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  Chris Till 9:22 pm on August 31, 2006 Permalink  

  Crossover for Mac 

  This is pretty cool. It’s a way of running Windows apps as if they were Mac apps with no trace of anything windows, unless you wanted to install Internet Explorer 6. i installed it for a min and during the few mins I could stomach the look of it I did get it to work and unlike engadget who couldn’t get it to load anything, I had a quick surf with it. IE didn’t scroll well at all with the trackpad which meant I had to use the arrows which wasn’t ideal.

  For a program that’s suppost to run natively, it was pretty slow and dissapointing. I was hoping to be able to install blaxxun contact (3d viewer that is designed to work only on windows and only on IE 6) but unfortunatly it gave an error when it was on 100% of the installation. The installer did work ok up until that point and worked in the same way as on windows.

  Installing is easy, it works with compatible exe files and CD’s / DVD’s as well as the built in installer system which reminds me of the linux / ubuntu installer.

  Seing as the only thing I would really want Windows for are to play some games and possibly get 3d working (which is doesn’t) this is probably the thing for me when compared with boot camp or parralels but the problem for me would be paying the money for the games and crossover without knowing for certain if they will be compatible (or run well enough). On the other hand I do have an old Windows box to play it on so it wouldn’t be a total lost cause.

  Either way, if you have an intel Mac and a few windows games, why not give this a try.

   

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  Chris Till 4:54 pm on August 31, 2006 Permalink  

  Is self employment possible these days? 

  

  Everyone would like to be able to come up with a successful plan to make money, but how do you get it? I mean the world has gone past the stage where pretty much everything has been done. Now when you think you’ve got something unique, you’ll probably get dissapointed sooner or later.

  For example you might come up with a great business name only to find every domain for that name has been taken or possibly trademarked.

  I think the last thing was the Million Dollar Homepage which I’ve talked about before. The creator Alex Tew is just a guy around my age who took a chance, for it to pay off bigtime. You have to respect that.

  When you want to do web design for example, what can you do that no one else out of the hundreds of others can’t. I can think of a couple of things but it will also limit the size of the client companies you can work for.

  I get the feeling that maybe the simpler, the better. I bet there’s a fair amount to be made in the lemonade business.

   
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  Chris Till 6:01 pm on August 28, 2006 Permalink  

  More new Mac Ads 

  

  It’s that time again, new Mac ads on Apple.com.

  These ones are some of the best so far I’d say. My favourite of the new 3 and including all the older ones is the one above. This one is about spyware and PC is trying to disguise himself to hide away. Justin Long (Mac) rejects the offer of glasses, fake nose and moustache and explains how Macs don’t have to worry about this stuff.

  It’s good to see that apple can put comedy in the ads as much as possible. I especially liked the part where PC said, “hello, I am no one” which is slightly different to the usual hello, I’m a PC line.

   
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  Chris Till 7:17 pm on August 27, 2006 Permalink  

  Gimp vs Photoshop Dugg 

  

  I had to join in on this argument again. I have mentioned before here that I’m a big fan of open source and the Gimp. I have also said how good it is to be fully open source.

  I would have to say that at the present time Photoshop is the better program but it would be pretty shameful for Adobe if it was inferior to Gimp. Adobe are a huge company that has millions to spend on development of their products as opposed to Gimp who somehow produce the funds to make a more than decent app and make it open source too.

  I think personally the only real problem with the Gimp is the lack of a full screen environment, instead prefering floating windows which can easily get lost behind other open apps. (Hopefully Spaces for leopard can help to sort this).

  I was going to also say that you can’t drag images from the finder into Gimp like you can in Photoshop. However, that isn’t the case as I (finally) figured out you can drag items from iPhoto, the finder etc onto the Gimp dock icon to open them. The only thing I don’t think you can do is drag in photos from the net to the app without saving them to the disk first. This is a small inconvenience but not a huge problem.

  So yeah Photoshop is good, but The Gimp is underrated by many I think.

   
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  Chris Till 1:28 am on August 27, 2006 Permalink  

  Reading and Leeds is Amazing 

  Anyone who gets the opportunity to watch / listen to anything from this year’s Reading and Leeds festival’s I urge you to take it.

  I’m hoping some stuff will appear on youtube soon but in the meantime I’m looking forward to the Raconteurs later today/tomorrow.

  MUSE were amazing, The Arctic Monkeys are impressing me more and more, I wasn’t a big fan of theirs at first and primal Scream were great live too.

  Here’s a taste of what the MUSE gig was like. Incredible stuff

   
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  Chris Till 12:34 am on August 23, 2006 Permalink  

  Pearl Blackberry Update 

  He’s back, and this time he’s brought some freaking videos with him. That’s right, the Boy Genius has a BlackBerry Pearl (8100) and shot some footage of the damned thing in action.

  The Boy Genius Report: BlackBerry Pearl 8100 pics and videos! – Engadget Mobile

  

  The camera function shows RIM are trying to make Blackberry more appealing to non-business customers. Sounds good to me.

  

  It’s pretty small, decievingly small for a phone with an almost full size keyboard.

  The only problem is, I just got my O2 X3 (Benq Siemens S70) working with my memory card reader (thanks to finding the SD / Mini SD adapter) and hence my Macbook. It’s perfect, for the first time I can drag and drop files on and off the phone without having to use the windows only software which didn’t even work with video or music files. I guess the only thing that isn’t perfect is the quality of the camera which is 1.3 megapixels.

  So considering this, why should I spend money on a blackberry? Unless it has a 5MP camera with video and wi-fi I don’t think I’ll be splashing out on one any time soon.

   
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  Chris Till 11:33 pm on August 22, 2006 Permalink  

  What the hell were you thinking Justin? 

  

  Justin Gatlin won the 100 metres and 200 metres at the olympics and the 100 at world championship un-doped but for some reason he decided he needed to improve (not sure where the logic in that is), and the only way to do that was to drug himself up with a performance enhancer. This lead to him drawing the 100 metres world record but then subsiquently him being banned for 8 years from track and field.

  So now he’s almost certainly ended his athletics career for seemingly no reason.

  This sort of reminds me of the Zidane incident, ending an illustrious career on a huge low, overshadowing everything else.

   
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  Chris Till 7:13 pm on August 22, 2006 Permalink  

  PS3 design, console hard drives and special features 

  I have to say the PS3 looks okish and it probably will have one or two games that may tempt me but how are you suppost to stack the thing? And why should I pay that amount of money for a console with features I won’t use only to have pay more money for a game to go with it.

  Curved top and ps2 like smallness on one side / bottom, thats going to cause a problem in a stack of stuff unless you can put it at the top. Then again it doesn’t look too stackable even on the other side so you might have to come up with another solution if you currently stack your ps2 on-top of your VCR, DVD player or maybe TV box.

  It also seems like a step into the realm of the stupid to offer the same thing Microsoft do with the Xbox, two versions of the same thing. One of which with better specs, wireless controllers and in the case of the PS3, according to Engadget a slightly different paint job.

  

  Please someone tell me why you need two different versions of the same thing all of a sudden? I mean why can’t they just keep things simple like Nintendo do. With them a games console plays games but with Sony and MS it also has to play DVD’s, stream stuff from your computer. Oh yeah it has a bigger built in hard drive. How many game saves or music for use in games will fit on 60GB? A lot so what’s the point in making it so big?

  Ok to be fair the Wii will have wi-fi, predominantly to play online (for free I might add) but it will also have a browser so on that I can’t complain. Not that it really matters as long as it doesn’t effect the price, and it looks like it won’t affect the Wii’s.

  Again, to be fair the PS3 will have Blu-Ray so that will jack the price up but I’m not sure if that will be on the top of the range one only or not. I would guess so but I would just wait for a while to see whether Blu-Ray turns out to be flop or not either way. Then if it does live side by side with hd-dvd then why not get a player that plays both? I’m pretty sure someone is working on one.

  I think it’s safe to assume that people generally buy consoles to play games and everyone but Nintendo have forgotten that, and that’s why the other new machines are a rip-off. Nintendo also offer wireless controllers as standard.

   
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  Chris Till 9:07 pm on August 18, 2006 Permalink  

  Writely open to all (finally) 

  It took long enough but Writely has been moved to Google’s systems and therefore is now available for everyone who wants an account. For free of course.

  

  Here’s a screen of the main menu which shows and gives you access to all of your docs and the ability to upload new ones and create them from scratch online.

  

  I’m a big fan of Writely. I think it’s another way Google can make the world better and easier. If I was still at college, this would be an invaluable app for me.

  I used to have to transport my documents between college and home by a usb stick or by using email which isn’t as good in my opinion.

  If I was at college now, I’d like to be able to just create documents online, take a backup of them and be able to edit, make backups at the other end, email, rename, download and edit in word / openoffice, create a pdf from the file or print the file out. I think that’s everything.

  The possibilities are exciting and now I’m eagerly anticipating a Google branded presentation creation app to add to Writely and spreadsheets to offer the complete online productivity package to rival office.

  ok, so if you want to check it out, click here and make an account.

   
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  Chris Till 7:15 pm on August 18, 2006 Permalink  

  New Palm coming soon 

  Looks like a new Palm Treo smartphone is coming soon. I was thinking the camera on the current treo 650 looked a little poor for the price, especially when you compare it to the phones of other manufacturers.

  I’m hopeful they’re going to add something along the lines of a 3 megapixel cam to it and seing as they’re going to introduce it on vodafone live, I’m also guessing free mobile tv on contract (which is usually the only way you can get these phones anyway) will be included.

  

  This according to ZDNet.

   
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  Chris Till 3:58 pm on August 18, 2006 Permalink  

  MacBook Firmware Update 

  I just got a firmware update for the macbook after seing a post about it in the Macintosh group on Flickr.

  It’s ok, it makes the fan more prominent when you’re using it like its going a little now. I’m not sure if it makes any difference to the actual performance of the machine, what it does to battery life, lowering the heat etc. I’ll have to test it a bit more before I can say.

  It did get extremely hot when it was in use before after a while of watching videos, dvds and other heavy use.

  Like I said, it’s good that apple are making an effort to eliminate the whine you occasionally get on it and make better use of the fan. I miss the silence though.

  I’ll use it more heavily later and see what it behaves like now. I still have reservations about putting it on my lap, I tried it just now and it still felt a little too toasty to do that for too long.
  

   
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  Chris Till 6:43 pm on August 15, 2006 Permalink  

  Spam Sucks 

  I don’t know whether I managed to tap into a porn ring with my post entitled “flocktails for cardinal” but lets just assume I did.

  For some reason I’m still getting porn or other spammy comments on that and other posts. Looking back now it probably wasn’t my best idea ever to allow anyone to post comments on my blog without being verified first.

  Ok so I changed that setting so now you do have to be verified. I always appreciate comments on my stuff so feel free.

  I also don’t know if this is a very common thing in wordpress or what. Maybe some poor guy sitting in a dark room on his windows 98 pc decided one day to post a comment about nothing much on my blog every day, who knows.

  One thing I do know is it won’t be occuring again any time soon.

   
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  Chris Till 4:01 pm on August 15, 2006 Permalink  

  Be on your guard pink laptop lovers 

  If anyone out there is planning to buy a laptop in a nice shade of pink anytime soon I urge you to steer very well clear of this thing.

  

  Proving once again that people seem to be willing to overpay for underpowered gadgets that could possibly be seen as “fashionable,” Samsung has released a new £1,300 ($2,460) notebook whose main (read: only) selling point is its bright pink exterior. At this price point we’d expect to see words like “Core Duo” and “GeForce” on the spec sheet, but the new 12.1-inch Q40 only manages to throw down a disappointing 1.2GHz ULV Core Solo processor, just 512MB of RAM, a scant 60GB hard drive capacity, and those integrated Intel graphics which will only please gamers who are into Minesweeper and Sudoku. Still, you are getting a built-in DVD burner and Windows XP Professional as the operating system, so this lappy isn’t a total lost cause. Although the shiny Q40 is available exclusively at PC World, we have a feeling that you’ll soon be seeing it in the hands of celebutantes worldwide, and perhaps even being given away as a door prize on a future episode of My Super Sweet 16.

  Samsung’s ultraportable Q40 is pretty in pink – Engadget

  I mean it costs double the price of a macbook almost and almost the same as a low end macbook pro and what do you get for your money. Wow is all I can say, and to anyone who has purchased one of these: What were you thinking?

  Samsung have really gone down in my estimations now after this and manufacturers, do things targetted at girls really have to be pink? Obviously I’m not female so I can’t have a proper view on this but I’m sure a lot of people will want something in more neutral colours and why should you have to pay more if you want a pink one anyway?

  Paint a black dell pink, erm maybe not, just get pink girly stickers and cover the top with it.

   
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  Chris Till 3:27 pm on August 15, 2006 Permalink  

  I guess Flock has some competition 

  In the form of Windows Live Writer. Microsoft’s new blogging tool which works with seemingly all the blogging tools Flock does.

  It looks ok, but nowhere near as good as flock, is not cross platform (obviously) but the problem for flock is this will catch on if it gets a mention on the live ideas page or msn.

  I heard about this from the guy who says he heard about it last so to hear it from them and still blog about it myself, pretty damn lame I know, but still. This is the kind of thing I’m into so it has to be done.

  Features wise it has a photo including tool which uploads, however not to flickr. You’re going to need some webspace and an ftp server, to be honest this doesn’t really cut it for me and probably won’t for normal people who don’t do the technical stuff.
  See this page for more info and this is a link to the actual file if you can’t be bothered to read about it before trying it out.

  So in summary, if you use windows (good chance of that), have a blog (pretty good chance) and want an external app to blog with then get this.

  If you want the convenience of having blogging built into your browser so you can copy and paste easier into posts etc as well as the Flickr / Photobucket integration then get Flock because it’s way better.

   
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  Chris Till 5:55 pm on August 13, 2006 Permalink  

  Let’s wait and see with the iPhone 

  The speculation surrounding the product which hasn’t been announced and may not even be in the works has escelated recently after Steve Jobs was apparently talking to close friends saying that he was excitied about it.

  

  Thats fine, I would be too but I would have expected him to keep with his and Apple’s tradition and not talk about it until they official release it and make it a nicer surprise.

  Then again it looks like the era of surprises are over as there always seems to be someone online who knows what Apple will do next, new MacBook, Mac Pro and now possibly the iPhone but we will have to wait and see if that is the case.

  Either way, I’m sticking with my O2 X3 until I know more about the iPhone.