July 03, 2008

On Thursday, Opera released version 9.51. The new version fixes a few security vulnerabilities and resolves some stability issues. One of the fixes addresses an arbitrary code execution vulnerability that was not previously made public.

I mostly have stopped reading comments to this blog because what passes for "discussion" in the comments section tends to be inane, rude, and/or vapid, and often all three at the same time. "On the Internet, no one knows that you're a dog," goes the saying. Or that you're a jerk.

Now, most people are not jerks. They just become losers when cloaked in anonymity. They say things they'd never say if confronted with the people they flame on discussion boards, in comments sections, etc. They're probably nice people "in real life." It's just on the web that they let it all hang out, to the detriment of the web and intelligent discussion.

Take the comments to one of my recent posts. The first is led off by "h3h" who apparently has no sense of humor (completely missing my point in the post), but can't leave it at that, then going on to lob ad hominems into his "argument."

"H3h" turns out to be Brad Fults. Judging from his Flickr feed and Twitter feed, he's probably an OK guy. He happens to be wrong in the way he chose to comment on this blog, but he's probably a well-intentioned person, normally.

On Thursday, Microsoft announced four security bulletins for Patch Tuesday next week. The pre-announcement is intended as a heads up for IT departments before Patch Tuesday. All four are considered important, the second-most serious ranking by the software giant.

Among the important patches, two affect vulnerabilities within Windows, with one

July 4, 2008 isn't just our nation's 232nd b-day -- it's also the day the highly anticipated Openmoko Neo FreeRunner cellphone will be available to anyone who wants to take a gander at the latest attempt to take the open Linux platform mainstream.

Will it work? If you gently take your eyes to a few discussion forums around the FOSS community, you'll witness overall controlled excitement -- after all, they get to play with some real hardware that's designed just for them (and will keep them from thinking about Google's open Android OS for a few days -– BTW, where is that first build already? Jeez).

But we can understand the anticipation for the FreeRunner -- the openness of the unit really beckons. And since the CAD files are also publicly available under a Creative Commons license, anyone can change the physical look of the phone. Do you want a really rough exterior for the security market? Stainless steel, maybe? Go ahead and try.

But the key here is that out of the box, any Regular Joe should be able to use it fairly easily.

The Openmoko Neo FreeRunner comes equipped with a GNU/Linux OS base, and a core system for dialing, SMS and recording contacts. It currently does not include a camera, but it wouldn't surprise us if it is somehow modded into one. In about a month, a brand new software suite will be released that will provide location-based applications, and cause the GPS manufacturers to have another uncomfortable group gulp moment. (The Garmin Nuvi smolders in anticipation, I presume.)

The FreeRunner will come in two versions at first: 850MHz or 900 MHz
Tri-band GSM. It packs in 128MB WSDRAM and 256MB NAND of flash memory,
and includes a 2.8-inch VGA touch screen (at 480 x 640), Wi-Fi at 802.1
1b/g, AGPS, and GPRS 2.5G. And it of course has Bluetooth 2.0
connectivity, plus a couple of 3-axis motion sensors.

The FreeRunner will prove another good training ground for the Linux
system -- inexperienced Linux users might allow a few hiccups in a new
desktop PC, like an Everex, but the cellphone's system needs to be
clean, and consistently useful. And of course the platform will
inevitably allow developers to come up with some cool new stuff.

So if you want to move beyond the narrow confines of the Windows Mobile
operating system, or Nokia's Symbian OS doesn't float your boat, you
might want to try this one out. We'll give it our own trained look in the
next few weeks.

iPhonegold has an interesting timeline plotting major events in the history of the uber gadget, stretching all the way back to 1999 when Apple registered iphone.org to reroute traffic to apple.com. Click on the pic below and relive all your favorite iPhone moments from the birth of the ill-fated ROKR to Engadget's stock plunging delay rumor to the launch of the 3G handset on July 11th.

Reading through this Wall Street Journal article, I'm increasingly worried about Zimbra. The article traces Microsoft's efforts to buy Yahoo!'s search business while leaving the rest of its business(es) to an AOL Time Warner or News Corp. This might be good for Microsoft, and it might ...

The only major desktop OS to decline? Windows. In fact, as the Inquirer notes, while the Mac is up 32 percent, Windows XP actually declined a full percentage point while Vista scraped together a measly 2.56 percent. Overall? Windows was down 2.45 percent.

Perhaps Viacom should have just asked nicely for Google's YouTube code.

This week, a federal judge denied Viacom's demand that Google turn over its YouTube source code, arguing that "YouTube and Google should not be made to place this vital asset in hazard merely to allay speculation."

On the Google Maps for mobile team we're always experimenting with new technologies, so we're happy to announce that we've started testing voice search as a new feature. Starting today, you can speak your business query instead of typing it on a select group of BlackBerry devices (Pearl 8110, 8120, and 8130, US only). Voice search in Google Maps uses the same speech recognition engine as GOOG-411, our free directory assistance service.

Using your voice to search for businesses is super useful in situations when you can't type, when the name of the business is long, or when you're not sure how to spell it. In other situations -- when you're in a library or a rock concert, for example -- typing makes more sense. Keeping that in mind, we designed this feature to allow you to choose whether to speak or type. Get it now on your BlackBerry Pearl by visiting http://m.google.com/maps on your mobile phone, or learn more here.

Using voice search is as simple as 1, 2, 3:

Press "0" to center the map view around your location

Press the left-side key and hold it while you say the name or type of business you're looking for (for example, "pizza")

When you're done speaking, release the left-side key, and our voice recognition technology will figure out your request and find the business you've been looking for, no typing needed.

This feature is experimental, which means a couple of things. First, similar to other voice-recognition technologies, the accuracy of voice recognition will improve over time as more people use the voice search feature. Second, the feature is currently only supported on 8110, 8120 and 8130 BlackBerry Pearl models in the US. Third, we'd love to get your feedback on it -- feel free to leave your comments below.

Come on, Novell, I can see touting SAP's seal of approval on SUSE Linux, but Microsoft? I found this banner on Novell's page today (while looking for a logo for an earlier post), and I laughed as I read, "A quick and easy way to certify..." and then ...

Despite returning to the familiar refrain of why the open-source community is broken, Open Season Episode 19 was perhaps my favorite to record. We had sound effects, Kermit vs. Bill Gates contests, discussion on how to make open-source businesses viable, Red Hat and its leadership role, and more.

Continuing in the grand tradition of shameless gadget imitation for the benefit of the consumer public, manufacturer GoLive2 has come up with the latest version of the Wii-mote: The motion-sensing Stix, for the PC.

The wireless GoLive2 Stix are 'touch sensitive' controls that will be compatible with hundreds of PC games, and will be conveniently offered at their own game portal, Sphere. The company will also support third party and independent game developers and help them adapt their games to the Stix scheme.

Oddly, there will be three different types of Styx with increasing levels of features, the Stix 200, the 400 and the 100. (Did they not learn anything from the Vista potpourri feature-set pricing plan?). The Stix 400 will be compatible with all of the approved games, including all the Games for Windows.

But will the motion control scheme have an impact on PC-based gaming?

As of now, the answer is probably no. This is especially the case since the control's success has been limited to the one Wii console, and even some Wii games have not coordinated with the control scheme that well.

Another reason for our skepticism is that PC gamers are uncommonly attached to their keyboard and mouse as their instruments of choice. Would you blame them? The rapid (but precise) shuffling of a sensitive gaming mouse in the middle of a Crysis bust-out is exciting stuff.

We've just released in the US a new version of Google Talk designed specifically for the iPhone and iPod Touch browsers. In addition to sending your friends Gmail messages from your iPhone, you can now chat with them while you're on the move, too! In your iPhone browser, just go to www.google.com/talk, sign in and start chatting. That's it. Google Talk runs entirely in the browser so there's no need to download or install anything.

There are some differences from using Google Talk on your computer. For instance, in order to receive instant messages with Google Talk on your iPhone, the application needs to be open in your Safari browser. When you navigate away to another browser window or application, your status will be changed to "unavailable" and your Google Talk session will be restarted when you return.

Other than that, we've tried to keep the design as faithful to the desktop experience as possible, so it should be familiar to you. You can select from a quicklist of the people you contact most, search your contacts, and manage multiple conversations. You'll never have to miss out on the latest gossip or updates from friends just because you're away from a computer.

On Wednesday, Microsoft announced new security features within the upcoming release of Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2. The features are designed to combat the rising tide of drive-by downloads and malicious scripts contained within carefully crafted links embedded in e-mail and Web pages. Most of the new features require systems

According to a collection of blog posts from people that have worked at both Microsoft and Google, there's much more than meets the eye. In particular, it would appear that Microsoft, crusty thirty-year old that it is, has learned quite a bit about how to add process to enable (somewhat) smooth functioning at scale.

This orientation [at Google] towards cool, but not necessarily useful or essential software really affects the way the software engineering is done. Everything is pretty much run by the engineering - PMs and testers are conspicuously absent from the process. While they do exist in theory, there are too few of them to matter.

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- You didn't think it was over, did you? As Yahoo's stock has fallen dangerously low -- almost to sub-$20 levels that preceded Microsoft's takeover bid back in February -- Microsoft is looking for partners to help it break up Yahoo so that it can nab its search business, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

For those of you using newly released Firefox 3, or willing to give it a try, you can take advantage of a new feature that lets you set Gmail as the default for all email links -- those that contain "mailto:" in them. If you're like me and don't have a default email client set up, then clicking these links typically launches an installation wizard for a destkop mail client, or opens some email software that you don't actually use.

Now you can configure Firefox to launch Gmail when you click on email address links and avoid the hassle. The folks over at Lifehacker published these tips on how to set it up:

1) Go to Gmail and sign in.

2) While in Gmail, copy and paste the following into your browser's address bar and hit enter.

3) Click "Add Application" when you are prompted1. Congrats, you just added Gmail to your browser's list of mail clients.

4) To set Gmail as your default, click on this link and you will be prompted with a dialog box listing available email applications. By selecting Gmail and checking "Remember my choice for mailto links" you won't have to tell your browser again. (You don't actually need to send an email after you click that link.)

You can always change this setting by going into "Tools" > "Options" (or "Firefox" > "Preferences," for Mac users) selecting "Applications" and going to the "mailto" option. There's a drop down next to the option that lets you change your default. Clicking "Application details" will take you to a settings page where you can completely remove Gmail or other mail apps.

1If nothing happens when you type in the code, double check that you copied the entire snippet correctly, and if nothing happens, you probably changed an advanced setting (maybe without even knowing) and need to set it back to default. To do it, type about:config into your browser and make sure that network.protocol-handler.external.mailto is on the default setting: true.

It is somehow appropriate that the UNbrella Eco-Brolly sports an English newspaper in the product shot. The pocket-sized tube unfolds and forms a scaffold for the free newspapers found all around Blighty and holds them above your head, protecting you from that other Great British product: Rain.

The thing is, it's not much smaller than a normal umbrella, which is something readily available for only a few pounds anywhere you might find a newspaper. The second problem is that newspaper, while excellent and insulating bedding material for both hamsters and hobos, is far from waterproof. Better is designer Shiu Yuk Yuen's idea to use it with a plastic shopping bag.

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