Opera Mini – Finally something new!

Apple has long thwarted the attempts of iPhone developers when it came to creating applications that competed directly with Apples embedded software.

Marco Arment, developer of Tumblr

“It’s an acceptable trade-off for a smartphone, but is it healthy for anyone if all possibilities vanish for alternative native web browsers, email clients, media players, media storefronts, calendars, and contact managers?”

Via http://www.marco.org/365203802

I for one was never that impressed with Mobile Safari, it is limiting and many times unstable. While Opera Mini has yet to be put through the paces I am pleased none the less to have a second option. If Firefox decides to come to the table with a mobile FireFox them I will be downloading it as well.

Why not?

BUT! Considering Apple has a 64% strong hold in the mobile Browser usage arena, and at the time only had one browser its safe to say that 64% of that traffic was funneled through one browsers. Web developers had one browser to deal with. Now Opera comes to the table. Another browser to possibly contend with.

No matter what, its nice to see some competition.

Read the official release here: http://www.opera.com/press/releases/2010/03/23_3/

Foto Journal – blogs for photographers

I have been running a photo blog now for a little over 2 years, the software available has been limited and those options are some times less appealing.

Some people have modified WordPress and some what forcing it to become a photo blog. Usually the front end is appealing to the end user but have considerable downfalls for the administrator.

When considering the average photographer, most of them are web savvy but not able to create or customize these applications on their own.

What Foto Journal strives to do, and does very well is create a powerful, simple to use, and customizable blogging platform for photographers.

Enjoy the many features like Tags, Comments, Photos, Posts, SEO, and Customizable. Everything you need and nothing you don’t!

Did I mention that Foto Journal was released to the public as of yesterday?

To help kickoff our launch we’re offering 12 months of Pro for only $80 (a savings of $112), which works out to about $7/month. That’s even cheaper than our Hobbyist account!

This offer is limited to 500 people and expires on April 30, 2010

Get Started!

Wolfram Alpha

Old news by now on the Woldfram Alpha computational knowledge engine, but a few other developments have occurred since this service has arrived.

They are now on the iPhone/Touch. The app is built on their new API, With support for Java, .NET, Python, Ruby, PHP, Perl, and Mathematica.

Their should be some interesting resources made based on the great information available.

Maybe some day I will finally know how much wood could a wood chuck chuck or how many seashells sally sells by the sea shore.

http://www.wolframalpha.com

Google Wave Invite – A Haiku Contest!

Google Wave is “a personal communication and collaboration tool”.

Google Wave is designed as the next generation of Internet communication. It is written in Java using OpenJDK and its web interface uses the Google Web Toolkit. Google Wave works like previous messaging systems like email and Usenet, but instead of sending a message along with its entire thread of previous messages, or requiring all responses to be stored in each user’s inbox for context, message documents (referred to as waves) that contain complete threads of multimedia messages (blips) are perpetually stored on a central server. Waves are shared with collaborators who can be added to or removed from the wave at any point during a wave’s existence.

Via Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Wave

Like many Google products they are not publicly available for what can seam like years! Google Wave has been sending invites for a while now and I have been given a second batch. So the last time I announced on Twitter that I had some to giveaway I got more responses than I could deal with. So this time I asked my Twitter followers how I should decide to pass these invites along. Well it came down to a haiku contest.

A haiku is a form of Japanese poetry, consisting of 17 moras (or on), in three metrical phrases of 5, 7, and 5 moras respectively. Haiku typically contain a kigo, or seasonal reference, and a kireji or verbal caesura. In Japanese, haiku are traditionally printed in a single vertical line, while haiku in English usually appear in three lines, to parallel the three metrical phrases of Japanese haiku.

I have 9 Invited to give away, so if you are interested leave a haiku in the comments and I will pick at random 9 winners on Friday the 13th (spooky).

Feel free to enter multiple times but make sure your entries are different.

Give the gift of a DNA Portrait

I came across this site today and after looking at all the press around the DNA Portrait I may be the only person in the world seeing this for the first time.

A Canadian company knows as DNA11 offers creative and unique pieces of art centered on your genes and unique features.

You can get DNA Portraits, Fingerprints Portraits, as well as Kiss Portraits in any imaginable colour combination you would like as well as a wide verity of framing and mounting options.

Check them out: DNA11

BumpTop – Piles Reinvented

Just something quick i saw on TED, BumpTop is a interesting 3D rendition of the currently 2D flat, ridged desktop model.

Its great fun to toss around your documents and pile them in a corner.

Watch the video on TED
View the Site – bumptop.com
Follow Them @bumptop

Safari 4 Beta

By now this isn’t new at all, But I have been using it for a few weeks now. The one thing I noticed is how fast it was. Safari always seamed to be a speedy browser. Since i started using Firefox, Chrome, and Safari more often during the day i started to wonder what some of the main differences were.

I’m not going to talk about the Acid 3 Test, nor about standards. What im going to mention here is performance in a system sense. Mainly how much memory these browsers are using.

Last week i was getting fed up with Firefox and it using close to 800mb of ram, this was due to a memory leak. I found that my updating to version v3.0.7 that the issues was more or less resolved. As I’m writing this Firefox is using 387mb of ram.

So I took all the tabs i had open in Firefox and opened/logged into the same sites in each of the browsers.
Read on..

Why DreamHost? I’ll tell you why!

Promo Code: 411a for a free domain name for one year with registration.

I have had a new people ask my “Why did you leave Media Temple?”.

Well to put it softly, I was unhappy. I moved to Media Temple about 4 years ago. I was at a host with a reseller account so i could manage multiple domain names, and at the time that was really the only way to do it. When Media Temple lowered there prices and offered Unlimited Domains for lightly less than i was paying i was glad to move. After all if its good enough for Sony, Nike, and Starbucks it should be good enough for me.

I didn’t have many problems in the beginning, nothing to crazy. The up time was great speed seamed decent. That was until this last year. I had a site completely disappear, At a charge of $10 an hour i could have my site restored from 2 week old backups. I was lucky and found an archive file under another domain name. I was told they cant create archives, i thought that was strange since i was able to make them. Nothing in there logs indicated this action even took place.

Next think i knew i was getting intermittent 500 Internal Server Error. Nothings changing on my end and of course it never happened when support had a look.

Next was the incredibly slow page load times. I’m talking 15-30 seconds to load the main page of my site. This i was told was doe to WordPress Plugins. I already use page caching but considered there could be a rouge plugin aching for server domination.
Alas this was not the case.

I had the same slow load times for other sites i have and even a simple php file with a few functions on it.
Read on..

BUG Labs vs Liquidware

I have been a big fan of Make: and did some searching on modal based electronics and came across BUG Labs. Plug the bits together hook it to your computer and do some light programming and your creation is alive.

BUG is a collection of easy-to-use electronic modules that snap together to build any gadget you can imagine. Each BUGmodule represents a specific gadget function (ex: a camera, a keyboard, a video output, etc.). You decide which functions to include and BUG takes care of the rest, letting you try out different combination quickly and easily. With BUG and the integrated programming environment/online community (BUGnet), anyone can build, program and share innovative devices and applications. We don’t define the final products – you do.

Unfortunately for me the price seems a bit steep for the modules, $79 for a 2mp camera? $99 for a GPS receiver? there prices seem to mimic something of the actual product. Granted you can just plug a Garmon GPS into a pint and shoot Camera, but there are alternatives. Base Station + GPS + Camera + Viewfinder = $549 for a low resolution digital camera with GPS. you can buy a GPS so i think until the modules and base station become a bit more reasonable you won’t see me using them.

Liquidware on the other hand seems to be a bit better bang for the buck, not to mention it runs on the Arduino controller, Liquidware bases there system on a plug in component system as well but for $249 you get many more practical units that can be multipurpose.

I also like how the modules are not all dolled up and concealed behind a plastic case. Liquidware also seems to have a better selection of modules but not Camera or GPS modules, that’s not to say some Googling won’t find what you need. In a matter of minutes i found a number of Shields to be used with the system including GPS, WIFI, and Servo Controllers.

I would love to get a hold of some components and see what i can make.