Month of July, 2007

made in Japan... in case you were wondering

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The sign in this picture is priceless.

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I was given this Sony Vaio laptop from our local LUG, it has Ubuntu on but I needed it for my accounts so dual booted Windows XP with the license stuck on the bottom. It's been a while since I've had a Windows laptop as I'm used to OS X on my iMac.

Most my friends chat on MSN messenger/Windows messenger/MSN/Windows Live Messenger (or whatever it is branded now) so I installed the Windows version. A few years ago the program was just an instant messenger for chatting to people, now it's so bloated I had to write this blog to highlight its problems.

As you can see almost 50% of the application interface is taken up by elements that have nothing to do with instant messaging! (Tabs can be hidden in the options but this is not default).

Compared to the Mac version there is so much bloat that detract from the original idea of the program.

Even though there are no search boxes, tabs or adverts the Mac version of the program remains highly usable and easy to use and look at.

I did a quick redesign in Fireworks of the Windows version to make it look better.

I've basically cut out all the crap - the program is back to its roots - for chatting to people online. All it needs now is some brushed aluminium.......

um, just look.

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yea, some of them are pretty funny. sucks to be this kid.

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Forums so specific and so insane that you'll know you have reached the end of the Internet.

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This picture has NOT been photoshopped or gimped or anything else like that, build it yourself if you don't believe me... You can see the main sections on the screenshot, here's the rest;
1Yr Ltd Warranty and Mail-In Service
Add CompleteCare Accidental Damage Service to 1Yr Lim Warranty

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"A fatal exception OE has occurred at..." Tattoo

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In a moment we've been waiting for since the first time we saw The Jetsons, the first flying car has finally gone on sale. Just like the car George uses to drop off the kids, the Moller M200G Volantor is shaped like a saucer. To avoid the need to pass FAA regulations, the civilian version of the Volantor is restricted to heights of 10 feet, but can

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Are you tired of the other kids at Summer Color Camp laughing at you because you thought chartreuse was a shade of pink? Still having nightmares about the time you called a Salmon colored dress Mauve? With our help you
’ll never call Azure, Aquamarine again and will be name dropping colors like they’re hot potatoes.

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The long awaited BBC iPlayer is launching in two days time (on the 27th July) for Windows XP only. The service will allow people to download TV shows to their computers and watch them for a set number of days after.

Channel 4 launched a similar service called 4OD (on demand) a couple of months ago however has been plagued with problems, if the BBC are to succeed with the iPlayer it must not have the following problems that 4OD has:

• Connection - 4OD only allows people in the UK to download shows, that's fine as we pay for the shows however the technology they use to only allow UK people sucks. For about the first month my BT connection was unable to use 4OD because I was apparently not living in the UK. I know some people now who are still told they cannot connect.
• Quality - When making 4OD videos full screen everything is pixelated, I was watching 8 out of 10 cats last night and Sean Locks ear was one giant pixel. The average 45min show is 350mb to download off 4OD yet if I downloaded the same show off a torrent site with the same file size the quality would be so much better.
• Application slowness - 4OD is basically a web page stuck inside Windows Media Player, this means that every time you click a link it loads another page. The problem with this is that the site and application doesn't look like a web page so you expect it to act a stand alone application. This makes 4OD seem incredibly slow to use and painful to navigate.
• Program expiration - This I believe is the biggest problem of 4OD - everything expires so quickly. For most free shows you can watch them for seven days after use. So if you download it on the sixth day and then leave it for two days it will have expired. Also once you have watched a show the expiration date changes. I personally don't see why shows need to expire, the chances are if I have seen it I'm not going to buy it anyway.
• Lame Technology - This may just be me but every time I go to stream a show it gets past the adverts (that don't particularly bother me) then it tells me I don't have the correct license installed to watch the show. It gives me no way to install the correct license and I just have to accept that I can't stream anything.
• Windows XP, Internet Explorer 6, WMP 11 - I don't like applications that force you down one particular route of technology. I have a Mac as my main machine but I don't mind using my PC. On my PC I use Firefox but I'm told I must use IE then finally I use VLC for media but I'm told to use WMP.

The reason Youtube is so popular is that it is so convenient and just works - this is a far cry from the buggy inconvenient 4OD. However 4OD is still a Beta so its allowed to suck to a certain extent!

By the sounds of it the iPlayer is going to equally suck come this Friday but I will reserve my judgement for now.

Title says it all!

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The gold old days

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Scott Wade uses the dirty back window of a Mini Cooper as a canvas to create awesome artwork. Features a few famous recreations and all pieces are done the same way sad men write WOW on their vehicles... albeit with better tools and astounding skill.

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"I remember reading about people boiling them, but how exactly am I supposed to do this? how long do I boil it for?"

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Normally we skip over these bullshit gold-plated gadgets, but this 18-karat gold-plated iPod shuffle's picture was so pretty we couldn't resist. We would've been even more impressed if it were solid 24-karat gold, but we'll just have to settle for this gold plating.

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A modded toaster that runs Unix.

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These pictures are not of a space station or space ship but of Japanese sewer system. Japanese water drainage system, looks like an alien space ship.

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A tragic tale of stupidity.

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Maddox update on the (in)famous iPhone.

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Evolution of versions Windows. From 1.0 to Vista. (screenshots)

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I've been using Safari since I got a Mac, it's a nice browser and looks great within OS X. At work and on my laptop I use Firefox and now I've decided to ditch Safari for Firefox. The following reasons finally pulled me towards Firefox:

• Extensions - At work I love the Web development extensions, they make debugging so much easier and me so much more productive. On my laptop I love Stumble Upon, being able to sit there and just click one button to find an interesting web page is so effortless. Between work and home I have Google Browser Sync, this handy extension keeps all of my bookmarks, preferences and tabs synced.
• Speed - While Safari renders web pages very quickly there are some pages it struggles with. I'm not sure if anyone else has this problem but when browsing Digg.com the browser becomes unresponsive for 20-30 seconds while it loads a page (the more comments on a page the worse it is). Firefox doesn't have this problem and just loads the page as it would any other.
• Javascript - I write in Wordpress a lot for my blog and in Safari the Javascript formatting buttons do not work. I'm not sure if this is the browsers fault or Wordpress but it is annoying. Last time I checked the GMail contact chat did not work either in Safari.
• Search - This has been fixed in the Safari 3 beta but it bugs me how the search opens a small box rather than being integrated into the browser. This means when I search I have to click on the box to give it focus.

You never know what you're getting. MySpace, more like MySurprise!

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0711_prince_charles_wenn.jpg, originally uploaded by g.mcq.

What is Prince Charles doin?

"We just got a hands on with Nyko's Wii Party Station and we can safely say that it's crazy. It's got pretty much everything you want to have when you're having a Wii house party, and it's designed cheaply enough ($24.99) for every Wii-owning family to use as an accessory to enhance their gaming."

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"He constantly interrupts me during my lessons trying to make valid points that are somewhere between "WTF?" and "OMG YOU ARE NOT USING TEH DEBIAN!"...

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Bizarre searches include: My English teacher lost my essay, my husband wears my clothes, cow seeds, husband doesn’t shower or wear deodorant...

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Art graduate Lauren Porter knitted a Ferrari sportscar for her honours degree at Bath Spa University.

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These awesome PowerBook earrings fall somewhere in between solving global e-waste problems and showing that recycling can be geek chic...check 'em out.

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Wouldn't believe it if I hadn't seen the photo

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Classic. A little ingenuity goes a long way. Well done lads!

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YuppiePunk » The 10 Most Unfortunately Named People on the Internets

From Robert Fagot to Dr. Reinhardt Adolfo Fuck.

So I was browsing Digg.com last night when I came across this post about the 69 best tech blogs, it has all the big commercial players including Gizmondo (1) Tech Crunch (3) and TUAW (31). I'm scrolling down the list seeing how many I recognise when I come across number 26 - I'm A Fish!

I was more than a little surprised though it's great to see another site recognising us in such a list. In an updated post today the site explains how he came up with the list and the time and effort that went into it. The list is in no particular order though still is good to be in the middle!

Kudos to Micahville!

Here is a list of blogs that are really awesome reads in general, no matter what flavor of tech you are interested. Everything else is 'title says all' from there

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It's been just over a week now since all of England's pubs, clubs, bars, work places and shops went smoke free. You can hardly miss the millions of no smoking signs that have now gone up in our high streets and vehicles but how has the smoking ban effected the way we go about our lives?

I'm a non smoker so welcomed the ban though was concerned about the social effects it may have. It's hard not to see the health benefits and I think in general the ban was welcomed.

I went out for the first time on Friday night since the ban, we started in our local Weatherspoons - The Shrewsbury Hotel as it has cheap drinks. The place was as always rammed with people there for the same reason I was, bar waiting times were no difference however I felt along with my friends the youngest in there.

Apart from us everyone inside was old, let me clarify old as in forty plus. Outside was different with its usual mix of old and young. It could just be that I hadn't noticed the old people mixed with the young before but there certainly seemed more of them.

Our next stop was Yates, this place is normally chav infested however bar waiting and fighting time was significantly reduced. The nice bar maid informed us that we had missed the busy time. Finally we ended up in our local club - Liquid, it was again pretty dead.

Of course the smoking ban might not be the only reason places were less busy:

• It was rainin so perhaps no one fancied getting wet queueing for the club then waiting for the taxi or walking home.
• People may be more interested in Big Brother this year therefore did not want to come out - though I find this one unlikely.
• Wimbledon highlights are almost as enthralling as teletext pages though might have kept people at home.
• Interest rates went up a quarter of a percent, not that many young people have mortgages and Yates hadn't yet started supplying copies of the FT.
• Reading the thousands of iPhone reviews is taking longer than expected.

It was nice not going out stinking of smoke and a drunk friend I bumped into in Liquid even mentioned how nice it was with no smoke which I thought was an interested topic of conversation considering his state and the fact I hadn't seen him in months.

The taxi driver on the way home said that the weekend before when people could still smoke was equally as dead so it looks like more than just the smoking ban is having an effect of peoples drinking habits.

So has the no smoking ban effected the way we live our lives? Well for me so far no and it hasn't put my friends off going out but I think its too early to tell the fuller extent of the ban.

having fun with a co-worker's $60,000 toy

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Not a good sign.

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what NOT to do in a public restroom

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A hawk-eyed El Reg reader points out that UK online retailer Ebuyer.com appears to be cutting costs by running its site on servers dating back to the late Cretaceous period - roughly speaking. According to internet monitoring company Netcraft, the e-tailer has bypassed run-of-the-mill legacy servers for some serious heirlooms.

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poor + design = ?

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"Online music has always been popular, and now social networks, peer recommendations and personalized radio stations are helping fans find bands faster than ever before. Here are more than 90 sites for musicians, fans, and everyone who enjoys music."

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Ignorance can also be funny.

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I don't know what to say.. who the hell designed that, why is a man allowed to wear something like that, will woman still think he's 'sexy'? And many more questions [and disturbing images] come to mind. From the 1974 sci-fi movie Zardoz.

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This car mod shows off a LINUX-based CarPC that is just plain awesome! He can listen to music, watch videos, view slideshows, sniff wireless networks and plot them with GPS, browse the web with Firefox, connect to his cell phone via Bluetooth, stream DirecTV, remote-start the car, and connect to it via WI-FI. Lots of great pics!

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Found on a Russian photo site... I have no idea what they are for or where they come from... but they're worth a look.

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Have at it, you sexist bastards.

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Meet William Kamkwamba. At age 15 he built a windmill entirely from scrap parts, generating enough electricity to power his home in rural Malawi, one of the poorest countries in Africa. His personal blog details the steps day-by-day with pics.

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Must see picture.

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Media Defender, a notorious anti piracy gang who have worked for the MPAA, RIAA and several independent media production companies, just launched their very own video upload service called "miivi.com". The sole purpose of the site is to trap people into uploading copyrighted material, and bust them for doing so.

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With so much information about the iPhone being generated over the past week here is a run down of the various reviews and information we have been getting about the iPhone. Reviews Walt Mossberg on the iPhone. One of the first iPhone reviews and goes into quite some detail about the various functions of the phone. This is a good starting place to find out about the iPhone. The New York Times iPhone Review. By David Pogue. Again another good starting place to find out about the iPhone. David Pogue's iPhone review. (video) He really doesn't like AT&T's Edge network. Cnet Australia on the iPhone vs the Nokia N95. Compares thickness, screen size, display surface, Wifi, talk time, internet use, video playback and audio playback time as well as a range of other criteria. The iPhone scorecard from reviews so far. The iPhone seems to be scoring highly so far. Engadget on comparing the iPhone to the Blackberry. Essential read if you are thinking about an iPhone and are a business user. Wireless Info iPhone review. Says the iPhone is attractive to business users and is revolutionary in some ways but only evolutionary in others. First impressions for Daring Fireball. Splits the review up into the different parts of the phone, not as long as some reviews but has some very good points. Howard Forums on the problems with the iPhone. Points out some useful things that you might expect on other phones but not on the iPhone. Engadget iPhone review. Detailed review about the various features, comes to the same conclusion as many other reviews though states that productivity with the iPhone could be better. TUAW with real world iPhone experience. Dave Caolo has fallen in love with the iPhone as he puts it. iLounge iPhone review. Ten pages of indepth iPhone information saying the phone is great but the two year contract sucks. TUAW initial thoughts on Mail and SMS. Generally positive about using SMS but as he admits he doesn't send a lot of SMS messages. Pocket-lint iPhone review. Great phone but still with it downsides, they are not convinced on the two year contract.

Hardware TUAW with some iPhone pictures and first impressions. Fixit on dismantling the iPhone. (Someone was going to do it sooner or later) PC World on the iPhone stress test. (Video) Engadget on the iPhone using an 620mhz ARM CPU. Potentially made by Samsung. Business Week on how much the iPhone components cost to make. Discusses some of the possible manufactures of parts and how much they cost. TUAW on the iPhone battery replacement warranty. Apple Insider on the internal components in the iPhone. Parts from Samsung and Intel. Engadget on the iPhone not looking so cool. Nasty crack in the top of the iPhone from the edge of a table.. AnandTech on dissecting the iPhone. Lots of pictures and detail about what is inside the iPhone. How Stuff Works on how the iPhone works. Good detail of the touch screen system and features. Rumours Engadget on a 3G iPhone for Europe. On Vodaphone and T-Mobile in the UK. Apple Insider on how the iPhone could be updated for Leopard. Apple Insider admit they are not sure about this rumour. Applications Lifehacker on the top 10 iPhone applications. Some useful apps and some not so useful apps. Hackintosh on the iPhone system restore image download. Download straight from Apple. Joe Hewitt on Firebug for the iPhone. Debugging software for the iPhone. 25 Top Web Applications for the iPhone. Includes iPhone Chat, Google Reader, iPhoneDigg and OneTrip Shopping list. iPhone Source. Good website on iPhone applications.

Activation Engadget on the iPhone costs. (All American costs, no European costs available yet). Apple Insider on porting ineligible numbers to the iPhone. TUAW on how to get a contract-free iPhone. More on prepay from TUAW using 999-99-9999 as your social security number. Interface Apple video on the keyboard interface. Official video from Apple about how to use the on screen touch typing. Think Secret with high resolution iPhone interface screen shots. Some nice pictures of the phone if you have not yet seen what it looks like. Gizmondo on touch typing on the iPhone. (Video) Engadget video on iPhone interface. Available in high definition. The iPhone Root Password. Ged Blog on setting the iPhones wallpaper. Useful if you want to put pictures from web sites onto the wallpaper of your phone. Humour Stephen Colbert on the iPhone. He doesn't actually have one but has the next best thing, an imaginary one. Punking an Apple Fanboy on iPhone release week. Some people have too much time on their hands, funny though! The Joy of Tech Comic. Other Gizmondo on what the iPhone doesn't have. Songs as ringtones (seems an obvious thing to have), games, flash, MMS (seems obvious too) and video recording to name a few. BBC on the iPhone making it into stores. Includes a video of Google CEO Eric Schmidt showing off his iPhone. BBC on the iPhone creating a stir at launch. Selling over 500,000 units in its opening weekend. Three accessories that won't work on your iPhone. Won't work as a phone when docked into speakers, no stereo Bluetooth and your headphones may not work. Think there is something missing from this list? Contact me.

This data is extracted from a poll conducted on women in 15 different Chinese cities by Self magazine, while the sperm of Hong Kong entertainer Andy Lau is the most wanted. SEXY Billllll !!!!

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Brace yourself...

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Is he kidding...does he seriously think anyone will download this?

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