A fast and sexy program launcher called Synapse Launcher is out. This is a re-do of Gnome-Do, or if you're more familiar with the Windows or Mac world, think QuickSilver, LaunchBar or Launchy. Looks good for sure, looking forward to playing with this one.
RubyMine 3.0 has been Released, giving full support for Rails 3 in a pretty sexy IDE.
The coolest Firefox addon for web development has released version 1.6.0.
Nice look at a comparision of customer ratings. Sure it's showing how Apple is magical and kicks everyone's ass, but looking at the chart as a whole, it's a decent resource (well, take the one image for what you will) if you're looking for a new computer.
And the most original use of google translate goes to..... the Web beat box tool via 9-5 mac.
Flock is firing back against the new guy RockMelt with the release of Flock 3.5. It updates the base software to Chromium 7 and offers various other tweaks.
Here are another couple of links with talk about the new 3.5 upgrade.
Cool list of built in TextMate shortcuts for those of you of the OS/X persuasion who are into coding or anything that involves text editing and textmate.
It's 151 pages, and the HTML link is currently broken, but if you're interested in learning perl (as you all should be), check out Impatient Perl, a free eBook by Greg London.
3D trees are only one of the highlights of the new Google Earth 6 beta for Mac.
Hopefully my friends in the US had time to sit, relax, and be thankful they weren't killed or maimed by the crazies shown in the video embedded below.
Seriously, I know stuff's on sale, but this is why the world thinks you're crazy you know?
Happy (slightly late) Thanksgiving!
Also as noted in the reddit comments not all the video is from American stores.... but it's more interesting to say it is :)
Console players anxiously waiting for the latest and greatest will want to check out the Gran Turismo 5 Review over at IGN.
Well, not the same as the iPhone unlocker, but ChevronWP7, the Windows Phone 7 unlocker will let you sideload applications.
A bit old, and yes, it's an ad for booze, but this short movie called Walking with Johnnie is pretty awesome. Thanks to Robert for emailing this to me.
And in case you don't notice it, it's a single friggin take.
You can get a bit of extra space in your DropBox via their free promo, via this lifehacker article. Only downside is you to get the final 128mb you whore out your FB and twitter account for them, and it's not 100% obvious from the page that's what you're doing (though after you connect your facebook and twitter account to dropbox, and then 'updating' on why you love dropbox it should be pretty obvious).
Of course, you can be a bit evil and connect the accounts and then revoke access before posting the 'update'. That said, I love dropbox and promote them when I can because it's an awesome free service (I just don't like companies spamming my social feeds).
Any movie with a name like "Source Code" I have to watch. Sadly the trailer shows it doesn't have anything to do with actual source code, but the movie looks interesting nonetheless.
Great video find over at the Secret Diary of Steve Jobs - In case you are traveling this week.
Related is this article in case you were thinking that the body scanners weren't all that bad. Glad I live in Canada and right now can't afford to fly anywhere, much less in or out of the US.
Got an iPhone 3G and wondering if you should move to iOS 4.2 after the #fail that was iOS 4 on the device? Gigaom has some iPhone 3G and iOS 4 benchmarks that might help you make the decision.
Great video of Adam Savage (of MythBusters' fame) at Wootstock Seattle saying "WTF, TSA?"
Apparently Opera goes to eleven with the new beta version of Opera 11, tab stacking (a bit like the new tab management in Firefox 4 beta), visual mouse gestures and more extensions. Worth a look for sure, though as with all version of opera, while I really love the idea of it, I just can't get myself to keep on using Opera, no matter how cool the version, for more than quick one-off tasks.
Via slashdot is a cool article on The Ones That Didn't Make It: Windows' Failed Rivals. I remember OS/2 of course (and bought into that while waiting for the promised Windows95 release), but I do also remember GEM as a viable alternative windowing system way back in the day. I also cut my computer setup teeth on DESQview and QEMM. Ah, the memories.....
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Awesome Buying advice from Andy I.
Title pretty much says it all. The latest version of iOS for iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad will be released today, and it will be including a free version of 'Find My iPhone', previously only available as part of the $99/year Mobile Me. They of course waited until my account just renewed before releasing this of course, because find my iPhone is one of the only 2 reasons that I pay the Apple Tax for this service.
If you don't know what's coming in 4.2, well, google is your friend here, search it. Course, the short answer is feature parity for iPad with iPhone, plus a few minor little things. The press release with details is here (thanks @johnkoetsier).
Not really a reflection of the Samsung Tab itself I think, but this story of really screwed pricing and policy with the Tab is more a reflection of what costs you're going to have to go through with any wireless carrier buying something "cheap".
First off, if you purchase from Verizon Wireless and decide that the Tab is not for you, you will be hit with a $70 restocking fee. If that's not bad enough, if you return it after three days of having purchased it, you will not be credited back your $35 activation fee either. Oh, did I forget to tell you about that fee? Yeah, in addition to the price of acquisition, Verizon also throws a $35 activation fee onto your first bill.
After you read the article maybe you wont' scoff so much when you hear that Apple or whoever says they've got some great amazing magical deal with a wireless carrier (or you'll grok why you're paying $800 for an unlocked iPhone or $700 for a tablet (or more).
Aryk pointed me to the "The Green Lantern" Theatrical Trailer. Definitely going to be interesting!
Thanks to my buddy Cat5 for passing on this Scale of Universe interactive site, very sexy smooth flash app.
Movies: Cowboys & Aliens (2011) including HD links.
Personal editorial: "OMFG Wow"
Other than the two different versions at different prices ($0.99 for the normal version and $1.99 for the HD version with high res graphics for iPhone 4 and iPad devices), I'm happy to hear that id Software's 'RAGE' is out for iOS, combining three things I love, iPhone gaming, awesome graphics, and First Person Shooters.
Seems this whole "go on a trip get groped at the airport" backlash is gaining some momentum. The latest has been from Penn of Penn & Teller and his story of calling the real cops on the screener for grabbing his crotch.
I say, "I can take an early morning flight or a private jet. " The cop says, "If I have a citizen who is saying he was assaulted, you can't just send me away."
Good stuff. Interesting to hear if this goes anywhere, or if the "but we're doing it to prevent [insert horrible images from 9/11] this from happening" will get all the sheeple back in line.
Sorry 3rd party apps, it's been nice, but now that the official twitter iphone app has been updated to 3.2 with push notifications, I'll be removing you.
A great article on what Facebook did recently with their big messaging announcement, and how they could take it in a different direction. Honestly I don't totally understand what FB messaging will be until I see it, but this article gives a pretty good idea what it's not.
9-5 Mac has a video of a iPad-Playbook comparison from Blackberry (so you can take the results for what you want). It's cool to see that the Playbook actually exists in real life.
If you're looking for a ebook reader and feeling constrained by having only the Kindle and iPad as choices, you will want to look at the Nook Color review over at Engadget.
I hate to say it, but this image pretty much sums up my thoughts on the Announcement by Apple that The Beatles are on iTunes. Don't get me wrong, I am a big Beatles fan, but I think that anyone who is a fan will have had their music ripped or in digital format already, and hasn't been waiting for the last 50 years for Apple to make it available. However, it's nice to finally have that loose end tied up :)
Also nice to see that they have put a couple of the concerts online, it's cool to see the boys from Liverpool play.
The morning is starting out interesting, with a Live From Facebook's Massive Messaging Announcement blog, where Facebook is redoing their messaging system to what looks like a unified sms/mail/messaging system.
Thanks to Tim from the FV.rb group for passing on this stackoverflow page of What is the best commit message you have ever encountered? Some real gems in there.
Also http://whatthecommit.com/
Great look at What to expect from iOS 4.2 on iPhone for everyone who is tired of hearing about what it's going to give you on the iPad, but want to know what shiny awesome stuff you'll get on your iPhone.
Some mad linux hacker got a Kinect open source driver working only after a few hours in a completely clean-room manner. Awesome. Wonder what stuff people are going to use this for. Home security? Linux desktop face recognition logins? Skynet?
OMG the latest oatmeal cartoon - Why I don't cook at home - could not be more true. This is the exact reason (well, mostly anyway) why I describe to people that I didn't learn to cook.
For anyone who was waiting for this, it's out. Fanboy as I am though, absolutely nothing in the list of changes excites me in the least. It's a minor-minor point release with bug fixes. Meh.
Thanks to Aryk for passing on a trailer for an upcoming iPhone game Infinity Blade. "Yowza" is right.
Google Instant Previews is a new feature that will allow you to view the page you are looking for in a small preview window on the main google page. You can read more about it here. I'm not sure how new this is, there's nothing on the official google blog or anything, but I definitely haven't seen it before.
My first thought was that this might let you view porn in private like you can with Bing :)
Via @johnkoetsier.
A nice walkthrough for those of you with iPads (lucky buggers) wanting to know what you get with iOS 4.2.
Yup, today was the day, Call of Duty - Black Ops was released last night at midnight, and if you were one of the crazies lining up, you may have a couple of hours of trigger time into it already. If you're wondering if it's worth it, you probably want to check out the Shacknews Call of Duty: Black Ops Review.
I'm not sure if I'd be brave enough to do this, but it's nice to know that you can Install Android on iPhone using Bootlace through Cydia.
The latest In pictures feature has some pretty great shots.
MacX Video Converter Pro, a mac/windows converter for video format to video format is free for another 7 days or so.
Looks like if you use iOS 4.2 on a iPhone 3G the performance suck goes way down from what it was when 4.0 was released. Good news for the people with the 3G who made the mistake of upgrading. Soon you'll no longer have to hit "no" to the prompt to upgrade :)
Wow, this is awesome.... a Fake Arnold sings in 'Commando, the Musical'. I'd watch that.
Not much to say really.... this page details the implementation of the auto-buy script described in this XKCD cartoon. Reddit, as usual, has the comments here.
Hot on the heals of their latest update to the Windows desktop client, they hit version 2.0 for Android. So if you're so inclined, check it out, looks good!
I heard about RockMelt via a post from Daring Fireball lamenting that this took the clean UI of Chrome and cluttered it up. However, if you are looking for a "everything in one place" browser for your social "stuff" (say, you're at work and want to keep an eye on Facebook, Twitter, etc while browsing and without having 3 or 4 apps running to keep things on the DL...), it's got potential. This is similar to Flock, but seems to put more emphasis on sharing instead of just consuming. I think :)
Sadly RockMelt isn't available yet, you have to connect them to your Facebook account to reserve a spot in the beta. If you want some more in depth stuff, check up the
Scobleizer interview where Robert goes in depth with the founders.
Cool stuff, Gruber links a couple of videos (second one is better) of Looking at Kinect Using IR Goggles to see the way it does it's motion detection.
While the iPhone auto-correct is pretty good most of the time, the site of Funny iPhone Fails and Autocorrect Horror Stories illustrates the times when it fails. Hard.
Cool review of Microsoft Kinect on Ars Technica, found over through a related reddit story.
Personally I'm not a console gamer, so outside of either an epic fail, and/or playing with it and seeing it be awesome, I'm kinda meh on the whole thing. It is however, a brand new paradigm in gaming (in theory anyway), so it'll be something to keep an eye on. Even if it is an epic fail, I seem to remember the first version of the iPod getting pretty "meh" reactions too, and we can see how that turned out.
The super-bonus is you get to see some videos of it all in action, and some (the aquarium game in particular) look really... uhm, how to say this nicest.... "lame". We'll see I guess.
Kudos to Grizzled for sending this great video (well, audio) of AC/DC's Thunderstruck on the bagpipes:
Awesome compilation of Don Draper Saying "What?" over and over again. Only truly awesome if you're a Mad Men fan.
Reminds me a bit of the fuck fuck fuck scene from The Wire (NSFW language obviously).
I wish I had noticed earlier, but as Illiad writes, the new Remembrance/Veterans Day arc has started, which means no repeat 'toons for a while, only new (and awesome I'm sure) content. Glad he's back up and at it! :)
Cool... Phone Disk, a desktop app to let you mount and browse your iPhone from your computer is free till December 1st.
iPad, iTouch or iPhone Disk Mode is made easy with Phone Disk. Using your standard USB cable, this tiny program runs in the menu bar or system tray of your Mac or PC. When it finds an iPod Touch or iPhone it seamlessly mounts it to your file system so you can directly access its files using Windows Explorer, Finder and every other program.
I haven't quite figured out how to use it, but The app sits in your tray and will let you browse the iPhone when it's connected to the computer, and hey, free is free!
Hat tip iPhone in Canada.
Sophos offers Free Anti-Virus Home Edition for Mac. Some would say that this isn't needed, or to quote one blog, is "giving away free bicycles to fish", but hey, it's free, and if you are a mac user and do occasionally poke your head in corners of the net requiring you to run software you would rather not, but still "have" to, this is a nice little backup for you to warez run them with confidence.
I know I'm a bit late to the party (been a long last few days) but it sounds like the excellent service drop.io is shutting down. According to the Drop.io Blog they were bought by Facebook and are shutting their doors in a staged way:
As of this week, people will no longer be able to create new free drops, but you'll be able to download content from existing drops until Dec. 15. Paid user accounts will still be available through Dec. 15 and paid users will be able to continue using the service normally. After Dec. 15, paid accounts will be discontinued as well.
While I'm happy for the guys over there for selling the company, I'm sad that the service will be gone. I heard on today's TWiT podcast that they were basically bought for one guy, and this means that the group of people that filled the niche so well aren't going to be innovating anymore on this project. Hopefully though they'll continue on to new and interesting projects!
Coo viral video from T-Mobile called The T-Mobile Welcome Back.
It's another one of those "people start singing / dancing in a public place" things, still cool though. Thanks @danaepp for pointing to it.
