The DS Lite, which I was talking about yesterday, has now been officially announced for release on June 11th. It will sell at the same price as the original DS.

When the Nintendo DS (Dual-screen) came out with its first games, my first thought was that it was very bulky and would only have 3D Games that I don’t like that much. However, a few factors are changing my mind.

• A new version of the DS is coming in a month or two that will be better looking, thinner, lighter and have brighter screensgame
• A lot of new upcoming games are going to mix classic 2D playing style with 3D graphics.

Here are a couple of screenshots of the new Legend of Zelda, Super Mario Bros. and Final Fantasy III over which I have been drooling for a few days.

After getting a first article published in the April issue of Québec Micro, I have landed four articles in the May issue of the Montréal-based computer magazine. You can read the magazine online or pick it up for free at one of the distribution points around Montréal. My articles are on pages 9, 10, 26 and 33 of the issue.

Another article that I submitted was posted on their web site here

I am really enjoying writing for these guys and seeing my articles in print. Hopefully I will be able to keep doing this for some time

My first article for the quebec computer magazing Québec Micro has been printed in the april issue which has started being available at distribution points. It’s an article on an application to read RSS news feeds that can be found on page 7 of the issue.

If you live in the Greater Montreal area, you can pick up the magazine for free at one of the distribution points listed on this page: http://quebecmicro.com/point_distribution.php.

Otherwise, it is possible for the first time to read the magazine online on the front page of the web site http://quebecmicro.com if you have Flash installed on your computer.

Happy reading

If you don’t know it this magazine, Québec Micro is a french computer magazine that has a circulation of 40,000 copies and is distributed freely across the province. I submitted two articles to them during my vacation. The first of these has been posted on their web site) while the second will be in the April issue of the printed magazine. I am quite excited about this and will post again once the issue is available. It will be fun to see my words in print and be able to share my computer knowledge with many people.

A few weeks ago, a colleague mentioned how annoyed he was at always making typos when typing e-mail addresses of employees within our company (@engenuitytech.com). After doing a quick web search on my favorite site (sourceforge.net), I found a wonderful utility that solved his problem and also hads many interesting feature. HotKeyBind can be used to assign special functionality to any key or key combination on the keyboard.

These functionalities include typing text, starting an application and many other tasks. Of course, you want to be careful not to assign functionlity to keys commonly used by other applications, such as the F1 key that usually bring up help, but there are only a few of these exceptions to be careful about.

To make things even better, this is open source freeware! You will find a link to this and many other useful free application here.

I often talk about RSS since I find that it is the most helpful creation on the web in the past few years. I recently stumbled on a site that is starting a movement to standardize the RSS feed icon to put on web sites. Currently, there are a ton of different icons that are used to designate an RSS feed so it is difficult for people to quickly identify an icon as a feed. Here is the icon in question:

As you can see, I added that icon to the sidebar on the left side of the site. For more information on the standard or to download the icon in different sizes and formats, take a look at feedicons.com.

The adventures of Pollux the little dog and all of his friends is coming to the big screen in a computer-animated movie that looks like a lot of fun.

I loved watching the old animated shows starring this dog and it will be a pleasure to see him again in full CG glory and introduce our little daughter to this cute character Check out the movie site for a trailer and many other goodies.

The Sunday Dilbert strip made a quick mention to Battlestar Galactica. Just funny.

While doing some quick Google searching, I found a very nice site containing tons of information on Battlestar Galactica, the great science-fiction that I keep raving about. This site is a wiki completely dedicated to storing information about the show. For those who don’t know what a wiki is, it is a database site where anyone can contribute information to try to get the most accurate data possible. This particular wiki uses the same software that the great wikipedia uses as its back-end.