Category: Web, Tech & Design

Nokia used the LinuxWorld Summit in New York this week to venture into new turf and launch a new product that is a step away from their core mobile phone business.

The Nokia 770 is a tablet PC for use in the home to browse the Internet and check e-mail primarily. Sporting an 800×480 screen with zoom facility, on-screen keyboard, WiFi connectivity and Bluetooth, the machine runs on the Linux operating system and Nokia’s maemo development platform.

Other bells and whistles include an Internet radio, RSS reader, image viewer and media player.

This looks like quite a cool product.
It’s a big risk for Nokia to move away from phones and all, but I respect that they had the guts to give it a shot.

I don’t think I’d ever think of getting something like this for myself, unless I got everything else on my gadget list, but still I wish them luck with it.

[More: Linux Devices]

The next version of Apple’s iTunes software will support and organize podcasts.

Podcasts, which are sound files and audio content such as radio shows, have surged in popularity. They do not require an iPod to listen to them on the go. Any digital MP3 player will work.

“With the next version of iTunes, due within 60 days, there will now be an easy way for everyone to find and subscribe to” podcasts, the company said in a statement.

Steve Jobs, Apple’s co-founder and chief executive demonstrated on Sunday evening how Apple’s podcasting organization and downloading process would work within iTunes at a Wall Street Journal technology conference.

I think this is really cool.
I haven’t played around with podcasting yet, but it’s something that has been going through my mind lately and to see Apple jump on the podcasting wagon and make it more accessible is really great.

[More: CNet News, O’Reilly Radar]

Your money or your files!

I’m actually surprised this didn’t happen before.
I guess it was just easier to take the money directly instead of asking for it.
Something like this means hackers are running out of ways to steal money directly, which is more or less good news.

This guy spent 500 hours painting a picture of Venice in MS Paint! Afterwards he added some effects with Photoshop.

This is amazing!! The painting is awesome!
This guy must have so much free time and nerves of steel to do something like this in MS paint.
I’d go mad if I tried to draw anything more than a stick figure in paint, lol.

[Via: Boing Boing, AtomTigerBlog]

A survey conducted by the Business Software Alliance shows that one out of every three software programs that people use around the world is pirated.

The survey showed that the global piracy rate decreased by one percentage point last year, but piracy related losses grew $4 billion to a record $33 billion for the year thanks mostly to currency falls in the US dollar.

Vietnam, China, Indonesia, Ukraine, and Zimbabwe had incredibly high amounts of piracy with rates ranging between 87 and 92% while the United States, New Zealand, Austria, Sweden, and the UK only ranged between 21 to 27%. The markets in these countries are much larger, however.

Damn!
That’s a lot of pirated software…
I never knew software piracy was this bad.
Anyway, it’s obvious most piracy is happening in developing countries where high software prices and unavailability of the software push people towards pirated software. I think software companies should think of this point and price their software better depending on the country they’re selling in.

This is no excuse for stealing people’s software, but it could be a reason why it’s happening that should be looked into.

[Sources: TechWorld, WebProNews]

Microsoft finally unveiled the new Xbox 360, their next generation game console with which they aim to take over the gaming console market from Sony.

In development for three years, the Xbox 360 will include a DVD player, a 20-gigabyte hard-disk drive, high-def game support and a 500MHz ATI graphics processor. Owners will be able to remove and upgrade the hard disk, which is used to store games in progress and digital music and photo files.

Consumers will be able to hook up music players and PCs running the Windows operating system to the Xbox. They’ll be able to substitute a game’s music with their own.

Unlike the first Xbox, users will be able to stand the Xbox 360 vertically. They’ll also be able to buy a variety of front panels, such as a wood veneer, part of an effort to make the design, and not just the performance, a selling feature

The console will be released at the end of the year in Europe, Japan and North America.

Check out it’s full technical specifications.

This is looking cool. I wonder what Sony’s Playstation 3, which is due out this year too and will most probably be unveiled at or a bit before the E3 games show, will be like.

I was waiting for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 to come out this year so I could compare and choose which one to buy.

[More: Engadget, Bloomberg, CNet News]

A few days ago, Google released Google Web Accelerator, a tool created to accelerate web sites and pages.

This reminded me of the early days of the internet when most people connected through slow modems and had to download applications like this to speed things up a bit.

I also knew a lot of people would come up with a bunch of privacy concerns and ramble on about how Google can now track every single move we do online. They did. Althought I think Google already had a lot of that information through their Toolbar. Plus a little reminder that this information is available to all our ISPs already.

Anyway, I thought I’d download the application and give it a spin.
I didn’t really feel a big difference in speed with it, but one thing I did feel is annoyed.
Applications like this are based on creating a cache of web sites and pages and loading from it instead of getting the page from the server everytime. This one also uses prefetching of available links on a page.
Now, what’s annoying about all this is that you don’t always get served fresh pages when they’re changed, you sometimes end up being shown pages of other logged in users, and some links you don’t want are prefetched.

It also raises a number of problems in web applications, some that I have experienced myself while using Backpack. Links are prefetched and cached resulting in the web app functionality being messed up.
More on the problems with web apps here and here.

So I’ve uninstalled this application and don’t plan on using it again for the time being. I don’t really advise you guys to use it either. Not for now, at least.

Anyway, Google have taken the application off their site saying that they have currently reached their maximum capacity of users and are actively working to increase the number of users they can support.

So Encarta is more or less becoming some sort of a Wiki…

So it seems the guys at Microsoft have recognized the power of collaborative knowledge and wikis or they’ve started feeling the heat from Wikipedia.

I think this is quite a good step. And I think it’s great how this whole blog and wiki movement is affecting how media and encyclopedias are working.
It’s somehow like giving the power back to the people.

Adobe Systems Incorporated has announced a definitive agreement to acquire Macromedia in an all-stock transaction valued at approximately $3.4 billion.

They say:

Sony aims to beam sensory information directly into the brain…

Well, I think that if this ever becomes possible, it should be heavily regulated. It could be a very dangerous tool in the wrong hands.

I certainly wouldn’t like to buy a game system that ends up playing with my brain instead of me playing with it.

The fact that someone can use this technology to screw around with people’s heads is really scary and unacceptable.

Anyway, I do think that other medical uses for it, that can help people with certain disabilities, can be a really great step forward for mankind.