Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

Hi all, Matteo, sirus, tcid, and wisher would like to thank all our visitors and wish you Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Bye

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Are virus going towards Facebook? Welcome to the black death, 2.0

Nowadays computer systems with a good set-up (I’m saying a good set-up, not a relationship with UNIX) are going to be less and less virus prone. In my opinion today only a stupid cold download some files from its favorite peer to peer network, don’t recognize that the porn he wanted can’t be stored  in an executable file. Since he is such a stupid that would underperform even in the Linux Girl-test, he is going to type the administrator password and make something that will make him gain a place in the hall of fame of stupidity.

A quick look at the previous paragraph may reveal a really high stupid/(number of words) rate.

A clever reader and a fucking annoying virus writer may have noticed that on Facebook the rate stupidity/(Things done) is too high to be computed. But this is not the most important factor. Facebook is a network and it is easy to send your friends an invitation. This mean a really quick spreading of whatever you are showing your friends (Never heard of the snowball effect?).

Wait! We have people acting in a stupid way and stupid things passing form a user to another, very very quickly. Now imagine to have something malicious that is passing form a friend to another: welcome to the black death, 2.0.

With this premise this was only a matter of time before something bad was coming out. This example is still relying on users stupidity (Once again), but considering the amount of data stored on the social network and the ease of access for user authorized application (Don’t trust everything, it’s a matter of life and death) making something dangerous, able to get information and even to spread to your contacts. Is that enough?

To my friend that are reading this post (but also to the others). Send me something bad and you will be no more a friend of mine, not only on Facebook but also in real life! I told you, be careful on what you are doing, or be sure you can hide yourself in a safe place, without writing on Facebook where you are.

P.S.

A couple of my readers should enjoy the picture I used in this post. Please give me a feedback on that (And obviously also on the whole post).

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iPhone OS surpasses Windows Mobile

MacDailyNews has posted an article comparing current market share and year-per-year growth of the most used mobile operating systems.

Current marketshare
Symbian 63%
RIM at 16%
iPhone OS 13%
Windows Mobile at 11%

Year-per-year growth
iPhone OS +328%
RIM at +83%
Windows Mobile at -3%
Symbian -12%

As you can see the growth of the iPhone OS marketshare is impressive: I guess it's time to recall Steve Ballmer's predictions about the success of iPhone!

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Mr. President and the Zune

Unfortunately we have to trust what Neal Santos of City Paper is telling us, but why not to trust him? Actually he said he saw Barak Obama (Yes the elected president of the United States).

Do you still have any doubt on what is the best music player?

:-)

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The Simpsons Mock Apple!

If you're a tech guy and you like The Simpsons, you will certainly love this video!

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Is Linux passing the girlfriend test? No, thanks to Free Software Foundation

Guys at TechRadar UK made a girlfriend of one of them playing with Linux, in their girlfriend test.

They told some simple tasks to the girl and looked how she was accomplishing the “challenge” using Linux.

This test aim is to demonstrate that Linux is noob-proof when it is about to deal with basic tasks:

• Bookmark a website in Firefox: is it the same thing that doing it in every operating system with Firefox.
• Write and print a letter in OpenOffice.org: same as the previous. It is still not demonstrating anything but the availability of common software for Linux and Windows.
• Rip a CD: different system, same behavior of the GUI that let the girl do what se wanted. But are you sure she won’t have any troubles?
• Send an instant message: here things are getting quite harder. The girl wanted to use Windows Live Messenger and had to use Pidign. She can nearly the same things after some trials. It is not Linux fault but the experience is losing some of its initial appeal.
• Create a pie chart in OpenOffice.org: other OpenOffice stuff, same consideration I made on the second task.
• Put the ripped CD on to her iPod: thank you Apple, thank you Free Software Foundation for the choice of OGG. The poor girl is not smiling anymore.
• Photoshop her head on to my body: she found GIMP and get it to work. At least the girl should receive a standing ovation since she managed to deal with the unusual interface. She is not a regular noob. Definitely.
• Watch a video on YouTube: my dear package manager, having flash installed is a thing that users want to do in a click or two. I know flash is evil, but the web is heavily relying on it. And using the web is more interesting than having a pure 100% free system.
• Make a phone call using Skype: problems are coming out. And in this case I can’t tell you this is not a Linux fault. An 'audio playback problem' needs to be fixed before noobs are going to consider using Linux.

A noob that has to deal only with browsing on nearly pure HTML/CSS sites that has to do some office work with OpenOffice could consider using Linux.

If the user wants to do more multimedia related stuff the situation is getting terribly worst. Maybe you are wondering about the responsible for this fall of Linux perceived usability

I’m pointing my finger against the Free Software Foundation that is trying to prevent anything not open being installed in the system. In my opinion this is a really bad choice.

The girl would have a better opinion of Linux if she could have out of the box working MP3, Flash and Skype support. Losing users in the name of an ideal is not a clever choice in my opinion. Maybe it is the right choice from the moral perspective. But an ideal without users is not going anywhere.

Just my 2 cents, as usual.

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Give power your Firefox SearchBar

Many people use Firefox but few know how improve the search bar.

There are may add-ons to search  but only two are really useful:

• Add to Search Bar: adds a function in context menu that enables to include any site in the list of search engines. Right click on search box of site that you want add and then click on “Add to search bar…”. No sweat!
• ContextSearch: permits to search  selected words directly from context menu.

One other trick very useful  for open search directly in new tab is that:

1. write “about:config” in address bar and press enter
2. click ok on the alert page
3. write “browser.search.openintab” in filter box
4. change value from false to true by double click
5. restart Firefox

The last trick that I want advise permits to search in address bar by different search engines. Normally, when you write a word in address bar Firefox uses “I’m feeling lucky” of Google, but it’s possible to use all search engines of the our list and to do it we must put before the word a keyword. This trick works only if the keyword is associated with a search engines.

For add a keyword:

1. Click “manage search engines” in search bar menu
2. Select a search engines and click on change keyword
3. Insert the keyword that you want use. Foe example I use “–g” for Google, “-w” for Wikipedia and “-y” for YouTube

If you want change the default behavior and set the normal Google search, you do this:

1. write “about:config” in address bar and press enter
2. click ok on the alert page
3. write “keyword.URL” in filter box
4. double click on line and insert “http://www.google.com/search?q=”
5. restart Firefox

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Microsoft thinks to WEB 3.0

All know what is WEB 2.0, but Microsoft already thinks to WEB 3.0.

 

Web 2.0 concepts have led to the development and evolution of web culture communities and hosted services, such as social-networking sites, video sharing sites, wikis, blogs and tags. Web 2.0 websites allow users to do more than just retrieve information, but they want do a high-interaction user-to-website and user-to-user.

 

In the future this high-interaction will be not only user-to-user but also user-to-machine and machine-to-machine: WEB 3.0. Microsoft is studying how use internet technologies for communicate between machine: we'll can buy metro ticket or restaurant by our phone, but also control our house thermostat. All this is only the first step of the innovation that WEB 3.0 wants introduce in our lives.

In WEB 3.0 era, all is interconnect, we'll not open refrigerator to see what buy for lunch, but refrigerator will give us shopping list or send it directly to supermarket.

To support WEB 3.0 our phone and other common used devices will became "intelligent".

 

Maybe someday, while I'll have breakfast, I'll talk about my coffee pot :) .

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Apple admits that OSX needs antivirus

Really bad news for the Apple maniacs that their beloved company is recommending to use antivirus. Yes you read right. At Cupertino are suggesting you to install an antivirus software on your Mac.

Even if in the commercial the subtle Mac was laughing at the poor PC that was ill.

Even if Mac OSX is a UNIX. I am a UNIX hater, I never hid that, and I’d like to know what the people that are theorizing the UNIX safety by design are going to say. I think it would be something fun.

Even if nobody cares to write a virus for a niche of the market. I think that that niche proved to be so dumb that will welcome any malware in his system. If Steve Jobs fooled you once why a good social engineer can’t make your machine working for him?

This is the official announcement. It is Apple.com, so I think that you are taking your credit card and doing an online order of the software suggested.

With the Apple fanatics desperate for that revelation and the users of other operating systems laughing so loud that they can’t read anymore why should I go on with this post?

Thanks to Feliciano for his post.

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Make Firefox 3 look exactly like Safari

Many people dislike Safari and switch to Firefox; I recently decided to try it and I started using it regularly. There are many features that only Firefox offers but there's one thing I particularly dislike of Firefox: the interface. Safari is truly well-designed: the GUI is uncluttered, simple and nice looking. How to make Firefox 3 look like exactly like Safari? These are the steps you have to take:

• Install the "Combine Stop-Reload Buttons" extension (currently at version 0.3); it merges the stop and reload buttons
• Install the "Fission" extension (currently at version 1.0); it provides a Safari-like progress bar, which shows behind the URL
• Install "Quartz PDF Plugin" to give Firefox 3 the ability to view PDFs
• Install the "Inquisitor" extension... it's so cool!
• Open a blank page and type about:config , press enter, click on "I'll be careful, I promise" and edit "browser.tabs.tabMaxWidth" to "200" and "browser.tabs.tabMinWidth" to "150"; this will change the tab width to make it more like Safari.

The result is almost pixel perfect! ...Enjoy!

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Make presentation with LaTeX using Beamer and the Dubino theme

Today I had a look at LaTeX as a tool for doing presentations.

I’m trying to abandon all the clerkish office automation suite. For my documents I’m happily using LaTeX, but sometimes I have to make presentations of my works and  the only program I was able to work with were Microsoft PowerPoint or OpenOffice Impress.

The geek I have inside wanted to do everything with LaTeX, so today I spent a couple of hours “learning” how to use the beamer package (Thanks to Swanz for the suggestion).

The operation you have to do to have it fully functional (Ina Windows environment, if you use other operating systems this is not the post that will tell you what to do in details) are the following:

• Install MikTex and Texnicenter
• Add the beamer package to MikTex (Using the MikTex Browse package tool). On my PC I had to install the following packages: beamer, pdftex-def, pgf, xcolor, ifxetex and translator. I don’t know what the package I mentioned are actually doing, but I can tell you that to make it work I needed to install it.
• Half of the work is done. Now we have to write the actual presentation. I’m not teaching you how to do that, you can Google to it. Sorry for this joke, is since I had this link that I was looking for a reason to use it :-)

Since the standard beamer templates are everything but satisfactory I also hacked what I found to have something enjoyable. To have the wonderful Dubino theme you have to:

• Downlaod it from my skydrive.
• Copy it to this folder C:\Program Files\MiKTeX 2.6\tex\latex\beamer\themes\theme
• run texhash (In Vista you have to do that in a Run-As-Administrator console)
• Congratulations, you have done it!

P.S.

If you are not understanding what I wanted to do don’t worry.

This post was more a note to remind me what to do than a real tutorial. If you don’t like this post, I’m sorry, but after all this is my blog and I can write what I want, isn’t it?

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EtherPad. The only way to write shared documents

Forget about Google Docs and other online tools that promises to help you editing collectively your shared documents but doesn’t have a way to see the modification to the document in real time. Such applications are the past in collaboration tools: with EtherPad we have a really cool web-application to write plaintext with your friends seeing what others are doing live.

Here my 2 cents:

Why does EtherPad rocks?

You can see the modifications live. Do I have to add something more?

Try it and fall in love with its clean interface that provides nothing more than a shared Notepad. And does it well!

You can chat with your friends to talk about what are you writing and really collaborate on what you are doing.

What is still to be done?

Support for other document formats than plain-text should be great. Unfortunately the world is not only about simple text.

Also a way to store files on my disk would be appreciated. Or are you thinking in the Google-ish way that all my documents are belonging to you and only to you?

Please try to get a 100% availability :-D. This service is really cool but if I can’t talk with your servers is quite useless.

Thanks to Oscar for the link!

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Please Google, give me back the old Gmail theme!!!

Few minutes ago I logged into my Gmail account and I found a theme change.

I was not liking the switch form the capital G to the small g in the Google logo, and I am still not liking it.

I think that the new theme is ugly and even the “classic theme” is not as good as the new one. Thanks god they provided the Older version option to stay with  the Gmail we are used to.

Please Google, don’t change logos and themes with new uglier ones!

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And the worst IDE ever is … Eiffel Studio!

I hope that you are a reader of Under The Wire and that you didn’t find this page looking for a solution to a problem with Eiffel Studio. Don’t waste more time on it, if it doesn’t work it won’t work whatever you search and whatever you are going to do. I’m sorry but the only advice I can give you is to not start a lost battle.

The only solution is to get a real language, with a real library and of course a real IDE.

If you like the Eiffel Studio icon (that actually is the only good thing of the whole project) save it somewhere and then trash everything else. Trust me, this is the only good idea!

Maybe you are thinking that all this hate (Yes, I hate it!) is quite excessive. I have my reason and after you read a couple of that you should only agree with me and join the Eiffel-Haters.

Here is a tragic list of the problem I had. The order is random, but it is impossible to tell what came first and what came then since once you solve a problem it will come back.

• It auto-completes only what it wants and after you compile it. Not exactly what I was expecting. Sorry, I am a CTRL+SPACE addict.
• It can’t understand that two files are actually the same file. What a stupid compiler (I don’t know it the stupidity is actually in the compiler on in another piece of software, however there is something that fails).
• The library of Eiffel are so limited that they choose to introduce .Net support. It should have been a good idea. If only the debugger worked with .Net code. Please Ballmer delete the page written by Bertrand Mayer on the holy MSDN. It doesn’t worth the bytes on the server.
• The user community is … hey there is anyone using it? It seems there aren’t and I’m not going to blame them. I just wonder why someone that is not completely crazy should decide to use this crapware. (Before you ask me, I am forced to use it. What a sad destiny).
• Documentation? If you call the man pages documentation you may also consider good the Eiffel documentation. I am used to JavaDoc and MSDN and I can’t go back without being brainwashed!
• Pre-compilation is a mystery. Why does it sometimes mess so up that the only thing to do is to take an axe and eradicate the all pre-compile folder. (Be sure to delete only what is in the EIFGENs, or you are going to break everything).
• It is consuming my .Net. I know that this is only a word, but this is a horrible word. I don’t want you to touch my .Net. Is it clear?
• It is open source and the community is not doing anything to pick the project to a decent working status. There must be a reason.
• The native compiler generates C code. That means the need for another compiler and tons of new problem, just to make impossible working with this IDE.

What should I do? No, Vi is not an option. Nor killing everyone at ISE.

The only people that should be happy about this total failure are guys working at Xilinx ISE and EDK the two crapware for hardware design in VHDL. At least they work, poorly but sometimes works. This makes hardware's guys big losers, and they lost also the worst IDE award!

Eiffel: What programming should NOT be.

p.s.

Please stop the monkey that are randomly hitting the keyboard and choose to stop this terrible project. An Eclipse plug-in will be enough. And maybe it will also work!

p.p.s.

If I will need a contract on my programs I will rather call a lawyer. Surely I’m not going to use Eiffel!

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Make your Firefox address bar better

The best thing of Google Chrome is its address bar that has both the classic address bar role and the search bar role.

To have the same behavior on Firefox you have to remove the search bar. After that you can type your searches in the address bar. Unfortunately the default behavior is to show the useless “I’m feeling lucky” Google response, to get a full response you have to do the following steps:

• type about:config on the address bar and tell Firefox that you aren’t going to make a mess.
• search for the keyword.URL entry. Once you found replace the default string with this one http://www.google.com/search?btnG=Google+Search&q=

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Android threatened by huge security hole

If you're worry about your iPhone's security you should relax at the idea of a much more flawed operating system: Android.

This is what happens on a Android device: "basically anything you type into your keyboard is also being run in a hidden console with root permissions."

Read more here.

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Windows 7 multi-touch: does it "just work"?

Funny movie showing Windows 7 and its multi-touch capabilities.

Have fun :-)

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Do you want videos from MTV?

Go to www.mtvmusic.com and enjoy the best videos transmitted by MTV.

Sorry for this flash post, but I’m watching videos :-D

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Apple getting bigger than Microsoft

ZDNet publishes a really interesting article comparing Apple and Microsoft from a economical point of view: is Apple becoming as big as Microsoft?

Take a look at the data:

Microsoft

Revenue: $15.1 billion | Net profits: $4.3 billion | Cash & cash equivalents: $20.7 billion

Apple

Revenue: $11.7 billion | Net profits: $2.4 billion | Cash: $25.5 billion

Is the good old fight back again?

Will Apple ever catch up?

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Have a first look at Windows 7

Live form PDC, the embargo is over and first screenshots of Windows 7 are you. Check this sites:

http://www.winsupersite.com/win7/

http://www.neowin.net/news/live/08/10/28/introducing-the-windows-7-ui

http://www.flickr.com/photos/longzheng

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=575

http://www.techflash.com/microsoft/Microsoft_taking_Office_to_the_browser.html

http://content.zdnet.com/2346-12354_22-244222-36.html

(More links coming as PDC goes on)

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Are you ready for PDC?

I hope you are knowing that next week Microsoft is presenting new things at PDC. The main thing that will be presented is Windows 7, and this is the real reason you should follow what will happen in Los Angeles.

To follow it live the right links are:

Ed Bott

Mary Jo Foley

Kip Kniskern

Rafael Rivera

Paul Thurrot

Tom Warren

Long Zheng

Check their sites out and you can discover what is the next big thing form Redmond.

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Instinct wins

Imagine the infamous “I am a Mac” advertisement with the products in place of the silly Apple’s actors. Imagine a fight on features instead than on myths.

If you are able to imagine this it means that your reality distortion field is weak today, so you may also know who is going to win and who is going to lose.

Samsung made a clever series of advertisement for its Instinct. Have a look and tell me what are you wanting right now.

Sorry Tcid, next time you have to let me play more with your iPhone… while playing I wasn’t looking at defects of the iPhone. And don’t forget to install some extra games and take a stronger battery or a longer power cord. I and Swanz can’t stand too many hours of boredom while we are at lessons.

Thanks to FolBlog for the post about this ads.

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A must read: The UNIX haters handbook

To celebrate a university course where I should learn to do Linux system programming in C I’d like to tell the world what really UNIX is.

I’m not going to write down anything, someone did it years ago but since UNIX is old, terribly old, I don’t think someone is going to experience something better than the hell is described in the book. :-D

The good thing of the book is that has also some bad words for C programming language, so I didn’t had to look for another book telling how crappy is C. By the way I don’t mean that if you want search you are going to find nothing. Just try and tell me what you found.

If you are a UNIX fan and you think that what is written in the book isn’t true you just have to add a comment.

If you are a UNIX fan that wants to help me even if I’m a bad boy you should tell me a small (I mean really small) Linux distribution to run in a virtual machine. Your help would be really appreciated.

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Why all of us should have a laptop?

Today just a link, but I think you should spend few minutes to look at it. I’d never thought that a laptop could ever have been so useful!

http://www.ixibo.com/index.php/2008/10/04/why-all-of-us-should-have-a-laptop/

Are you still thinking that laptops aren’t useful?

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[ITA]: Guida wifi Politecnico di Milano per iPhone

Sorry, this post is in Italian...

Per tutti quelli che vogliono collegarsi alla rete wifi del Politecnico di Milano con il proprio iPhone o iPod Touch: finalmente è arrivata la guida!

Scaricatela qui!!

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myRadio 0.1 is out: get it now!

Some days ago I posted the announcement of the myRadio development. Now the program finally reached a good level of functionality (At least it works on my machine) and I packed it the first jar of the project.

Even if it is far away form perfection, especially in the user interface, I think that you should give it a chance and report the feature you want, the bugs you find (I hope you aren’t going to find too much bugs) or other suggestion to the sourceforge tracker of myRadio.

With myRadio you can enjoy creating your favorite radio, mashing-up the radio program you like with the podcast item downloaded by myRadio. I’m doing it and I can assure you that, using last.fm or a shuffled library for the soundtrack, you’re going to forget what a old-style radio is.

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Worried about your privacy?

I've just found this video and I've found it astonishing.

It does not depict a real situation but a possible one: most of your data is digitalized... what if the wrong people get their hands on them?

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Computer History: 1994 – Netscape

Happened in 1994:

• Apple releases the first Macintosh computers to use the new PowerPC Microprocessors.
• Kurt Cobain, lead singer of Nirvana, is found dead in Seattle, Washington
• Roland Ratzenberger and Ayrton Senna is killed in an accident during the San Marino Grand Prix.
• Nelson Mandela is inaugurated as South Africa's first Black president.
• The Provisional Irish Republican Army announces a "complete cessation of military operations."

In 1994 was also released the first version of Netscape, since Google Chrome revamped world interest on browser war I’m going to dedicate the first episode of Computer History to it, one of the main characters of the original browser war.

Before the .com bubble, the first browser war, and the web as we know it

After Netscape died his code was taken by Mozilla Foundation to develop Firefox, but this is another story, you are going to know more when we are writing one of the next computer history stories.

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Do you want a LLOOGG invitation? Ask us

Hi everybody, for a while we weren’t having fresh invitations to test new services. In the last days I got five invites for LLOOGG.

If you are asking yourself what the hell is that double lettered service I think that I couldn’t have found a better way to describe it than the way its authors did: your web2.0 tail -f access.log.

Nothing simpler than a page where you can find live who’s reading your pages, what pages and where did he come from. Looking at your visitors coming to your last post minutes after you wrote it could be a pretty thing.

Although the main aspect of lloogg is that allows you to see what’s going on live on your pages it provides you simple charts of records of past days visits. By sure it is not as detailed as Google Analytics, but do you really need all that data for a personal blog?

More useful the data about Top referrers (Come on, link us! :-D) Top search (Sometimes it could be funny) Top pages (Don’t you want to know what is your most read post?) and of course Browser war.

If you want an invite as usual, post a comment. And be quick since I have only 5 invites to share!

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Tired of Windows podcast catcher? I’m developing myRadio!

I think I gave a chance to every existing Windows podcast catcher without finding something that really worked as I desired. Here is my experience with the main programs and why does them suck:

iTunes for Windows is probably the best example of bloatware. It eats resources just to play some music. Since I don’t have any iThing I have no need to have it installed.

Juice was messing up with user rights making it unusable. Also the broken links at their official page made me feeling like if I was in front of the corpse of the project.

Doppler had some exception coming out at every start, and also other bugs. Not answering my question surely didn’t make me wait for a new release, neither to give help finding and fixing the problem.

After these (really bad) experience I decided to open NetBeans and write (in Java, so my software is also cross platform) one podcatcher form scratch. After all I’m a developer!

Maybe I may have to wait to have some spare time to design the coolest user interface in the world, but so far I’m needing a programs that works without hassles. I can think about making it eye-candy tomorrow, now I want to grab some podcast to make myRadio (Sounds like a good name, isn’t it?).

If you want to learn more, have a look at the code or just compile (Did I mentioned the program is open-source?) and run the pre-alpha version I’m developing go to the myRadio sourceforge page. So far it is working even if lacks some functions I’m going to add as soon as possible, and I think it is the most important thing right now.

Don’t forget to ask for features and signal bugs. I promise that as soon as I have some spare time to dedicate to the project I’m going to answer.

To receive fresh news subscribe to Under The Wire feed or to the project feed.

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Microsoft ads made on Macs

Have you seen the Microsoft ads featuring Jerry Seinfeld?

Whether you liked them or not, they're gone now: the campaign has been cancelled after negative feedback from all over the world.

But Microsoft is trying a new campaign inspired by "I'm a PC" sentence.

The ads are certainly better but... they've been made on Mac.

This is what LuisDS, a Flickr user, has found out.

Look for yourself...!

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The real story beyond iPod invention

Are you thinking that I’m writing an article explaining how Steve Jobs in a dream revealed himself how to design the most famous tech gadget? Actually you are a little wrong, it wasn’t a dream nor was Steve Jobs the brilliant inventor that first thought about the device as we know it.

Surfing on the web I found this really interesting site where Kane Kramer explains what he designed (not in California) 20 years before Apple iPod. Am I the only one that is finding more that one or two similarity between this concept and the Apple product? I feel like if I am in front of a couple of brothers!

The Apple fan you have inside is saying that Apple introduced the iTunes Music Store, that was really original. Sorry for that Mr. Kramer was presenting the music shop of the future in only few years after Apple’s foundation!

The only thing that Mr. Kramer was missing was the Internet. Without it such a business was simply unaffordable.

If you are not trusting what I’m saying just ask Kane Kramer, Burst.com or Apple.

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Chrome is not killing any browser

Although there is someone claiming to have switched yet I think that Chrome is not going to kill other browsers, simply because even if you can find tons of hype-generated articles you are not looking at a mass switching. Considering that blogsphere is writing about Chrome but just downloaded it to have a sample ride must made you think: so far we have still IE6 with a 25% share. Common (non-geek) users may find interesting the download link on Google’s homepage, actually my brother noticed it the first time he Googled something, but they are not going to download it.

Cutting off non-geeks that are not switching to Google I’m going to tell you why geeks aren’t switching although they have copy of Chrome in their systems and tired it for a while:

• No extension yet, try to search for “Google Chrome AdBlock”, seems that in the last days this is the only question on the web. Seriously do you think that Google would be happy to give out a browser with the capability to hide ads and to kill their revenue?
• Geeks are paranoid, Google wants our data. How can the two attitudes live together? It seems that chrome is part of the Google’s plan to conquer the world.
• I know you didn’t clicked on the link on the want in the previous point, but I also know you should have done unless you have carefully read the terms of use.
• Chrome is cool but there is nothing that requires Chrome to work properly. Why change browser to fix something that is not broken?
• It based on something that was designed with security in mind, and this is the result.
• Ok it is fast, but my navigation style is “check feed reader”, “open interesting articles in a tab”, “read what I opened before”. I don’t think I could appreciate speed differences since tab loading happens in bacground.
• Process isolation is a good idea, but looking at Vista reliability index Opera crashed four time since June. I’m not saying that it is a useless feature, but so far I can live without it.
• Chrome isn’t integrated with other Google services.
• It is Windows only. Doesn’t look strange that the perfect operating system for who wants to be an early adopter is Windows?

If you are looking for interesting articles about Chrome look at the links of this sentence ;-)

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Today big thing: Google Chrome

Hi everybody, this week started with a big thing form Mountain View. After the iPhone and its troubles, the flop of Cuil, the Olympic Games and the release of Photosynth and IE8 beta 2 it is Google turn to come out with something new: a web browser.

Maybe some of you are thinking that a web browser isn’t really something new, and you are perfectly right unless the new browser adds some new capability. Google promises a browser for web-application, something that sounds to me like the Google OS that Google can’t develop. Does it seems a good idea? I don’t think so, why should I have (and maintain) both a regular OS and this web-app OS? Why should I give to Google more data than the personal information has yet?

Going on reading articles that invaded my RSS reader (OMG, you’re all talking about Chrome) I’m not so impressed, I have still in mind the two days Cuil fever… we all know how it finished

Looking at Chrome features I’m not finding the big thing that such noise made me expect for:

• Stability: one tab, one process, as in IE8.
• Speed: it uses webkit, so at least I can be as fast with Konqueror or Safari (But is better if you don’t use something designed with security in mind). Maybe the new JavaScript Engine is good, but also other browser are enhancing their interpreters.
• Search: Am I the only one that associates that with privacy danger?
• User experience: I think to have yet seen what they’re promising.
• Security: wow a blacklist system pushed by Google, I hope that Chinese government is not thinking to use it.

Will it last as a revolution or is Chrome going to be a failure?

[UPDATE 9-2-2008] To download Chrome just open the Google homepage and follow the link. Soon my review.

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e-Mule is free software, you don’t have to pay for it!

Hi, I’m writing this post since yesterday a friend of mine asked  why he had to call a phone number in order to have something like an eMule activation code. Of course since eMule is free software you don’t have to pay for it, nor it requires an activation. You are seeing the request of such code because you downloaded a modified version of the software form an unofficial ad fraudulent site.

The only thing you have to do after having downloaded a fake setup is  trash the installer and download the right one from the official site. Next time double check what you are clicking on the Google page and do everything but clicking on sponsored links.

The last thing I want to share with you, my dear newbie, is the super-secret Google function to retrieve music. I hope you are going to find it useful.

To get a copy of a modified version of eMule just follow the simple steps I’m describing below:

• Point your browser to the root of all evil
• Query Google for eMule, download eMule, or something similar (making the query ad more nooby as possible is a homework left to the reader)
• Follow the first sponsored link.
• Congratulation you are just going to download a modified eMule installer.

p.s.

I first read of the special eMule version by this post of Napolux. After reading the post I was waiting for a friend coming with the question: I had to wait for four days, not bad :-(

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More evidences of Apple troubles

Earlier this week I wrote a post saying that Apple products just worked. I don’t know what happened to my RSS but seems that the heresy is spreading faster and faster: maybe I just subscribed the right blogs, but you can’t hide the evidence of the problems.

In the last days I found other interesting articles and blog post that I’m going to share with you.

You can read an article by the New York Times titled Apple Imperfect: maybe Mr. David Pogue is on vacation, or maybe he is preparing a new fun video of what Windows 7  copied form Mac OS X. The fact is that he is too busy to check what his mates are publishing.

I’m sorry for Steve Jobs: yesterday he had to think to some little things a bit more important than Pouge’s silence: iPhone Ad has been banned (I’m still waiting the ban of the get a mac campaign, but this is another story), the mobile device is experiencing security hole and last but not least App store showed the world what does censorship means. I think it is a good score, isn’t it?

At the beginning of this post I mentioned about bloggers complaining: here we have one unlucky user. I guess that in the next days I’m going to find other sad posts.

Please Steve, turn on again the reality distortion field, I’m missing it.

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Internet Explorer 8 beta 2 is available

I’m just downloading the new beta form the official site. You can read on the official blog what has been changed or come back in few days to find my first review.

p.s.

Don’t worry for my navigation, my main browser is Opera, so even if the beta is too beta I don’t mind :-D

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Playing with Photosynth

Last week Microsoft Labs released Photosynth, a cool application that enables you to make synth from your photos.

I gave it a try using photo I made while I was having a bike trip just to have fun climbing a mountain and taking some shoots to the other side of the valley in order to test the application. You can see the result of my synth here. I hope you will appreciate that I take photos from several points and that I tried to embrace the whole valley with my shots.

The result it is quite good, all the pictures were matched in the right way and the final effect is cool. The only thing I would change is the way pictures are showed: I can’t stand the fact that the picture I’m looking at is highlighted making evident that the synth is a collage of photos. I think that building the synth as a 3d scene without referring to the photo the it is made of would be a way better.

So far Photosynth is still a geek game, but I think that changing little things it would be the next big thing in photography ;-)

p.s.

I am still waiting for someone I know to post on youtube a video made with his helmet camera. I know I promised to send him some photo I’m making. Actually I am  still waiting for photography gods to send me the inspiration for a good shot, so I don’t have any photo to show you :-(

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It just worked

In the past there was a company that had the it just works mantra. Now they are getting bigger and should at least change the tense of their motto as I did in the title of this post.

Our readers (and also at least on of my co-authors) should remember when I unveiled what someone wanted to keep secret. Now it seems that other bloggers decided to tell the world their problems.

But this is not the worst thing for the company that has to pay actors to have someone lining out of their shops to make some photos just to tell the world that there is actually somebody interested in what they’re doing.

Once reality come out also the reality-distortion-filed seems to need some fix: on the Internet the heresy is spreading.

What do you think? Are blogger suddenly become victims of collective madness? Or do you feel like somebody who wake up after a nightmare where you were forced to think different?

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How to entertain millions of people

Microsoft always knows how to entertain millions of people... with a Blue Screen of Death! More pictures here.

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Photo of the Week #04

Fantastic shot by ms4jah.

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Why Cuil is not cool

Hi, maybe you heard of a new search engine that promises to take over Google. No, I’m not talking about Live Search. This post will tell you why Cuil sucks, at least for the search I made to test it.

The most important thing that made me angry is that searching for Under The Wire there isn’t any link to this blog. We are at fourth position both in Google and in Live Search, why don’t Cuil link us? After this post I think that our blog will be banned, but so far it doesn’t seems to be a huge loss.

Being serious for a while I’m going to explain other reason that made me say that Cuil isn’t cool. Maybe the fact that we aren’t linked isn’t  really good reason, so I’ll show you other Cuil features that only seems to work.

The layout of the result page, with pictures and a more fashionable style, is eye-catching but it can’t help if you can’t find what you were looking for. And trust me, you are not going to find anything useful.

The “tabs” could be a great way to filter search results, but in a lot of the queries I did there was no filtering suggestion. On the other hand when it shows something you’re only few clicks apart form the failure of your search: you won’t find nothing, even if you try to filter Cuil's results.

Also the “explore by category” feature seems to return random results… And I think that this isn’t very useful if we’re talking about a search engine.

Another thing that would help is the typo check and the suggestion to correct the misspelled word. Without this feature nobody will ever being able to find something useful. Maybe I couldn’t find nothing just because I made typing errors, but since nobody told me that I misspelled a word how can I recognize and correct the error?

The only thing I appreciate of Cuil is their privacy page. Looking at what they are saying it’s hard to think that Cuil’s creator were working for Google ;-) This really caught my attention and I think this is the only reason I will give another chance to Cuil. I hope that in the while somebody will tune the algorithms in order to give more effective results. Also a link to this blog for every search made would be a cool thing, but I don’t want to ask too much.

Does Cuil link to your blog? Have Cuil ever returned a useful link while you was searching something with it? Feel free to share your opinion about Cuil in the comments to this post.

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How do we make money blogging?

Should we try this new method?

Thanks to Napolux and GapingVoid

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Microsoft tells us to become pirates!

No, I’m not joking. I’m just watching the banners of the new Microsoft advertising campaign.

I hope that at Redmond nobody is thinking that the only way to have Vista installed on more computers is allowing users to crack it. I think that this isn’t the clue of this banner, but I’m sure that not telling that being a pirate is still cool would have been a better choice.

I’m not a pirate, and I think that Vista is good, so for me the Earth isn’t flat anymore! I’m also writing about new Vista’s banner, so maybe at Microsoft someone wanted us to talk about this banner just to get some viral marketing effect. Am I right?

Thanks to Thomas Hawk

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Top 6 (and more) search on Google that linked our blog

Before starting writing a new real post I’d like to share what our reader that comes form Google were searching in the last month.

1. Leopard vs Vista: are we attracting trolls, or just wannabe switcher? Nobody left a comment, so we will never know.
2. FIFA 2008/FIFA 2008 free: sit down, take a deep breath and listen my words. We are NOT a damn video-game site. The mistake I did was this post. The mistake are doing Google searchers is looking for FIFA 2008: stop playing video-games and have a life!
3. Live Mesh invitation/Live Mesh invite: I knew this should be one of the most searched entry, geeks are always looking for an invitation to something. Unfortunately I got only few invites and I can’t send invitation to readers were asking for. On the other side we’ve collected some mail address, if I was a spammer I’d pass half my days writing post about invitation and the other half sending chain mails. You're lucky I'm not a spammer, although somebody says I am.
4. CSS edit under Windows: a lot of people are searching for that, maybe at macRabbit somebody should take note and start writing a porting.
5. utvv e-mule: I think I know who made this query. I’m glad to see that someone finds our articles useful.
6. Leopard on a pc: please, stop searching for that… I don't want to be kidnapped by Apple's lawyers.

After the top six (Who said that I must write a top 10 or a top five? I wanted to write a top six!) I'm going to tell you the best queries. Are you ready to laugh?

Somebody was looking for information about how to fix a wire. Actually I think we never wrote a post about this, but you're a very lucky person: since sirus is an electrician we have the right person you're looking for. Just write a comment and we will send sirus at your home to fix all the wires you need. Maybe sirus can help also the guy who wants to wire macbook air to time capsule.

But the real genius is another searcher, somebody that I'd like to meet. His query was an easy-to-give-out Windows Seven invitation. Slow down, our marketing office is at work and when we are going to share invitation of the next windows release you're the first person we're serving. I'm going to invite you also before tcid, I promise that. Just leave your name -and a mail address- on the comments to this rant.

Another friend of us was asking Google if can we use cds on macbook. Well, you shouldn't use cds because they're old.

I think that when someone tells you ask Google he is not meaning that there is somebody called Google you can talk to. So if you write I want my capital G icon back for ie7, you're not talking to Mr Google. And just in case you're thinking to ask Santa Claus, neither he does exists.

Thanks to who was searching for Leopard sucks, you know the truth, but I can't understand what you were looking for. Are you a troll?

Can somebody tell me what is the link between sirus and iPhone? I think I'm missing something. I'd also like to know what was searching who typed whisher and iphone. Thanks god the first link is my old page on WinAddict, so the poor guy found a great post to read.

Just to grab some visit I'm now going to write some dull phrases picking words form this list. I'll let you know what kind of queries will came out this month.

fat albert hole: what girls learn on the mormon beefcacke calendar is a bite of seattle. Red bull flugtag and hot lap dance club. I must stop here before I get crazy.

See you.

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We are still alive

I’d like to tell our reader that we didn’t run away with the ad-sense cash, we just have to pass a lot of exam and prepare the defense of our thesis. Actually we have still to finish our thesis, but this is a little detail… I have to write code, write documentation and write presentation, poor my fingers and poor my keyboard. My mind is gone, but I still hope I can do it!

Before coming back to my thesis I suggest you to post a comment on what you’d like to read on utvv. If we survive, after the holidays, we will come back with our fantastic posts.

Stay hungry, stay foolish and stay tuned ;-)

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Photo of the Week #03

By courambel. Fantastic.

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The wow is still now!

Thanks to Windows-Now

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Apple is still using Internet Explorer 5

Today I was surfing through Apple's web site to get some information about the new products shown at the WWDC 2008. Reading about MobileMe (a wonderful piece of software) I noticed they have started using Windows Vista. In fact, till the WWDC 2008, Apple web site used to show Windows XP's screens instead of Windows Vista's screens. In my mind I said "That's a great piece of news! After one year and a half they have finally discovered Vista (WOW!)".

Although Apple engineers have started using Windows Vista instead of Windows XP it's unclear the cause they are still using an "old hag" like Firefox 2 to surf the web instead of Internet Explorer 7 which is more secure (under Windows Vista thanks to the Protected Mode) or Safari 3 for Windows which is certainly faster and in addition to this it's also one of theirs products (they say "The World's best browser").

If these are the facts I've finally understood why Internet Explorer is always the worse browser or even not considered in Apple's comparatives. Although Apple engineers have discovered Windows Vista, it's clear Apple hasn't discovered Internet Explorer 7 yet. They are probably still using Internet Explorer 5 (the last version for Mac OS X) or even a previous version if it's possible. That's the truth!

See you...

News of the day: Opera 9.5 has just been released, few days before Firefox 3. Opera's guys have won the race!

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Apple reinvents Windows Me

Looking at the picture seems that at Cupertino the photocopier has been started again :-)

My friends are saying that mobile me is a great thing, with such a brother I can’t tell them they’re wrong!

Thanks to Paul Thurrott

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Snow Leopard details

One of the most incredible rumor for Apple's WWDC 2008 was a new version of Mac OS X called "Snow Leopard".

Such rumor has been confirmed by Steve Jobs on stage and by a press release yesterday.

Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard will not bring any new end-user feature but it will focus on performance and lay the foundations for the next releases.

...What does it mean in practice? We' have gathered all the information appeared on various websites:

• New Quicktime ("Quicktime X"): this is one of the oldest pieces of Mac OS X; even if you have never opened Quicktime a part of Quicktime is loaded, for example, in Safari whenever you watch movies. Quicktime has been the source for various security holes and hopefully Apple is going to rewrite it from scratch. Quicktime X is going to deliver better performance and support to the latest codecs.
• Hard drive space used by Mac OS X: dramatically reduced; this is a very good news: every major OS update has stolen hundreds MBs of my hard drive space.
• Out-of-the-box Microsoft Exchange support: just like the iPhone now also your Mac will be able to talk to Exchange servers.
• Extended 64-bit support: Leopard support for 64-bit processors will be extended to more layers of the OS. Maximum RAM allowed will be 16 TB (16384 GB)
• Multicore support made much easier for developers: thanks to a new technology called "Grand Central" developers will be able to easily build applications that take advantage of all the power of the multicore technology; tasks will be allocated to different cores (and different processor) automatically, optimizing the processing power.
• Safari 4: one of the applications that Mac users use the most and, at the same time, one of the most hated. Safari 4 will bring better JavaScript support with an amazingly fast engine (called SquirrelFish)
• You probably know that Mac OS X already optimizes your Mac's resources dividing the load between the processor (CPU) and the GPU (used for all the graphical rendering); with Snow Leopard developers will be able to exploit GPU (that are rapidly becoming as fast as processors) power for general-purpose computing. OpenCL (Open Computing Language) makes it possible for developers to efficiently tap the vast gigaflops of computing power currently locked up in the graphics processing unit (GPU).
• PowerPC support dropped. I think that Apple is going to make Mac OS X much faster; dropping PowerPC support would make it easier (less work). Moreover the Snow Leopard beta handed to developers at WWDC is Intel-only.

Snow Leopard is scheduled to ship in a year from now: hopefully we will get a deeper insight in January 2009 (at MacWorld) and have it installed on our Macs in summer 2009.

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Finally: iPhone 3G official photos

After weeks, months of rumors Apple has finally released the new iPhone with 3G capabilities.

First pictures are offered by UTVV.

Most of the countries where the iPhone will be available:

Most of South America... Norway, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Denmark, Netherlands, Belgium, Poland, Czech, Switzerland, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Malta, Croatia, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Greece, Turkey, Jordan, Egypt, Niger, Mali, Senegal, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Kenya, Botswana, South Africa and others.

Complete list:

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First pictures of WWDC 2008 [updated every 10 minutes]

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New iPhone to be sold at 99€ in Spain

The keynote is coming and many European carriers are announcing their partnership with Apple to bring the iPhone to their country.

While many are waiting for tomorrow's keynote, some, such as Telefònica (Spain), have already made their announcement: what makes it relevant is the new price policy adopted by Apple.

It seems in fact that carriers will be able to sell the iPhone at a special price if the customer sign a two-year contract: in Spain it seems that the new iPhone will be sold at 99 € (156 USD circa).

[Source - original article]

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iChat coming to the iPhone?

As already written in our rumor roundup iPhone may come in colors.

This picture seems to be a great evidence of it.

Video conferencing seems to be on its way, too.

iChat for the iPhone would be a big surprise! ...It would push 3G a lot.

Keep yourself updated on the latest rumors following UTVV on Twitter and on Plurk!

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New theme for UTVV

Enjoy the new theme!

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GMail labs adds (pretty useless) function to GMail

I just looked at the new GMail-labs settings, hoping to find the next-big-thing for my web based mail account.

I admit it, I was a bit curious about the feature developed in the 20% free time that Google left to its employees, and I was expecting to find something great.

Seems that this time the 20% free time had been a little wasted since none of the experimental feature did worth a try. Here is the list of the feature users should test (with my opinions):

• Quick Links if it’s bookmarkable and does worth a bookmark it’s yet on my favorites.
• Superstars please stop them or GMail will become a Christmas tree.
• Pictures in chat and Muzzle is there anyone using web-chat? Crazy!
• Fixed width font why should I loose the right layout of the mail?
• Custom keyboard shortcuts and Mouse gestures maybe it’s not so useless, but I don’t think a AJAX application is the right place for shortcut.
• Signature tweaks wow, we can sign a message before the quoted text :-(
• Random signature maybe it’s cool, but do we need it?
• Custom date formats it must be a system setting not an application setting!
• Old Snakey ladies and gentlemen Google-OS is here, and you can also play games on it!
• Email Addict hitting the X that closes the tab is too easy?
• Hide Unread Counts why?

If you choose to become a useless-function tester remember that big-G could remove what you’re testing without saying nothing to you. The function will just disappear.

p.s.

If you’re looking for a real big thing, have a look at the new version of Windows Live Writer

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OS X Leopard coming to every PC?

We already posted about this subject a few months ago, but now that WWDC banners have dropped "Mac OS X Leopard" in favour of "OS X Leopard", rumors of Cupertino's OS coming to every PC is becoming a little bit more consistent.

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WWDC 2008 rumors roundup [UPDATED x2]

So, what should you expect from Apple's World Wide Developers Conference 2008?

No one ever really knows everything that will be shown on stage but we can be pretty sure about some of the products that will be introduced.

iPhone

• [sure] Firmware version 2.0 available to all iPhone (and iPod touch) customers
• [sure] AppStore will deliver free and commercial applications; iPhone will eventually become a open platform
• [probable] Games for the iPhone demoed on stage
• [sure] iPhone finally gains 3G capabilities
• [uncertain] iPhone might also get GPS capabilities
• [probable] iPhone changes form factor: thinner?
• [uncertain] iPhone retains the same form factor but a new model is introduced: iPhone nano? iPhone Air?
• [uncertain] lower prices: $200 low-end iPhone?
• [uncertain] iPhone in colors: white, black and red?
• [uncertain] iPhone abandons aluminium and glass in favour of plastic
• [probable] improved battery life
• [probable] video recording capabilities
• [probable] conferencing capabilities
• [uncertain] new commercial
• [sure] iPhone finally coming to Australia, Italy, Japan, Spain, etc...

Macs

• [uncertain] new MacBook Pros
• [uncertain] new MacBooks in aluminium
• [uncertain] new touch device?

.Mac, Mobile Me, Me

• [sure] new name: "Mobile Me" or "Me"
• [sure] completely renewed service, more iPhone integration

Mac OS X

• [uncertain] 10.6 developers preview
• [uncertain] Pure Cocoa
• [probable] Intel-only
• [probable] ships spring 2009

Stay tuned for the latest news!

And don't forget to follow WWDC 2008 on Twitter!

...UTVV is now on Plurk too!

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Follow WWDC 2008 with UTVV!

If you are looking forward to finding out what Steve Jobs will deliver at Apple's World Wide Developers Conference 2008 you shoul stay tuned on UTVV!

We have opened a Twitter from which to follow WWDC 2008 live.
If you like Plurk this is our account with live coverage of WWDC

That's a unique opportunity for you readers!

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Brand new Google icon, trouble coming?

Today while I was doing a Google search I noticed that something strange was going on, but at first I didn't realized what looked unusual.

Some search after, looking at my tabs I discovered what my eyes noticed what was changed: instead of the capital G the favicon of Google is now a little blue g.

Probably at Mountain View they are tired to be called the big G and decided to change their nickname in the most subliminal and easiest way they can go on: just changing they brand.

Do you like this new icon? I hope that the big G is coming back, the little g doesn't represent Google in my mind and makes too confusing to look at my tabs.

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