Apple updated the iPhone system software to 2.2 late this week, and so far I’m impressed. New features include street views (for some cities) in Google Maps, a redesigned Safari, and the absolutely welcomed ability to download podcasts directly into the iPhone from the iTunes store. Never mind that the process is a little clunky, just the fact that I can do it is pretty impressive. Equally cool, bit not as glitzy, is the fact that you can now hit “update all” to update your apps, and they’ll update all at once. More importantly, the icons now stay just where you left them, rather than you having to move them around every time a feature gets changed. Other than that…it’s the same iPhone as always. Apparently Apple has added a bunch of “emoji” icons, which is important to the Japanese market, but doesn’t do much for me.
Yep, the other side of the coin has dropped and I’ve got another article up about Flash on the iPhone up at Mac | Life, this time accentuating the positives of Adobe’s graphical powerhouse on Apple’s iconic mobile device.
…is the title of my latest article over at Mac | Life. It’s already getting some vigorous debate from Flash defenders and detractors, so join in with your two cents, wouldya?.
Turns out all the hooey about “OMG HACKZ0RZ!” has at least a grain of truth to it. According to the New York Times, weeks before the “haha the Olympics are on and noone will notice” mini-war Russia just sprang on Georgia, the breakaway republic’s servers were being pelted by Cossack nerds aiming to humiliate them and take down their internet infrastructure. Besides the psychological benefits, cyberwar is also exceedingly cheap, costing much less than a tank full of soldiers to implement and maintain. Whether these cyberattacks are the work of the Russian government, intelligence agencies or criminal organizations (or all three) is unclear, but in a larger sense these incidents point to the way wars might be waged in future conflicts. Of course, the people with the most to lose aren’t the Third World powers but Western and Asian countries, where more infrastructure and economic muscle is tied into net connectivity. JUst like terrorism, cyberwarfare is essentially asymmetrical.
First water on Mars, and now the brainy folks at MIT have figured out a way to make solar energy much more efficient and practical. I generally regard the words “solar” and “revolution” with some skepticism, since most of the time there’s more hope than facts being put on the table. But MIT isn’t known for either grandiose statements or stupidity, so I’m holding out some hope in this case.
So one of the benefits of doing “The Lab with Leo” was getting in contact with lots of people who ship out gadgets for review. Now I’m doing the odd review for Freyburg, the first of which is the Linksys WRT600-N. First things first….I have NEVER, until now, installed a router where everything just worked. Every single router I’ve used, whether from Linksys, D-Link, or otherwise, has given me some form of incompatibility grief. Even my dad’s Airport wouldn’t talk to both his new iMac and his old iMac. The 600N, however, had no problem finding my Macbook Pro, my girlfriend’s Macbook Pro, our Xbox 360 (a sticking point with many other routers) and even my iPhone (though even though it connects, it goes by the old name and not the assigned name I gave the router).
It works as advertised…it’s considerably faster than my old wireless G router, with streaming and downloaded video starting almost immediately and a noticeably faster browsing experience. You can attach a hard drive to it for network enabled storage, though I haven’t bothered to do so yet. Given how easy the rest of the routers functions were to set up, I’m assuming it’ll be pretty painless as well. Linksys also announced new Mac setup wizards for their routers, which should make things easier for the install-challenged. I didn’t have any trouble installing it by hand, but some Mac users might, so the new installation software is probably a wise move. The original price of the router was $279, but that price seems to have gone down to $150 to $180, depending on where you go online to find a unit. Overall….a win!
Chris absconded to Las Vegas this week for liquor, gambling, and other licentious pursuits, so it was left to the other two pillars of RFS to hold the fort, which they barely managed. The subject at hand? “Turn Left,’ which served as not only this season’s “Doctor Lite” episode but also as a fantastic return to the series for Billie Piper, not to mention a sterling performance by Catherine Tate. The usual digressions and drivel-making were of course present, but without our tall co-host’s derisive sneers and seething hate, it wasn’t quite the same.
This one’s more ranting about the proposed Canadian DMCA. Also, on a technical note, it looks like video hosting sites don’t ike something about the end credits, so I guess I’ll have to tweak that for further episodes.
The Canadian DMCA has just been tabled by the House of Commons, and from what I can tell (gleaned from Michael Geist’s excellent blog post) it’s a complete and total ruinous mess for the future of electronic media in Canada. Let’s, just for a second, get past the spectre of evil pirates stealing content from hard-working, impoverished studios and record companies. This bill makes it illegal for anyone to transfer music they bought off a CD and onto their own iPod. It also makes it illegal to unlock an iPhone or other locked digital devices, to the tune of a $20,000 fine. So the fact that I’ve been carting around said iPhone for the last six months is apparently more important than the fact that our representatives in Parliament consort with gangster molls or that the Alberta tar sands are an ecological disaster area. No, people downloading the latest Coldplay album is what our law enforcement services should concern themselves with.
The real irony here is that the studios are the authors of their own destruction. If these laws are actually enforceable, all that will happen is that people won’t bother to watch copyrighted material anymore. The means of production are cheaper than ever, and more and more people are watching amateur video, citizen journalism and other user generated content. The drive for self-preservation will actually accelerate the decline and fall of big media, by its own hand.
And the potential damage from this bill doesn’t just affect individuals. Companies in the business of moving and storing content, like Domain7, have already expressed concerns (check their news section for their take on the bill).
…this one about “revirginizing” your iPhone. Which many people, including myself, may be doing soon in order to run the saucy goodness that is the iPhone 2.0 firmware, rolled out today at the World Wide Developers COnference as part of the hoopla surrounding the 3G iPhone.
