adobe Flash stopped working on my main Windows Vista PC also, probably after Zune software installation, since that’s the only thing I installed recently. Though, there were also several Vista patches on Tuesday, that may have played a part in this.

I was able to fix it and here are the tips for you to try, organized from simple to hard:

• Go directly to Adobe installation site for Flash, Pay Attention and Uncheck Google Toolbar (seriously, it’s like Spyware installer!). Follow installation steps and make sure to reboot your PC after installation.
• Still doesn’t work? Try downloading Flash Installer package from Adobe. Follow directions and download the Installer package at the end of step 3. HOWEVER, on Vista, do an extra step and Shut Down Internet Explorer + Find IEUSER.EXE in Task Manager and End Process on it. Then proceed to install Flash as downloaded above
• Still broken? You are in serious fix… You will need to install Microsoft software and fix some registry keys. Then try again the step above. Reboot and Voila.

Of course, if you still can’t fix it, just use Firefox browser, it seems to work just fine even while IE keeps insisting that "Flash not installed".

Now that you have your Flash fixed, you have some options. First, educate yourself on our planetary crisis by watching the trailer below. Next, proceed to enjoy more Flash capabilities and features, courtesy of Adobe. Of course if they would get their act together, and talk in over with Microsoft or whoever, you wouldn’t have to mess with all that Adobe Flash installation mess to begin with. Enjoy!

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This is an early report on the new Zune software, since it just came out this Tuesday (two days ago). It is a major overhaul of Zune Firmware as promised, but the Desktop software redesign seems less dramatic.

But, there is a Bug that exceeded my wildest expectation — my cherished Music Library is all messed up now! Seriously, there are some glitches people forgive, but probably not this one. Some artists and their albums are correct, yet others are all mixed up. Wrong Album Art appearing on albums, AND wrong songs appearing inside the albums (just some songs, from other albums, get mixed in with real album songs)!!!

Britney Spears should be most upset, however. It put some of her songs under No Artist category, and slapped Chumbawamba Album Art on them! It really has no excuse for messing up so badly! These Britney’s song are from my personal CD collection, and were ripped using Microsoft’s own Windows Media Player not too long ago! The songs located in proper folder and contain proper MP3 tag information embedded in them (check out the screen shot below).

But maybe, the new Zune software using some sort of advanced Artificial Intelligence to figure out the actual level of artistry behind some specific songs?! Maybe by analyzing the MP3 song itself (finally putting my powerful Quad Core PC to some fine use)?

Nah… It’s just a bug….

UPDATE: Bugs happen! So after posting this and finishing other daily activities, I set out to find a fix. And looks like Microsoft posted it on the day of software release, at 4:55pm on their Zune forums, just scroll down to post by Zmanaaa. I promptly followed their simple instructions and looks like it fixed all of my troubles! The only remaining issue is occasional Album Art confusion. However, I found how to fix that also! Simply navigate to relevant Album directory where the Art is wrong, and Delete album art file, called ZuneAlbumArt.jpg (May be Hidden, so make sure to select Show Hidden Files in Explorer options). Then, Zune promptly redownloads proper Art from it’s Online database, whenever you navigate to that album in Zune desktop software. Voila!

UPDATE2: After doing the database recovery fix above, you will need to Resubscribe to all your podcasts, even though most will appear in the list still. Another thing I had happen, only once though, when unplugging Zune from my Sleeping Vista machine, it didn’t “reactivate”. I had to switch the Key Lock On/Off, before it started responding to any key presses.

UPDATE3: Since at first I didn’t realize I had a problem with my music library, I naturally synched all the mess to Zune. Turns out even after you fix the library, Zune can still have mess “stored” within it. So, I fixed that also yesterday. To fix it, you will need to blow away everything from Zune and “reset” it essentially. Navigate to Settings in the upper right of Zune software, click on Device in the settings, and find Erase All button. Once done, disconnect and reconnect your Zune, and it will re-sync everything down to device (may take a while, but it’s worth it).

UPDATE 12.5 (Nov, 2008): WOW, This post is still as popular as ever, a full YEAR after it was posted. There was another update to Zune software since this post, and mostly everything is so much better now. These workarounds will still likely work for you, though I did not need to try them myself since then. I am still having some issues with Podcasts duplicating, but that is really minor, seriously!

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I think I tackled this in the past, but here is a brief reminder, yet again. I am against bloging senseless! I really don’t enjoy blogs that post 10+ times each day, that’s just ridiculous! Yes, there may be a lot to blog about, and there is a lot going on in the world all the time. But, putting this many posts ends up only hurting your readers, in my humble opinion. It becomes impossible to read every post, and since there is no way to know which posts may be important to you without reading them all, people just stop trying!

So, philosophy of this blog is to weed out the essence from the noise, and bring you just things of interest. Plus, don’t forget the hourly updating Latest Shared Links section on the right. That’s where I bring you latest deals, news of interest, and other fun things. That section is updated frequently, but don’t worry if you don’t keep up.

Now, onto the promised Weekend Fun. This weekend I bring you the amazing advances in Computer Graphics Technology, using 3D shaders rendering, bump-mapping, and other such hard to pronounce methods that lead to the amazing creation on the right. If you are not a fan of that sort of stuff, please don’t click on any of the links below, you’ve been warned!

Now, if you are still reading, I presume you enjoy this skillful art and technology coming together, like me. So, here are some video clips from the excellent Dead or Alive: Xtreme 2 game. It’s just a compilation of mini-games, but Who Cares! when the graphics is this good!!! And you probably would want to visit the game developer site, just make sure to click on the English magazine laying towards the bottom of the screen, that’s how insiders get in.

Still reading this? Ok then! Check out this Promotional Trailer and then Game Opening Movie. Done? Did I mention that this game plays via HDMI on your 42″ or larger HDTV screen!!! So, go on and buy the game, with XBox 360 if you still don’t have it!

PS: I was trying to stay family friendly blog by avoiding words like Sexy, Blonde and Girl, but the traffic spike from the search engines seeking just these words is something I can really use right now

PPS: For some reason there is one new Amazon favorite item (on the right column) which isn’t showing image, but be sure to click through and find out what it is!

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