Right On Technology

Free Stuff on Twitter!

Introducing Freezly, the newest and easiest way to find free stuff on Twitter. So, who doesn’t like free stuff? I’m always a sucker for “sign up for our visa card and get a free hat” etc. However, Twitter actually has had several contests that I’ve seen that requires minimum effort from the participants. Essentially retweet some message and then qualify for a free item. One of the best promotions I’ve seem was discussed by Mashable and involved Squarespace (an excellent blogging platform like WordPress) giving a way an iphone a day for 30 days. All you had to do was include #squarespace in a single tweet which resulted in their topping trending topics for several days in a row.

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Since the Mac’s new OS Snow Leopard came out yesterday I thought I’d throw up my review of Mac’s latest along with pictures and a review of my new rig. Snow Leopard brings some interesting new features, but over all the update isn’t anything ground breaking, although the polish is pretty amazing. This is version 10.6 to the original Mac 10 OS and comes in at a very svelte $29 bucks (take that Windows 7!). The first nice improvement that Snow Leopard brings is a new 64 bit operating system, which means that all apps can access a much large amount of RAM (usually limited to about 4 gigs under a 32 bit OS). So, this brings more speed and versatility to an already powerful OS.

Another immediate benefit you might see is an instant savings of space on your HD. Apple says you’ll see at least 6 gigs in space saving, but some reports have seen anywhere from 10-20 gigs! Nice! Apple is able to do this primarily due to how they now configure printer drivers, etc.

While there aren’t any real new revelations in the UI for Snow Leopard, there are some minor changes that folks might appreciate. The biggest tweak is the addition of Expose to the dock. Holding down on an app’s icon triggers Expose for that application’s windows, and if you drag a file onto an app, you can then select which window you want to drop it into. Here’s some video:

Additionally Apple has added some updates to Finder, Quicktime, Exchange Control for enterprise solutions, more speed and more stability. You can read some good review here and here.

Bottom line: For $29 bucks this is a no brainer, everyone with a Mac should upgrade, even if you are still running Tiger. I think it’s pretty clear that Apple has priced this so that it is affordable for everyone. This indicates to me that Apple has a plan for big things and wants to make sure that everyone upgrades now. So, my advice is to grab this, extra space, 64 bit everywhere and some nice little additions makes this worth the $29 bucks.

Now to the real cool news, my new iMac! Here are the specs to my new rig:
-24 inch LCD screen
- 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
- 4 GB of DDR3 SDRAM
- 640 GB Serial ATA hard drive
- Nvidia Gforce 9400 Graphics card
- Yada yada

It’s a nice machine which I’m dual booting Windows 7 on, which runs very nice too. Here are some pictures of me which I call Christmas in August.

Rumors have abounded about the mysterious exploding iPhone for a while now, but maybe this myth is a reality. At least one person is taking this serious, the French consumer minister. It seems Herve Novelli will meet with executives from Apple to discuss incidents in which the Apple product has “spontaneously combusted”. Reportedly at least a half a dozen iPhones have exploded in France, some even having caused injury to one teen’s eye.

Up to this point, the exploding iPhone has been something of a urban myth, everyone has heard about it, but no one has actually seen it. My favorite story is that of a man in Austrailia who contacted Apple after his daughter’s iPhone exploded wanting to get his money back or at least a replacement for it. Apple agreed to replace the iphone, but sent a letter that required him to sign a non-disclosure agreement with the following language, “. . .agree that you will keep the terms and existence of this settlement agreement completely confidential”, and that any breach of confidentiality “may result in Apple seeking injunctive relief, damages and legal costs against the defaulting persons or parties”.

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In what I think is pretty cool news, today Sony announced their new e-reader called the “Reader Daily Edition”. This new e-reader by Sony is figured to compete with Amazon’s Kindle, or at least kick some real competition in a market that is nearly controlled by the Kindle. The new Sony Daily Edition will have some pretty impressive features as well. First, it will feature 3G wireless through AT&T. This is an almost must have feature so that users can download books at will. This feature on the Kindle is awesome as it allows you to get books, newspapers and magazines whenever and where ever you like. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been at home, wanted a new book, but didn’t want to go all the way to Barnes & Noble or wait for Amazon to deliver it. Instant gratification, gotta love it.

The new Daily Edition will also include a 7-inch touch screen. This is one thing the Kindle lacks; a touch-screen interface, so I think this is a clear winner for Sony. The Daily Edition will also take advantage of open source materials with a new feature called the “Library Finder”. This allows you to access local library materials and download free books offered through your library. Right now it is a pain to do this through most local libraries and the interfaces are generally horrible. What a great idea, kudos Sony! Finally having some real competition in this platform will only mean good things for the consumer. It’s hard to say what the user experience will be, battery life, etc, but having a decent product that competes with the hefty price-tag of the Kindle is good. The Daily Edition is getting good reviews everywhere:

“Sony has given the market what everyone was waiting for in terms of a wireless device,” says Sarah Rotman Epps, a Forrester analyst who has been covering e-readers. “Not only that, they have gone one step further, and shown their latest product is no copycat of the Kindle.”

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Is it possible that Miami Heat star forward just tweeted his way into rehab? There are indications that this might be exactly what happened. It appears that Beasley has been admitted into an unnamed Houston rehab center under the guidance of coach John Lucas. What’s real interesting (from a tech point of view) is that Twitter might have played a role in his admission to rehab. Souces explain that there was a series of very strange tweets, two account deletions and a twitpic that revealed some very suspicious bags on a table in the background.

As reported above, it appears that Beasely had several updates posted to his account @Gorillabeas. That account has now suspiciously disappeared. Here is a screen shot of his Twitter updates which comes from Twitters cache:

And then follows some responses from friends or followers of his on Twitter:

Photos

Straight out of the pages of a sci-fi book, scientists claim they are close to creating the first artificial life form. No, this isn’t something out of Clarke or Asimov, this is actual science from the J Craig Venter Institute in Maryland. Dr. Craign Venter, somewhat of a controversial figure in science circles, claims that a synthetic organism is likely just months away as a large obstacle has finally been overcome. His claim is that the first man-made organism will be a bacteria that is a bit on the simple side, but still an important step on the road of evolution. Reporting on the work of Dr. Venter’s team the Daily Mail stated:

In January, the team created the entire genetic code of a new bacterium. They now hope to transfer such artificial DNA into a host cell to create a new species, the journal Science reported.

Yesterday Dr Venter said: ‘Assuming we don’t make any errors, I think it should work and we should have the first synthetic species by the end of the year.’

The team successfully transplanted the genome of one bacteria into another for the first time in 2007.

They then created the first entirely man-made genome. But previous attempts to introduce the synthetic genome into another organism and take control of the new bacteria all failed.

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James Cameron

James Cameron, the director of such blockbusters as Titanic and Terminator is finally getting what he wants. For years Cameron has wanted to create a stunning 3D film of epic proportions, but technology has so far not been able to do exactly as he wanted. In fact, Cameron has waited about 15 years for the right technology to finally catch up with his vision. This December we should all be able to see Cameron’s vision come true in the movie Avatar (video below).

While not a whole lot is known about Avatar, what is known is pretty interesting. The movie portrays an epic battle between Earth and the alien moon Pandora. When humans encounter the seeming harmless Na’vi they decide to conquer and ravage the planet. This turns out to be a big mistake and the movie portrays the struggle between alien cultures and a man caught between the two.

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The Pirate Bay Copied

It was only inevitable that someone would duplicate the infamous bitorrent site The Pirate Bay and it turns out that, yep, The Pirate Bay is back in business. It was reported a few days ago that this was indeed a possibility, even a likelihood that someone could essentially archive the entire site, including all the searchable torrents, and appears that someone has done exactly that.

The 21.3 Gigabyte torrent was created by an anonymous fan of The Pirate Bay and told TorrentFreak “I suppose I want us to have assurances. If the TPB deal disappoints us, we can just put it up again.” For those not familiar, The Pirate Bay went “mainstream” selling out to the corporate world after assuring their users for years they would never do so. Many in the community felt betrayed, but more then anything (I think) they were concerned about where they were going to get all their free movies and songs. Well, no worries, it looks like you can go to BTArena and use what amounts to a clone of the entire Pirate Bay site. I guess it’s too early to say if this will work as well as the old TPB site, but apparently everything works from the browse to the search functionality (although it has been taken down due to server loads, good sign).

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Blackberry to Include Flash?

Wowsa, Blackberry to include Flash and Silverlight support!?! I have to admit, one of the most annoying things about mobile browsing is the inability to view any web page that uses Flash. Even the iPhone, which is clearly the best mobile browser out there, doesn’t support Flash. Apple does have a deal with YouTube and some other services that allows you to watch video on the iPhone, but there are many many web pages that just don’t work properly on either the iPhone or the Blackberry.

However, there is definite news out there that Research in Motion (RIM), the makers of the vaunted Blackberry, is working on including full Flash (not just Flash Lite) and Silverlight support. Silverlight is the Microsoft product that competes with Flash to do a variety of video and scripts on web pages. The other reason this is good news for Blackberry users (which I use for their superb enterprise support) is that Apple has been very very resistant to including Flash support on the iPhone. I think the reason Apple has done this is A) They hate Adobe and don’t want to give that huge market share to a rival and B) they are probably looking at coming up with some kind of HTML 5 or similar Flash like product that will do video, sound, etc.

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For anyone that does as much travel as I do, one of the most frustrating things is going to the airport (2 hours early) just to learn that your flight is going to be delayed. If you have ever had that experience, you are going to love new start-up Flightcaster. As anyone knows, airlines are notorious for waiting until the last possibly moment to delay or cancel a flight, oftentimes knowing long before that they will probably have to do so. In fact, what most people may not realize is that airlines actually intentionally due this to rebook passengers and deal with the inevitable flight changes, etc. Enter Flightcaster, who takes on the onerous task of predicting and calling delayed flights as much as 6 hours before the airline will do so.

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