MythBusters: MythBusters ' Adam Savage Talks Tech, Obsessions, and Science in a lifehacker interview.
Chrome for Mac Sees Progress, according to OSNews. Still very alpha from the looks of it though.
Via Daring Fireball: E-mail Addresses It Would Be Really Annoying to Give Out Over the Phone. Use one of these to guarantee that you don't get an email back :)
Bits about the Red Dwarf upcoming return to the screen(s) found at io9: Red Dwarf Crashes Into The Internet.
The Apple Blog has some details on Skype for iPhone, including screenshots. Basically it looks a lot like the normal iPhone phone app, which is good. I'm interested to see how it works like in real life. I've had the Fring app which allows VOIP connection on the iPhone via Skype, but I honestly haven't ever actually called anyone on it :)
Update: It's here. Well, in the US app store anyway. Hope it comes to Canada soon.
Update2: Seems it might not. This CBC story has this:
Chaim Haas, a public relations representative acting on behalf of Skype, said the application is available in every country in which the iPhone is on sale and in which Apple has an iTunes Store — with the exception of Canada.
io9 does a good job explaining the 10 Different Timelines From The Terminator Universe. This is why I didn't want SCC to be honest, diluting and polluting the Terminator universe, yessiree.
I hadn't even heard it was announced, but the Battlefield 1943 Screenshots (think the classic BF 1942++) look pretty hot.
The Map Room: ‘Dead Pixel in Google Earth’.
Edit (Arcterex): Sadly this piece of conceptual art is not actually visible on google earth, as it is just ... conceptual art.
Any Ruby on Rails programmers out there will know that version 2.3 was just released.... Railspikes has 10 Cool Things in Rails 2.3 to wet your appetite about what's new in this release.
MythBusters: MythBusters ' Adam Savage Talks Tech, Obsessions, and Science
Click on the images to see them fade...
Earth Hour 2009 - The Big Picture - Boston.com
Iotd: The Las Vegas Strip, Before and During Earth Hour
In other words, feel free to check out this awesome site:
NIN|JA 2009 is a place where you can get a free sampler pack of music from NiN, Jane's Addiction and Street Sweeper (who I've never heard of). Like the last couple of NiN projects, this is free, DRM free music from MP3 to FLAC to uncompressed WAV files. Pretty awesome, great to see that they "get it".
Rumor: Palm Pre Beta Tester Gives April 30th as Planned Release Date
Rumor: Palm Pre Beta Tester Gives April 30th as Planned Release Date
Found some early footage of a time travel based RTS over on shacknews: Time Travel RTS Achron Revealed. Not sure if I would be able to wrap my brain around all that stuff though.... I'm more a "shoot things" kinda gamer :)
Seems Call of Duty 6, (or Call of Duty 4 part 2) is announced and will be born as Modern Warfare 2. As I've said before, CoD 4 was one of my favorite games that I've played recently, and if this is going to be like that, then I'm excited :)
And not in the "not seen for a decade" sort of way. The Duke is Back site is looking for someone to play Duke for ..... well, some reason anyway.
We're reaching out to the fans with a 3 city nationwide search to find the next real life Duke Nukem.
As Darren says, Vaporware awards don't win themselves!
Geeks of Doom has some more clips from the ‘Battlestar Galactica’ Prequel ‘Caprica’.
Holy crap! Check out these "Landscape Aquariums". How the hell does that survive after you put the water in is what I want to know!
Weapons: X12 Stun Gun Freezes People From 88 Feet Away
X12 Stun Gun Freezes People From 88 Feet Away
Weapons: X12 Stun Gun Freezes People From 88 Feet Away
X12 Stun Gun Freezes People From 88 Feet Away
Just heard about Video Monkey via MacBreak Weekly as a theoretical replacement for the now-defunct VisualHub video converter software. Definitely going to check this out tonight!
Very cool article by John Carmack of iD Software on porting Wolfenstein 3D Classic to the iPhone (now available in the app store).
I love the note on the main page for the app which claims "* not responsible for damage to iphone caused by awesome action overload" :)
Super-cute pics of two baby Leopards born: Rare Cubs Born Against the Odds is the title. Seems that in captivity the mothers often do damage to their cubs, which I wonder is an instinctual thing based on being in an undesirable place to have offspring (ie: a zoo) or if it's something that "just happens". Regardless of this, those babys are damn cute!
Cool article from Mozilla labs on some new Firefox New Tab Page which uses something called a "Cognitive Shield".
No matter where we put the links to your most visited sites (and their latest news), it always seemed to be a distraction, based upon our own perception and the feedback from thousands of testers. Given that the bulk of those testers are multi-tasking-adept early adopters, we’d expect that feedback to be even stronger from more mainstream users. Our original thought was to place the links along the bottom of the page — outside your foveal vision. In practice, the peripheral vision proved too strong, and the links still drew your eye and interrupted your cognitive flow.
Interesting tidbit about the GNOME linux desktop project from OSNews.... seems they are Migrating to Git for their revision control system.
This is interesting, as git was created for the Linux kernel developers after the non-free software that was being used (BitKeeper) went to a for-pay scheme. Git semed to explode as the Ruby on Rails project (with GitHub and friends), and this seems to be a second (that I know of) major Linux project to adopt git for their SCM.
Funny introduction to twitter in the video twouble with twitters. Thanks for the link Len (who doesn't get it either).
Not a bad list actually...
Yahoo’s 100 Movies To See Before You Die | /Film
Via Appstorm.net comes a nice set of 50 iPhone Wallpapers for Design Lovers. Some better than others, worth a look anyway.
Co-Editor Aryk pointed me to a super-sexy Limited Edition Terminator 2 Complete Collector’s Set. Decent pre-order discounts from Amazon and hey, wouldn't you love a glowing-eyed Terminator skull in your bookcase????
IO9 (again) has a sneak peek trailer from SciFi for Caprica. This one actually makes it look interesting!
Chock full of spoilers, but a nice wrap-up and summary of the season finale episode of BSG over at IO9's Battlestar Finale Review: As Battlestar Ends, God Is In the Details.
Note - there are spoilers, so if you don't want to know, don't click.
Battlestar Finale Review: As Battlestar Ends, God Is In the Details
New Firewall for the Linux Kernel via OSNews. I've never heard of nftables before. Sounds interesting, creting a distinction between userspace and kernel space. Even more detail here.
Found a series of pics via Reddit of the coolest Star Wars Car you will see this week. I promise.
Now to do this to my car......... :) (I wish!)
Burning Questions: 12 Plotholes That Must Be Filled in the Battlestar Finale
Leaks: Surviving A Lynch Mob - AIG Internal Staff Memo
Interesting development on ThePirateBay.org noted by TorrentFreak. You can Download Torrents Remotely With Pirate Bay’s Personal RSS. Basically you add a torrent to your personal RSS feed from anywhere on the web, and have your home system watching the RSS feed for new torrents to download, and does so. Very neat!
Spacebat: "Spacebat Tribute" Video Will Make You Cry Like "We Are the World"
"Spacebat Tribute" Video Will Make You Cry Like "We Are the World"
Awesome article from the Microsoft site on Reverse Engineering the Twelve Days of Christmas written in obfuscated C code (circa 1998).
Looks like Subversion1.6 has been released. Hit the link for changes/info/etc.
Another case of putting a camera in a big-ass balloon and sending it to the edge of space.
While Failblog shows this as a Baby Name Fail, I say it's a complete and udder win! In other news, I've found the name for my first-born.
Obvious: Palm CEO Confirms That, Yes, There Will Be More WebOS Phones
Battlestar Galactica Frakmap is exactly what you think it is.
GMail has announced a new feature in their "Labs" area - Undo Send. Basically it doesn't send your mail for 5 seconds, giving you a chance to reconsider it :)
Microsoft announced at Mix09 that IE8 is available now, via Ed Bott. The IEBlog has some info on making your IE8 experience more pleasurable as well.
The Apple Blog has a First Look at the iPhone OS 3.0 Beta. Lots of screenshots and impressions there.
Update: More screenshots here. Lots of great detail about how things work, excellent read @ iLounge.
Along with the free Rails Magazine available, check out The Rubyist which has two issues and a free PDF download.
Shuttle-Riding Bat Dies The Most Glorious Death Imaginable.
Really not much more to say, other than thanks Len for the link.
Oops, dupe! Sorry about that :)
Check out the GNOME 2.26 Release Notes for all the new goodness that's been revealed in the latest release. Short summary is better disk burning with Brasero integrated, better file sharing with the integration of webdav and bluetooth, Evolution mail client upgrades, more PulseAudio integration, easier multi-monitor configuration, better IM (including video), lots of other minor tweaks.
Again it is (IMHO) an evolutionary upgrade, with not a lot of really new stuff or quite frankly, exciting stuff. It is good to see the improvements, improved developer APIs, internationalization, etc, but there's no huge jumps that I've seen, or really compelling reasons to upgrade. Of course I will, as I'm a sucker for pretty much any upgrades :) In fact, I'm looking for the Ubuntu packages now :)
Congrats to the GNOME developers and contributors on another great release!
Photography: Teens Capture Amazing Shots 20 Miles from Earth's Surface With a Balloon
BSG's United Nations Summit: The Night Battlestar Galactica Took Over The U.N.
I'm so glad that I'm not the only one that this happens to. Another brilliant XKCD cartoon.
Psystar: Psystar Ignores Every Lawyer In The Entire World, Debuts New Compact OS X Desktop
Great video of a presentation from MythBusters Co-Host Adam Savage on Obsession. Via @gatewayy.
Space Eulogies: Shuttle-Riding Bat Dies The Most Glorious Death Imaginable
Via Paul Thurrott at the WinSupersite I found a UI changes from Windows 7 beta to build 7057. Mostly tweaking and filling out it looks like, but some other interesting changes.
Tombuntu found that there is a Pre-Alpha Chromium Browser Now Available. Even better? It actually contains a working browser!
NOTE NOTE NOTE NOTE
This is very very very pre-alpha and should be almost called an Omega version (for me so pre-alpha it won't run :) and running probably isn't a good idea, as most likely it'll blow up and give you a bad impression. It is nice to know that things are progressing towards Linux and Mac builds though!
According to the updates on the Google Earth Blog, there is now Live Imagery from Another Planet. According to the update there is a layer available on the mars imagery that contains the latest data from satellites which can be as fresh as a few hours. Not quite live, but close!
Now we need that on earth, for all our non-alien stalking needs.
According to Shacknews, Tribes (remember that, way back in the day?) has been Ported to Browsers.
A web-based version of Dynamix's classic team-based multiplayer shooter Starsiege: Tribes is soon coming to browser gaming portal InstantAction.
How cool are these pics.... the Shuttle Launch Seen From ISS a Plane. You may remember a similar view from a plane a while back.
If you're interested in Ruby on Rails, you'll be happy to know that Rails Magazine Issue 1 is now available. Free digital download, or you can order a dead-tree version.
I've been an advocate of something like The Technical Support Secret Handshake for ages now.
Fizzbin.
Again with the Apple stuff, will it never stop?! You can keep an eye on the iPhone OS 3.0 event today by checking out either Engadget or the @macrumors twitter stream. If you're a twitterer you probably you that doing a search for #iPhone will probably garner you some good stuff as well :)
Update:
Highlights from the event are below (hit the read more):
I'm fairly excited to be honest, I'm looking forward to what people can do with this in their apps, and I'm happy there aren't any silly "new feature XXX only will work on our new iPhone 3.0 hardware" restrictions. At least not yet :) I'm also glad they haven't radically changed the iPhone, but have added to it significantly. I'm especially interested in the spotlight app, and seeing how it works in practice and how well. It sounded like it was an 'always open' app in the leftmost screen, which makes it more useful than a search app you have to open up each time.
Still, we'll see :) Going to download the SDK tonight and start programming something to make my millions with!!
Tomorrow Apple will give a sneak peak at the 3.0 version of the iPhone firmware. No clue so far as to if this will be on a new hardware platform (ie: version 3 of the iPhone handset) or just an upgrade to the current version. Hopefully some of each (ie: I don't want to buy a new $500 phone to get access to whatever new features there are).
A lot (lot) of "3.0 firmware wishlists" have appeared, mostly fueled simply by wishes, practically none with any actual inside information on them (some might argue that there are leaks who do go to people like Kevin Rose with details, but again, who knows. Anyway, one of the good lists I found was from Frasier Speirs, who has his own iPhone OS 3.0 Wishlist.
My list is pretty simple:
Macenstein asks: What the hell is Best Buy selling? I'm pretty sure that when Apple released the new Mac Mini they didn't stretch it out like that. Really, I have no idea what they were thinking, other than maybe people expect a 2.0 product to be bigger?
BMW DesignWorksUSA designs ultimate gaming rig. Hot.
Paul Thurrott weighs in on the changes from Windows 7 Beta to RC. Not all good news IHHO.
iPod Shuffle Unboxing and Hands On from the Apple Blog.
Dystopia: The Gorgeous Terror of Global Warming
Dystopia: The Gorgeous Terror of Global Warming
Boing Boing Gadgets reviews the iPod Shuffle (Third Generation).
[...] The new iPod Shuffle is Apple's worst product in years. Its headphone module-interface fails because it's really about physical appearances: it does nothing to improve the experience of listening to music, and is in fact irritating until you've learned how to use it.
Cool visual look at Operating System Interface Design Between 1981-2009. From Xerox PARC to Vista.
DIY: Star Trek iPhone Is the Definitive iPhone (If You Are Picard or Jason Chen)
Watchmen: Watchmen Screenwriter Begs You To See It Again
Watchmen Screenwriter Begs You To See It Again
Two bits of mac news for the price of one!
xkcd - A Webcomic - Not Enough Work
The title of OH… MY… GOD should tell you something about how Woz looked on DWTS last night. Still, I must say that the geek troops should rally to keep our man in!
How to Delete Accounts from Any Website - Features by PC Magazine
Nunchuck Fail on Fail Blog. Hilarious, even though you know exactly how it will end, and it does, badly.
This brought back memories of spending most of highschool watching endless reruns of Red Dwarf. Smeg.
Cracked has their 7 Special Effects The Stars Want to Keep Secret.
The trippiest set of Paper Sculptures you'll see today.
Great find via RSS.... a flickr account where the owner has a pet AT-AT. Well, picture of one as it if were a pet anyway :)
Best Music Albums Ever, well, at least according to Esquire. Thankfully not an album-a-page, but it's flash, with ads inserted randomly. Interesting list though.
To get around the ads every 5 albums, hit the back button (the one in the page, not the browser back button) and then forward again, and you can continue.
Sadly the list is a FAIL as there's no inclusion of any U2 (ie: Achtung Baby or Joshua Tree). At least they included a Johnny Cash album, which got a tiny bit of cred back....
Ok, Now I feel old...*Hides his Tapes...
Happy 30th Birthday, Compact Disc!
Great video from some guys (probably a viral video from Samgsung to be honest), who got to play with a boxful of Samsung SSD Awesomeness. SSD = Solid State Drive of course. All I can say is "me want".
DIY: Retr0Bright Restores Yellowed Vintage Plastic to Factory Fresh
Retr0Bright Restores Yellowed Vintage Plastic to Factory Fresh
Modern Fossils: The Fossil Record Now Includes Outdated Personal Electronics
The Fossil Record Now Includes Outdated Personal Electronics
Confessions of an Apple Store Employee has some insight into how things work inside the Apple stores from a former employee.
Adam Savage, or MythBusters fame, will answer reddit.com questions.
Via my buddy Fozbaca is a very cool bookmarket system called Readability.
The concept is super-simple, setup how you want to read things (font size, style, margins), and then when you go to a page that's filled with crap that interferes with the content (ie: 99% of the webpages out there, except UFies.org of course), hit the bookmarklet button, and boom, perfectly readable with no crap around it. Pretty awesome stuff. Another blog entry about it here on if:else.
Battlestar Galactica-ish: The Battlestar Galactica Reboot You Didn't See
Concepts: The Holodeck, As Re-Imagined in 2009
Featured Desktop: The Notebook Desktop
Yesterday evening, the UFies server expanded to two servers (yay) which will give us a server to use for the database and for backup. However at the same time (well, a couple of hours later) the main server suffered some stunningly catastrophic hardware failures. The RAID array lost 2 of the 4 drives, and the hot spare never worked. Luckily there is a nightly backup which Fred and I managed to get access to (after some heart stopping "no such device" messages).
I spent today and this evening transferring over settings and data and reconfiguring all the old system stuff (from a gentoo install) to work on the new server (a ubuntu install).
Probably 90% of that is done now. User accounts have been moved over, along with data, mail appears to be flowing, DNS, ftp and some websites are back online. Please email me at alan@ufies.org if you see oddness with your stuff.
Sadly not the controlled transfer from old server to new we were wanting, and no chance to clean up dead user accounts and websites, but better (way better) than losing everything (again).
Remember folks, backup regularily!
Things still needing to be fixed:
