Mic On-The-Fly

Today, I'm resurrecting our blog that seems to have died.

I am planning release a new software solution for Eclectic Software supporters that will allow them to change their mic volume "on-the-fly", "in-game", "in-use", however you would like to call it.

Currently in the beta version, it will allow you to assign shortcuts keys for each function (e.g. "Ctrl+F10" to mute or "F12" to increase the mic volume). In later versions, I will be using Direct Sound to "Boost" the volume of the mic. The "boost" feature is already included with a lot of sound cards, but there are cases where its not availible and this program will greatly help those few.

The uses that I can see in the future program are: VoIP calls, Gaming (esp. online games), Speech-to-Text applications (this program will give you an easy way to mute your mic).

If this looks like something you would use, or you can think of another use for it, please email me with "Mic On-The-Fly" or "Mic OTF" in the subject line. I would greatly appriciate any feedback.

The Monkeys Have Hit The Button (again)

Three cheers for the Cairo Shell development team! With less than six days from the second official alpha, Cairo will take a stab at the infamous Vista and the greatly anticipated Windows 7 interface. When this shell replacement reaches even its beta stage, there will be no need to ever see "explorer.exe" hogging up system resource ever again.

But when was this miracle of a program going to be made public? No one knows. The development team does not want to set any dates or deadline, even rough estimates. This caution makes sense. A shell program that wants to replace Explorer, Luna (yes, they might port it to XP), and Aero is not written over night. The Cairo team does not want to have a reputation like that of Windows, Apple, and every other software company that has late releases and buggy code. As a computer science student, I know that software never completely meets the deadline and Vista is a crashing example of software that was forced out too quickly.

Cairo is not the first team trying to make Windows bearable. There are other projects such as GeoShell (http://www.geoshell.org/) and Sharp Enviro (http://www.sharpe-shell.org/) that do basically the same thing. Although, the exciting attribute about Cairo is that Cairo is by far the best looking shell replacement out there!