Category: Web, Tech & Design

On the 41st anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s assassination, Glasgow video game company Traffic has released JFK Reloaded. A reconstruction of the scene and events around the Texas School Book Depository that tragic day, the game puts Oswald’s rifle in the hands of players.

From a Boston Herald article and Traffic‘s press release:
“We’ve created the game with the belief that Oswald was the only person that fired the shots on that day, although this recreation proves how immensely difficult his task was,” (Traffic’s Kirk) Ewing said.

This is so insensitive and disrespectful!
I can’t believe some people have gone this far and this low.

[Via: Boing Boing]

In a move that marks the beginning of the end for a hugely successful chapter in technology history, Britain’s biggest high street electronics retailer Dixons has announced that it’s taking VCRs off its shelves for good.

All over the world, the revolutionary VHS (video home system)–which let people record and watch television programs when they wanted rather than at the whim of broadcasters–is in headlong retreat as the DVD (digital versatile disc) takes over.

To add insult to injury, police grudgingly admit that in Britain at least, home burglars don’t even bother to take VHS players because new ones now cost so little that no one wants a second-hand model.

Rest in peace VHS.
You were a wonderful chapter in the history of technology and behind so many fun and beautiful moments.
In your support, I’ll try to always keep a place for a VHS in my home 🙂
Until I migrate my wedding video to DVD that is 😛

Google have launched a new service called Google Scholar.

Google Scholar enables you to search specifically for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research.

Using it you’ll be able to find articles from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web.

Just as with Google Web Search, Google Scholar orders search results by how relevant they are to your query.

In short, Google simply rules search!

We all know that prolonged computer use can cause RSI, back trouble, high blood pressure and steam to vent from both ears, but it appears that’s the least of our worries, because we’ll soon all be blind and that will be an end to it.

According to a Japanese study published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, watching a computer screen for nine or more hours a day may contribute to the onset of glaucoma – a nasty disease which progressively damages the optic nerve and eventually leads to blindness.

The researchers – led by Dr Masayuki Tatemichi of Toho University School of Medicine – tested the eyesight of a total of 10,000 staff at four Japanese companies. They found that 522 of their guinea pigs demonstrated “visual field abnormalities” – aka “sight defects” to the man in the street.

The scientists reckon there is a significant link between these defects and heavy computer use by those who are also long or short-sighted. Furthermore, 165 of those demonstrating visual field abnormalities already showed signs of glaucoma – especially those suffering from short-sightedness.

The main conclusion of the study is: short-sighted heavy computer users are most at risk from developing glaucoma.

My main conclusion is: I’m doomed!

[Source: The Register, Guardian]

After Google opened up their AdSense program to bloggers, MSN seems to be following in it’s footsteps.

Susan Mernit blogs that MSN Network GM told Mark Glaser how Microsoft might work with bloggers in the future…

“If you’re a blogger, MSN might come to you and say, ‘We want to distribute you. We’ll send you traffic and we want you to run these ads on your site, and you’ll get a share of revenues on that. That’s probably an offer that many bloggers are going to be interested in because they don’t want to have to invest in creating that kind of infrastructure, and they would value the traffic.”

This is very interesting news.
Anyway I’d like to know how MSN are planning on sending traffic to bloggers?
Will they be playing around with their search engine so that bloggers who are in their program get listed high in the search results?

[Via: Mental Mayhem, Micro Persuasion]

Over the next several weeks, Google will be introducing POP access to GMail users.

This means that GMail users will be able to download their emails from Gmail’s servers onto their own computers so they can access them anytime with a program like Microsoft Outlook Express or Netscape Mail, even when they aren

Finally, version 1.0 of the Firefox browser was released today.

After playing around with all it’s releases, I officially moved to Firefox as my browser of choice over a month ago and have been enjoying it fully ever since.

It sticks to the standards, offers all needed features and accepts skins and extensions which extend it far beyond a browser.

My installation currently notifies me when I get an email in my GMail account, it gives me the weather forecast for Tunis for the next 3 days, has a built-in ftp client, feed reader, calendar and web developer kit.

It’s definitely the best and coolest browser on the internet today.

I only use Internet Explorer at work for testing purposes because that’s what most people still use but honestly, compared to Firefox, IE should rot in hell just like Netscape should have done before it.

Download your copy of Firefox 1.0 and have fun surfing again.

I finally got around to installing and testing Google Desktop, and what can I say but WOW.

It’s very easy and straight-forward to install. It starts indexing files, emails and web history in the pc idle time and enables you to search through them all in lightning speed.
You can even let it index your chat sessions for future searches.

It’s amazing.
I’m already using it for all my searches through my emails and files. It’s so fast and effective, it beats any of the built-in search functionalities.

It’s Google doing it’s wonders on your desktop.
Another big thank you to the guys at Google for the great software they’re making for us.

I just came across these, and thought they were too important to just put on the linklog. They deserve to be the center of attention.

So here they are, the 5 pitfalls of estimating a software project with my comments:

1) Allowing non-technical staffers to give estimates.
Aaaarrrgghhh!! That so gets on my nerves when someone non-technical just goes ahead and gives a baseless estimation.

2) Being afraid to look in the mirror.
Not evaluating past projects and finding out what went wrong in them is one of the biggest mistakes anyone can do. It’s like doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a better outcome.

3) Underestimating design time and debugging time.
This is another major problem. People just love to assume they’re perfect and that they can just skip design and just jump directly into development and then produce something that doesn’t even need testing. Simply stupid.

4) Inadequate/unclear requirements.
Don’t get me going on that one.

5) Taking too large a bite from the apple.
Giving estimations without breaking the tasks down to bits and pieces is just asking for trouble. The complexity of software lies in it’s smallest details not in the big picture.

[Via: Christopher Hawkins]