I hope for the best and fear the worst, but suspect that there could be an exit strategy here for Apple.  Shifting their focus to their proprietary devices (sound familiar) and away from the hardware and software that have become largely commodity gives Apple the ability to keep tight control over everything that goes onto their systems.  No longer do they need to be associated with Open Source, no longer do they need to be associated with standard Intel processors and motherboards.  They can double their efforts into making proprietary hardware with proprietary operating systems.

I’m not excited about it.

Chris
LABrat.com

Its about time there’s some standards here.  Flash, Silverlight, Shockwave, QuickTime, etc.  Hopefully in the future we’ll get a reprieve from loading all of this other software that could have security issues into our boxes.

Following this great article, I installed Windows Mobile 6.5 this morning on my HTC Touch Pro (Sprint, CDMA).  This is the transition interface between Windows Mobile 6.1 (and prior, back to Windows Pocket PC 2000 even) with the original Windows Mobile interface and the new Windows Phone 7, Zune-convergence interface.

My experience has been pretty good, although the UI does studder a little when using it.  I’m really getting used to at this point, but I have only been playing with it for about 30 minutes.  3 kids have a way of delaying some of my geeking off.

Its obvious that this is a way to start bringing the UI back to Microsoft, instead of partners like HTC, developing engaging phone user interfaces.  This is something for Microsoft to be proud of, but I’d hardly argue that its a quantum shift in UIs, like the iPhone was when it first came out.  Again, it is also obvious that Microsoft is trying to converge the Zune and their Windows Mobile line, as Apple has with the iPhone.  Is it a surprise that Microsoft is aiming at Apple, given their dominance in the mobile music player market, and their coveted smartphones? 

We’ll see if Microsoft gains marketshare through the work to develop convergence of their devices.  What do you think?  Feel free to share!

Chris

You should be able to mount Mac drives to do imaging using this, as I  understand it.  That would be really handy also because my MacBook Pro’s drive is making noises and it would be nice to just dupe it…

To quote the site:

Paragon Software is giving away 50, 000 licenses of this product-gain full access to Mac HFS+ File Systems from Microsoft Windows NTFS!

 HFS for Windows enables the use of Mac-formatted partitions in Windows operating systems. Utilizing Paragon’s own unique technology – the Universal File System Driver (UFSD), Paragon’s HFS for Windows is able to extend the boundaries of Microsoft Windows’ scalability and interoperability.

See the article for more info:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/different-kind-of-company-name.html

See the chart for proper usage:

Haha – pretty funny.

I like Pirated Edition. ;-)

I’m just playing around with my new iPod touch (including the spell correction feature while I type). It’s quite the little unit.

I do have a few bitches, though.

1) I bought a brand new iPod touch, but it didn’t come with the latest firmware. You gave to shell out an extra $10 to get the “apps” feature. I actually called Apple and bitched, but all I got was a support specialist who agreed with me.

2) Once you do upgrade, the apps are awesome (including the free WordPress plugin I’m using right now). However, there are big problems with the apps. They take forever to install and make iPod backups horribly slow (like HOURS long)

3) The apps crash often – usually locking up the iPod. I guess it’s still a bit more beta than I was hoping.

All in all, I’m very happy with it though. The “Remote” app is awesome. Also the “SimpleMedia” app let’s you stream from your computer to the iPod – VERY cool! There are a ton if other cool, fun, and useful FREE apps – and the number is growing everyday.

— Nem

http://www.mojaveexperiment.com/

I mean, could you refute the lack of excitement these ‘test subjects’ showed. After all they didn’t even touch the workstation for what I could see, and the whole test was more of a presentation or non-hands-on demo. If you add a rattling noise or a cricket at any point when they’re made aware it is Vista what they’re experiencing, it could not have been more appropriate.

In any case, I think they should think about naming their experiments and the outcome carefully. Or some may say “The Mojave Experiment was a success, it feels arid, not much too see or feel there, Vista will leave you feeling like you’re… in a desert.

And I am not alone with this sentiment of failure, read this post at Microsoft Watch: Why the Mojave Experiment Fails

Of course, being a Solaris junkie, I’m excited. This has been out for awhile, but it hasn’t received much press. I’m installing Windows right now on my Solaris machine at work. So far, so good. I don’t care if it’s going to be all that slow, it’ll save me time from dual-booting in the long run. Plus, I can install the various Linux distros I need to work with as well. Very nice!

Oh, yeah, and its free.

The most amazing thing about this is happening under the hood: the developer wrote a library that abstracts browser rendering engines using Canvas, SVG and Flash (on a per-need basis) into a unified language – Objective J which is – as the name suggests – a mapping from Objective C to JavaScript.

Neat.

The best feature… an emergency hand pump allowing for operation when the power is cut to your building and the ninjas are about to get your drives. :)

Gawker.com: Does Web 2.0 Benefit Only the Tech Elite?

Original article

This was interesting in that the blogger points out that we’re so quick to adopt new technologies and new ways to use the Internet, ie Web 2.0, that we’ve caused issues with consuming the tools we have that more tools get invented to handle the new tools. Maybe we should figure out how to fully utilize the tools we have rather than getting invested in creating yet another tool…maybe I’m just old fashioned and think getting a job done well, rather than finding a new job when life gets tough, has some merit.

In other news:

Apple Air vs. Lenovo ThinkPad X300

Finally, someone uses Apple’s advertising against them, to their advantage…

Okay – I want like 10 or so of these. First, I can make my Mac Mini a dual-head box. Actually, I’ll make it a triple head, since I recently upgraded my 17″ LCD to a 20″, making my triple-head setup now all 20″ displays. Then, I’ll make my other three workstations all triple head. Then I’ll make my laptop a quad-head (3 of these plus the laptop display).

Scratch all that. I want 30 or so and I want every machine I own to have six heads.

I’m gonna need more 20″ LCD displays….


Also, check out this video of a similar product in action:

After a great time at this SXSW2008, I must say it is the place to be if you’re in any field of technology. I have been to many conferences, Symposiums and such, but SXSW is by far the best one in recent years. I enjoyed the Music, Film and Interactive festivals. You get to meet interesting people: musicians, filmmakers, actors, producers, geeks, creatives and human-like characters.

This year’s panels that I thought were a must and then spawn a lot of sentiment, rage, or made it to the news were:

Mark Zuckerberg interview by Sarah Lacy, twitterers from everywhere exploded badly, but don’t take my work for it, there is a great place where everything is well detailed.

http://scobleizer.com/2008/03/11/audience-of-twittering-assholes/

and here is video from the interview, judge yourself:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/10/mark-zuckerberg-sarah-lacy-interview-from-sxsw/

I actually think the interview was to generic, it would be great for a business conference, but here you have technology people all gather together, we all know who Mark is, and we had actual technical questions and wanted to hear technical or technology related information. What I was actually glad to see is how open Mark was to talk to people, I had the opportunity to talk with him at the Facebook party. He is a very approachable person.

Also a great panel was the ‘Browser Wars: Deja Vu All Over Again’ which had Brendan Eich, who invented JavaScript and is CTO of Mozilla; Chris Wilson worked on every version of IE that you’ve used; Charles McCathieNevile is the public face of standards at Opera, hosted by Arun Ranganathan, System Architect.

What it was unfortunate is that Apple didn’t send, at Aruns request, anyone from the Safari team. This actually was a let down, but if Apple does not care to send anyone, then they cannot defend themselves, which is their own fault. Apple missed a great opportunity, and probably they thought all of these developers would had been tough on them, as it should be.

http://www.appscout.com/2008/03/sxsw_browser_wars_become_brows.php

I was actually impressed by the amount of people with iPhones, and Apple Laptops, definitely the majority, I would like to set a poll or if anyone could bring some statistics back from SXSW, please do.

The Google party and the Facebook party were great, I will be posting a few photos of the events and of some sessions. Anyway, if I saw you, talked to you or anything alike at SXSW, please drop me a line.

Great events, great nightclubs, great place, Austin.

Even though there isn’t any active development on this (last update: 2005-07-09), this is still the best virtual desktop manager I’ve found for Windows. A couple quirks, but so far I’m happy with it. It lets me set up the same keys I use on Mac/Solaris for virtual desktop switching, will switch backgrounds, and even has a text popup of the desktop name when you switch. Its missing some features, but it covers the basics, which is good enough for me.

Toshiba has developed a new class of micro size Nuclear Reactors that is designed to power individual apartment buildings or city blocks. The new reactor, which is only 20 feet by 6 feet…can last for up to 40 years, producing electricity for only 5 cents per kilowatt hour, about half the cost of grid energy.