IPHONE OS 3.0 IS OUT

the iphone os 3 is now out, you can download it on itunes. for a list of the most important features read this.

Opera Unite

While waiting for the OS3 for the iPhone, V recommended I do a little research on a new project from Opera, Unite. If you've been reading this blog you know I'm quite a fan of Opera though lately they have been disappointing me.

What is Opera Unite?

Unite is a new concept. Actually, it's a question for an older concept.. " aren't we missing something? shouldn't this be different? " where this refers to the internet.
The internet may be viewed as " a series of tubes" but that's somewhat misleading. Fortunately the way the internet works is quite easy to understand and if you're reading this blog you already know how it works. The whole idea behind Unite is that why should we depend on servers who somebody else manages? why should we depend on 3rd parties when it comes to file sharing and other such interactions?

This idea in itself is worth pondering. And the people at opera say they have a solution, but I believe it to be flawed from the beginning. Their ideea is that each computer on the web should be it's own web-server, and interactions should be ..well .. directly peer-to-peer. And somehow Unite is said to deliver that. But my honest opinion is that Unite is an upgraded tunelling , VPN app. Something like next-gen Hamachi, over which you can now send files and stream media. But that's crap. The whole ideea with posting on the web is "it's there even if you're not". Social services are meant to be hosted by 3rd parties. Instant messaging is already well established with it's own apps. Same goes for browsing, games and everything else. Why would you want to downgrade all of the great apps and services out there and stick them all up in another new app? it just doesn't really make sense.

And let's say you do that, let's say it works out fine, but in the end ..YOU ARE STILL DEPENDANT ON 3RD PARTY SERVERS, opera's in this case.

SO let's try and forget for a second about utopic web-spaces and let's focus on rolling out the useful software..YOU HEAR ME APPLE??? useless people....

iPhone 3G S and Iphone OS 3

Wow it's been a great day today, and it's only half-way through. Yesterday ( or late last night in my time zone) was the World Wide Developers Conference ( WWDC) at which Apple unveiled among other things, the latest and most powerful version of the iPhone.

The iPhone 3G S ( S stands for speed), is packed with new features, that make the iphone an even greater smart-phone. While there are quite a lot I will only note the ones that are truly great:

• 2x ( twice) the speed of the iphone 3g. Meaning you'll be able to load, view, edit and save programs/files/attachements/web pages much faster.
• a brand new 3MPX built in camera, with auto-focus/tap-to-focus and the ability to film @ 30 fps.
• new voice-controlled interface, for phone and ipod apps.
• longer lasting battery, up to 9 hours on wifi.
• improved accessibility features
• data encryption options
• built-in nike+ support
• faster internet access, the phone now supports 7.2 Mbps HSDPA
  

A few other features hidden around, you can watch the keynote at Apple.com. Other things worth noting:

It comes out with the new OS3. For a list of features and enhancements read this.

It's release date is June 19th, and the OS 3 release date is June 17th.

The OS 3 is a FREE upgrade for all iphone users.

The 3G S cost 199$ for a 16 GB model and 299$ for a brand new 32 GB model. ( prices according to At&t for new subscribers).

The OLD iphone 3G is now available with OS3 preinstalled for only 99$.

All fine and dandy, if you're a new user than this is the phone for you. But what if you're not? Is upgrading worth it? Here's a great article on the issue from TechCrunch.

News

Things have been going on these last few days. Here's my take on them:

First of all E3. Great ..too bad I wasn't there. Fortunately there were no " Giant enemy crab(s)" ( for people familiar with bashing Sony you'll know what that means). Second the game I was looking forward to, Assassin's Creed 2 was demoed. It seems to be a nice sequel with some definite improvements. What people can only hope now is that Ubisoft finally gives some freedom to the player. What Assassin's Creed actually needs is to have a talk with Hitman.

Second, we have a launch date for Windows Seven, and it's sooner than anyone expected: OCTOBER 22. As I have been beta testing for the last few months, I can tell you Seven is going to be a great release, and a very stable one. No more Vista-like mistakes.

Third I've had some rendering issues with a 9600GT on Sims 3. There is no possible reason or explanation, and I have yet to find a fix. And there's nothing on the net related to this.

Fourth Alongside Seven Microsoft is launching Bing. The beta has been around for a few days now. Bing is a new search engine, that is supposed to be Search 2.0. And while certain features, and ideas that went into it's making surely sound smart and great ..time and page-hits will be the judges in the end.

I'm sure many many many other things have happened in the last 2 weeks but I've been really busy with exams coming up. Anyway that's why the name is RANDOM geeky stuff. Cheers

From Vista to Seven

Hello. How are you guys? What have YOU been up to? How are YOUR pcs doing?

Just wanted to do a very very short summary on a few up-front differences between the two Microsoft operating systems. Besides all the changes listed out there, here are just a few that you come across in the very first days of using Seven.

1) Boot Time.
When Seven was first unveiled, one of the main features was 40% faster than Vista at boot. Well that's a myth! Don't get me wrong, it does boot up very fast just not faster than Vista. Either I was very lucky with Vista or whatever but both OSs take 15-20 seconds from power up to desktop. And I tested this quite a few times just to be sure.

2) The real difference in boot is another one. Seven uses parallel driver loading, meaning it loads all your drivers at the same time making use of multi core cpus. Also means that once you see your desktop ..that's it, all drivers were loaded. Vista did not do this, and though it didn't take very long to see your desktop, drivers were still loading. For example after desktop it took another 1 minute to get my printer driver ready. But while doing this ..Vista also caches some of your frequently used programs, meaning if by any chance you use one of those programs it would load up much faster than usual. Seven doesn't seem to do this anymore.

3) Copy-ing + Install time
Copy-ing files finally seems to have gotten fix. It works even better/faster than in SP1 and I'm glad it does. As a direct result, install times for different applications are considerably lower.

4) Security.
Seven is based on Server 2008 kernel + Vista features and security. It's even more secure than Vista, and best of all you can now set the level of agressiveness for the User Account Control.

5) Compatibility
I have not had any problems with Seven ( except for this one). Most programs work, all drivers worked and in case they don't try the Run in Compatibility mode feature because it actually works. And best of all, companies have already released drivers for RC1 for example nVidia updated my graphics driver.
6) Toolbar
This is one of the highlights of Seven but I must say my own feelings are quite mixed. At first it does seem great and it always looks great but as for improving efficiency ..well not so sure about that. I mean it does make things faster but only in specific situations ( mainly the ones demoed by microsoft with multiple similar-looking documents), but there are quite a few situations in which it actually hinders the user. And there is still some work to be put into it because ocasionally it will get stuck and not open windows anymore. You have to manually right click and maximize the window for things to get back to normal. But certain aspects can be tweeked for example when to combine the icons and their size. Overall Seven makes for a nice experience and I really look forward to the finished product.
The end.
As I said this is not completely of thorough in any way. I just wanted to note the first differences people will come across between the two operating systems. Please leave comments and suggestions. :-) Cheers

No title

Well I just wanted to let you know that (as you can see) we have a new header thanks to Flo. Don't ask me why there's a white line next to it ..it's just the way blogspot resizes pictures and I'm too lazy to edit the html again.

Second I wanted to give credit to Lucian, he's the one that told me how to modify the volume limit on ipods.

I might write an article later on today. Cheers