February 2008
63 posts
iPhone 1.1.4 Update is Out [Apple] →
iPhone 1.1.4 Update is Out. You can get it now from iTunes. Remember, if you have jailbreaked or unlocked your iPhone, don’t install it. If your iPhone is clean, have fun. We will keep updating this space with our discoveries. Apparently, the 162.1MB update “fixes bugs and supersedes all previous versions.” Update: I have got into my Apple Developer Connection and there’s...
Unity under the sea: Google invests in new... →
Google announced today that it has joined a consortium of five other international companies to build a 6,000-mile cable from Los Angeles to Japan. Once online, the “Unity” cable will increase available bandwidth between Asia and America by around 20 percent.
Read More…
Gotcha, CAPTCHA! Gmail bot detector system cracked →
Spammers have figured out a way to crack Gmail’s CAPTCHA system so that they can set bots to automatically sign up for gmail.com e-mail addresses. It apparently took a little more work than cracking the Windows Live Mail CAPTCHA, but it was still doable.
Read More…
Explaining 7 Layers of OSI to my Developee.
Tuesday's Coming →
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Apple Corporate, Retail, Apple
In case you haven’t noticed — and thank you everyone who has written in to remind us — Apple has been delivering at least one goody every single Tuesday since the start of the year. Of course, this Tuesday is the last one in February, which is quickly racing towards its leap-year enabled end. This is, of course, the...
Microsoft Should Acquire SAP, Not Yahoo →
Reservoir Hill writes “Randall Stross has an insightful article in the NY Times that says that if Microsoft thinks this is the right time to try a major acquisition on a scale it has never tried before, it should pursue not Yahoo but SAP, another major player in business software, thus merging Microsoft’s strength with that of another. This is more likely to produce a happy outcome...
[+1864] Why Eating a Big Mac is Cheaper than... →
We’ve all heard the figures. We know that meat production uses significantly more land and fossil fuel resources than a vegetarian diet. But, then, why on earth is it cheaper to eat meat than fresh fruit and vegetables?
[+1673] Over Half of Britons Claim No Religion →
The report also calls for the disestablishment of the Church of England. The role and privileges of the established Church are challenged because they do not reflect “the religious demography of the country and the rising proportion of other Christian denominations.”
[+1337] Baby Strapped in Car Seat for 8 Days and... →
Sargent died with his eyes open, fists clenched and strapped into a car seat after eight days without food or water, the county’s top prosecutor said Wednesday. Parents of 5-month-old appear in court to face first-degree murder charges, may be facing death penalty
A pilot with the Cleveland Clinic for health... →
Posted by Alan Newberger, Engineering Manager I suffer from poor eyesight and intense seasonal allergies, but I’m thankful that health issues occupy just a small portion of my life. Even though I’m rather healthy, I sometimes find myself needing access to accurate health information. I can get a long way by searching for health facts online, but I also need to incorporate what I find...
How to Convert Your HD-DVD Discs to Blu-Ray →
eldavojohn writes “Are you one of the few who boarded the HD-DVD Titanic ship headed to the bottom of ocean to join BetaMax? Fret no longer, friend, simply convert those and pretend like you never invested in the wrong technology! All you need is a Windows machine with a fast processor, an HD-DVD drive, a Blu-Ray burner, 30GB of free disk space, at least, though 40GB or more is recommended...
Apple launches Xsan 2 →
Filed under: Software, Features, Apple Professional, XServe, Apple
In addition to dropping the price on the Shuffle (and introducing the 2 GB version), today’s big Apple store update appears to be the launch of Xsan 2. Xsan is Apple’s Storage Area Network (SAN) file system, and while this update isn’t as sexy as a new consumer laptop update, it’s still pretty cool....
American Idol comes to iTunes →
Filed under: Audio, iTS, iTunes
OK, guilty pleasure alert — I kind of love American Idol. In fact, I have previously referred to it as, “my crack.” I even named my MacBook, “Simon” because it was purchased with money I made writing about the show last season (and because I am a GIGANTIC dork). And even though I’m not professionally covering the show this year, I...
Apple launches Xsan 2 →
Filed under: Software, Features, Apple Professional, XServe, Apple
In addition to dropping the price on the Shuffle (and introducing the 2 GB version), today’s big Apple store update appears to be the launch of Xsan 2. Xsan is Apple’s Storage Area Network (SAN) file system, and while this update isn’t as sexy as a new consumer laptop update, it’s still pretty cool....
iPhone gets copy/paste advanced multitouch →
While the filing details using a combination of the thumb and two fingers to cut, copy and paste — something that seems awfully relevant to that little iPhone thing Apple sells — what we’re most intrigued by is the description of the “side pinky swipe” to control system functions like volume and screen brightness.
Blogger now in Filipino →
This is a quick post to announce that, in addition to Blogger’s recent improvements and fixes, we are now available in Filipino. There is already a very strong blogging community in the Philippines, and we’re very happy to support that and be a part of it. Want a taste? Start with our friend Aileen and keep clicking!
American Idol comes to iTunes →
Filed under: Audio, iTS, iTunes
OK, guilty pleasure alert — I kind of love American Idol. In fact, I have previously referred to it as, “my crack.” I even named my MacBook, “Simon” because it was purchased with money I made writing about the show last season (and because I am a GIGANTIC dork). And even though I’m not professionally covering the show this year, I...
Shuffle price drop →
Filed under: iPod Family
After this morning’s store downtime the Shuffle product page shows a $30 price drop to $49. If you’re in the doghouse for not getting a Valentine’s Day gift for your significant other, this might be your opportunity. Of course, I don’t know what meaning might be construed from giving your sweetheart runt of the iPod family, but it might be taken...
Harvard Web site hacked, database on file-sharing... →
One of Harvard University’s Web sites appeared on Monday to have been hacked, with its contents appearing on the BitTorrent file-sharing network.
Next Mobile Intel Processors (Montevina) Due in... →
Digitimes reports that Intel is poised to launch the Montevina platform at Computex Taipei 2008, which takes place from June 3-7, 2008.
Montevina is the next revision to Intel’s mobile platform and will carry the consumer brand “Centri…
EMC's "very massive" storage cloud →
As Amazon struggles today with the first big outage to afflict its popular S3 data-storage service, it looks like it will also soon be facing a big new competitor. The storage giant EMC is gearing up for a major move into “the cloud.” Like other traditional IT component suppliers, EMC sees cloud computing as both threat and opportunity. On the one hand, it could put a large dent into...
Crash: Amazon's S3 utility goes down →
There are reports that Amazon’s Simple Storage Service - called S3 - suffered a “massive” outage this morning, beginning at about 7:30 am eastern time. At 9:03, an Amazon official posted a note in the service’s customer forum, saying, “We can confirm the high error rate you’re experiencing. While we don’t have an ETA at this point, we’re working as quickly as possible...
Skype 2.7 for Mac released →
Section: Apple, Applications, Operating-Systems, OS-X, Third-Party
I’ll admit that I rarely use Skype, compared to the other IM services out there - mainly because most of my communicating on the internet is done via text, and most of the people I know use MSN. Skype has some nice features, though. The fact that webcam video chats work from PC to Mac is useful, considering Microsoft Messenger...
Mac Automation: Birthday greetings →
Filed under: Features, How-tos
I am sure that everyone has forgotten other peoples birthday’s from time-to-time (*raises hand*). Luckily, with Mac OS X’s built-in Address Book and Automator, you can automate the remembering and sending of greeting cards by e-mail — thus eliminating the awkwardness of forgetting. In this how-to I will show you how to create a birthday field in...
Mac OS X 10.5.2 Update Brings Welcome Fixes →
jetpack writes to make sure we’re aware that Apple’s OS X 10.5.2 update is available and that it contains plenty of improvements and fixes that users have been asking for. Macworld enumerates some of the big ones, saying that the update “shows Apple listens to users” (sometimes). A couple of the new features simply restore Tiger (10.4) capabilities that Leopard (10.5) had...
Use Amazon S3 to automatically back up your Mac →
Amazon’s S3 is an online storage solution; you pay for only what you use ($0.15/GB/month, plus some transfer costs). I wrote a simple step-by-step guide to setting you a Mac to sync with Amazon S3; here’s the executive summary version: You need an Amazon Web Services account. Once signed up, you’ll need your Amazon access key and your secret key. These are what s3sync will use to...
Yahoo formally rejects Microsoft bid →
Yahoo today publicly dismissed Microsoft’s $44.6 billion takeover bid, setting the groundwork for a long conflict between the firms. The search firm’s Board of Directors says it has unanimously rejected Microsoft’s offer after believing that the deal “substantially undervalues” Yahoo’s worth. The reputation associated with Yahoo’s name, its user …
MacBook Air face-off: HDD vs SSD (with video) →
In this fourth installment of our MacBook Air review series, we pit Apple’s standard hard disk drive (HDD) model against the standard solid state drive (SSD) configuration in a set of battery and benchmark tests to gauge the performance and power sav…
iPhone, iPod touch price cuts coming by April? →
Prices on the iPhone and the iPod touch may drop substantially within the next two months, a report suggests. Citing an anonymous source, the report claims that by mid-April at the latest, a $100 price drop will reach the 16GB iPhone, as well as the 16 and 32GB Touches; this would put their costs at $399, $299 and $399, respectively. It is also s…
But where is this damn 10.5.2? →
At the end of 2007 we learned that the 10.5.2 Leopard update would be released at MWSF on January 15, 2008.
Later we heard that it would be delayed, however 3 weeks later there is still nothing.
Even though this release schedule has fallen through, Apple has been busy releasing beta versions to the developers, initially fixing big problems, then minor problems and then increasingly smaller.
We...
Widgets and iChat on Apple TV? →
Section: Apple News, Rumors, Applications, Video, Audio Video, Apple-TV, iTunes, Computers, Software, Current-Products, Apple-TV-product
A recent Apple patent application deals with widgets in a multimedia center and hints at Apple TV updates.
The patent describes widgets such as stocks and weather on the Apple TV, but more importantly, widgets that would be tailored to what you are watching,...
The Sony Ericsson Z770: "your life in a clamshell" →
Filed under: Cellphones
This is a phone we’ve seen in the wild on a couple occasions, but we had one detail dead wrong: the model number. It turns out that Sony Ericsson’s newest Z series flip is actually the Z770, not the Z660 we’d heard before. The company is billing the Z770 as a phone fit for people who need access to the internet (web and email, specifically) but...
IBM Says Storm Worm Creators Making Millions,... →
The cunning masterminds behind the Storm worm are apparently rolling in great wealth. The boffins at IBM estimate the worm is netting just under $2 million per day for its creators. The Storm worm’s financial success comes from the fact that it has successfully created a massive collection of autonomously running computers, a.k.a. a botnet, which can be used to launch profitable spam...
$100 Price drop on iPhone and iPod Touch? →
Section: Apple, Apple News, Rumors, Audio Video, iPod Touch, Communications, iPhone
The latest rumor floating around the internet is about a $100 price drop on both the iPhone and iPod Touch, also discontinuing the low capacity models. 9to5Mac, a blog that has recently been fairly accurate with their rumors, believe that we will be seeing these updates in the next two months. They believe that...
Microsoft’s $80 billion (and growing) Yahoo... →
The buyer in any public-public merger generally sees a stock price hit - they’re offering a premium over what the market thinks the seller is worth, and the market takes that out of the buyer’s hide. But Microsoft lost nearly $40 billion in market cap in the eight trading days since they made their offer. That’s quite a penalty - and one Microsoft likely didn’t plan on dealing with.
Microsoft...
The New Safari Is Amazingly Quick, Firefox Watch... →
Computerworld had a review up Friday on the latest build of Apple’s Safari browser, the development version “WebKit” . Like Firefox builds these are evaluation/ testing builds so can be prone to bugs, but like Firefox what you see in these builds is usually what’s coming to the browser itself some time into the future.
Computerworld said it was quick, so I tested it. They weren’t lying.
Running...
Lenovo readying MacBook Air competitor? →
Well, hello there.
(Credit: Gizmodo)
If you asked geeks which manufacturer would be the first to take a shot at the MacBook Air, Lenovo probably would not be at the top of the list. Yet, a rumored update to the manufacturer’s X series line of ultraportables could do just …
Factory-fresh ASUS Eee PC vulnerable to hackers →
Filed under: Laptops
Everybody’s ritual when they get a new computer is different: some people start installing their favorite programs, some people set their desktop picture to Pushing Daisies (not us, other people… who aren’t us), and others check for vulnerable processes that might allow hackers to gain root access. RISE Security falls into that latter category, and spotted...
MacBook Pro 2008, The Mock-Up [Apple] →
Here is the new MacBook Pro 2008 in Photoshop mash-up
wet dream form. Would we see something like this at the
alleged—at least according to the usual
rumorologists—special event at the end of
February?
It doesn’t seem far-fetched to me. MacBook Air aesthetics, with
much rounded corners and sightly thinner frame, are both doable and
logical. Our guess is that Apple would lose the DVI port in...
Eee PC Has A Kindle Mode? [Asus] →
Got a desire for the sold out Amazon Kindle? If you do your probably out of luck on actually getting one anytime soon. The next best thing might actually be an Eee PC in “Kindle” mode. By using FBReader in fullscreen and portrait mode, an Eeeph forum member turned his Eee into a Kindle imitator. Since FBReader is a free e-book reader for Unix and Windows computers this little Kindle...
3G iPhone on the Way? →
mooseman93 wrote to point out Forbes is suggesting that if you haven’t purchased an iPhone yet, you may want to wait just a little bit longer. Supposedly the next generation of iPhone will offer some substantial upgrades, including 3G capabilities. “To be sure, a 3G iPhone likely won’t pop up over the next several weeks. The Unofficial Apple Weblog reported this week that Apple...
Dell launching Penryn-based Inspiron, XPS... →
Dell’s XPS M1330 uses the Penryn chip.
(Credit: Dell Computer)
Dell is in the process of updating its notebook line with Intel’s newest 45-nanometer mobile processors. As reported earlier this week, Dell indicated it would refresh its lineup with Intel “Penryn” processors. This comes as Dell moves much …
First Look: Internet Cleanup 5.0 →
The biggest danger to your computer is security; if you donít protect your computer from malicious software or users, someone could steal important files and invade your privacy. To protect your privacy on your Macintosh, Smith Micro Software offers Internet Cleanup 5.0, which guards your personal data stored on your computer in three ways….
Clean your MacBook with toothpaste →
Filed under: Portables, How-tos, MacBook
Toothpaste is such versatile material. When I was in college, I used it as drywall spackle to fill in nail holes. As a kid at summer camp, I used it to write my name on the rafters of our cabin. I’ve heard that some people even clean their teeth with it. Check out this tip from Lifehacker. It seems that a dab of Arm & Hammer Dental Care Advance...
Say Hello to the First iPhone Clone: the HiPhone →
Here comes the HiPhone, the first true iPhone clone, as one can not truly call it “counterfeit” as it has a different name.
Available for 239 USD, it features some function we might like to see added in the true iPhone:
- removable battery
- video recording
- support for 2 SIM cards
- play most of available video format
- support for USB mass storage
But beside its different...
OpenID Welcomes Microsoft, Google, Verisign and... →
As anticipated by TechCrunch UK in early January, OpenID is welcoming some big new partners to the club - Microsoft, Google, Verisign and IBM (TechCrunch UK anticipated all but Microsoft).
Google has been dabbling with OpenID for some time with its Blogger platform (and Brad Fitzpatrick, the creator of OpenID, is now a Google employee).
Yahoo also announced support for OpenID earlier this...
Vista SP1 riding the torrents, breaking Ballmer's... →
Filed under: Desktops, Laptops
For those of you who simply can’t wait one more second to get your hands on one of the more hyped updates in recent memory, Vista SP1, you’re in luck. According to a report (and our BitTorrent client, chugging along in the background), the new service pack has been leaked, then promptly made available for your forbidden downloading pleasure....
MacBook Air HDD and SSD battery benchmarks →
The Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg (SSD) and AnandTech’s Anand Lal Shimpi (HDD) have each issued reports on the battery performance of Apple’s new MacBook Air models after putting the notebooks through some extensive real-world tests. For his…
Nokia's N82 now in black -- $629 unlocked →
Filed under: Cellphones, Portable Audio
After having scooped the world with the first press shots of the N82 in silver, Intomobile brings us the first shots of the N82 in black. Nothing else is new. Then again, with a 5 megapixel camera, xenon flash, Carl Zeiss glass and quad-band GSM with HSDPA data, assisted GPS, 802.11b/g WiFi, Bluetooth, FM Tuner, 3.5-mm jack, microSD slot, and 2.4-inch...
Juicy 700MHz Auction Developments: Google Punked... →
While the hot and heavy 700MHz a(u)ction is anonymously taking place behind closed doors, we do know a couple of big things have happened. That potential winning bid from Thursday was punked down by a surprise total bid of $4.74 billion. This is juicy because it indicates Google has probably been outbid—assuming it was the party that pushed the bid past the $4.6 billion open access reserve, as it...