Apple Tablet – the iPad is… meh
The so much awaited Apple Tablet has finally been announced by good ole Steve Jobs. My first impression? Meh. Put it this way, I was very very excited about the Apple Tablet, I was amused that the name could have gone the iSlate way (is late, get it?), but even the name is a total and uttermost failure. iPad... what's with the easy iPod pun?!
Those of us who read Gizmodo and other technology-oriented websites have been showering in mockups of how the iPad would look like and truth to be told, most of them look better than this chunky piece of an eBook reader. What's this supposed to be anyway? A phone? But it has no 3G... An eBook reader? But it costs $1000... An MP3/video player? BUT IT COSTS $1000!
Come on guys, who does not sincerely believe that Apple has just shot themselves in the foot please raise your hands and drop me a comment with sound reasoning. As for me, if I had Apple stock I'd be hitting the sell button as hard as I could right now... poor move Jobs, poor move...
Photos after the break (courtesy of Gizmodo).
UPDATE: Alright, alright, it only costs $500 after all. My point still remains: it is ugly and it only allows one app running at a time... $500 for a giant iPhone? Meh.
iMacs and the yellow tinted screen
Oh oh! No, not Santa, this is actually a juicy story. Mark Wilson at Gizmodo brings us an issue with the latest Apple's iMacs. According to said person, some of the latest iMacs randomly display a yellow tinted screen, turning the whites into... well... yellow. Manufacturing issues like this happen you say, and I would agree; that's not really the issue in this case.
The issue is the fact that Mark's iMac was exchanged but the replacement computer is also icteric. So what's the deal? Well, I'm not a fan boy for either side, I'm not fanatic so this brings me no special joy; despite that, I share Mark's opinion on the issue: multi-thousand dollar computers, computers that are known for being overpriced for their specifications, shouldn't have issues like this. Moreso, the issue should never happen again on a replacement computer. This can only mean one of two things - either the issue is happening on a large percentage of iMacs or Mark has just been extremely unlucky. Considering Apple's previous rapport with manufacturing issues and faulty parts, I would go with the former.
Right now Apple has been creepy and resorted to shady backstage data mining to flag Mark's Apple account to disallow any other exchanges; apparently his computer will now be repaired instead. Mark isn't happy and he's trying to spread the word; this is my attempt to help him and to get Apple to change this behavior. This would be acceptable from a cheap computer brand but not from Apple, THE most expensive computer brand, whose flagship is to produce computers with above-par quality. This sure as hell isn't above-par.
[via Gizmodo]
10 Google Wave Invites
Yeah, it is serious 
I have 10 Google Wave invites to distribute to the first ten visitors to leave me a comment on this post. This is NOT a contest, I will be giving the invites to the ten first lucky people who leave a comment on this post requesting an invite. Please be sure to leave the comment with a working e-mail address, or the invite won't go through and you will lose your chance.
Comment away!
[UPDATE]: 8 invites left!
Out with the old, In with the new!
The New Year is at the gates and so I thought it would be a splendid occasion to change the looks of my blog. Therefore, avast ye landlubbers! The new theme is here, hope you like it
Cheers!
Tiago
Adobe and the slap on Apple
Well, for some weird reason, Apple refuses to give in and have Adobe port Flash over to the iPhone. It would be a massive advantage if we could see an iPhone with a full blown version of Flash, as opposed to Flash Lite. But... Apple won't bend. So what does Apple do? The best it can do right now: get people angry at Apple.
Below is the image that people will see when they try to download Flash on their iPhones (courtesy of Engadget):
Sidekick data recovered (most of it, maybe all)
You just have to take the fun of being a critical blogger, don't you T-Mobile? It seems that T-Mobile has actually managed to recover most of the data that was deemed 'probably lost' as the result of the massive server crash. According to the magenta folks, they will be able to recover most, if not all, of their customers' data. Good news for the Sidekick owners, but if I was you I'd just go with Robin anyway...
Official Microsoft statement after the break.
[via Gizmodo]
T-Mobile Sidekick in Danger
Well, truth to be told this had to happen at some point. According to the good folks at Engadget, T-Mobile has most probably lost the data of their customers' Sidekick phones. The T-Mobile Sidekick is a device that relies heavily on cloud-computing and simple things such as looking up contacts or reading old text messages are done through servers in the cloud (that is to say, in the Internet). So if these servers fail for some reason, or more extremely (like it happened) lose all the data they contain, then the end user is pretty much screwed.
I hope for the sake of the costumers that the data isn't just lost; I would have also hoped that T-Mobile had off-site, offline backups of all this stuff but that clearly does not seem to be the case. It is also up to our imagination whom to blame for this. Of course that for all the people affected by this problem, T-Mobile will be the one to blame, but whose fault was it in the end? Is it a bug in the servers? Will it happen again? Has it been patched?
Doesn't really matter now but here's the morale of the story: ALWAYS keep backups of your data.
‘Ay up me duck!
That's right folks, despite not having given hourly updates on my trip to England, I am finally here; safe and sound. The trip was quite on the wire but everything just fit perfectly. The flight arrived a little bit late which meant we had to rush over to the correct bus stop within Heathrow but luckily this Taxi Assistant guy pointed us (me and my parents) in the right direction and off we went. With sandwiches bought in-between and eaten right at the bus stop, also with the anxiety feeling peaking a little over what's normal. Still, there really was nothing to be anxious about. The bus came, we put our luggage in the trunk and off we were. It was quite tiring to take a 2.30h flight but ahead of that we still had a 2 hour bus trip to Leicester. (Buses are better in Portugal by the way!)
Then once we arrived in Leicester we had the taxi dance; pretty much hopping from taxi to taxi so that we could get to where we wanted. Leicester is quite huge so going from the city center to, say, my accommodation at Mary Gee houses really is madness; it's about an 1 hour walk. Add the fact that we didn't know the city and that the GPS in the iPhone simply sucks balls when you are on foot, and we had but no other choice than to be driven around by some funny Indian men (one of which didn't even know where Ratcliffe Road was!).
By the end of the day I had one burst blister on my heel and we were all pretty tired. The hotel also felt kinda sleazy but the receptionists were all very friendly and we also got free breakfast which was pretty good.
On the next day, my parents had to leave, which translates as: "on the next day, it was weeping day". We were at Morrison's and they had to go to the city center, so that meant it was time to split. They were going to take a taxi and I was going to go back to my accommodation by foot. It was kinda sad but we all knew that this is for the best and that this will actually be great for me! I'll be Tiago Espinha, MSc in one year from now which is really exciting! Master Tiago... yeah, I like the sound of that 
After that I've been having a blast. Hopping from event to event, meeting new people, English, French, Bulgarians, Swiss, etc and it's been quite great. The fun's about to end though (or to start, depending on your point of view) and my induction week starts on Monday, with departmental registration.
All in all I'm really looking forward for this experience and sometimes I come to myself and I can't still believe I'm in the U-friggin-K! But it is true, I'm here, with the cloudy and freezing weather included.
That's all for today, so cheers!
A day in the life of a Presario CQ60
So here I am now, finally alone. My owner won't leave me alone for a second during the day! I'm surprised he gave me some rest now, I guess I should enjoy it.
Well, first things first so I should introduce myself. I'm an HP Compaq Presario CQ60-200EP and by the looks of it, I must be pretty darn good as my owner uses me every single day! It can be maddening at times... having him (literally) push my buttons all the time...
Lately he's done a smart move though and installed Windows 7 on me. I feel so much lighter now. It's as if I went to the gym regularly for a year... except I didn't!
I don't get to do much fun stuff very often but he does a lot of work with me and in a way I'm happy with that. I like feeling useful and handy and I know my owner trusts me with some pretty serious stuff...
I pack a generous 15.6 inch screen which is pretty wide and still portable (in your face, you 17 inch monsters!). All in all I was very affordable and I'm a dual core, from Intel - by far the best CPU maker out there right now. My graphics are also by Nvidia which is pretty darn good, I say. You know, I also have a DVD burner with lightscribe which is the next best thing these days and did I mention that I have an integrated card-reader, a webcam and an HDMI output?! I love it when he plugs me in to his 52 inch flat screen. I feel like a whole different computer when he watches 1080p movies with me!
Do you need a laptop? If you do, I have a few brothers that would gladly live with you and accompany you everywhere! I'm a sexy piano-black and have a cute aluminum "Q" on my lid. Interested? Well, for a limited period I can get you $30 off in orders over $150 on the HP Home Store. Sounds good?
Just go over to the HP Home Store and use the following coupon code: SV2132.
Keep in mind though! This coupon is valid through the 31st of October or while supplies last! So get yours while it is still time!
(Restrictions and exclusions apply)
Windows 7 – Adjust Aero Peek Delay
Having recently tried Mac OS X and all of it Exposé and Spaces goodness, I couldn't help but to notice that Aero Peek feels like a complete rip off of the Exposé feature. Don't take me wrong though, it is not a critic. I am of the opinion that progress can only be made if we pick the best bits and pieces out of everything that is out there and put it all into one package. So while Windows still has a long way to go on user experience matters, I see this as a move forward.
Still, Aero Peek came with an annoyance for me: it takes too damn long! Basically, when you activate Exposé on a Mac (either by having a shortcut or by hovering over a hot corner) you instantly get to your desktop and can see what's underneath - with Aero Peek this takes at least one or two seconds which isn't ideal for me by any stretch.
With that in mind, and since there does not seem to be that much documentation about this yet, Microsoft allows you to adjust that delay time with some registry hacking. To adjust the delay, do the following:
- Open regedit (Start -> regedit -> press enter)
- Go to the key HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Explorer \ Advanced
- Once here, create a new DWORD (32 bit) entry with the name DesktopLivePreviewHoverTime and set it to whatever time you'd like in milliseconds. I found that 100 works best for me but I will leave that at your own discretion.
Now I'm back to testing Windows 7 RTM - have a good one!
