10 Mac applications that promise to improve your productivity. Cool.
This is interesting, a pre without the hard keyboard.
Too bad Palm carrier locks/sells soul, I'd love to have one. Gizmodo - Palm to Release Second Smaller, Pre-Like Smartphone With WebOS This Year - Mini pre
Head about Runes of Magic on the Totally Rad Show. Basically it's a free version of World of Warcraft. No monthly fees, nothing to pay to buy the game. Sounds very cool... anyone have any experience in this?
New Transformers 2 Trailer Leaked. Looks good (though the quality sucks).
Links this morning from Aryk and Len.
Into the lifehack, GTD, productivity lifestyle? Check out Productive! Magazine. Free PDF downloads which not a huge amount of ads in amidst the content. Worth checking out for sure.
The 2007 Microsoft Office Suite Service Pack 2 is alive and ready for download. Boosting lots of bug fixes and some hefty performance improvements (so claimed, I haven't verified anything yet myself), sounds like a must-have (290mb) download. If it's not up on Windows Update for you the link above should do for you.
The renamed Firefox 3.1 beta is now Firefox 3.5 Beta 4 and is Available for Download. Lifehacker has links to where other details are. Release notes are here.
Slashdot discussion on Windows 7's Virtual XP Mode and what sort of pain it could cause IT professionals. Personally I think it's a neat idea to allow a transition for users, as well as a nice bridge for people who are still on XP and not yet up to Vista who may begin to feel really left behind when 7 hits sometime (this year maybe?).
That said, I don't have to support windows machines myself, much less windows machines with 2 copies of windows running on every desktop!
The Apple Blog has a neat article onPhoto Editing Options When iPhoto Isn’t Enough. Basically non-photoshop solutions for the mac for when you need something a bit above what iPhoto gives you. Personally I'm a lightroom guy, though I will whip out the GIMP when I need something quick and dirty.
‘Star Wars’ Retro-Inspired Travel Posters. Awesome, I need these in my home :)
The price of this one caught my eye, very reasonable.
Gizmodo - Seagate Replica Is Time Machine for Windows PCs - Seagate replica
Opera celebrates its 15th birthday! You can also head to this link for a special page :)
While I'm not an opera fanatic, or even a constant user, I'm impressed with how they keep on coming out with things ahead of the curve, and it's always a browser that I have on my system as a "second" for testing or use an an alternate lightweight platform.
Good job opera guys!
Interesting article popped up on Gizmodo about the Alpha 680, The First Android Netbook Priced At $250. The OS is very limited of course, and it's typical netbook (1G of storage, etc), but for only $250, it seems to be a very attractive price if the hardware is decent enough!
MacAppStorm has a good selection of 34 Stunning & Free Mac Screensavers for OS X (lots have windows versions as well though).
Gizmodo has pictures and video of the 36-Foot Saturn V Model Launch. Very cool looking.
Paul Thurrott shows one of the fun applications of the newly announced Windows 7 "xp mode" - IE 6 and IE 8 side-by-side. This will definitely be an interesting feature for people doing web development. I think you can do it now with VMware and it's "Unity" mode (which allows virtualized apps to run as native windows within the host OS.
Hancock Wildlife has a live streaming webcam of an eagles next, with fairly newly hatched babies.
The Ruby on Rails hosting/provisioning service Heroku has just announced their Commercial Launch. The free service will remain, with users getting a "dyno" and database as they have been (and that system is still perfectly adequate for hosting smaller apps.
Package: The Orange Box is on for $10 this weekend. Savings of almost $75 over buying all the games separately, if you're into Half Life2 and Portal type games.
Via reddit comes a set of 25 images entitled Brutus and Me, a photographic story of a man and his bear, Brutus, a bear raised from a cub. My favorite pics are six and nine for their pure surrealness :)
Of course, I really expected to read something about the man mysteriously being mauled and eaten! Sounds like this story has a happy ending though.
I don't have a Tivo, but those who do who haven't already done this might appreciate the 30-Second DVR Tweak to Speed Up Commercial Skipping. Thank goodness the MythTV has this all built in from the get-go :)
Press Release: Canonical Announces Availability of Ubuntu 9.04 Desktop Edition. Lots of tweaks here and there, press release has all the details.
Congrats to the Ubuntu team, as well as the OO.o, and GNOME teams and everyone else whose contributions made this new release possible.
Looking forward to seeing how much of a big deal it will be to upgrade the new UFies server to it :)
Sent to me from Darren is a great quote, found here in the comments of a Chuck story on io9 from "LittleBigSteve".
Smart people know Jobs and Gates are BOTH evil. Just different flavors. Microsoft is vanilla evil, and Apple is chocolate evil. Rich, CREAMY chocolate! But still evil.
That's awesome.
Fon releases open meshing WiFi router via Boing Boing.
You can plug it into Ethernet or a 3G dongle. Share your bandwidth with any other router in range that implements OLPC's mesh-networking standard. The Open WRT software is designed to run on just about any hardware so you do not actually have to buy a Fonera to join the fun.
Hit the site for more details.
Let the movie tie ins begin! The Iconfactory presents Star Trek icons and wallpaper, for mac, windows, and mobile.
The Chrome Blog announced that they've taken the "3D Browser" idea they put out for april fools, and made it real. Google, is there anything you can't do? Anyway, the 3D graphics in the browser is here, along with demo plugins and a samples page.
Chris Blizzard weighs in as well.
Holy crap, this has been a long time coming! The Battlefield 2 v1.50 Beta Patch has been released. I still play BF2 every once and a while, and still enjoy it, other than a few bits that it looks like this patch fixes. Looking forward to playing it again tonight!
It's a big patch though, 1.3G.
Two new services were announced by google today. First check out Google Similar Images (which is pretty much what it sounds like) and then Google News Timeline, which displays google news in a... uhm... timeline, to help you visualize how news has happened in relation to the rest of the day/week.
Tweetie for Mac OS X was released last night, and the twitter app has gained a lot of buzz. It's sexy, sleek, and while some of the UI elements are a bit odd (for me) it's definitely a good contender for twittering from your mac desktop. Makes me think I should check out the tweetie for iPhone (I use TwitterFon right now).
Wanna see a video of a guy jumping out of a plane with no parachute on and surviving? There you go. Holy crap the size of that guys balls must make it really hard to walk!
Stack Overflow asks What is the best comment in source code you have ever encountered? and the masses respond with some absolute gems. IE:
//When I wrote this, only God and I understood what I was doing
//Now, God only knows
Thankfully my favorite ("drunk, fix later") is in there too.
Dork Yearbook is a tumble blog of old pictures of nerds and geeks (and dorks) in their youth. Some of these are horrifyingly familiar.
For future reference, the list of Amazon.com Free MP3 Downloads.
The Book of Ruby has been completed. 425 pages, 300 Sample Programs, free for download on the linked page.
Very hard to describe video done in the stopped-action motif that a couple of the Halo 3 videos was done in. Very cool. Go watch it now.
So along with the "macs are too cool for me" ads, every once and a while you find a gem like this article from Computer World entitled Living on Air: A Windows guru spends two weeks with a Mac
For PC users, Mac OS X takes some getting used to, but once I did, I found it a more elegant, polished piece of work than Windows (either XP or Vista). With so many nice little touches, it seemed as if I was finding a new one every day.
Essentially it's a story of Windows Boy meets MacBook Air, spends 2 weeks getting to know her, finding out that while she's a bit more pricey than some of the other girls on the block, she's worth it. Then after two weeks Windows Boy wants to keep her. Or something like that.
Could be all BS though.... and in a week some article will come out about how the author Preston Gralla was really a mac-sympathizer all along or something, who knows.
Next time you think your camera is too heavy, or you don't want to go on your photo walk with that heavy 18-250 zoom lens, check this monster out and count yourself lucky. Course, a 600mm/2.8 might not be a good walkaround lens come to think of it....
Back In Time is a time-machine like interface and system for Linux, with KDE and GNOME frontends.
Saw this morning on Lifehacker, Gordon Ramsay Demonstrates the Perfect Scrambled Egg Breakfast. Tasty looking, except for the mushrooms of course!
Founds some *Exclusive* Transformers Revenge of the Fallen Footage on Vimeo. I gotta say, it looks really good.
Creativity stuff all around us. Amazing stuff. Anyone want to send me one of each of these?
Scenes from the zoo from Aryk. Great cute pics for you if it's Friday and you just got knocked in the gibblies by the economy!
Business Week goes over the Microsoft "Laptop Hunter" ads and asks What You Don't Get for $699. Blah blah point of view blah blah fanboys blah blah of course :) I don't buy the "you are paying more for security" argument... AVG is free and most of the software I use is free anyway. That said, looking forward to Windows 7, things like burning ISOs on the desktop is a very nice feature (that I've had in Linux for the last 10 years or so... :)
The Future of Firefox looks pretty cool. Lots of video and mockups (more here showing how the ideas of the ubiquity plugin are going to be integrated into the awesomebar (maybe), and how tabs may not be in the Firefox of the future (maybe). Cool to see how the Mozilla guys are looking at the future though.
A fascinating look Inside the precision hack that the 4chan folks set up a bit ago. Details and history in the link.
OK, it took me a bit to get this, but when I did, it was the damn funniest thing ever. Check out Pulp Browsers. I won't give you any hints if you don't get it though :) (unless you ask really nicely).
Well, it's not the full new ISS module, but Colbert will get NASA Treadmill Named After Him. For US people you can watch the segment over here.
10 Cool Things We’ll Be Able To Do Once IE6 Is Dead. Granted, 99% of the things on the list are ones that I have no idea what they mean, but the web-designer folks may appreciate this one :)
Visualising Sorting Algorithms. For all your nerdy needs :)
Looks like 10 years later, the real story behind Columbine is coming out. Turns out pretty much everything you know, thought you know, and were told about it was mostly wrong. Hell, complete books were written about incidents that simply never happened. Isn't modern communications and information dissemination awesome? :)
Via Darren, a not-quite-official entry into the list of Microsoft "Laptop Hunters" series of ads: Homeless Frank.
Oh go on, laugh, it's funny :P
Via Aryk.... Man Builds Chair That Tweets His Farts, Single-Handedly Justifying Twitter's Existence. Not much more to say, other than I want my couch to do this. It would certainly make my twitter stream more interesting!
Speaking of twitter and trends, found out about Susan Boyle on Britains Got Talent 2009. It's reminiscent of Paul Potts (the opera guy) from a couple of years ago. It's one of those unexpected things that it is pretty awesome to watch/listen to, if for nothing more than to see the look on the judges faces just before she starts singing... the looks of "what is this old bat doing" followed quickly by "WTF she's awesome" is great to see.
I've been getting to be more and more of an Evernote fan lately, and have started to grok what twitter is really all about (other than twitter spam of course), so I was pretty interested to see how Evernote Twitter integration had been implemented over on the Evernote Blog.
Basically you do a dance following the @myen user on twitter (click link for instructions), and when you're set up you can simply mention @myen in a "tweet" and that note will automatically show up in your evernote inbox. Very cool!
As an aside, you can search for #EvernoteCrazy in the twitter to see what other folks are using it for.
Looks like there'll be some good stuff from iD Software at E3 this year. They gave this tease regarding Doom 4 though:
Doom 4 is "not a sequel to Doom 3, but it's not a reboot either," the CEO teased further, entirely ignoring the bit where GameSpot asked if it was a prequel. "It's a little bit different than those, and if I told you why, I would get my ass kicked."
25 (Most Wanted) Tips For iPhone 3G has some nice stuff, even that I hadn't heard before.
Via someone on Twitter is a nice page of 22 Firefox Extensions to Turn Gmail into a Powerhouse of Productivity and Manageability. Some look useful, some look really useful, and some are just kinda "meh".
Funniest LOLCat evah? I haz found it! Has awesomeness on many levels.
Shacknews has some very sexy BioShock 2 Exclusive Gameplay footage. Niiiiiice.
Another neat one from OSNews, xPUD: Linux with an XUL Interface, 10 Second Boot Time is a neat idea in terms of doing something different with the Linux UI.
Of course, it looks like a lot of the reduction of boot time is the post-X-starting time, which is really saying that GNOME and KDE do a lot of stuff after they get started up and before the desktop is usable. While I applaud the new UI, I'm wondering if another desktop interface, regardless of how fast starting, is going to be useful if it sacrifices things like session information and other "modern" capabilities. Still, innovation is always a good thing.
Canonical Strikes Back at Microsoft's Linux 'FUD' regarding Linux on netbooks and how (Microsoft claims) that XP is trumping them.
More of a clarification than anything, as with most OS/Phone/Editor/etc religious wars, it's all in the details as to if your "side" wins or loses. In this case the clarification was that people return netbooks of the same build quality an equal amount for windows and linux, vs tons of returns for Linux (which was what was claimed before). IE: people return crappy hardware regardless of the OS on it.
Since the Palm Pre is probably going to be locked up by Sprint a hundred years, this looks like a very good alternative.
Gizmodo - Lenovo's Droolworthy OPhone Gets Handled on Video - Lenovo OPhone
Just tried this out here at work. Works very well. Lifehacker - AutoBrake Automates DVD Ripping - dvd ripping
Looks like a release candidate that is appears to be the near final is out! Lifehacker - Likely Windows 7 Release Candidate (7077) Lands on BitTorrent - Windows 7 Beta
The first comment says it all "Sweet. Now I won't have to wear pants to work. " ... Gizmodo - A Wearable Robot Chariot - Chariot
Sweet. Now I won't have to wear pants to work.
Hows this for dedication.... check out this Russian Wall-E Case Mod. That's an amazing amount of work with an amazing end result (caution, image heavy link).
The Apple Blog has a nice Dev Session on how to create a orientation aware clock. Very nice and easy to follow for those of us completely new to iPhone development.
Great find from Fozbaca, a video from 1993 of A Visit to id Software, with pre-finished Doom and the original iD team. Awesome blast from the past!
Seems the latest beta of the iPhone OS 3.0 has some video recording capabilities revealed, but you have to alter the config to say that the hardware has a video camera. Macenstein asks Will Apple pretend iPhone video recording requires the new iPhone? as there are many jailbroken phones that use video recording just fine. *sighI* another case of Apple deciding what we can do with the hardware that the user (theoretically) owns?
iTunes drops all DRM, adds variable pricing according to many blogs around. A few posts I've noted say it's not that easy (ie: impossible) to find songs at the "low" price point of $0.69. The lack of DRM is nice though.
Engadget has some info as Nikon readies entry-level DSLR with articulating display. Originally via the great 1001 noisy cameras blog. Interesting that the things that people have been saying should come to DSLRs from the P&S world (such as video, and swively LCDs) are finally making it.
Guess we'll find out if the rumored April 14th release is true soon enough.
Over the weekend there was another Microsoft ad released. Again it focuses on the differences between Mac and PC pricing. I could go into how this is really missing the point (in a way) and how the ads are both good and reeking of desparation, but Jeff over at the iPhone development blog has some
good thoughts on it. To quote:
Whatever the actual numbers, there's not even a close second to Microsoft in this market. Apple is a very distant second, Linux (if you lump all the distros together) is an even more distant third. There are few industries where a company enjoys this kind of lead.But, Microsoft is suffering an identity crisis because the world of computers has fractured into many components, of which the general purpose computer (laptop/desktop) is just one piece, and Microsoft has had a very hard time repeating their dominance in other sectors.
I guess my main objection or eye-roll to these ads are that people already know (at least I think they do) that Macs are more expensive. I don't see honda putting out ads about how if you went looking for a BMW under $20k you wouldn't be able to find anything, but you could get.... drum roll a brand new Civic! I've used and bought both (a) Mac and (multiple) PC laptops, and while the bang-for-buck and "apple tax" is kinda there (many people with more time on their hands than I have gone though component by component and no doubt proved that the Mac is on par price wise for the equivalently outfitted PC laptop already), the feel and quality and "vibe" of a MacBook is much higher than the $500 or $1000 laptop. Specs be damned, the light, thin, sexy aluminum case with less USB ports trumps 99% of the PC laptops that this ad portrays. Course, I'm sure I could be accused of being a fanboy :)
How's this for an awesome hack by Ben Heck. Putting an original C64 into a laptop case. Via Aryk's IM :)
A cool DropBox hack to let you get your IP and control Your Home Computer From Anywhere With VNC.
Who's Wearing the Mask? Cool article On the Nature of Secret Identities at io9.
Some cool videos of Battlestar Galactica Composer Bear McCreary Scoring Capcom's Dark Void.
Nice article on Joshua's blog on url shorteners.
The worst problem is that shortening services add another layer of indirection to an already creaky system. A regular hyperlink implicates a browser, its DNS resolver, the publisher's DNS server, and the publisher's website. With a shortening service, you're adding something that acts like a third DNS resolver, except one that is assembled out of unvetted PHP and MySQL...
Joshua goes through a bunch of other issues that exists, both for the user and the publisher of the page that you're going to. Well worth a read.
Coding Horror: The Eight Levels of Programmers. Funny cause it's true.
Adam Savage Answers Your Questions over at reddit's blog.
Remeber that cool mod that surfaced a couple of weeks ago where a guy hacked a macbook to replace the apple logo on the back with a full LCD screen? Well, if you're wanting to try it out yourself, a tutorial has been posted with parts needed, etc. This isn't a simple change mind you, and it's very possible you're going to void your warranty ;)
In more Red Dwarf news, Dave Announces Broadcast Schedule and part of it is April 10 having the first new episode, Back To Earth - Part One.
Very exciting.
Also the Doctor Who Easter Special will be coming up at the same time.
Via reddit. Seems the folks producing the E Text Editor (think TextMate for Windows) are Releasing the Source on github. This is cool, as TextMate is the de-facto programming editor for Mac, and it'll be cool to see something with it's power (and from the screencast on the main page, pretty much the same capabilities) out there for Linux and Mac as well. From the article it doesn't look like it's purely an open source license (a la GPL and friends), but it's a great start, and I'm excited to see what happens with this.
io9 - New Cylon Concept Art Unveiled - Armatron
New Cylon Concept Art Unveiled
io9 - Ron Moore Throws Out Another Alternate BSG Ending - Battlestar Galactica
io9 - Behold The Next Doctor Who's Real Monster! - doctor who
io9 - Behold The Next Doctor Who's Real Monster! - doctor who
Gizmodo - Palm Pre's First Apps Hands On: Seriously Good-Looking Programs - Palm Pre Apps
I have to admit the actress's voice is a tad creepy :) Gizmodo - New Palm Pre Promo Vid Shows Fandango, Pandora Apps; Multitasking Galore - Palm pre video
demo video of the Pre in action
Where Gadgets Go to Die: Facility Strips, Rips and Recycles
Where Gadgets Go to Die: Facility Strips, Rips and Recycles
Video of a Palm Pre 3rd Party App Video Walkthrough.
Digg released their new DiggBar product, another URL shortening service which additionally gives you "digg stuff" in a toolbar when you go to the page with the short URL form.
Likes for me is as a digg user, it might make things more convenient. Dis-likes is that it keeps you "in" digg when you might not want it. URL shortening services should (IMHO) just do that, shorten the URL for easier twittering or facebooking, and when you click on the short URL, it takes you to the normal URL. This keeps you in the short URL and puts extra stuff on top that you might object to or you might not.
Interesting to see if the size of digg will give this more traction than the tons of other short-url services out there.
Nice post on the google chrome blog about how the Google Chrome 3D april fools joke came about and was brought to fruition :) Those google guys have a lot of fun, that's for sure.
The Pidgin multi-provider instant messanger now has (as the blog post is titled) Voice! Video!. Great features to have, wonder if it'll work properly with other services that use voice and video (ie: google talk).
Great info in the form of 50 Totally Free Lessons in Graphic Design Theory via Curtis.
Vincent Untz sent a message to the Gnome Devel list this morning regarding Planning for GNOME 3.0. Citing the belief of the community that GNOME Is lacking excitement and vision, some of the core release team members started planning for the (mythical) GNOME 3.0. This is basically a call to arms for discussion about what 3.0 will be all about. Well done I say, especially since GNOME 2.0 was released June 2002.
His follow up email has more details from the different areas he hits in his initial mail.
So maybe all the conficker hand-wringing wasn't an overreaction.... seem according to the twitters (11) register.com's dns servers are down due to a massive DOS attack.
So if you're website is down (like our companies is) or you're wondering why half the internet is dark, this may be the reason :) Some people are reporting it's back, but with sporadic response from their DNS servers.
Funny or Not? April Fools' Day Pranks Roundup. Have I mentioned I can't wait for this day to be over?
Also a 2009 roundup.
Here's an animated gif of an awesome baby trick. Totally going to teach my kids this (if I were to have any)!
