Just a quick heads-up: MXit Lifestyle, makers of the popular South African (and now international) instant messaging app "MXit", have released an Adium plugin for running MXit on Mac.

I've just downloaded and used it, and it works like a charm. No problems to report about so far, and I'm ecstatic that I can finally chat to my MXit friends whilst on Mac (at the same time being able to talk to my Facebook and Gtalk buddes thanks to the amazing powers of Adium).

You can get the plugin for Adium from their official site. Note that you'll need to download and install Adium, the free and super-awesome instant messenger for Mac OS X.

MXit is also available for PC. You can download the full PC client (for free) from their site.

MXit is a free instant messenger that allows you to communicate with friends via your mobile phone, iPhone, Android device or BlackBerry. I was fortunate to be one of the few beta testers in South Africa to use the early MXit app back in 2005-2006, and it has grown rapidly since its official release.

Touch screen phones are all the rage these days. Everywhere you look, there's some new phone out that offers a 3.5" touch display (usually with no keyboard).

Having owned an iPhone 3G, I am of the firm belief that full touch phones are just a gimmick - their original "wow" factor tends to ware off, and the user is usually left with a user experience that's anything but amazing.

For instance, one major gripe that I have about these types of phones is the inability to "feel" the keyboard, thus allowing you to type without looking at the screen (something I tend to do a little too often). Besides, being able to "feel" a keyboard ensures that you feel "secure" in what you've pressed - you can be sure that that key is what the corresponding writing on-screen will be.

Furthermore, touch screen phones pose the problem of being very delicate devices. A cracked touch screen can run the repair bill up to quite an extraordinary figure - and manufacturers usually don't include the screen as part of the warranty.

While I am an opponent of the advent of touch screen phones, I'm not ruling them out. Touch is the future, we all know that. But what I think is cool is the "hybrid" phones, like most HTC mobiles and Nokia's new N97. These phones offer a ful touch screen for easy, quick access to things like reading new texts, or pulling up contact information. But they also include a full slide-out QWERTY keyboard so that you can compose text in an easier manner.

What's your take on touch screen phones? Drop a line in the comments, I look forward to your unique opinions.

Windows 7 looks all fine and dandy right now. It looks good - brilliant, even. Its design is probably the first in Microsoft Windows history to actually be able to rival that of the great Mac OS X... but it's still going to suck. Let me tell you why:

All versions of Redmond's Windows operating system have been plagued by a technology that underpins the operating of the system - the Windows Registry. This piece of software manages the existance and execution of applications on the system - by storing special "Registry Keys" that contain information pertaining to application settings, as well as special keys designated to the installation of files on the system. It's basically the backbone of Windows, and it's also very much prone to getting corrupted very quickly.

It is, nine out of ten times, the cause of messing up your Windows experience and resulting in a re-install of the system. It gets corrupted mainly because when you install and uninstall software, the registry manages all the application's keys in a very complex manner. So uninstalling software can result in the system not removing certain keys (usually because it deems them necessary for other applications). This corrupts the integral part of the Windows system.

Now this type of technology is kind of "obsolete" in today's modern world. Modern operating systems like Mac OS X and Linux (because Windows is not, contrary to popular belief, modern - its core, NT, is over twenty years old!) have more intuitive ways of managing applications on the system. Microsoft has yet to jump on the bandwagon and develop a more stable way of managing their applications, and thus making the OS more reliable.

So that's why Windows 7, with its corrupt-prone Registry, will still suck in the long-run.