From beta 1 of Firefox 2.0 I like what’s been changed in it. Mozilla have added an x to every tab, unified the themes and extensions windows and made it a lot easier to subcribe to feeds using your preference of external app (netnewswire, newsfire, vienna etc) or just the usual firefox live bookmarks.
There hasn’t been anything really special added but it’s a good step forward for the browser.
Rating: 10/10 - Really solid browser, works fast and I like the new feed options. They might make more changes though before the final release so this might turn out to be pointless.
It looks like the people at ODEO have been busy recently. I noticed they just added links to a couple of new products they are working on right now including odeo play and odeo studio that have been around for a little while now.
The two new services are called hellodeo and twttr (not sure how to pronounce that). Hellodeo is a webcam recording and playing service. I guess the point of it is to record short messages easily so you can embed them in private messages on myspace or in any other html code anywhere.
Twittr is a way to keep people updated on what you’re doing and how you’re feeling by text message and their site. I’m not sure if it’s US only but it looks ok anyway. Have to say it’s not very impressive compared to Hellodeo but it’s always nice to see innovation and new things coming out that may or may not take off.
Either way, back to hellodeo. I like it. It makes recording video so much easier for the less tech minded. It works instantly with my Mac’s isight cam with no settings needing to be changed which is cool. Then theres the advantages of not having to use iMovie or quicktime to record and also not having to spend time uploading the video to a site like youtube or google video which takes too long for just a hello message anyway.
I guess that makes this ideal for messing around and giving people video messages in a similar way to odeo in audio.
The next thing they should do to progress this is to let your videos be private and not be shown on the front page as they are right now. They should also add an ODEO style inbox so you can send someone a message that way without anyone else being able to see it.
Anyway, it’s all cool stuff.
But as you get a bit older and wiser from the time when it was fine to throw money at expensive games you probably won’t play that much without really thinking about what else the money could do. This is one thing I’m really excited about. The Nintendo DS, and one of the best things about it is the browser opera are building for it. I only heard about the browser after I looked at the DS for it’s gaming (I’m a mario kart addict) but even so, I would have liked it without.
I’m just excited about Nintendo in general. I really appreciate how they are always innovating in gaming by doing things that no one else would dare try.
Sony and Microsoft are going to stick with the traditional control pad design trying to wow people with the wireless feature which was probably overdue. Not that it hasn’t been done before, I have a Gamecube wavebird wireless controller right now. Nintendo is once more one step ahead by completely reinventing how games are played with the wii-mote.
I do have a PS2 but I think now I realise I don’t play the kind of games that appear on non-nintendo consoles as much as on the snes, gamecube, gameboy, ds etc.
Aside from the games, it’s a lot about price. The prices of the other consoles seem to just keep going up as they progress from console to console. However, Nintendo seem to be able to invent and pioneer in gaming while still offering their products for consistently affordable (especially in comparison with the others) prices.
The PSP for example is double the price of a DS. I know it plays UMD movies and MP3 music, but who needs that? Plus we all know Sony’s history with their own formats. I like sony, but for gaming I think Nintendo have always been there while Sony and MS are the ones who have tried to come into their market.
The DS is for gaming, and the fact that I will be able to check my email and the latest news from anywhere with a wifi connection with much more portability than a laptop is great, especially for the price.
After having a look at newsgator online and it’s synching with NetNewsWire, I don’t really get it. The synching seems pointless for one thing. Not only this but the site also has a design tht doesn’t grab me at all.
It makes more sense to just use NNW by itself with no synching, and if you do need to store your feeds online, use google reader or personalised homepage.
They’ve finally brought out a Mac version of the Las.Fm app that combines the old scrobbler with the radio player in one which makes life a lot easier.
As you can see it looks nice. The only thing I don’t like about it is where if you close the program by clicking the x it closes the whole program instead of hiding which would be better. It’s not exactly hard to fix it though, just open other apps in front of it and use expose to get it back to the front when you need to change stations or something.
Rating: 9/10 - Way better than the former iscrobbler / last.fm player combo.
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Even though I knew it was likely that some Italian teams would get demoted to lower leagues I didn’t think it would be as bad as it has been. Three teams have been relegated, most notably Juventus.
Juve have won the title two years in a row and have had the titles taken away from them. As if that wasn’t bad enough they have been given a 30 point penalty at the start of this season. This means they have to win 10 games before they even get above 0 so they will almost certainly be down there at least two seasons. Probably more seing as a team is about good players and no doubt most of their big names will be leaving for other clubs before this season starts.
The Juventus stadium, the Delle Alpi, home to serie b football.
I feel bad for the players who I don’t think knew about the matchfixing who worked hard to win the title twice. Now they’ve been robbed of their success.
One thing that can’t be taken away from them however is their huge amounts of money and now their world cup win, (except the players who aren’t Italian such as Pavel Nedved).
When I last blogged about this, my view was that .mac could be included in the purchase of every new mac by upping the price by a small amount or by lowering the charge of .mac.
The view on digg seems to be that it should be free. I’m not sure if Apple will be able to sustain this for free but a slight increase in mac price would do the trick without doubt.
On the other hand, if it did bring more people to the Mac then they would make their money from the computer sales themselves and .mac would be sustainable without a charge. Still, I think the most likely thing is a very small addition to the price of every new computer. Say $5 or something.
How could I resist an invitation to try something new on the coolest audio site?
Now that looks great. Right now when you click on any of the top navigation links it loads them in the usual odeo style though so it needs some work.
Rating: 9/10 - Black is always cool, all the colours look nice and stylish but minimalist navigation is perfect.
The big climbdown:
After a month of constant interesting things happening it’s the big climb-down from the world cup and wimbledon to nothing. The people who say “it’s just sport, it’s nothing important” have a point, but still. I like tennis and I sort of like football, and when it all ends at once it’s like a depressing nothingness.
Microsoft’s “iPod beater” :
This pic from engadget is suppost to be what it’s going to look like. Personally I won’t be getting one. It’s suppost to have some kind of xbox tie-in feature and I don’t have an xbox so thats one reason why not. The next iPod will no doubt be better anyway so thats another reason.
Zidane’s Final Game:
I feel bad for the guy. I mean he didn’t bank on getting send off in his final game. He went into it thinking the worst thing that can happen is we lose on penalties and theres a chance I will hold up the world cup for a second time and bow out on a high. The latter failed to happen but it was made worse by headbutting matterazzi. Whatever he said, it’s clear if you lose it it’s going to end up causing you to get the press attention you don’t want.
It would have been ok if the game was memorable for other things or maybe if it wasn’t his last match or an earlier round or group stage. That way he could have redeemed himself. As it is, his career will be remembered for this above anything else.
Oh yeah, incase you missed it, Italy are the world champions.
Black Holes and Revelations is a great album. I pre-ordered it ages ago and it didn’t dissapoint when I got it from itunes.
“Assasin” is probably the best track on it. It’s probably the heaviest sounding on there. Supermassive Black Hole is good too and so is Starlight. Simply put, the whole thing is worth getting.
The thing I noticed about MUSE ablums is there is always the two or three standout tracks. From Showbiz it was Sunburn, Muscle Museum and Showbiz. From Origin of Symetry it was New Born, Hypermusic and Plug-in Baby. Then from Absolution it was Time is Running Out, Stockholm Syndrome and Hysteria. Same with this album.
Rating: 10/10