Category: Computers, Science & Technology

A new version of iTunes is out… and Apple is really pushing it! You may want to update to stay current!

Apple iTunes 8.0: A closer look at ‘Genius’

“While Apple is pushing a major update to its client software filled with several new features, easily the biggest new one appears to be its music recommendation engine, called Genius. This afternoon, the Cupertino company is billing its new Genius feature, premiering with iTunes 8.0 software, as a way to ‘create a playlist from songs in your library that go great together.’ Obviously, many times when companies make such claims, the reality may not match the hype. So BetaNews set out to look into the feature, find out how exactly it works, and determine whether its recommendations are genuinely qualified. According to Apple, the work begins when Genius starts scanning your library of music. As the help file for the feature reads, ‘To create Genius playlists, iTunes uses anonymous information about your library and other iTunes libraries.’ A user must go through several hoops to activate the feature — apparently a pretty solid attempt by Apple to ensure the user realizes that some data from their machines will indeed be shared with the company. Once the user accepts, iTunes gathers data from the songs in the user’s library, and then sends it to Apple. It is apparently processed there and sent back, after which, iTunes activates the Genius feature.”

So, if you want to recommend your tastes to others, here’s your chance!

After all, if some scientists are right (and we trust them SO much… think global warming…) then, the world might come to an end on Wednesday (tomorrow as I write this.) Why? CERN will switch on the LHC (Large Hadron Collider.) Sorry about Thursday (I never COULD get the hang of Thursdays!)

Will the world end on Wednesday?

“Be a bit of a pain if it did, wouldn’t it? And the most frustrating thing is that we won’t know for sure either way until the European laboratory for particle physics (Cern) in Geneva switches on its Large Hadron Collider the day after tomorrow. If you think it’s unlikely that we will all be sucked into a giant black hole that will swallow the world, as German chemistry professor Otto Rössler of the University of Tübingen posits, and so carry on with your life as normal, only to find out that it’s true, you’ll be a bit miffed, won’t you? If, on the other hand, you disagree with theoretical physicist Prof. Sir Chris Llewellyn Smith of the UK Atomic Energy Agency, who argues that fears of possible global self-ingestion have been exaggerated, and decide to live the next two days as if they were your last, and then nothing whatsoever happens, you’d feel a bit of a fool too. Rössler apparently thinks it ‘quite plausible’ that the ‘mini black holes’ the Cern atom-smasher creates ‘will survive and grow exponentially and eat the planet from the inside.’ So convinced is he that he has lodged an EU court lawsuit alleging that the project violates the right to life guaranteed under the European Convention of Human Rights. Prof. Llewellyn Smith, however, has assured Radio 4’s Today program that the LHC – designed to help solve fundamental questions about the structure of matter and, hopefully, arrive at a ‘theory of everything’ – is completely safe and will not be doing anything that has not happened ‘100,000 times over’ in nature since the earth has existed. ‘The chances of us producing a black hole are minuscule,’ he said, ‘and even if we do, it can’t swallow up the earth.’ So, folks, who do you believe?”

By the way, you can watch them flip the switch live on their webcam network!

CERN Webcam

Sounds cool! I like Cnet’s take on Google’s new Chrome Browser and the need for more feature tweaks.

10 things we’d like to see in Chrome

“So far we’re pretty smitten with Google’s Chrome. It’s certainly not without its faults, but for version 1.0 of a browser it’s pretty sharp. We’ve compiled a list of 10 things we’d really like to see added or tweaked. Some come from other browsers, and some are just improvements on some of the existing features. Google, we hope you’re listening.

1. Profile roaming between multiple browsers. This may be a pipe dream, but if Foxmarks for Firefox has proved anything, syncing up your bookmarks between multiple machines is awesome. Doing the same with passwords, settings, and history would be even better. Considering Google already has a way for your browser to send data back to the mothership, and a hosted Web history service of its own, a little sync using my Google account doesn’t seem that hard does it?

2. Better bookmark management. Speaking of bookmarks, the bookmarking system in Chrome is about as basic as it gets. ‘Stripped-down’ might be a better way to describe it. On the outset, it seems as robust as Firefox 3’s with a really simple one-click way to save links. Where the system falls apart is the lack of tools for organization, and a complete lack of a back-up tool to save your short (or long) list of favorite sites. Of course, a bookmarks plug-in like Delicious would help sort this out, which brings us to the next yearning…

3. Plug-ins. Google has acknowledged that plug-ins are on the road map, which is a good thing. Here’s how the search giant can totally one-up Mozilla, though: let me install and make changes to extensions without having to restart the browser. Nothing is worse than having 30 tabs open and having to restart, even if it remembers what I had open before. This reminds me…

4. Saved sessions/Warning messages when closing multiple tabs. Firefox’s little warning for when you’re closing a group of tabs was a huge lifesaver in version two. Firefox 3 brought with it a way to save that grouping of open tabs for later. Chrome has neither of these features. Accidentally closing your browser with a slew of tabs open means they’re gone for good–that is unless you set it from the default option of clearing what you were looking at. Chrome is also nice enough to tell you some of the most recently closed tabs back on its special start page, but that’s it.

5. A full-screen mode. I love the minimalism of Chrome, but sometimes I just want those extra 60-90 vertical pixels back. Give me a keyboard shortcut for this too, and I’ll be in screen hog heaven.

6. A more customizable interface. The blue is neat, but getting that great deep purple found in incognito mode is enough of a tease to make me want to change the way it looks based on how I’m feeling. Plus, you’ve taken away the nice special Windows-theme coloring I had when you got rid of the top of the application, so let me choose how I want it to look. Bonus points for a tie-dye mode or something that changes depending on what time of day it is–like your personalized homepage service iGoogle.

7. A way to drag ‘applications’ back into the main browser. The option to turn a certain site into a self-contained browser window with a stripped-down interface is great. However, the inability to drag it back into an open Chrome browser window is maddening when you’re trying to re-open some real estate on the task bar. You can do this with existing tabs and windows, and it works great.

8. A Mac/Linux version. The lack of a Mac client has left the growing percentage of Mac users in a bit of a tizzy. Worse yet, based on Google’s track record with some of its other cross-platform software offerings like Google Earth and Google Desktop search, the Mac has fared a little worse with slower release schedules and less features than its PC siblings. Hopefully new features will be rolled out to all the platforms at about the same time.

9. A pop-up blocker that blocks. Clearly Google is trying to shake things up with a pop-up blocker that really should be called a ‘pop-up relocator,’ since it not only lets them open but also load. Frankly, this drives me nuts since I have to close them down to get them off the screen. Also if it’s really important and something I meant to click, I have to go drag it off from the bottom of the screen.

10. A regular old search box. Yes progress is good and the ‘omnibar’ does a pretty slam-dunk job of getting new searches going, but let’s get some of the ambiguity away from that thing and have an option to leave it for URLs only. Also, a separate search box would let me pick from the other multitude of search providers in addition to Google without compromising my screen real estate.”

I would just add, better support for all plugins… they already do Flash… let’s see Silverlight!

I am using Google’s new “Chrome” web browser to type this entry. First impressions: it seems faster, and smoother than other browsers… I suppose that is due to multiple processes handling things… however, it doesn’t seem to support Microsoft’s Silverlight video streaming plugin… I guess not too surprising. Anyway, fairly impressive for a version 1.0 browser!

Whoa! You thought the Mac/PC ads were cool! When it was announced that Jerry Seinfeld would be doing Vista ads… you can imagine Apple quaking in their boots… NOT! Seinfeld’s show was famously a “show about nothing.” Well, so are these commercials! Keep in mind M$ spent $300,000,000.00 on them. Ouch.

The First Bill Gates + Jerry Seinfeld Microsoft Ad Makes No Sense

“Besides the slick and probably expensive editing designed to make Jerry Seinfeld look like the more awkward of the pair, there’s not a whole lot of special effects in this clip. In fact, there’s not really a whole lot of anything, including laughs, information or pimping of Vista. It’s kinda like Seinfeld’s really long, really rambling Superman ad for Amex he did a few years back. We hope the rest of the campaign is better. They did get Bill Gates to use his mug shot somewhere in the spot (not spoiling it by saying where), but other than that we’re underwhelmed.”

Watch it… and then ask yourself… does this make me want to run out and buy Vista? Ahhh…no!

A quarter of a century of open source, completely free software. Wow! And, I remember it when it happened. Pretty wild!

GNU turns 25

“No longer will the Free Software Foundation be the target of advertisements for novelty condoms, Ibiza package holidays and extreme sports gear. It’s leaving the 16-24 yoof demographic behind. Today the GNU project celebrates its quarter-century. It was on 27 September 1983 that MIT slacker Richard M Stallman made his announcement that he intended to create a complete Unix-like system that would be completely open and hackable, giving anyone the right to modify and distribute the work. The Free Software Foundation is getting its celebration in early. The innovation of the GPL software licence only followed some years later, but it was driven by GNU’s needs, and it was to have profound consequences for the computer industry. 25 years ago, Stallman saw the project as a way of continuing the community ethic of shared code, something he felt was in danger of being eclipsed by the arrival of new, commercial software companies, seeking to capitalize on work in the labs. It’s not so strange if you look at it through Stallman’s eyes: software was a tool that had always been open, hackable and redistributable, and now mediocre people in ill-fitting suits were trying to steal that freedom… by making a quick buck with dodgy products, and putting very little back. One of these was Bill Gates – others were a host of start-ups seeking to take the code and make commercially useful products with the lab work. Ambitious and insecure, these start-ups all needed to explain their USP to venture investors as a kind of “secret source”. So Stallman set about creating a free alternative. Over the next few years, he created a toolchain that allowed other developers to create working, open computer systems on entirely new and alien hardware. He wrote the gcc compiler, with Richard Mlynarik the gdb debugger. With a few other tools, this was enough for a ‘bootstrapping’ system: both the gcc and gdb were of such high quality that the fame spread, particularly amongst the embedded community. Phones, switches, A to D converters… boxes of all kinds ran on, and trusted, GNU.”

So, why would you want to use Gmail as your SMTP Gateway? Well, let’s say that you have a laptop that you travel with. And you have Mozilla Thunderbird set up as your e-mail client. On your local, home network, you use your ISP’s SMTP gateway, and all is well. But when you take your laptop and go to Starbuck’s using their WiFi connection… you can’t send e-mail. Drat!

What do you do? Well, if you have a Gmail account (they are free, after all) then you can do this… set up Gmail as your out-going SMTP Gateway. Simply fill in the fields in Thunderbird as shown in the screenshot, and you are good to go! Handy, huh?

(Don’t forget the SSL radio button, and the port definition!)

Remember the Muppet show’s “Pigs in Space?” Well, now it is “Virii in Space!” If even the International Space Station can get a computer virus… well, is nowhere safe from these evil minions of the “pigs” that design viruses? Sigh.

Computer Virus Hits ISS, Should NASA Worry?

“It was confirmed yesterday by NASA that they have discovered a computer virus on a laptop that is aboard the International Space Station (ISS). The big question that has come out of this though, is should NASA worry? The virus was first discovered by Symantec back on August 27, 2008, with the virus being called W32.Gammima.AG. It impacts systems running Windows 2000, 95, 98, Me, NT, XP, and Windows Server 2003. At this point though, it does not seem that there is much of a threat to NASA directly from the virus. The report states that the virus is very easy to contain and remove, and can cause minimal damage. The best thing the virus can do is steal passwords, but it is not believed that the worm virus could do any damage to NASA at this. NASA is seeing it as more of a pain than a major threat, and for good reason. Many continue to question though how a virus managed to get on the International Space Station in the first place. Don’t they have virus scanning software?”

Notice a black screen with a notice that “You may be a victim of software counterfeiting” on your PC? It may be the result of Microsoft’s latest Genuine Windows Program!

New Windows Genuine authenticator can blank desktop backgrounds

If in the last week or so you’ve noticed that your desktop background in Windows XP Professional goes completely black exactly every 60 minutes, don’t worry, it’s not a virus. A blackened desktop is the latest indication that the Microsoft Genuine Advantage program has determined your copy of the operating system to be non-authentic, as a service of its latest version rolled out to XP Professional users this week. ‘The desktop background can be reset to anything else in the usual ways,’ wrote WGA senior product manager Alex Kochis yesterday, ‘but every 60 minutes it will change back to the plain black background. This will continue to happen until that copy of Windows is genuine.’ Kochis’ team has been tinkering with multiple ways to provide some kind of ‘in-your-face’ notice to the user that Microsoft doesn’t believe his copy of Windows to be a valid one, without making any kind of implied accusation that somehow the user is at fault. For Windows Vista, WGA disables the Aero translucent front-end, substituting the more conventional ‘Vista Basic’ theme instead. In addition to the blackened desktop, the new WGA will show a transparent, immobile notice in the lower right corner of the screen: ‘You may be a victim of software counterfeiting.’ The notice will remain in place whatever software the user may try to run, though it’s probably not intense enough to cause screen burn-in.”

Sigh… spammers just keep trying to get their junk in front of our eyes… and try to find ways to defeat the spam filters… no, it is ASCII art! Back “in the day” ASCII art was cool on old “green screen” terminals… now it is a spam threat!?!?

ASCII: An artful way around spam filters

“An old computer art form is making a comeback as a newer way to evade spam filters. For decades, computing fans have enjoyed a form of expression called ASCII art that shows pictures or messages as a low-resolution graphic, a grid made of numerous computer characters encoded with the venerable ASCII standard. With a photo digitized with ASCII art, for example, the ‘#’ character can represent a dark pixel and ‘.’ a light pixel. And there are large fonts constructed from an assemblage of individual characters. Now the technique has surfaced as a way to transmit information that’s hard for spam filters to detect–but that so far, at least, has proved relatively harmless beyond that stage. ‘There’s been an upsurge in ASCII spam in the last week…It’s quite effective in getting through filters,’ said Chris Boyd, director of malware research at messaging management firm FaceTime Communications. But earlier efforts to use ASCII art for spam have proven to be duds, he added. ‘The downside is that 9 times out of 10, it’s completely useless because it’s almost impossible to read, or it’s a really bizarre picture of a naked lady that’s not clickable,’ Boyd said.”