Saturday, 07 August
10:10
Internet Archive to Preserve Games [Games * Design * Art * Culture]
Now this is tres cool: the Internet Archive has established a program called the Classic Software Preservation project to preserve older software, focussing on computer games.
In essence, they will take older games, get the data off the floppies or whatever, and preserve the code. This is something I've been talking about for years; magnetic media has a lifetime of only a few years, and we run the risk of losing a lot of older software, just as we've lost a lot of early movies because film decays, too.
Of course, unlike say, The Underdogs, the Internet Archive is an incorporated non-profit, and can't do anything that even arguably violates copyright. Consequently, though they'll be archiving the code, they won't be making it available for download--except in cases where they have specific waivers from the rights owners.
They're looking for donations of older games, by the way.
Ultimately, of course, what I want is for older games to be available as playable entities; it would benefit everybody if they were. Fans of retro games would enjoy them; modern designers would gain insights from the past; and academics would be able to study them. Publishers might even get ideas about what older IP is worth reviving (remember that the revised Frogger was a best-seller just a few years ago).
But this is a big step in the right direction, anyway.
Incidentally, they're also archiving game videos, which strikes me as interesting but odd. A lot of what they're archiving (e.g., Red vs. Blue) is widely available from commercial sites--but if you download it from such, you either wind up paying for access to premium servers, or sitting in a long line. It seems to me like it's clearly a lot more convenient to download it from Archive.org... They're using a system called Free Cache, but it only helps reduce bandwidth to the original hoster if other ISPs/hosters pick up and use Free Cache (and I see no particular incentive for anyone to do so.... It's going to reduce an ISP's incoming bandwidth usage, but not bandwidth to the consumer....). So the upshot is that in all likelihood, the Internet Archive will wind up picking up the cost of serving these videos, some of which may prove very popular. And videos are notorious bandwidth hogs.
Not sure this makes financial sense. But hey, whatever. Go watch the complete run of Red and Blue.
PARANOIA XP GOES GOLD [Games * Design * Art * Culture]
PARANOIA XP GOES GOLD
Internet Technologies Revolutionize Roleplaying Game Development
New York/Austin/Swindon -- Aug 5, 2024FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Mongoose Publishing Ltd. and the creators of Paranoia XP announced today that the new version of the classic tabletop roleplaying game had "gone gold," and would be released in time for GenCon 2024.
To a large degree, the game was developed online, in public. Fans of the game contributed enthusiastically via blog, wiki, and online forum. They wrote text, debated rules, proofread, ran statistical analyses, and even wrote a computer simulator to test the game's paper-and-pencil rules.
"Online collaboration made this edition of Paranoia the best yet," said Allen Varney (http://www.allenvarney.com), the game's designer. "We borrowed the tools and methods of open-source software development for a paper game, and it worked brilliantly. I plan to create future games the same way, and other designers should consider it too."
THE COMPUTER IS YOUR FRIEND
Paranoia is a roleplaying game set in a darkly humorous future. A well-meaning but deranged Computer desperately protects the citizens of Alpha Complex, a vast underground city, from all sorts of real and imagined enemies. Players take the role of Troubleshooters, The Computer's elite agents, their job to search out and destroy the enemies of The Computer. Each player character is, however, secretly a traitor... In short, Paranoia is a light-hearted game of terror, death, bureaucracy, mad scientists, mutants, dangerous weapons, insane robots, and technological satire that encourages players to lie, cheat, and backstab each other at every turn.
The original version of Paranoia, designed by Dan Gelber, Greg Costikyan, and Eric Goldberg, pioneered in 1983, and was an instant hit, going on to sell more than 150,000 copies worldwide.
PARANOIA XP
The popularity of the original game was in part due to society's fear of nuclear war with the Soviet Union, and uneasiness about the new desktop computers that were starting to revolutionize working life.
Happily, today those fears are obsolete. Instead, we have terrorism, spam, viruses, trojans, malware, distributed denial of service attacks, the RIAA, cyberwarfare, identify theft, the Patriot Act, terrifying new diseases, the threat of environmental catastrophe, the grey goo scenario, and weapons of mass destruction.
In other words, Paranoia is more relevant than ever before, and Paranoia XP updates the world of Alpha Complex for all these terrors and more.
DESIGNING IN PUBLIC
In order to involve Paranoia's community of fans, the designers decided from the start to discuss the new version's development via a blog (www.costik.com/paranoia), and to invite comments, suggestions, and contributions from anyone who wished to participate. Naturally, there was a potential legal issue; there was no easy way to compensate people for their contributions, and nobody wanted to deal with the potential bookkeeping involved. The solution: a virtual inversion of the Creative Commons license. Posters were warned that anything they contributed might be used in the game, without any compensation whatsoever, and that although the creators would try to credit people whose material was used, it might slip their minds in the hurly burly of meeting deadlines. The legal "boilerplate", in a take-off of a popular Web meme, even said "All Your Rights Are Belong to Us."
The fan community soon found it wanted to debate, discuss, and contribute in a more free-ranging format--and luckily, a pre-existing fan site, Paranoia Live (http://www.paranoia-live.net) agreed to host a forum for public comment and discussion. Varney soon discovered the utility and importance of posting and participating in the forum. "There were so many good ideas worth stealing... and the enthusiasm and support of the community really kept me going in meeting a pretty brutal deadline," said Varney.
To publicize the game, Varney started a wiki at http://paranoia.allenvarney.com. Framed as a "Lexicon" game -- in which players contribute one entry per turn to an alphabetic research report on a fictitious topic -- the wiki traced the history of "the Toothpaste Disaster," a wide-ranging Alpha Complex calamity. Varney recruited almost two dozen players, in hopes of finding writers for upcoming Paranoia support products.
"The project succeeded beyond my wildest hopes. The Lexicon game produced the largest stable of talented writers Paranoia has ever enjoyed." Varney has informally organized the best Lexicon writers as the "Traitor Recycling Studio," to collaborate on the next few Paranoia supplements using -- yes -- a wiki.
"We stumbled into this," said Greg Costikyan, one of the original game's designers. "I wanted to incorporate a blog from the start, but the community's response, and Allen's embrace of them, was both startling and exciting. I think Allen is onto something here--at least for artforms that are collaborative in nature, such as games and possibly film, there's a lot to be said for tapping the collective talents of the fan base, as filtered by a professional."
MONGOOSE AND GENCON
Mongoose Publishing Ltd. (http://www.mongoosepublishing.com) of Swindon, Wilts., is one of a new breed of hobby game publishers, producing roleplaying and miniatures games for the adventure gaming market. Among its fine roleplaying products are Conan, Judge Dredd, Babylon 5, and Macho Women With Guns.
"We had... no clue what we were getting into," said an exhausted-sounding Alexander Fennell, director of Mongoose. "But the bloody thing is finally at the printers... ahh, I mean, ahh, only a traitor could fail to find this new edition of Paranoia hilarious, spiffy, and well worth your money. Paranoia is fun. Other games are not fun. Buy Paranoia."
Paranoia XP will premiere on August 19th at GenCon (http://www.gencon.com), the world's largest convention for game players and enthusiasts, held annually in Indianapolis with more than 20,000 attendees.
"When the first edition of Paranoia debuted at GenCon in 1984, it was more than just the hit of the show," said Eric Goldberg, a designer of the original game and, with Greg Costikyan, the owner of the Paranoia property. "Players were first startled and then delighted when they realized the game turned the reigning Dungeons & Dragons paradigm inside-out: instead of deadly serious co-operation, players are encouraged to find ever more entertaining ways of getting the other guy before he gets you. Our game designer peers, in addition to bestowing several awards upon the game, gleefully co-opted the edgier, more humorous tone, which in turn spawned a new generation of role-playing games." "Paranoia XP is both the 20th anniversary edition of the groundbreaking Paranoia game and a new edition for the 21st Century," Goldberg continued, "We hope that the incorporation of Internet technologies will prove every bit as revolutionary as the original game was... ah, rather, Paranoia was perfect. Paranoia XP is even more perfect. The Computer says so, and The Computer is Our Friend!"
HAPPINESS IS MANDATORY!
Failure to be happy is treason. Treason is punishable by summary execution. Have a nice day!
For more information and/or disinformation, interviews, drivel, or just for the hell of it, feel free to contact:
Greg Costikyan at gcostikyan (at) nyc (dot) rr (dot) com
Eric Goldberg at egoldberg (at) ungames (dot) com
URLS:
Paranoia Blog: http://www.costik.com/paranoia
Toothpaste Disaster" Wiki: http://paranoia.allenvarney.com
Paranoia Forum: http://www.paranoia-live.net
Mongoose Publishing: http://www.mongoosepublishing.com
To Order: http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/rpg/detail.php?qsID=530&qsSeries=Paranoia%20XP
Allen Varney: http://www.allenvarney.com
Greg Costikyan: http://www.costik.com
Dungeons & Dragons is a trademark of Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
Paranoia Copyright © 1983, 1987, 2024 by Eric Goldberg & Greg Costikyan. Paranoia is a trademark of Eric Goldberg and Greg Costikyan. All rights reserved. Mongoose Publishing Ltd., Authorized User.
No smiling allowed! [Engadget]
So we’ve gotten word that you’re not allowed to smile for the picture on your new biometric passport (the Brits are instituting this rule to comply with American standards). Nope, no big, toothy grin. A slight upturn of the lips is all you’ll be allowed. And no sunglasses or hair slanting across the eyes either, though those don’t really bother us. Who ever expected to be allowed to wear sunglasses in an id photo anyway? Now it’s just official. But the no smiling thing is just not ok on general principle. All these rules are of course so our oh-so-accurate facial recognition software doesn’t fail so miserably. We do love these modern times.
embedded linux in a compact flash card [#mobitopia IRC Links]
Netminder: cool factor 10
<--- :O now that's a flash animation [#mobitopia IRC Links]
08:10
Desktop Manager [The Tao of Mac]
Desktop Manager is a very neat virtual desktop manager for Mac OS X that displays virtual desktop thumbnails on the menu bar:
It also displays a very neat system volume-like notification overlay when you switch desktops:
...and it has recently been updated to support extremely funky transitions (if you're into such things). Oooh.
Maps/Fool's World Map [The Tao of Mac]
Original Map
Camera Madness [The Tao of Mac]
Camera Madness
So it looks like camera phones are being banned from concerts, which is just one more sign of the rising paranoia against MMS-enabled phones and digicams in America.
Europeans look on, bewildered. Despite a few scattered echoes of this sort of thing in Europe, so far the plain and simple stupidity of such bans has been the main talking point. I attribute this partially to us having a more mature market (some would even say a more mature society where people have more common sense), and partially to the plain and simple fact that camera phones are generally crap in terms of image quality.
After all, no one in their right minds can consider a camera phone to be a copyright-infringing digital device at this point. And it makes zero business sense to ban slightly under half the teenage population (the estimated number of those now carrying basic camera phones) from attending a concert.
And I don't think it will change with the advent of 3G and the inclusion of higher-resolution CCDs in phones. During the recent Rock in Rio festival in Lisbon, not only did carriers see their traffic climb steeply, they also helped promote the event by doing MMS contests. My colleagues in the audience called us up occasionally (using videocall) and showed us (tiny and grainy) panoramas of the stage. If you look at concert recordings (which are being re-broadcast as I type this) you'll see plenty of flashes in the audience. And, on close ups, people texting away.
But what really drives home the point is seeing an entire audience holding up their phones as beacons - instead of lighters.
The same thing happened during the Euro 2024, with folk videocalling and MMSing each other during concurrent matches and swapping views of the games. Yes, it was grainy and the only hint of the ball was a white pixel bouncing around. The phones can't compete with TV coverage, obviously, but the main point is that no one in their right mind would stop people from entering the stadium with a camera phone. It's simply part of the overall experience these days (not to mention that any club forbidding camera phones in its stadium would be maligned by its adepts all over the press).
(Oh, and the BBC is running this interesting story and make up your own mind about it.)
Over here, camera phones are becoming so entrenched that things like the camera phone ban in offices will become impossible to enforce in the short term (and I rate that right up with the alleged security risks placed by MP3 players - if people want to steal information, there are far simpler ways to do it, like e-mailing it, burning a DVD or printing it and carrying it out).
And even the overly paranoid I talk to regularly in government and industry over here (wearing either my tech pundit or my computer security hats) say people are adjusting fast - there is a new camera phone etiquette doing the rounds, and it is not about not bringing them in - the emphasis is on responsible use.
As one of them told me: "We're up to an 89.9% mobile phone penetration rate in Portugal - can you really stop people from carrying a camera phone when they often have no other means of communication - not even a landline phone?"
All in all, I think Europe is (again, like in so many other things) taking a better approach than America in this regard. Of course the jury is still out on whether we trust our citizens to be more responsible, have higher tariffs for MMS or just have less hype-prone politicians and lobbyists.
But any which way, we still look at America's paranoia with mild interest and some fear mixed in to our overall amusement, wondering just what they will try to ban next.
Maybe Europeans carrying camera phones?
(And people still ask why I never considered working in the US.)
PARANOIA XP GOES GOLD [Games * Design * Art * Culture]
PARANOIA XP GOES GOLD
Internet Technologies Revolutionize Roleplaying Game Development
New York/Austin/Swindon -- Aug 5, 2024FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Mongoose Publishing Ltd. and the creators of Paranoia XP announced today that the new version of the classic tabletop roleplaying game had "gone gold," and would be released in time for GenCon 2024.
To a large degree, the game was developed online, in public. Fans of the game contributed enthusiastically via blog, wiki, and online forum. They wrote text, debated rules, proofread, ran statistical analyses, and even wrote a computer simulator to test the game's paper-and-pencil rules.
"Online collaboration made this edition of Paranoia the best yet," said Allen Varney (/), the game's designer. "We borrowed the tools and methods of open-source software development for a paper game, and it worked brilliantly. I plan to create future games the same way, and other designers should consider it too."
THE COMPUTER IS YOUR FRIEND
Paranoia is a roleplaying game set in a darkly humorous future. A well-meaning but deranged Computer desperately protects the citizens of Alpha Complex, a vast underground city, from all sorts of real and imagined enemies. Players take the role of Troubleshooters, The Computer's elite agents, their job to search out and destroy the enemies of The Computer. Each player character is, however, secretly a traitor... In short, Paranoia is a light-hearted game of terror, death, bureaucracy, mad scientists, mutants, dangerous weapons, insane robots, and technological satire that encourages players to lie, cheat, and backstab each other at every turn.
The original version of Paranoia, designed by Dan Gelber, Greg Costikyan, and Eric Goldberg, pioneered in 1983, and was an instant hit, going on to sell more than 150,000 copies worldwide.
PARANOIA XP
The popularity of the original game was in part due to society's fear of nuclear war with the Soviet Union, and uneasiness about the new desktop computers that were starting to revolutionize working life.
Happily, today those fears are obsolete. Instead, we have terrorism, spam, viruses, trojans, malware, distributed denial of service attacks, the RIAA, cyberwarfare, identify theft, the Patriot Act, terrifying new diseases, the threat of environmental catastrophe, the grey goo scenario, and weapons of mass destruction.
In other words, Paranoia is more relevant than ever before, and Paranoia XP updates the world of Alpha Complex for all these terrors and more.
DESIGNING IN PUBLIC
In order to involve Paranoia's community of fans, the designers decided from the start to discuss the new version's development via a blog (www.costik.com/paranoia ), and to invite comments, suggestions, and contributions from anyone who wished to participate. Naturally, there was a potential legal issue; there was no easy way to compensate people for their contributions, and nobody wanted to deal with the potential bookkeeping involved. The solution: a virtual inversion of the Creative Commons license. Posters were warned that anything they contributed might be used in the game, without any compensation whatsoever, and that although the creators would try to credit people whose material was used, it might slip their minds in the hurly burly of meeting deadlines. The legal "boilerplate", in a take-off of a popular Web meme, even said "All Your Rights Are Belong to Us."
The fan community soon found it wanted to debate, discuss, and contribute in a more free-ranging format--and luckily, a pre-existing fan site, Paranoia Live (/) agreed to host a forum for public comment and discussion. Varney soon discovered the utility and importance of posting and participating in the forum. "There were so many good ideas worth stealing... and the enthusiasm and support of the community really kept me going in meeting a pretty brutal deadline," said Varney.
To publicize the game, Varney started a wiki at /. Framed as a "Lexicon" game -- in which players contribute one entry per turn to an alphabetic research report on a fictitious topic -- the wiki traced the history of "the Toothpaste Disaster," a wide-ranging Alpha Complex calamity. Varney recruited almost two dozen players, in hopes of finding writers for upcoming Paranoia support products.
"The project succeeded beyond my wildest hopes. The Lexicon game produced the largest stable of talented writers Paranoia has ever enjoyed." Varney has informally organized the best Lexicon writers as the "Traitor Recycling Studio," to collaborate on the next few Paranoia supplements using -- yes -- a wiki.
"We stumbled into this," said Greg Costikyan, one of the original game's designers. "I wanted to incorporate a blog from the start, but the community's response, and Allen's embrace of them, was both startling and exciting. I think Allen is onto something here--at least for artforms that are collaborative in nature, such as games and possibly film, there's a lot to be said for tapping the collective talents of the fan base, as filtered by a professional."
MONGOOSE AND GENCON
Mongoose Publishing Ltd. (/) of Swindon, Wilts., is one of a new breed of hobby game publishers, producing roleplaying and miniatures games for the adventure gaming market. Among its fine roleplaying products are Conan, Judge Dredd, Babylon 5, and Macho Women With Guns.
"We had... no clue what we were getting into," said an exhausted-sounding Alexander Fennell, director of Mongoose. "But the bloody thing is finally at the printers... ahh, I mean, ahh, only a traitor could fail to find this new edition of Paranoia hilarious, spiffy, and well worth your money. Paranoia is fun. Other games are not fun. Buy Paranoia."
Paranoia XP will premiere on August 19th at GenCon (/), the world's largest convention for game players and enthusiasts, held annually in Indianapolis with more than 20,000 attendees.
"When the first edition of Paranoia debuted at GenCon in 1984, it was more than just the hit of the show," said Eric Goldberg, a designer of the original game and, with Greg Costikyan, the owner of the Paranoia property. "Players were first startled and then delighted when they realized the game turned the reigning Dungeons & Dragons paradigm inside-out: instead of deadly serious co-operation, players are encouraged to find ever more entertaining ways of getting the other guy before he gets you. Our game designer peers, in addition to bestowing several awards upon the game, gleefully co-opted the edgier, more humorous tone, which in turn spawned a new generation of role-playing games." "Paranoia XP is both the 20th anniversary edition of the groundbreaking Paranoia game and a new edition for the 21st Century," Goldberg continued, "We hope that the incorporation of Internet technologies will prove every bit as revolutionary as the original game was... ah, rather, Paranoia was perfect. Paranoia XP is even more perfect. The Computer says so, and The Computer is Our Friend!"
HAPPINESS IS MANDATORY!
Failure to be happy is treason. Treason is punishable by summary execution. Have a nice day!
For more information and/or disinformation, interviews, drivel, or just for the hell of it, feel free to contact:
Greg Costikyan at gcostikyan (at) nyc (dot) rr (dot) com
Eric Goldberg at egoldberg (at) ungames (dot) com
URLS:
Paranoia Blog:
"Toothpaste Disaster" Wiki:
/Paranoia Forum:
/Mongoose Publishing:
/To Order:
Allen Varney:
/Greg Costikyan: /
Dungeons & Dragons is a trademark of Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
Paranoia Copyright © 1983, 1987, 2024 by Eric Goldberg & Greg Costikyan. Paranoia is a trademark of Eric Goldberg and Greg Costikyan. All rights reserved. Mongoose Publishing Ltd., Authorized User.
I want my Tidy-Bot! [#mobitopia IRC Links]
auenf: "...When it meets something it can't recognise, it could take a picture of it and page you, letting you use your smartphone or Web browser to tell the Tidy-Bot what the thing is and where it should go...."
Link [Scripting News]
New comment management features for Manila.
Link [Scripting News]
Kerio Personal Firewall helps users "control how their computers exchange data with other computers on the Internet or local network."
Link [Scripting News]
A .NET bloggers dinner in Boston, August 18.
Link [Scripting News]
On this day last year Scoble was hanging with someone even more interesting than yours truly. Item 2. Lest anyone doubt that we lost a great blogger when Douglas Adams died, here's a piece he wrote, six years ago today, about his nose. Item 3. He wrote a testimonial for Scripting News. "His opinions are passionately held, well-informed, intelligent, argumentative and quite often wrong." Heh.
Link [Scripting News]
Julie Leung wrote up my visit on Thursday. I didn't need a visitors badge, but I did have to take a ferry (which was very nice) and I was charmed by two new special friends who showed me their unusual blogs posts, on paper, if you can believe that. A generation is on the way to whom blogging is no big deal, esp when both Mom and Dad do it. I asked for Julie's help in planning a west coast con, since she flew all the way to Boston to help make the second one such a great success.
06:10
New program for Microsoft Smartphone released: CityTime [msmobiles.com]
04:10
Oyster Festival Watch - Saturday [Feet up!]
It's carnival time!
The main event today is Whitstable's 107th Carnival, we'll be watching it near the start in Tankerton, and it's usually pretty surreal, especially after seeing all the floats getting ready in Tankerton's back roads. The procession usually gets even more anarchic towards the end. Good stuff!
Firefox 1.0PR? [#mobitopia IRC Links]
Some Melbourne Airport History [#mobitopia IRC Links]
00:10
Shark Tank: Don't DO That! [Computerworld Shark Tank]
It's years ago at this busy circuit-board manufacturing facility, and the new component-insertion machine suddenly starts sticking capacitors and resistors everywhere but where they belong.
Shark Tank: By any other name, it still smells [Computerworld Shark Tank]
It's 1999, and this pilot fish has just started work as the sole IT guy at a very small marketing company that uses spa-- er, "marketing e-mail blasts."
Link [Scripting News]
Phil Haack: "The firewall built into XP blocks incoming traffic, not outgoing."
Link [Scripting News]
On this day last year Scoble was hanging with someone even more interesting than yours truly. Item 2. Lest anyone doubt that we lost a great blogger when Douglas Adams died, here's a piece he wrote, six years ago today, about his nose. Item 3. He wrote a testimonial for Scripting News. "His opinions are passionately held, well-informed, intelligent, argumentative and quite often wrong."
Friday, 06 August
22:10
Link [Scripting News]
More Bainbridge Ferry pictures, and Microsoft visitor badges.
Link [Scripting News]
The first picture in the sequence is sure to get top billing on Scripting News at some point. The Seattle skyline was looking pretty good late yesterday afternoon. The water of Puget Sound will make a good backgroup for the name of the site.
Link [Scripting News]
Julian Bond recommends ZoneAlarm for tracking all outbound traffic and Scott Frazer recommends TCP Spy, Jack Huisinga recommends Winternals TCP View Pro. I've tried ZoneAlarm, got lost setting it up. I'm more motivated now. I spent an hour and a half bending the ear of a Microsoft guy who's responsible for this stuff today. I said it's time to get on the side of the users. It's amazing the press isn't beating this drum more loudly, but it's just a matter of time. I paint a pretty good doomsday scenario for Microsoft people. Imagine a major bank requires its customers to get a Mac in order to do online banking. With the spyware situation on Windows, it's not such a far-fetched idea. These machines are leaky sieves. Who knows what info they're sending back to Spyware Corporate Headquarters. Passwords? Account numbers? Hmmm.
Link [Scripting News]
Jeff Sandquist says that Windows XP SP2 has this feature. Cool!
Developing Speech Recognition applications for Microsoft Smartphone - now easier thanks to new SDK from Fonix [msmobiles.com]
20:10
Link [Scripting News]
Northern Voice is a blogging unconference in Feb 2005 in Vancouver.
Link [Scripting News]
Julian Bond recommends ZoneAlarm for tracking all outbound traffic and Scott Frazer recommends TCP Spy, Jack Huisinga recommends Winternals TCP View Pro. I've tried ZoneAlarm, got lost setting it up. I'm more motivated now. I spent an hour and a half bending the ear of a Microsoft guy who's responsible for this stuff today. I said it's time to get on the side of the users. It's amazing the press isn't beating this drum more loudly, but it's just a matter of time. I paint a pretty good doomsday scenario for Microsoft people. Imagine a major bank requires its customers to get a Mac in order to do online banking. With the spyware situation on Windows, it's not such a far-fetched idea. These machines are leaky sieves. Who knows what info they're sending back to Spyware Corporate Headquarters. Passwords? Account numbers? Hmmm.
Flat Rate? 50 Million Free Minutes? What's The Difference? [TheFeature.com]
The press is making a lot of noise over a report claiming people don't use their mobile phone plan's minutes. Maybe that's because no one is supposed to.
19:10
Odds And Ends Of A Busy Friday [The Tao of Mac]
Odds And Ends Of A Busy Friday
- The first sighting of the Nokia/6230i. I like the 6230 a lot, but have spent most of my time testing SonyEricsson phones and marvelling at their superior Bluetooth abilities and screens. Since I've come to the conclusion that the Series 60 is beginning to suffer from platform bloat, it will be nice to try out a Series 40/45 phone again - if the 6230i exists at all, of course. The photos look pretty dodgy...
- Looks like Windows XP SP2, amongst other things, a revamped Bluetooth interface (besides the revamped Wi-Fi client I've been fiddling with for the past few months). I wonder how it will work with my Toshiba/M100?, which disappointingly doesn't support any audio profiles in its Bluetooth stack - but then, I don't intend to upgrade to SP2 anytime soon (I have a two-year record of not reinstalling XP that I'd like to beat some day).
- Ah, so Bluetooth can have a 1.08 mile radius after all. And me wondering why my headset stopped working when I left the room... It must be defective. :p
- Xcode 1.5 is out, with gcc 3.3 and Subversion support (besides better ant support as well, which looks like something I should look into).
- A great-looking client-server aggregator I will also be looking into. Having something that could enable P2P/distributed classification and rating of RSS feeds is a notion that has been hovering somewhere near the back of my mind ever since I saw Peerkat.
- More proof - now conveniently available in wallpaper form.
Nokia/6230i [The Tao of Mac]
An enhanced 6230 with a 1.3Mpixel camera and an improved screen. Unconfirmed, might well be simply a fake drawn up by someone with far too much free time.
Resources:
- Mobile-Review
Link [Scripting News]
There's something missing from the search engines. I'd like to give it a name of a thing or a person and have it show me, in reverse chronologic order, what's been said about that thing or person. That would allow me to effectively create a custom weblog about a person or thing, even if there was no weblog about the person or thing.
Link [Scripting News]
There's something missing from Windows. An application that hooks into the outbound Internet message flow, and shows me where messages are going. This would allow me to figure out what spyware is running on my system even if the various utilities can't get rid of them. Then the next step would be to allow me to block traffic to certain servers. That would disable the spyware. It seems that I should have control of my machine at that level.
Vodafone KK Shows Net Loss of Subs in July [TheFeature.com]
For the second month in a row , DoCoMo led KDDI in new subscribers by a narrow margin. More significantly, Vodafone KK had a negative month, actually losing 3100 more subscribers than it could add.
New game for Microsoft Smartphone: TipTop by PopCap [msmobiles.com]
BuZZone SDK - low cost kit for development of Bluetooth applications [msmobiles.com]
17:10
and the winner is... [martinlittle.com:thinkThin]
The bookie's favorite way back at the beginning of July but the only one of the last four not fancied by Martin at the beginning of it all in June... Nadia has won Big Brother 5. I see a lucrative future with Nicorette. That is all from BB5, I am sure Martin will fill everyone in with details of what they all do next.
Comments?
BB third place [martinlittle.com:thinkThin]
is.... Dan ! Oooohhh martin is good :-D
Comments?
Big Brother End game (guest post from richlloyd) [martinlittle.com:thinkThin]
Shell is out of the house and everything is falling into place for k1dd and his final day prediction. The all wise Martin predicts the final evictions as; Shell - Dan - Jason Only time will tell but as we head towards the final hours of BB5 I think all would agree that it has been a classic. Shell has gone, so no money for her Mom, but who is next?... Stay tuned :-D rl
Comments?
XM satellite radio and Starbucks [Engadget]
XM Satellite Radio and Starbucks are teaming up to deliver a new station to XM subscribers, the “Hear Music” channel based on Starbucks HearMusic complication CD business. And it works both ways, Starbucks will be using XM in the stores to pump in the channel of their own creation. Starbucks, of course, also has WiFi in most locations now by T-Mobile as well as CD buring by HP in some locations. So XM Radio is a nice cherry on top of that Frappa-Technochino they’re serving up.
Review: PDAMill Snails 2.0 [infoSync World]
Who knew mollusks could be so malevolent? Larry Garfield looks at a disturbingly cute but visually stunning twist on an old favorite genre.
Penguin backs down on katie.com [#mobitopia IRC Links]
we need to figure out how to circumvent this before the olympics [#mobitopia IRC Links]
hell freezes over, XPSP2 ships [#mobitopia IRC Links]
Nokia 6620 Available at AT&T Wireless [Russell Beattie Notebook]
I've been *waiting* for this phone since it was announced in January. Just like my beloved 6600, but with faster data access. Now what? I've got a fantastic new 7610 which I'm very happy with. But the 6620 has EDGE! I guess I'll just have to go down to the AT&T; store and do a side by side comparision to see if the data rate improvement is worth the cost and the loss of the higher-resolution camera.
There's too many Series 60 phones coming out now! I've resisted the $200 on the QD because it's not really any different from the N-Gage I already own. (By the way, I just got Tiger Woods for it yesterday - Ewan's review was spot on - I was 5 under par on my second round of play). And there's now this phone and other non-Nokia versions as well! I'll never be able to use them all...
Of course, the phone on my short-list now is the 6630 round-bottom 3G phone. Looking online, though, it doesn't look like it'll work with the UMTS frequencies here in the U.S. and it'll be years before we see a 6635 or some-other number which will be the NA spin off phone... Hmm.
-Russ
Bluetooth Crippled in Verizon's New Motorola V710 [Russell Beattie Notebook]
First I tried to send the V710 an image I took with my S60 Nokia phone and it refused - even though I could see the phone while browsing Bluetooth devices. It didn't prompt to pair or anything, it just cancelled the transfer. Then Vineet went into the photos section of the Moto and tried to "send via Bluetooth" as you would normally do, but there was no option of that sort. Since my Moto A845 which has an identical UI has that ability, this phone has obviously been made so that only Bluetooth headsets are supported.
Gotta love carrier paranoia, no?
Update: Alright! I was wrong (and happy about it). Charles gave me the heads up - it looks like the V710 does indeed support dial up networking! I just confirmed and though something went wrong (not exactly sure what) the phone definitely connected and dialed. It's still too bad the other profiles aren't supported - sending photos to other phones and my computer is probably the number one use of Bluetooth for me. Syncing as well - I wonder if the phone can be synced? Doesn't look like it.
-Russ
Link [Scripting News]
News.Com: "Microsoft on Friday wrapped up development on a long-awaited security update to Windows XP."
[Aug 6, 2024 14:15 PDT] 3 Links [Erik's Linkblog]
Dion — Oh no. Dr. Java thinks AOP is B.S. :)
Cédric — New TestNG, now with groups of groups!
Dion — JDK 1.5: Arrays.asList("Rod", "James", "Chris").
Japanese Content Giant Buys 2 US Firms [TheFeature.com]
US ringtone leader Zingy and one-time mobile hot property Vindigo have been acquired by a Japanese mobile content heavyweight. Are Japanese eyes turning east?
15:10
Shooting up the Kyocera 7135 [Engadget]
Don’t think we’ve ever been as pissed about our cellphone as this guy was after Verizon refused to replace his defective Kyocera 7135 (though we’ve been close). He decided to use it for target practice rather than pay the 350 bucks they wanted before sending him a new one.
August 06, 2024 [Joel on Software]
I'm just about to leave for the annual Spolsky family vacation... this year we've got a villa in Umbria, Italy. I'll be passing through Rome on Monday, August 16th. We've got a few people who have already confirmed to meet for a dinner there, so if you'll be in town, let's meet up!
Where: The lobby of the Aleph Hotel
Address: Via di San Basilio, 15
When: 20.00 lunedì 16 agosto 2024
I'll make sure the concierge knows where I am. At 8 PM when we see how many people show up, we'll find a good restaurant that's open (not easy in August in Rome, I'm told) and talk about software (and food (and the heat)).
Link [Scripting News]
Mary Jo Foley says Microsoft will release a local disk search before the end of the year.
Link [Scripting News]
Steve Gillmor's Ode to iPod.
[Aug 6, 2024 12:22 PDT] 11 Links [Erik's Linkblog]
Soto 2.0, a lightweight, modular service framework relying on Java's dynamic nature.
Russ — Handango gets a redesign.
Christian — Spring Webwork2 Integration.
Daniel — Testing EJBs.
Dr. Java — Dr. Java with AOP (Aspect-Oriented Programming) Cross-Cutting Bullshit.
Fred — Better than JDepend.
Gabriel — Free Blog Templates.
Google hacks are for real. Google hacks are for real, regardless of what some uber-hackers may think or say.
Windows XP Service Pack 2 Arrives. The big security fix is up for download, but Microsoft urges users to upgrade piecemeal by Auto-Update.
IBM releases new Emerging Technologies Toolkit 2.1. The ETTK includes a SOAP engine and an embedded application server.
Russ — Bluetooth Crippled in Verizon's Motorola new V710.
14:10
Suicidal bicycle rides through NYC traffic [Engadget]
Wow, we thought we were badass when we attached a camera to our helmet and skateboarded down the street, but check
out these videos of cyclists zipping around NYC in traffic while filming.
[via waxy.org]
Use USB cams with iChat AV [Engadget]
If you have an older G3 Mac or want to use any old USB 2.0 webcam with iChat instead of buying an iSight, try the iChatUSBCam, a new add-on application that will enable you to do just that. We have a few old Macs and some webcams we’re going to love trying out with this.
Sneaker vending machine [Engadget]
The Daily News tries their hand, er, foot at a new sneaker vending machine at New York’s swank SoHo store Michael K.
Originally debuted in Japan (of course), the Sneaker Vending Machine takes cash and dispenses a refrigerated Reebok
Travel shoe in the size and color of your choosing for $60. We just want to know what happens if the shoes get stuck in
the coil that drops the food into the bin.
[via Popgadget]
Bluetooth Crippled in Verizon's Motorola new V710 [Russell Beattie Notebook]
First I tried to send the V710 an image I took with my S60 Nokia phone and it refused - even though I could see the phone while browsing Bluetooth devices. It didn't prompt to pair or anything, it just cancelled the transfer. Then Vineet went into the photos section of the Moto and tried to "send via Bluetooth" as you would normally do, but there was no option of that sort. Since my Moto A845 which has an identical UI has that ability, this phone has obviously been made so that only Bluetooth headsets are supported.
Gotta love carrier paranoia, no?
-Russ
msmobiles.com revelations: Handango gives away software without consent of developers of this software [msmobiles.com]
Makeover of Handango is official now [msmobiles.com]
13:10
MMSlib: Encode and Decode MMSes with PHP [Matt Croydon::postneo]
Via freshmeat, I spotted MMSlib this afternoon:
Mmslib is a PHP library for encoding and decoding MMS:es. MMS is short for Multimedia Messaging Service. In short it is the successor of SMS (Short Message Service) with the enhancements that you can not only send text but basically any content type your phone can handle such as images, text, videos, ring signals and audio clips.
I'm going to file this one away for a rainy day when I'm hacking on code at three in the morning and need to deal with MMSes in a LAMP environment. This looks like a great little library.
New: S-Tris for UIQ - tetris clone [AAS: All News Stories]
S-Tris is a tetris clone for UIQ from Elements Interactive. The game features customisable controls and increasing level difficulty as well as the classic Tetris gameplay.
Hitachi to release 5 flat screens in time for stay-home weather [Engadget]
Come September 1st, if you’re at all interested in a plasma screen TV capable of 68.6 billion colors, Hitachi’s
going to have five for you, ranging from 32 to 54-inches. It’s the latest in their ingeniously titled
WOOO line of home entertainment products, including some
with built-in DVD players and hard drives (for recording TV shows—goodbye, standalone TiVo?). Plus they’re not ashamed
to let us know that they’ve developed a new technology that’s supposed to dramatically prevent brightness degredation
over a display’s 60,000 hour expected lifetime, which is nice to know when you’re dropping a few dimes on a TV.
[Via Japan Today]
Use USB cams with iChat AV [Engadget]
If you have an older G3 Mac or want to use a USB 2.0 Webcam instead of buying an iSight Camera— iChatUSBCam is a new add-on application that will enable you to do just that. We have a few old Macs and some Webcams we’re going to try out with this.
Sneaker Vending Machine [Engadget]
The Daily News tries their hand, er, foot at a new sneaker vending machine at New York’s swank SoHo store Michael
K’s. Originally debuted in Japan (of course) the Sneaker Vending Machine takes cash and dispenses a refrigerated Reebok
Travel trainer shoe in the size/color of your choosing ($60).
[via Popgadget]
Movie Gadget Fridays: the new Batmobile [Engadget]
To celebrate the weekly American tradition of opening new movies on Fridays, we’re inaugurating a new feature, Movie Gadget Fridays, where we’ll highlight one sweet gadget from the world of film, from classic sci-fi flicks to upcoming blockbusters.
This week’s movie gadget is the new Batmobile, and this isn’t some sissy Val Kilmer version either, this is the Batmobile gone stealth fighter gone SUV. Some fans caught some footage of the new Batmobile in action during filming for the new Batman movie which is being filmed in Chicago right now. Should be out in 2005.
The year ahead for personal robots [Engadget]
PC World has an article about the personal robots that are coming our way tomorrow (that is, the royal tomorrow) and
the ones that are populating our homes today. They don’t reveal any new robots we haven’t already covered, but there
are plenty of neat tidbits in the article, like that an estimated 4 million personal robots will be sold in 2006, and
that people have bought over 500,000 Roomba RoboVacs from iRobot.
[via robots.net]
The Xbox 2 to surface at next year's CES? [Engadget]
We haven’t quite wearied of all these Xbox 2 rumors yet (trust us, we’ll get there), but the latest is that Microsoft is furiously trying to get a working demo model ready for a surprise unveiling at this coming January’s Consumer Electronics Show. This flies in the face of earlier speculation that they’d raise the curtain at the X04 event in September, but then again Bill Gates did introduce the original Xbox at CES a few years back. Either way they’ll get the jump on Sony, which isn’t scheduled to show off the PlayStation 3 until next year’s E3 video game expo in May.
Motorola to drop the MPx220 Smartphone on us on September 27th? [Engadget]
We wouldn’t bet our first-born on it, but PhoneMag swears up and down that a “trusted source” has confirmed for them
that Motorola will be brightening our lives with their new MPx220 Smartphone on September 27th. The MPx Pocket PC Phone
is supposed to appear a couple of months later, on November 30th, but we’ve heard rumors that it’s been delayed until
early next year. will appear shortly after, on November 30th.
[Via Smartphone Thoughts]
Austrian researcher Bluesnarfs at 1.08 miles [Engadget]
Get that little lead bag for your cellphone ready; long distance Bluesnarfing (aka using Bluetooth to hijack a cellphone or PDA) is here. An Austrian Bluetooth researcher in Santa Monica Bay recently used an antenna and a modified dongle (don’t do this at home, kids) to steal the entire address book as well as send an SMS from a target phone 1.08 miles away. (Looks like they could have also used the BlueSniper we reported on yesterday.) Along the way they saw dozens of Bluetooth devices that were similarly vulnerable, although they say they focused only on that one phone. Bluetooth-enabled cellphone makers (we’re looking in your general direction, Nokia) are denying that Bluesnarfing is a serious risk because it has to be done in such close proximity to the victim, but it looks like that theory’s out the window…
[UPDATE: We’ve just been contacted by the Flexilis team who conducted the experiment in conjunction with Martin Herfurt, the Austrian researcher. They organized the event with Martin. Thanks, John!]
Palm-Mac users petition for Cobalt support [infoSync World]
August 06, 2024 [Joel on Software]
I'm just about to leave for the annual Spolsky family vacation... this year we've got a villa in Umbria, Italy. I'll be passing through Rome on Monday, August 16th. We've got a few people who have already confirmed to meet for a dinner there, so if you'll be in town, let's meet up!
Where: The lobby of the Aleph Hotel
Address: Via di San Basilio, 15
When: 20.00 16/08/01
I'll make sure the concierge knows where I am. At 8 PM when we see how many people show up, we'll find a good restaurant that's open (not easy in August in Rome, I'm told) and talk about software (and food (and the heat)).
the sarcastic tech update for the UK [#mobitopia IRC Links]
Johnny Walker interviews Jenson about the Williams move [#mobitopia IRC Links]
Handango gets a redesign [Russell Beattie Notebook]
Why was the site redesigned?This is very similar to what Yahoo Mobile does as well and it makes sense. You generally only have one or two devices, so why have to wade through the tons of software that doesn't work on your device? Actually, Handango lets you add several devices which show up like tabs (Yahoo only lets you select one mobile) which is great if you still have an old Palm lying around. I think it's a brilliant solution to the problem of smoothly transitioning Handango's focus from PDAs to mobiles and smart phones. I would've suggested just relegating the PDAs to secondary status myself, but this is a much smarter way to do it.In short, we redesigned the site to make shopping easier. Earlier this year, we conducted an extensive usability study and the results helped us identify several areas for improvement: Shop by Device, Search, Categories, Shopping Cart, and Product Details. Each of these main areas has been improved in various ways.
What is shop by device and why did we change to this format?
"Shop by Device" is just that: shopping for software and digital content by selecting your device model rather than operating system. Many customers were unfamiliar with their device's operating system and this caused difficulty in finding the downloads they needed. Our goal with shop by device is to improve the shopping experience by giving you relevant software you want, when you want it. For die-hard Handango customers resistant to change, we still offer the same familiar shopping experience under the Shop by Platform (or Operating System) section on the home page.
Unlike Yahoo, though, I wasn't able to select my shiny new Nokia 7610 from the list of devices, so they definitely need to do some work on that front. Generating a comprehensive list of mobiles available, carriers and app compatibility? That's a serious full time job for three people at the minimum so I won't give them too much slack about it. ;-)
It's a shame that Handango hasn't gotten the CSS and Web standards religion though. The page is full of tables and the images that make up the tabs and borders take forever to download. That is pretty disappointing. What's really a shame is that I can't find the mobile version of the site. Where's the minibrowser support? Why can't I see all this great design on my phone? Yes, they have some Java app download thing, but this web redesign really should've included a prominent XHTML-MP version. They really did themselves a disservice by not making the mobile a first-tier client in the redesign. Are they afraid of competing with the carriers who buy their back-end purchasing system (AMPP) or is the mobile version just somewhere I can't find? If it doesn't exist, it's a massive oversite, if it does, it needs automagic redirecting from handango.com and a prominent link on their front page.
Anyways, I see this as a definite net positive. This is the first of many redesigns we're going to be seeing in the next few years as the importance of mobile phones changes the focus of many online companies. But hopefully all new redesigns will include better minibrowser support! As the number of mobile clients accessing the internet grow exponentially, it'll be a no brainer to include compelling mobile versions of the site as part of any new web rollout.
-Russ
Link [Scripting News]
On this west coast trip I'm talking with people about the next BloggerCon, an academic, non-commercial un-conference. No speakers, no panels, no audience. Long 1.25 hour sessions, multiple tracks. A welcome session where we sing the national anthem, and a closing session where we say tearful goodbyes and plan to meet again. The first BloggerCon in October of last year was an inaugural. In April we did the mid-term. Should the next one be in October, or after the election? Are there enough true believers on the west coast to make it a clean sweep, setting the stage for a European Con in Spring 2005? We'll discuss this at the BBQ at Scoble's on Saturday, at the convention bloggers meeting at Stanford on Monday, and between bites of noodles and chicken at Jing Jing later Monday night.
11:10
Magic Messenger for kids [Engadget]
Today’s fast-paced world demands ever more of our children and the Magic Messenger is here to help. It’s a neat
little device with a full QWERTY keyboard that connects to a landline and lets you send text messages to both
cellphones and regular phones (converting your child’s
message to speech if the recipient’s phone isn’t text message-capable). Only available in the UK right now, the
Magic Messenger costs £20 including (which includes an initial three month subscription) and £4.50 every three months
after that, with texts costing 10p each. It also has group sending, so your kids can blast messages out to many people
at once, letting them learn the ways of the cellphone spammer at a young age.
[via Textually.org]
Canon coming out with an EOS 20D digital SLR? [Engadget]
It’s not like they’re never going to come out with a sequel to their EOS 10D digital SLR camera (pictured at right)
sooner or later, but is Canon prepping an EOS 20D? There’s some buzz that they’re hard at work on one, and that it’ll
have an eight megapixel sensor (as opposed to the six megapixel one found in the 10D) and that it’ll retail for
$1,600.
[Via PhotographyBlog]
The heat_horse, a pants-drying radiator [Engadget]
As long as a radiator is going to heat your home it may as well dry your pants, right? Except for the part about how
we’d rather just dry our pants the old-fashioned way (i.e. in a dryer) rather than have to deal with looking at that
thing all the time.
[Via MocoLoco]
FoxTrot gets the scoop on the jPod [Engadget]
How did FoxTrot get the scoop on the new Sony?
[Thanks, Paul]
MSN Mobile for Verizon Wireless customers [infoSync World]
Friday People [Russell Beattie Notebook]
There are two types of people (those who can count and those who can't. Okay, four... Just kidding). There are those who wake up on Friday and are thankful the week is almost done. Then those who wake up on Friday and can't believe the laundry list of things they set out to do on Monday still isn't anywhere near completed and now they have only a few hours to get it all done...
I'll give you a guess which type I am...
Hey - at least today's Hawaiian shirt day.
-Russ
Link [Scripting News]
On this west coast trip I'm talking with people about the next BloggerCon. Can we have one on the west coast? BloggerCon is an academic, non-commercial un-conference. No speakers, no panels, no audience. Long 1.25 hour sessions, multiple tracks. A welcome session where we sing the national anthem, and a closing session where we say tearful goodbyes and plan to meet again. The first BloggerCon in October of last year was an inaugural. In April we did the mid-term. Should the next one be in October, or after the election? Are there enough true believers on the west coast to make it a clean sweep, setting the stage for a European Con in Spring 2005? We'll discuss this at the BBQ at Scoble's on Saturday, at the convention bloggers meeting at Stanford on Monday, and inbetween bites of noodles and chicken at Jing Jing later Monday night.
10:10
78% of cell minutes go unused each month? [Engadget]
So a survey by TNS Telecoms found that a full 78 percent of wireless minutes go unused each month, and that people
are paying more than they need to for cellphone service. It’s more than just a little disingenuous, since a lot of
these unused minutes are part of those “free nights and weekends” promotions, meaning that it’s virtually impossible
for anyone to use even a majority of the minutes given to them each month. What percentage of daytime minutes wireless
subscribers use up each month is curiously absent from the press release announcing this news. But that shouldn’t come
as any surprise given that the press release was issued by TracFone Wireless, which offers pre-paid wireless phone
service where people pay only for the minutes they use and is trying to lure customers away from the monthly service
plans offered by the carriers.
[Via MobileTracker]
Austrian researcher Bluesnarfs at 1.08 miles [Engadget]
Get that little lead bag for your cellphone ready; long distance Bluesnarfing (aka using Bluetooth to hijack a cellphone or PDA) is here. An Austrian Bluetooth researcher in Santa Monica Bay recently used an antenna and a modified dongle (don’t do this at home, kids) to steal the entire address book as well as send an SMS from a target phone 1.08 miles away. (Looks like they could have also used the BlueSniper we reported on yesterday.) Along the way they saw dozens of Bluetooth devices that were similarly vulnerable, although they say they focused only on that one phone. Bluetooth-enabled cellphone makers (we’re looking in your general direction, Nokia) are denying that Bluesnarfing is a serious risk because it has to be done in such close proximity to the victim, but it looks like that theory’s out the window…
Hip inhaler [Engadget]
Those with asthma know that pulling out that bulky inhaler during social situations doesn’t always scream style, and most inhalers will easily brand you a dorky mama’s boy no matter how hot your hair looks. That’s why a graduate from Brunel University Industrial Design and Technology created Thinhaler, so that asthmatic sucking could be therapeutic and sexy. The 6mm thick inhaler can fit in the credit card slot of a standard wallet and costs the same as a traditional inhaler. It does carry smaller doses of the medication because of its size, but that’s a small price to pay to achieve hip inhaling.
HDTV TiVo vs. Media Center PC [Engadget]
Thomas Hawk pits his new Hughes HR10-250 high-definition TiVo (which is available for use with DirecTV) against a PC
running on Microsoft’s Media Center operating system (specifically HP’s 873N), and while it’s not exactly fair to
compare the two, since Media Center doesn’t support HDTV recording (at least not yet, it’s coming soon), but not
surprisingly he describes watching recorded HDTV on the TiVo as practically a religious experience. The Media Center PC
still comes out tops in terms of portability, since it makes it incredibly easy to archive shows to DVD or save them to
a laptop or other PC.
[Via PVRblog]
Xenon strobe for camera phones [infoSync World]
palmOne releases new 'fashionable' accessories [infoSync World]
Immunizing the handheld [#mobitopia IRC Links]
stupidest way to carry your cellphone ever? [#mobitopia IRC Links]
security vulns in libpng [#mobitopia IRC Links]
No Title [#mobitopia IRC Links]
Link [Scripting News]
Steve Gillmor's Ode to iPod.
Link [Scripting News]
Today, more meetings at Microsoft. Already I've learned that the interest in blogging and RSS in Microsoft is deep, broad and long into the future.
Link [Scripting News]
President Bush: "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."
Link [Scripting News]
Washington Post: English, a Battleground State.
Rumors: release date of Motorola MPx220 (MS Smartphone) and Motorola MPx (Pocket PC phone) [msmobiles.com]
08:10
Shiny New Toys [Feet up!]
I'm playing with a few shiny new (virtual) toys right now with the aim of making my life better or more efficient or something.
First off: Feeds, I've mostly switched from JabRSS to Bloglines. It's more a horses for courses sort of problem, I'm keeping some feeds in JabRSS, but for the others I can pick and choose when to read things in Bloglines rather than having the immediate delivery of JabRSS. I've grabbed Martin's feeds to populate my profile quickly, don't take it too seriously yet though, there's some feeds in there that I'll never read and others that are still only in JabRSS. I'll have to have a look at the mobile output of Bloglines sometime too.
Music: I've finally managed to get last.fm to work, not sure what I was doing wrong but it's running nicely for me now, as you can see from the oddball stuff I've been listening to. Last.fm are tied in with Audioscrobbler so that my music preferences for one reflect nicely in the other. It'd be nice to have my data in RDF or a feed or something, but it's certainly scrapeable. The only downside is that I've switched back to Winamp from Zinf, for Winamp's Audioscrobbler plugin, and whilst Winamp 5 is much nicer than Winamp 3 (or whatever I last used) I still prefer Zinf's simplicity. I should have lashed up an Audioscrobbler contributing plugin for Zinf, rather like Matt Biddulph's command line Python app, but I'd never got around to it...
Moblogging: Something I've been meaning to get into, maybe LifeBlogger will do the trick, and it'd give me give a reason to configure xml-rpc and update this pyblosxom install.
Old folks suit [Engadget]
Like we all don’t already feel old enough — scientists at England’s Loughborough University along with the building company Skanska, created The Third Age Suit which makes the user feel like an immobile old person. The suit isn’t just to remind us of the onslaught of age, architects have been using the suit to help design better hospitals, retirement communities and aged-friendly environments. The suit has restrictors and splints that hinder movement, yellow goggles to create loss of vision, and gloves to create lack of tactile sense. Though we know the designers have the noblest of intentions, all of a sudden the future makes us want to crawl into the corner and cry.
Denon's VR-5805 16.1-channel surround sound receiver [Engadget]
We won’t be truly satisfied until we can surround ourselves with dozens and dozens of speakers, but in the meantime
Denon’s new flagship A/V receiver, the AVR-5805, will have to suffice. The thing can deliver up to sixteen channels of
sound, making it the first 16.1-channel surround sound receiver. There’s just one problem: there isn’t anything to play
on it, since no one has gotten around to releasing any movies or music in 16.1-channel Dolby Digital yet (yeah, you can
always double up on speakers, but that sorta defeats the purpose, doesn’t it?).
[Via QuenteCafe]
The Phonesafe [Engadget]
No way! Someone found an even geekier way to carry your cellphone around than in a holster attached to your belt.
It’s the Phone Safe, a spandex wrist sheath with a little pouch for carrying around your phone.
[Via The Red Ferret Journal]
Commuter Cars' Tango 600 [Engadget]
Rich and eccentric? Care about the environment? Like funny-looking vehicles? Commuter Cars Tango 600 high performance electric two-seater contraption could find a place in your heart. It’s got two 1,000lb/ft electric motors (one for each rear wheel), goes 0 to 60 in four seconds, has an SCCA- and NHRA-regulation-passing rollcage (it can take a 200mph crash; try that on your crotch rocket), excellent stability and seems to frequently win in autocross events. It just costs $85,000, which is where the rich part comes in.
Office-In-A-Bucket [Engadget]
We need one of these for impromptu roommate relief, though your office might more likely use one to spruce up that staid annual work party: Office In A Bucket, OIAB. It’s portable, inflatable (only with indoor outlet) and looks like a big white igloo. There’s 2 sizes, 3x4m and 4x5m, and the body inflates with the bucket’s interior fan in about 8 minutes. Now all we need is a very long extension cord and some blacklights and some WiFi and we’ll be the coolest kids on the block.
[Via Business 2.0]
Sony SDM-HS73P X-Black monitor review [Engadget]
The Sony SDM-HS73P 17 inch monitor seems to be an example of
good technology crapped up by some bad design decisions. The good technology is the XBright screen tech (called
XBlack by Sony) which provides much richer and more vibrant colors than traditional LCDs, at the cost of the
screen being a bit more reflective. But the crapping-up of this product comes in several places. One is the large
black bezel surrounding the screen. According to the review (and we haven’t used one personally so we can’t say
for sure) it acts as a giant black mirror that draws attention away from the screen itself. The physical
adjustment options of the monitor also seem to be lacking, with only forward and back tilting easily accomplished.
No rotating without shifting the whole thing. Also, there’s no DVI input, something any self-respecting LCD
monitor should have these days. And at $609.99, it’s hardly a steal.
MSN Web Messenger [www.gadgetguy.de - The GadgetGuy]
Finally - this removes another nail from my sysadmin's coffin: MSN web Messenger is here, and it works fine from Firefox.
That allows me to stay in touch with my fellow #mobitopians and other friends without having to tear holes into our company firewall - great stuff.
Telstra take diverse 3G approach [#mobitopia IRC Links]
US sms spam slips through legal barn door [#mobitopia IRC Links]
Orange get crossed wires [#mobitopia IRC Links]
Telcos and billing systems, a clumsy mix [#mobitopia IRC Links]
JimH: O2 cutoff punters in billing cockup
Home Office admits face scanning is unreliable [#mobitopia IRC Links]
XP SP2 delayed again [#mobitopia IRC Links]
Preston gets WiFi [#mobitopia IRC Links]
06:10
The Deskoid Robotic PC - quite a few years behind [Engadget]
Umm…we almost don’t know where to start with this one. This guy named Wayne Chiangis is developing this thing he calls the “Deskoid RoboticPC” which, as far as we can tell is a desk unit (kinda obvious but this desk unit is adjustable) with a complete PC system (speakers, webcam, cable management, all that) that can move around (we guess) somewhat autonomously, which seems to be the robot part. What we can’t figure out is the point of this whole endeavor. The idea of a person “relocat[ing] an entire PC to any room and begin[ing] to be product[ive] almost right away ” (we fixed the grammar to make it readable there) is pretty normal. It’s just that this problem has already been nicely solved by a humble device we like to call the laptop.
Editorial: Immunizing the handheld [infoSync World]
Viruses and trojans are beginning to appear on handhelds, still in small numbers. Larry Garfield muses on how to head off the problem before it gets too big to handle.
verizon goes msn mobile [#mobitopia IRC Links]
Erik_: Can you hear me now?
[Aug 6, 2024 03:40 PDT] 4 Links [Erik's Linkblog]
Erik — SherlockRSS.
freeJSX. The Java Serialization to XML project has released freeJSX, a complimentary and opensource version of JSX.
Google AdSense and Adblock. Adblock is a Mozilla/Firefox extension that filters out advertisements on the web.
Thomas — More advanced breakpoints in eclipse (and IDEA).
04:10
Tiqit handheld not dead [Engadget]
Sometimes a handheld comes out of left field and sort of blindsides you - the Tiqit is one of those. It’s been so long since we’d heard anything about it that we’d figured they’d just quietly faded away, something which isn’t totally unheard of for a startup. But not so! The Tiqit is alive and well, sort of. Like the OQO, it’s a handheld computer that runs on Windows XP (though it’ll also run Linux and Unix), but has a pathetically slow CPU (just 300MHz, or slower than most regular PDAs these days). Yeah, it has a full 56-key keyboard and a mouse stick with left/right buttons, but it’s awfully thick and heavy, weighing in at a hefty 1.25 pounds. If we’re lucky the next version will be slimmer, trimmer, and sport some built-in WiFi; assuming that the Tiqit survives long enough to see a second edition.
[Aug 6, 2024 01:31 PDT] 13 Links [Erik's Linkblog]
Erik's Pulse has been published.
Distributed Parallel Programming Environment for Java. A set of tools and technologies for developing simple, distributed, parallel applications.
Dr. Java — Dr. Java's Useful 10 Useful windows programs!
Steve — initial thoughts on the Motorola V710.
Wendong — Reset Nokia 6600.
Sam — Product Review: Fedora Linux Core II.
One-JAR 0.95. A Java jar distribution mechanism.
E-Data settles with Apple, sues 14 US companies. In October, 2003 E-Data filed a patent infringement suit against Microsoft and other companies over their on-demand music service.
Flux 6.2, a job scheduler, workflow engine, and business process management system.
Simplicis 2.0 Final. Simplicis Content Management Platform.
Dion — IDE Feature: Show me a paired down view of staticly typed code.
Goldy — Write Java apps that work with proxy-based firewalls.
Goldy — JDBC Connection via HTTPS Proxy.
Weekly Wrap: The Dog Days of Summer [TheFeature.com]
Given the slow trickle of news this week, most everybody must be on vacation. But the FCC cleared its desk before leaving, Symbian reported a strong first half, and more...
Hardware photo review: Qtek 9090 (aka T-Mobile MDA III / Xda 3) - latest Pocket PC phone made by HTC [msmobiles.com]
01:10
Oyster Festival Watch - Friday [Feet up!]
So the week's coming to a close, and today's programme is almost like a drawing in of breath before the hectic finale weekend. Just two mellow events today; story time for 5-10 year olds in the Tower Hill tea gardens, and Past Times with local historian Tony Blake for the grown-ups.
Konica Minolta's new digital SLR, the Dynax 7 DSLR [Engadget]
Konica Minolta has dished some more dirt on their first stab at a digital SLR camera, the Dynax 7 DSLR, which may or may not be coming out very soon, but will have an eye-sensor below the viewfinder, a six megapixel sensor, and anti-shake technology.
00:10
Shark Tank: Don't worry -- it's right there on the home page [Computerworld Shark Tank]
This small not-for-profit organization is looking for ways to cut costs, and one obvious solution is to make all the research it produces available on a Web site.
Persistence of Vision Shoes... [Engadget]
Earlier we covered the ”Spin Time” gadget that uses little LEDs to create messages in the air when you spin it, using the same principle responsible found in those “floating clocks” and used to create the illusion of motion in movies. And now there’s even that Nokia phone that does the same thing, so with all the recent interest we thought it worth mentioning that a few years ago we made a pair of basketball shoes that could spell offensive things to the other team (and fans) when you ran down the court. And then ya get worked.
Link [Scripting News]
NY Times: "Silicon Valley's digerati, traditionally the biggest proponents of initial public offerings of technology stocks, are overwhelmingly bearish on Google's anticipated offering."
Thursday, 05 August
22:10
New: Piano Keys for UIQ phones [AAS: All News Stories]
Jonty Lovell has announced Piano Keys. This program implements a 4 octave plus piano keyboard. Press a key and the sound plays. Now all you Pianists need never be without your Piano. Also useful for other musicians for tuning.
Author's Description:
Real music on the P800 and P900 smartphone! A fully functional 4 octave plus piano keyboard for the P800 and P900 using grand piano samples for a realistic CD quality effect.
The sound quality and octave range is the best available on this medium and the simplicity of use is fantastic.
New: PacMunchi for P900 - PacMan clone [AAS: All News Stories]
PacMunchi is a PacMan clone for the P900. You can control the man using the stylus or the jog dial. The game has multiple levels with increasing difficulty and has the classic PacMan gameplay.
Features:
Move around the place eating pills, but avoiding the ghosts. You loose a life if a ghost gets you. If you eat a white power pill, you can munch the ghosts whilst they are showing thier darker side.
Features
* Fun and easy to play, you already know how to
* Fully controllable using the Jog Dial and/or stylus input
* Hi-res colour images
* Game score displayed
* Multiple levels, increasingly difficult to master
New: S-Tris - freeware Tetris clone [AAS: All News Stories]
Elements Interactive have announced the availability of S-Tris a freeware Tetris clone. The game has been developed using their in-house engine (Edge). The game features customisable controls, addictive gameplay and increasing difficulty as you play.
It looks like the company may develop further Symbian titles. The company is well know for its Pocket PC and Smartphone portfolio.
New: GeoViewX World Map [AAS: All News Stories]
GeoViewX is a program which displays an interactive world map. It allows users to scroll across a global map showing information about cities, distances between two points and time zone information. The program can be connected to a Bluetooth GPS so position can be plotted (and speed and direction dials can also be displayed).
Features:
# GeoViewX Feature List Intractive World Map - allows user to scroll across the world finding major cities
# Major world cities with their latitude and longitude information
# Find distance between any two points on the face of the earth
# GPS enabled - location plotted on the map
# Time zone information to find world time
# Bearing and Speed shown as meaningful dials
# GPS connection to Blue Tooth GPS receivers is automatic
Symbian H1 Results - 5 millions phones shipped [AAS: All News Stories]
Symbian recently released their H1 results. So far 5 million Symbian OS phones have been sold this year. There are 23 devices currently shipping. There are currently 34 phones and variants under development by 10 licensees (some of which we'll see in the second half of the year). The number of 3rd party applications has more than doubled to nearly 3,000.
From Symbian.com
Worldwide shipments of Symbian OS phones reach 5m in first half of 2024
See press release for full details
LONDON, UK, 4th August 2024 - Symbian Ltd today released the following unaudited financial and operational figures for the second quarter and the six months ended 30th June 2024:
H1 2024 Operational Highlights
Global shipments of Symbian OS-based phones grew to 5.0m (H1 2003: 2.7m units) in H1 2024, a year-on-year increase of 85%, bringing the total installed base of Symbian OS phones to more than 15 million.
At the end of H1 2024, six Symbian OS licensees were shipping a total of 23 Symbian OS products to network operators in Japan and throughout GSM / GPRS territories worldwide
During H1 2024, Symbian OS licensees announced products targeted at a wide range of mobile networks, geographical markets and customer segments :
- W-CDMA, 3G products for European and Japanese network operators including Nokia 6630, FOMA F900i, F900iT and Motorola A1000
- GSM / GPRS, 2.5G products included Arima ASP 805, BenQ P31, Nokia 7610, Nokia 6260, Panasonic X700, Samsung SGH-D710, Sony Ericsson P910
- Products and variants for specific regional markets such as Siemens SX1c and Sony Ericsson P910c for Chinese markets; Sony Ericsson P910a, Nokia 6620 for North and Latin American EDGE and 850MHz networks
- Market segment-targeted devices as Nokia's N-Gage QD game deck and the Nokia 9500 Communicator for enterprise markets
At the end of H1 2024, 34 phones and variants based on Symbian OS were under development by 10 licensees (end of H1 2003, 26 phones & variants and 9 licensees) - See press release for full details
Three new Symbian OS licensees were announced during the first half of 2024
LG Electronics, the world’s fifth largest mobile phone manufacturer
Arima, a leading Taiwanese manufacturer of mobile terminals
Lenovo, formerly known as the Legend Group, the largest IT corporation in China
Commercially available third party applications for Symbian OS phones rose to 2,954 (end H1 2003 – 1,323 applications) (Source: Symbian research, see Notes to Editors for methodology
£50m rights issue completed to fund accelerated development focused on enhancing Symbian OS as a platform for lower cost, mid-range phones
annualised cost base to rise from c.£70m to c.£100m within 18 months
headcount to rise from c.900 to c.1,200 full-time and contract employees worldwide
David Levin, Chief Executive Officer, Symbian Ltd said:
“Symbian has performed in line with our expectations in the first half of 2024 with five million phones using Symbian OS being shipped to network operators worldwide, taking the installed base of Symbian OS phones to more than 15 million.
The number of Symbian OS phones in development continues to grow; 34 products and variants from 10 Symbian OS licensees are in development. These products are targeted at a wide range of network technologies (GSM / GPRS, CDMA, EDGE and WCDMA), geographical and language specific markets (Europe, North & Latin America, Japan, China), as well as customer segments such as gaming and enterprise users.
Symbian OS continued to attract new licensees with LG Electronics, Arima and Lenovo becoming Symbian OS licensees during the first half of 2024. Symbian OS is attracting growing support from the wider application development community; just under 3,000 commercial third party applications for Symbian OS phones are now available (end H1 2003 – 1,323 applications). (Source: Symbian research, see Notes to Editors)
In May, Symbian launched Symbian Signed, an application certification program that has been endorsed by Orange, T-Mobile, Nokia and Sony Ericsson. This program builds on Symbian’s existing support for application developers by creating even wider commercial opportunities for third party Symbian OS applications and offers faster routes to market that require less cost and effort.
With completion of the £50m rights issue and strong support of its shareholders, Symbian will accelerate development of Symbian OS with a particular focus on evolving Symbian OS to enhance its suitability as a platform for the development of lower cost, mid-range phones.
Symbian looks forward to further phones based on Symbian OS being announced and commencing shipment during the second half of the year. Sales of phones recently announced and to be announced during the second half will largely determine Symbian’s full year performance. As in previous years, sales are likely to be heavily weighted towards the last four months of the year.”
For full details see http://www.symbian.com/press-office/2024/pr040804.html.
21:10
[Aug 5, 2024 18:08 PDT] 13 Links [Erik's Linkblog]
Introducing the Reflexive User Interface Builder. An application and toolkit for building and rendering Java AWT/Swing and Eclipse SWT GUIs.
Ubik 1.2a. Ubik is a RMI-like distributed computing framework.
JBoss Kicks Off Free Webinar Series. The series will consist of semimonthly Webinars, to be hosted by key members of the JBoss team.
Java Live Survey. Take this short survey and help Sun make the Java Live chats better serve your needs.
Michael — New Batmobile footage.
Andreas — Java Technology Concept Map.
David — Server-specific guides (Tomcat and JBoss) for installing blojsom.
Jelmer — 5 Windows Tools no one should be without.
Lasse — StoryTestRunner in Java = Fitster.
Martin — 10+ tips: Averting Bad Web Experiences.
French Tax Office Takes Up Open Source. JBoss.
J2MEGL 0.0.7. A Java 2 Micro Edition Game Library.
Google IPO: No longer a sure thing? Last-minute problems, from SEC missteps to investor cold feet. Who's in at $135 a share?
19:10
Woman Down, Woman Down! [martinlittle.com:thinkThin]
Just so that she could watch the final week of Big Brother, Fiona has got mumps ... and no computer (see, I do know someone with no computer at home!). She is doing a good job of keeping me up to date, however. Stuart has just been turfed out.
Due to complete work immersion and lack of non-work Internet access, I've totally not been keeping up with goings-on, but I'm surprised Stuart's out. William Hill still have Nadia as favourite, but shockingly Shell is least favourite to win and Jason has moved up to second favourite to win, ahead of Dan!
Comments?
Resources: [The Tao of Mac]
Resources:
(partly lifted from Bruno)
- Lisbon City Hall Map Site - Now includes an aerial photograph overlay. Sadly, it only works properly in Internet Explorer, which goes to show you how much they know about web sites.
- National Geographic Atlas
- Maoporama
- Vodafone Portugal - Lisbon and Oporto
These pages share an initial or final title word with 'RecentChanges'
- FullRecentChanges
- RecentChanges
- RecentEdits
- RecentVisitors
Tired. [The Tao of Mac]
Tired.
Lots of conference calls, meetings and whatnot. Zero free time, although I did come across this Verizon page, which has a hilarious IETF anecdote at the top).
For those who have just dropped in, IETF is the main reason I can still take 3GPP seriously, since they take great pains to accomodate IETF standards these days while "sanitizing" them by adding lots of acronym-flavored fluff all around.
And speaking of standards bodies, I just remembered this:
so far.
Griffin 10' GarageBand guitar cable [Engadget]
The new cable from Griffin is made exclusively for connecting a guitar directly to the mini jack input of a Mac. The high quality magnetically shielded cable eliminates the need for additional adapters when plugging a guitar directly into programs like GarageBand, Amplitube or other guitar recording software.
Who you gonna call? The BlueSniper [Engadget]
Also shown off at Defcon this past week, you can add the BlueSniper to add to your arsenal alongside your Sniper Yagi rifle. Like that other wireless firearm, the BlueSniper consists of a rifle stock with a scope and a yagi antenna attached to it. The team behind this one claims the BlueSniper can be used pick out and attack Bluetooth-enabled devices from up to a kilometer away, and is powerful enough to detect them even through building walls, but not quite powerful enough for busting ghosts.
More Users Want Stylish, Feature-packed Phones [TheFeature.com]
Nokia's small, feature-rich 6230 has proved to be more popular than the manufacturer thought, and is now missing from many European shops.
Encouraging Camera Phone Use In Schools [TheFeature.com]
After all those news stories about school districts banning camera phones, here's one suggesting a local district encourage the use of camera phones.
17:10
Reading list [The occasional scrivener]
Reading
- Paul Theroux: Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town
Shelf
- Rinker Buck: Flight of Passage
- Peter Englund: Brev från nollpunkten
- Ryszard Kapuscinski: Imperium
- Alistair Reynolds: Absolution Gap. Loaned from Patric.
Queue
- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
- Graham Hancock, The Lords of Poverty: The Power, Prestige and Corruption of the International Aid Business
- John Ajvide Lindqvist, Låt den rätte komma in
- Michael Maren, The Road to Hell: The Ravaging Effects of Foreign Aid and International Charity
- Ewen Montagu, The Man who never was
- Neal Stephenson, The Confusion
- Anders Sundelin, Fallet Wennerström
- Arkadij Vaksberg, Skjut de galna hundarna!
((R) means "re-reading")
Biggest miniSD ever [infoSync World]
Review: Siemens C62 [infoSync World]
A basic, no-frills mobile phone needn't necessarily mean a bad one. Join Anthony Newman to find out if Siemens' C62 is trash or treasure.
Yann Arthus Bertrand Aerial Photos [Russell Beattie Notebook]
This is what Babelfish thinks the top of the blog page says:
It is a butt and sprout the photograph author ' The ground which is visible from sky ' The army bedspread which is a yearly exhibition work with the subject which is to like this real nature will be beautiful rightly and the song which will not be?Gotta love machine translations...
Update: I corrected the language and updated the title in honor of Mr. Bertrand who died yesterday is a really cool photographer. Thanks to all my commenters for educating misleading me.
-Russ
Big Brother UK: Viewers Up, SMS Votes Down [TheFeature.com]
Though the Big Brother reality show is attracting a record amount of viewers, the number of SMS votes isn't keeping pace. Is SMS voting getting boring?
The MPx220 is coming your way! The Motorola MPx220 command center launched! [msmobiles.com]
16:10
Samsung slides out SGH-d415 phone [infoSync World]
Samsung's latest GSM phone sports a sliding design combined with a swivel camera and over-sized color display.
Upgrade for Orange SPV E200 available [infoSync World]
New web site design of Handango online shop with mobile software is active from today [msmobiles.com]
Another channel to communicate with Windows Mobile cell phones: MSN Web (!) Messenger [msmobiles.com]
14:10
Pocket PC malware outlook gets worse [infoSync World]
A backdoor trojan horse program has been found in the wild for Pocket PC devices. Meanwhile, mobile malware may be easier to write than expected.
[Aug 5, 2024 11:24 PDT] 27 Links [Erik's Linkblog]
Spring: Creating Objects So You Don't Have To. As a dependency injection framework, Spring links objects together using XML definitions.
GeoServer 1.2.0.
Kent Beck Joins Agitar Software. JUnit creator and pioneer of eXtreme programming, Kent Beck has joined Agitar Software, makers of unit testing software.
Berkeley DB Java Edition 1.5.1. A patch release of 1.5.0 containing bug fixes and performance enhancements.
JGraphpad 5.0. A major new version with EPS export, a series of new layouts, new and extended cell views, and many major bug fixes.
JGraphAddons 1.0. This release offers various bug fixes, enhancements and new and extended cell types.
JetBrains Omea Public Beta released. Omea is an extremely powerful yet simple to use "Integrated Information Environment".
Maven: Trove of Tips. Andreas Schaefer made the switch to Maven and has some real-world lessons he learned from the experience.
Creating Varargs in Java 1.5 Tiger. This excerpt from Java 1.5 Tiger: A Developer's Notebook.
C-JDBC 1.0 final. C-JDBC is an open source database clustering middleware that requires no code modifications.
Datamata SQL Portal 3.0, a web based database management tool.
Confix 1.4. Confix is a configuration toolkit that transforms XML into your configuration object model.
BEA and Unisys post new SPECjAppServer200 results. Benchmark results in the Multiple Node category.
Carlos — Killer "Slicing and Dicing" Eclipse Plugins.
Russ — The Nokia 6230 and the Success of Clean Design.
Alan — Disappointed with the SYS-CON coverage of BEA.
Bryn — Nice programming language mode for JEdit.
Daniel — New Life for EJB.
Dion — RE: Lightweight Containers vs. EJB3.
Eugene — Be careful when copying Java code tips.
Hinkmond — J2ME phone services in China.
Mark — Programming J2ME on Symbian OS.
Matt — JSF: Which implementation should I use?
Scott — Visualize The News With Java.
WebTranslator Java API 0.1a, a library providing automatic language translation to the client's locale.
Google May Have Illegally Issued Shares. Google may have illegally issued more than 23 million shares of its stock to hundreds of employees and consultants.
F.C.C. Supports Surveillance Rules on Internet Calls. Internet phone calls should be subject to the same type of law enforcement surveillance as cell and landline phones.
Verizon Wireless gets cozy with Microsoft and brings MSN Messenger and Hotmail to cell phones [msmobiles.com]
13:10
ROM upgrade for Orange SPV E200 (UK English) smartphone is out [msmobiles.com]
12:10
Sabotaged by Spam [Games * Design * Art * Culture]
I suppose I shouldn't complain overmuch, given that I purposefully chose about the cheapest hosting place I could find.
Nonetheless:
1. As you may recall, some weeks ago I had a problem; I was getting 10,000 bounced emails a day to my main email address, and repeated calls to my service provider got me no where. I specifically asked them to disable the SMTP server, as I never actually send mail from it (I use my local cable provider's SMTP server)--I only use the POP server. They refused, basically claiming it wasn't a problem "as long as your password is secure..." I went and changed all the passwords, FWIW.
I sent some copies of the bounced emails to people who were bouncing them, with full headers; one advised me that it was virus-originated. I also simply killed the old email address, so I wouldn't have to download 10,000 emails a day, and set the server to bounce any mail to that address. This was at least a short-term solution.
2. Two weeks ago, -all- email to all costik.com email addresses started getting bounced, along with a message saying (sender) "is currently not permitted to relay through this server. " Now the oddness here is that this is typically a message from an SMTP server to someone trying to send mail through the server who does not have authorization to do so (often because the sender isn't in the same domain as the server). It's not a message you typically get from a POP server that's bouncing incoming mail. Whatever.
I wrote the provider saying "wassup?" essentially, and got a message saying that they were having problems with mail servers on several hosted sites, and the problem would be solved shortly. It wasn't.
I tried again, got the same message.
I called their phone support; the fellow on the other end tried several things, said he would bump it up a level, and I'd get email. I did get email, saying the problem was solved. It wasn't.
Nex thing I knew, my website was down, along with this blog. Not only that, I could no longer connect to the mail servers (I had previously been able to do so, although it was futile, since all incoming mail was getting bounced), nor could I FTP to the site. Another call to tech support; oh, you have to contact our abuse email address.
I contacted them, and was told I was a spammer, and my account would not be reinstated.
As you can imagine, this rather pissed me off. I emailed back a rather irate note, pointing out that I was no damned spammer, and if there was any spam going out of my SMTP server it was their damned fault as I'd told them to turn it off, for chrissakes.... I also cc'ed Cory Doctorow, on the grounds that if they didn't give satisfaction, maybe I could get him to blog it on Boingboing--I mean, if you can't get satisfaction, you can at least get revenge--and he wrote asking if he could post it. I asked him to hold off, since one possible response on the part of my hoster might be to get more rigid and impossible in the face of bad publicity.
Yesterday they said "Okay, we're reinstating your account." However, when I FTP to the site there were no files there... no folders... not even a "public_html" one.... Nada. I was fearful they'd simply wiped the whole damn thing. My site is backed up... The blog posts are stored on Blogger... But the comment files weren't. No backup there. Gak.
The problem was compounded by the fact that a press release for Paranoia XP has to go out soon, and I really wanted to point to the Paranoia blog, similarly caught in limbo.
Today, however, everything seems to be back, including the comments. I've backed them up, and will continue to do so regularly.
However, all email to costik.com addresses is STILL getting bounced... I have an inquiry in... sigh...
10:10
SIP [The Tao of Mac]
The Session Initiation Protocol, the current underpinning of standard VoIP.
Resources:
Standards Documents:
- RFC:3261
- draft-ietf-simple-presence
- draft-ietf-impp-cpim-pidf
- SIP Servlet API Spec
Packages:
Stacks and Libraries
- Vovida stack.
- SIPp Performance Tester
- Shtoom (Client and Python tools)
- oSIP (libosip2)
- SIP Open Stack - Java
Proxies
- Siproxd (proxy, 2024)
- partysip (proxy, 2002 but allows local registration)
- SaRP
Clients & Presence
- Java Presence Proxy
- X-Lite, a SIP softphone for Windows and Mac OS X
- SJPhone, another softphone.
Full-Blown Implementations
- Asterisk
Resources
- SIP Drafts: APIs and Programming Environments - includes mention of a PHP SIP environment.
- VoIP-Info (VoIP-oriented Wiki)
- Slashdot: Cheap and Reliable IP Telephony? - discussion and a few more links.
Default Logins and Passwords for Networked Devices [www.gadgetguy.de - The GadgetGuy]
(Via vowe.net:) "NOTE: This listing is only provided as a resource to network administrators and security professionals. It is also meant to remind people that a serious problem exists when people configure a network or a computer system and do not change these passwords."
Get the list here. Useful ressource for my consulting activities. Although some critical systems are lacking, but there's potential for growth.
Tube Race On The Telly Tonight [Ewan's Musings]
For those of you in the London area, footage of the Tube Race will be on BBC London News tonight, so watch out for me and everyone else running around like idiots, and sounding (hopefully) not too much like tube-spotting geeks. For today only (5th August) you can view the...
Today's jihad [Rants and Revelations]
Today I wish to hunt down everybody who makes an email virus scanner that sends back a message to the "From" address telling them that the message that they sent contained a virus, and all the morons who install these...
08:10
Spoke too soon [Rants and Revelations]
Ok, everything wasn't all sweetness and light. I went to bed with the rsync going on to the ext2 partition, and a cp -r going on to the VFAT partition. An hour or so later, I was awaked by my...
06:10
Click-By Links [The Tao of Mac]
Click-By Links
- Seems like Linksys? might yet make a thriving business out of having its appliances hacked. This time it's their neat storage appliance, and I definetly want one - with careful reassembly, it can run all my current MRTG? and RRDTool stuff plus a number of small housekeeping scripts besides hooking up my storage to the net - if you seen one in Portugal, give me a shout (unless, of course, the $75 retail price hasn't caught up with it en route).
- Erik looks really neat, but it's Windows-only.
- The Gish demo is out. Give it a squish and see if it tickles your fancy.
- Gruber's take of Perl modules. I agree that the current Mail:: modules aren't up to scratch, and will be keeping an eye on these newfangled E things when I need to ride the camel again.
We're Doomed
Oh, and I finally saw Doom 3 today. All of a sudden, everyone was talking about how old and slow their PCs are, and how they really should think about upgrading so that they could surf the Net faster, and... well, you get my drift.
My take? Well, since the only reason I played Quake (World, II and Arena) was the multiplayer component, I wasn't at all impressed by the gameplay. The graphics (despite pretty damn slow on a year-old machine) were pretty damn scary, though - now I know why whoever recorded the demo movie was constantly retreating from monsters.
Still, it's as good a reason to buy a G5 as any other I have right now (and it looks like I'll have a while to wait yet for a Mac version too, so I'm definetly out of the loop for six months or so). And, of course, we'll see if I can ever find enough spare time to start playing anything again.
Update: According to Carmack himself gets a sizable revenue from licensing the game engines).
04:10
Oyster Festival Watch - Thursday [Feet up!]
Nice mix of activites today, the kite workshop should be fun, Whitstable Windsurfing's weather page is currently reporting light breeze. The rest of the day has a good bundle of kids activities - ideal stuff for the Summer hols.
A couple of fun adult things - not as adult as Dave Lee, but that would be going some - this evening. The band Hullabaloo are playing at the playhouse, and the ghost tours continue - I'm really tempted to go on one of those.
Oyster Festival Watch - Wednesday [Feet up!]
Better never than late... If you hadn't seen Wednesday's programme, you'd have missed some fun events, ok I can't get too excited by African cotton crafts (such as Ghanian painting, Tie & Die and batik), but I'm sure the Blue Peter watchers would love a play. Being at the seaside there's plenty of getting wet, and the crabbing and It's a Knockout would have featured lots of water...
T-Mobile Sidekick II and Promises of Sync [MobileWhack]
T-Mobile and Danger are issuing dualing press releases today. Danger gives word about actually letting people sync to a computer again, however:
Along with the launch of the T-Mobile Sidekick II, T-Mobile and Danger plan to introduce software that will allow Sidekick customers to wirelessly synchronize their desktop contacts and calendar information with their T-Mobile Sidekick. This synchronization software will be available for the T-Mobile Sidekick II and previous Sidekick generations. Price of the software will be announced at a later date.Good to know they're working on ways to customize the device with colored bumpers though. Desktop sync, or "fashionable faceplates"? Form, or function? It'd be nice to have both for a change.
Editor's note (rael): There's a rather positive review of the SKII -- "Another Try at Inventing Superphone" -- over at NYT Circuits.
Discuss this story
03:10
Get your mobile social software here... [MobileWhack]
I ran across a couple of lists of mobile social software applications and mobile urban games.
Discuss this story
[Aug 5, 2024 00:30 PDT] 9 Links [Erik's Linkblog]
FCC Says TiVo Owners Can Share Shows. Last week TiVo received alot of heat from MPAA and NFL for a proposal regarding sharing of recorded shows with users...
Russ — US Carriers Mobile to Email Test.
Chakra — Google Watch (Got Gmail? Got Gshares?).
Chris — Mac and Java: I see the love, now where's the point?
Mohd — Simple doc to add Logging to your classes using Eclipse & Jalopy(optional).
Steve — Windows Update Updated.
Michael — Free MapPoint Web Service for a year for MSDN subscribers.
JML 5.0 RC 2, Java Modeling Language.
SpamAssassin 2.64. A mail filter which attempts to identify spam using text analysis.
Look Who's Talking: MinuteMan's War Robots [TheFeature.com]
How do you get unmanned robots and self-flying airplanes to talk to each other? With an airborne Internet that reconfigures itself on the fly.
01:10
The Nokia 6230 and the Success of Clean Design [Russell Beattie Notebook]
I moved to a 6230 recently, but had been on a 6100 for a few months before that - and really liked the form factor. It didn't fill my pocket or feel bulky like my old 7650/3650, it felt like a *phone*.Tom is an expert in the field - if says a phone is good, it's good.6230 does everything I want and more (J2ME/BT/radio/WAP/etc), screen size is adequate (more would be nicer but it's not a killer), it's *responsive*, and stats I see for WAP traffic to some services we run indicates that S40 handsets generate 2x the traffic of S60...
Though I can't say I told you so as I've been pushing Series 60 phones over the Series 40 models, this mobile does meet much of what I always felt the obvious keys to consumer product success are: create a "Model T" like device which is simple and clean in design and yet packed with features. In fact, I went on at length in April about how cleanly designed phones would win - I was talking about the 6225 at the time, but this phone is along the same lines.
The 6230 has just about everything you want in a mobile including lots of memory, external storage card, advanced Java, WAP 2.0, GPRS/EDGE, MP3 *and* FM support, Bluetooth and it's a triband World Phone. And say what you want about the S40 (okay, I will) it's still an incredibly well designed User Interface which is beats the hell out of the competition like the standard Moto API (which I've been forced to use more and more lately and am not happy about). It'd be nice if the screen was larger (like the amazing Moto v400) but that's soon to be address with the Nokia 6230i, so even that won't be an issue for this model for long.
No over analyzed market segmentation, no wacky keypads, no gimmicks - Just a well designed phone that people want to have and use. I wonder how much money Nokia would save per year, and how much they would increase their sales, if they just cut down the number of models they sell and just focused on this type of model to sell to the public? Make six differently colored shells like the iPod mini and just market the hell out of that one model. Judging from Apple's relative success, I'd say that'd be a winning strategy.
It's really a shame that American carriers - specifically AT&T; Wireless- aren't selling this phone yet as it is a perfect model to take advantage of the nationwide EDGE network (here's the settings from a with-it VC). I wonder if the delay is because of network issues, the merger with Cingular, or just the general focus on flip phones now in the American market. Probably the last one.
Neat phone, but I wonder if it's the last great Nokia candy bar phone?
-Russ
In computer terms, I came out ahead. [Rants and Revelations]
I bought a 200Gb hard drive ($141 with a $40 mail in rebate) and a USB external enclosure ($15). The idea was that I would have a hard drive that I could use as a backup for the 80Gb drive...
Wednesday, 04 August
23:10
Shark Tank: Geography in, geography out [Computerworld Shark Tank]
User can't get her mapping software to properly display states on the U.S. map she's preparing. So she calls the vendor's support line, and this pilot fish sees the problem immediately.
South Korea Ponders Further Cuts to SK Telecom Rates [TheFeature.com]
SK Telecom is already heavily regulated, but now the South Korean government is considering using SKT's calling rates to try to control inflation, not just regulate the wireless market.
21:10
Firefox Search Plugins, Quicksilver Update [The Tao of Mac]
Firefox Search Plugins, Quicksilver Update
I put up a couple of Firefox search plugins that make it a trifle easier to search for stuff on the site (took around 10 minutes flat to hack them together). Feedback is welcome.
Of course, if you are using Quicksilver, you don't need this. I wish there was a decent Windows analogue that I could use out here in corporate territory. No, make that I wish some enlightened soul allowed us to buy PowerBooks.
Update: Quicksilver has just been updated to become modular. Plus a couple of changes (like the default activation hotkey, which was the first thing I changed back).
On a first glance, I really didn't like the plugin-oriented approach (or rather, I didn't like having to go and download plugins for core functionality that used to be there before). I think base functionality (i.e., a core subset of plugins that cover what you can do with a freshly-installed Mac) should always be part of a default install, and that things like Firefox and developer-oriented plugins should be part of separate "packs" or categories.
I'll survive the change, of course (and things like the diff plugin promise to become staple actions on my machines), but for a while it felt like it started out on that long winding road simple applications take in order to eventually become too complicated to manage - especially if I have to bother with irritants like managing identical sets of plugins on both my Macs.
Konfabulator springs to mind, and if you've been reading this for a while, you know that's not necessarily a good thing - openness and third-party contributions are excellent, but an unmanageable menagerie of add-ons becomes a hindrance to users and too distracting to developers (who spend more time adding stuff to categories than doing actual development)
Still, the new iTunes plugin rocks, and Nicholas has (as usual) been quick on the uptake and open to suggestions. He also pointed me to Growl, which might be just the thing for me to use instead of (or alongside) my homegrown RendezvousAlerter. Kudos to him :)
Applications/Growl [The Tao of Mac]
Growl is a global notification system for Macintosh OS X. This allows any application to send it a notification, and then it displays it.
Unlike LanOSD, Growl is licensed in the public domain and has Perl and Python bindings (yes, boys and girls, it sets itself up in Library/Frameworks, which means it should work with any language, and comes with a small set of Xcode samples).
August 04, 2024 [Joel on Software]
Eric Sink: “It‘s okay to be in awe of these great hackers. But as a practical matter, small ISVs would be much better off hiring professionals.” Agreed!
Which reminds me, I can't wait for Johanna Rothman's new book on hiring geeks to come out. I'm reading the manuscript now and it's a great book on a topic that doesn't get a lot of coverage.
US Carriers Mobile to Email Test [Russell Beattie Notebook]
A little while ago I was checking out a new mobile site and I was suprised when I read in the help pages something like, "to post, send a text message to [email protected]." I was quite taken aback. Text message to an email? No, that's not right. Though it may be available for some operators, SMS needs a phone number, not an email address. What they were talking about as MMS messages. That's when the patently obvious dawned on me:
Camera phones are all MMS enabled and MMS uses SMTP and thus is basically email.
Of course there's some caveats to that sentence - MMS assumes GSM, and MMS to email assumes the carrier allows this sort of thing. But in general, it's a good assumption that if you have a camera phone, you can send an email automagically from your mobile. Even Yahoo Mobile's Photo Upload instructions assume this: "Email or MMS your pictures to [email protected]," it says. Huh.
So we all know my opinions about *receiving* MMSes (it just doesn't ever seem to work) but sending these messages? That's a whole other ballgame. So this morning I wandered around the office and had my coworkers send me an email from their mobiles using the most basic functionality possible. The same way a newbie would send an email from a mobile.
The results:
AT&T; Wireless: I sent a message from my Nokia S60 phone. SMS won't let me enter in an email, so I chose a "Multimedia Message" instead and the message came through pretty instantly as a basic Email. The return address is in the format: [email protected]. I've done this before, so I knew that bit. I copied and pasted a long message and replied, but only got an SMS in return, with the first 160 characters.
Cingular: I had my coworker Todd do the same thing from his S60 phone using Cingular and got the message with the return address of [email protected] (notice no country code). It too came through as a plain email, but with a bunch of text at the bottom: "You have received the above Multimedia Message (MMS) from a Cingular Wireless customer," etc. I responded with a bunch of text and surprisingly (or maybe not considering the domain name) Todd got a full-on MMS message in return with all of the text. Subsequent tests with Images didn't work, but still... that was very interesting.
Verizon: I had Vineet try with his shiny new Motorola V710, and got an email from [email protected], which had no extra text or formatting. I sent a bunch of text back, but he only got a TXT message with the first 160 characters or so.
Sprint: I had Joel send me a Picture Mail from Sprint, and got the standard HTML message with the image attached from [email protected]. In case you don't know, embedded in the HTML is a hidden XML fragment which point to LightSurf's servers so you can grab the attached image if you want to. Responding with a lot of text, Sprint too only sent the first 160 characters or so in a basic text message.
Nextel: I had ScottC send me a text message from his shiny new i830, and he was surprised (as most people are) to see the field say "Enter Phone/Email". I received an very basic text email from [email protected]. Replying with a bunch of text only sent the first 160 characters or so.
T-Mobile: Finally, I had Matt send me an email from T-Mobile and got a message from [email protected] - the message was in HTML, but so broken Thunderbird couldn't read/format it so it appeared blank - it also didn't have a subject. Responding with a bunch of text sent an MMS (like Cingular) so that was pretty cool.
So the conclusion is: Wow. They all work. I'm not sure how reliable or stable these systems are, but if you wanted to launch a mobile service which relies on messaging like Yahoo Photos did, you don't have to worry about a special SMS or MMS phone number, you can simply have the users (at least here in the U.S.) enter in an email address. The challenge of course, is to work through the permutations of email formats to best extract the text and media content, and exclude the attached images from HTML message like from T-Mob and Sprint.
And what about sending? Well, this is a bit more interesting. Plain text SMSes will still work most reliably. But it seems to me that a startup could skip this step as well, by simply knowing the format of the carrier's email-to-mobile address. But you can't rely on this at all - I know from experience.
Back a few years ago, I was toying with the idea of these types of alerts and played this game with Telefonica Movistar. At first, SMS messages sent to their email gateway would arrive as sent to the user. But eventually they changed to an online web-mail system where all you got on your phone was an alert that said "you have a message waiting for you in your online mail account". Obviously they did this to make sure that companies did not use the email gateway for exactly what I was thinking fo doing with it - to skip around the SMS charges.
But the U.S. is a bit different - email is much more ingrained and if a user wasn't able to send or receive email like this, there could be an outcry. Also, I'm sure that T-Mob and Cingular charged for that MMS message that was *received* and were quite happy to allow that functionality. I wonder if they have plans for SPAM? I once stupidly posted an email to one of my prepay phones on this site and paid the price with *loads* of mobilized spam messages.
It'll be interesting to see how this evolves and how both developers and carriers use and adapt these services.
-Russ
Did The FCC Ban Mobile Spam? [TheFeature.com]
The FCC is getting a lot of attention for supposedly banning "mobile spam," but the details suggest that they did very little... and that mobile spam may already have been banned.
19:10
All too easy [AAS: All News Stories]
Ewan goes head to head with Tiger Woods for N-Gage (Series 60) and finds it somewhat less than a challenge. Read the full review here.
Intermediate Licence Practise [Gadget17's Gazette]
Well firstly apologise for not posting for a while, but I have been busy practising for my Amateur Radio Intermediate Licence, as well as deleting and re-categorising some posts here.
The Intermediate Radio Licence course won't be stating until October, but I wanted to get ahead of the game. In preparation, I have purchased a Multi-meter and Soldering Iron. I will if all goes to plan be taking the course at Bromley DARS than for my Foundation Licence at Whitton ARG ARG. Only one bus from centre of town to Bromley instead of one bus and two trains Whitton. Talking of which, I went to the Whitton club for 1st time last friday since I got my Foundation Licence and had a great evening.
I contacted the author of the Intermediate Licence book and was sent some Mock Exams which I am working though the questions so I understand what the questions are asking. For part of it you can choose to build a simple electrical project and I have a feeling I want to try a Morse Oscillator so I can try to learn Morse Code. Well it's back to the Studying.....
Comments on this Entry:
Symbian Rolling Along [TheFeature.com]
The OS developer says it shipped 5 million handsets in the first half of 2024, an 85% increase over last year.
Mio 168 - Pocket PC with built-in GPS - helps athletes from Taiwan in 2024 Olympic Games [msmobiles.com]
17:10
Nokia/Lifeblog [The Tao of Mac]
Resources:
- Russell's take
- Erik's LifeBlogger
Nokia/7610 [The Tao of Mac]
The 7610 is Nokia's first Lifeblog-compatible Series 60 phone with a megapixel (1152x864) camera:
Notes:
The keypad is hideously hard to use, period. The joystick is too fiddly. In short, I can't use it for more than a few minutes.
Bluetooth services as reported by Mac OS X 10.3.4: SDP Server, Hands-Free Audio Gateway, OBEX File Transfer, SyncMLClient, Nokia OBEX PC Suite Services, OBEX Object Push, Dial-Up Networking
JPEG? images created by this phone don't have complete EXIF headers:
$ jhead Image\(008\).jpg File name : Image(008).jpg File size : 291708 bytes File date : 2024:06:14 22:26:33 Resolution : 1152 x 864 Jpeg process : Baseline
Resources:
- Russell Beattie's Review
- Press Release
- All About Symbian
- Phone Scoop (has pics of a black version of the handset)
- CNN
- Preview
- Pocket Lint Review
- InfoSync Review
Linksys/NSLU2 [The Tao of Mac]
The Linksys? NSLU2 is a neat little appliance that serves USB storage over SMB. The disks must be formatted by the appliance itself using ext3.
Resources:
- Product Page
- Manual
- Review
- Hacking in
- Linux on the NSLU2
16:10
T-Mobile and Danger release Sidekick II [infoSync World]
The much-awaited Sidekick II is now official, sporting a number of improvements over its predecessor in both hardware and software.
[Aug 4, 2024 14:04 PDT] 21 Links [Erik's Linkblog]
Can Apple attract Java enterprise with Xserve? Xserve includes an open source application server catering to Java developers...
JSX released under the GPL. A free version of Java Serialization to XML (JSX) has been released under the GPL, called freeJSX.
Dion — Spring Hibernate Config: mappingDirectoryLocations.
Maintain a Healthy-Software Lifestyle. Poor software quality can cause your programs to come to an untimely end.
Put JDK 1.5's Executor to Work for You. Take a look at a powerful, scalable, and extensible framework you can use to execute and manage asynchronous tasks
Mapping Data Objects Simply. Take a look at a simple technique for mapping data objects from HTML to database and back in Web applications.
alt.lang.jre: alt.lang.jre: Feeling Groovy.
Eye on performance: Determining the riskiness of change. How the metrics of coupling can impact code quality.
Mars Simulation Project 2.76.
Groovin' with WebWork 2: Using Groovy as Actions. Christian Parker has found a niche, using Groovy as the language of choice for his WebWork 2 actions.
Glenn — No, Free Wi-Fi Doesn't Cause Bankruptcy.
Mike — FCC Allows SMSpam.
Dion — Making sure classes are in your project CLASSPATH via ant.
Lokesh — PropertySheet component.
Simon — Together Designer CE on Mac OS X (from Linux installer).
Tom — Review - Tapestry in Action by Howard M. Lewis Ship.
William — RSS and WAP - CellFeeds.com.
AntMeat 0.3. An Ant task for submitting releases to freshmeat.net.
JasperAssistant 1.3.2. A visual report designer for JasperReports.
RealPlayer 10 for Linux and Helix Player 1.0 Final Released.
New Archos Gmini 400 also a PVP. The 20GB Gmini 400 ads the ability to play video, making it a small portable video player.
Orange SPV C500 - the smallest smartphone in the world - will be available also in silver ! [msmobiles.com]
14:10
Play-Doh and a Zen Parenting Moment [Russell Beattie Notebook]
But yesterday I bought some Play-Doh for Alex and brought it home with me last night ($2 for a four tub pack?!? Amazing!). He's played with it before at his "activities" and at his day care, I've just never seen him play with it. He's just at the right age for it, old enough not to eat it - though he doesn't eat *anything* including actual food, so that's not a problem - and dextrous enough to play without mashing the dough.
So this morning when I woke up, Alex and Ana were playing with the Play-Doh on the coffee table in the living room. And instead of Maisy (who I love, don't get me wrong), was Mr. Rogers. So I sat down and though Alex likes the Play-Doh, he doesn't actually create anything with it yet, so Ana and I started creating little sculptures for him to play with. I haven't touched the stuff in easy a couple decades, so I was just amazed at the tactile feel of it and it's moldability. Take some blue stuff and press against the yellow stuff and it just stays. And then you can separate it again just as easily! It's magic! I had forgotten!
So there we three were, quietly playing with the Play-Doh, the smooth voice of Mr. Rogers explaining something or other on the television and I was like "Wow. This is incredibly mellow." I mean, I use my fingers all day to type, it's been a long time since I actually tried to use them to mold stuff, I was totally into it. First I created a little dog-like thing, then a bus and Alex took them and made the appropriate noises (bow-wow, zoom-zoom) and I was in a Zen like peace. Again, if you don't have a kid you have no idea.
:-)
I'm going to get some Play-Doh for my desk! I have some Silly Putty already, but it's just not the same.
-Russ
Location blogging and Location based services ( LBS ) - available NOW for Windows Mobile devices: Pocket PC and Microsoft Smartphone [msmobiles.com]
12:10
Manhunt Twist [dwlt.thinksOutLoud]
Gamesindustry.biz has the latest on the Manhunt story which has caused so much furore over the last week, and prompted me to rail against the games industry:
Police involved in the Stefan Pakeerah murder case have revealed that the copy of Manhunt at the centre of a tabloid media frenzy last week was found in the possession of the victim, not the killer.
The story also poses the question of how the British media's behaviour during this story:
The tabloid press, in particular the extremist right-wing Daily Mail newspaper, have already been heavily criticised for ignoring the police reports and prosecution statements which gave the motive for the murder as robbery, with LeBlanc killing his younger friend in order to pay back a drugs-related debt. Few tabloid stories made any mention of the drugs angle.
Somehow, I doubt that they'll print any kind of retraction. However, this doesn't change anything regarding the behaviour of Rockstar, ELSPA and the other relevent parties that I wrote about yesterday.
OTA [The Tao of Mac]
Ch-ch-cha-changes [MonkeyX - Hairy Thoughts]
Yes, I'm alive.
Past few months have been a mixed bag of change: end of a long-term relationship, moved out of my own home in with a friend and got myself a new job (at MTV Europe).
Currently, have no home internet access so apologies if you've tried emailing me or came to this site wondering if it was down to a post every couple of months.
It'll be a while before I resume public writing but I've been keeping a private weblog with ideas and essays ready to refine and publish. Not that I'd hold my breath for them.
As befitting my limited available Internet time I'm going to post some quick and dirty lists of "things".
Things that currently interest me
- Knowledge representation using collaborative web outliners
- Mobile wireless gaming platforms
- Online communities
- Content categorisation using bayesian filters
Things that don't interest me at all
- US Presidential elections
- Citezan media
- The EU
Books I've read whilst inbetween jobs
- Goats
- Green Mars
- His Dark Materials trilogy
- The Nature of Scientific Revolutions
- Dr. Atkins' New Diet Revolution
- Coder to Developer
- Micro Java Games Development
- An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
- Sandman graphic novels (re-read for nth time)
Books Amazon delivered to my old address and I've not yet got
- The Zenith Angle
- All the Shah's Men
Good movies seen lately
- Shrek 2
(All other movies suck in comparison)
Albums I've been listening to
- Faithless - No Roots
- Snow Patrol - Final Straw
- The Essential Clash
- Lamb - What Sound
Embarrassing things watched
- England at Euro 2024
- Big Brother
- Wife Swap
Modern verbs I use too much
- Download
- Blog
- Ping
- Grep
- Zip
Essential games for the thinking monkey
- Victoria
- Europa Universalis II
- Hearts of Iron
(Paradox offer the best historical strat games I've ever seen, all basically based on the same engine... I eagerly await each release and hope for something with the playability of Victoria and the depth of EU II but based in the post-WWII period)
Most disappointing games
- Star Wars Galaxies (beautiful, almost good social experience but ultimately dull after "grinding" levels)
- Sim City 4 (this franchise is dead, move along folks, nothing to see here)
- Freelancer (great graphics and gameplay, let down by limited environment, come on Microsoft with a great sequel)
- Patrician (economics in the Hanseatic League - nice concept but lacking longetivity for a strategy game)
Words I'm sick of
- Celebrity
- Truth
- Love (hehe, post-relationship blues)
Words I'll never get sick of
- Monkey
- Spatula
- Fuck
People who I'd like to wag my finger at and say "Oiii! Shut-it" in a mockney accent
- Bankers
- Journalists
- Politicians
- Luvvies
- Chelsea-Kensington types
- Stupid, loud youth (pronounced "yoot") who give it all that in public
- Old people who aren't cute, quiet and vulnerable-looking
- Young people who aren't cute, quiet and vulnerable-looking
- The incompetent gits at London Underground
Things I'm going to be when I grow up / old
- Cranky
- Rich
- Crazy
(Links? Hah!)
[Aug 4, 2024 09:36 PDT] 21 Links [Erik's Linkblog]
New Life for EJB. The proposed EJB 3.0 specification defines a new syntax but some say it fails to address fundamental flaws in the model.
JBoss Announces Partnership with Novell/SuSE. A partnership in licensing and support agreements announced at LinuxWorld.
IBM's Cloudscape Becomes Apache Derby.
Mule ESB Server 0.9.2, a messaging framework.
Serious Security Hole In PuTTY. Simon Tatham and his fellows released PuTTY 0.55 on 2024-08-03 which solves this bug.
Developing Web Applications with JavaServer Faces. Read about the nuts-and-bolts of JavaServer Faces.
Bryan — BREW or Java? How about neither.
Databases and MIDP, Part 5: Searching a Record Store. This article explores the various strategies for finding one or more records that meet criteria you specify.
Databases and MIDP, Part 4: Filtering and Traversal Strategies. This article explores the different strategies for finding the data you need.
Berin — Back to Dojo Again.
Daniel — Getting in synch.
Oleg — History of 64-bit Windows.
Scott — Make the Beeping STOP ... Blackbox Java Component Programming with Toolkit.
Vinny — What's going on at BEA?
Cédric — Spam software review, part 1.
BMW Offers Digital Audio Player Watch. BMW is offering a combo watch/MP3 player that features 256MB of onboard storage and an integrated USB cable.
Fred — The Must Have Eclipse Plugin.
William — What I Really Meant to Say.
Confix 1.4. Confix is a toolkit that converts XML config files to Java objects, sparing you tedious DOM tree manipulation.
Mary Jo — Sounds Like XP SP2 Finally Is Done.
AOL buys Mailblocks in spam-fighting effort. America Online has snapped up Web-based e-mail company Mailblocks.
09:10
HipTop [The Tao of Mac]
Resources:
- Original Sidekick Review
- Sidekick 2 Review
A neat handset by Danger.
08:10
Bra-att-ha-grejer [mymarkup.net]
Införskaffat idag:
- Hari Kunzrus "Transmission", efter att ha läst Andres Lokkos recension i Expressen häromdagen (ej på nätet).
- En Unlimited Personal Edition-licens av Movable Type
- En Tivoli Audio-radioapparat
Hummer-hälsningen [mymarkup.net]
Följer upp ett tidigare inlägg.
Hummer-hatet är utbrett. Det finns till och med en Hummer-hälsning:
FUH2.com har just nu 1004 exempel på hälsningen. [via: David Weinberger]. "The H2 is a death machine. You'd better hope that you don't collide with an H2 in your economy car. You can kiss your ass goodbye thanks to the H2's massive weight and raised bumpers."
Ett fönster till själen [mymarkup.net]
Läser i New York Times (reg. krävs) om forskning som går ut på att analysera bilder och film med avsikt att se vad som speglar sig i folks hornhinnor och därmed (kanske) vad de tittar på, eller vad som finns runt omkring dem i ett rum. Kan användas t.ex. i datorgränssnitt där blickan kan användas, men också för att bekräfta vittnesmål. Låter som något för ett kommande CSI-avsnitt.
Forskarna vid Columbia University heter Ko Nishino och Shree K. Nayar och man kan läsa om det hela i deras papper "The World in an Eye" (PDF)
Firenze [mymarkup.net]
Florens är som en stor marmorsarkofag med myror springandes på den (myror av alla nationaliteter, men mest japaner). Det var första gången jag var där, så för mig var allt nytt.
Vi klarade oss turligen ifrån Stendhal-syndromet (avgaserna gjorde susen). (Fast nu vill man ju se Dario Argentos film!)
Jag har satt upp ett litet album med bilder, ganska trista dom flesta, mest stenar (och en och annan polis).
» Några dagar i Florens. (TypePad willing).
Update: Jonas har konstaterat att Toscana verkar vara svenska bloggare favorit-resmål.
Litet hus [mymarkup.net]
Sydneys operahus med dimensionerna 64 x 38 x 41 mikrometer, ungefär som halva diametern hos ett mänskligt hårstrå, byggt i glas och plast. [via: Howard Lovy's NanoBot. Ursprunglig arkitekt: Jørn Utzon]
Andelar på bloggingtjänst-marknaden [mymarkup.net]
Stéphane Le Solliec har räknat drygt 260.000 bloggar och kollat vilka blogg-hostingtjänster som är mest i användning - bsentinel kallar han det. I listan över de 100 mest använda "bloggfarmarna" är så klart Bloggers blogspot.com i topp, men därfefter kommer intressant nog iranska persianblog.com. Inga nordiska tjänster i sikte, så klart. [via: Smart Mobs]
(Le Solliec skapade plattformen för franska bloggingtjänsten U-blog, som först köptes upp av Loic Le Meur och senare av amerikanska Six Apart - Stephanie Booth förklarar varför franska bloggare inte är nöjda med nåt av det här, i inlägget "U-Blog, Six Apart, and Their Angry Bloggers").