Who's more annoying: Android or iPhone fanboys?

The battle between Android and iPhone seems to be popping up a lot lately, even in non IT circles.  Most of the discussions are quite heated with people refusing to see the others point of views, going on for hours with which one has which feature.

This is what the two parties are compared to. 

Android smartphone owner (as viewed by an iPhone fanboy):

• Resembles Dr. Sheldon Cooper from Big Bang Theory
• Installed Linux on the PS3
• Fashionably nerdy
• Becomes aroused when seeing a DOS command field
• Views the phone as a purely utilitarian device
• Chooses his phone based on carrier

iPhone owner (as viewed by an Android fanboy):

• Resembles Ross from Friends
• Superficial, insecure douchebag with metrosexual tendencies
• Drives a BMW or Prius
• Enters a hypnotic state when seeing the Great Steve
• Favorite phrase: "You still there? Hello?"
• Doesn't actually know how to work a real phone

I own a iPhone 3GS. I bought this phone because Spook has an iPod touch and I'm completely in love with the iPhone app store's selection.  I use the phone as a media and gaming phone. What can I say, I'm addicted to those little useless games.

A good friend of ours bought an Android phone last month and I must admit, it is very impressive. Comparing the latest models, the Android is winning in my books. I feel the iPhone 4 was prematurely released. All of this is just opinions and like I said, we've spend hours debating this topic.

Now I ask the question. Which fan boy is more annoying?

Who are more annoying?

The Gates Notes - Bill Gates Blog

Bill Gates has launched a blog to share his activities and thought with the world. This is quite an interesting read.

You will find topics like "What I'm thinking" which covers his ideas and opinions on things, "What I'm learning" which covers lectures, books and much more, "My travels" to places like Africa and India, and "Conversations" that covers discussions with contemporary problem solvers.

Even though Bill is retired, he seems to be a very busy man. He seems to be involved with all kinds of matters, from world issues like global warming and poverty, the latest technologies, politics and even teaching.

Go take a look at his blog or if you're a Twit, follow him on twitter.

M

Toyota’s famed violin-playing robot

Presenting Toyota’s famed violin-playing robot.

The bipedal artificial violinist hasn’t been seen much since its debut back in 2007.  It was one of several Toyota bots playing musical instruments at the 2010 Expo, but this line of “Partner Robots” is under development to eventually serve as personal assistants.  Toyota seems to be using the musical performance as a test and demonstration of the robots versatile movements and precision. The violin bot is likely to become a healthcare worker aimed at assisting the elderly.

Other companies like Panasonic and iRobot are also climbing onto the elderly band wagon.  This could be exciting or this could be a ticket to become lazy and fat.  I don't honestly think that only old people would buy this. Besides all of the "movie" speculation about the robot bringing the Apocalypse. I think that this is just another way of making life "easier" and less personal.  I don't think there is anything wrong with hard labour, but in the same breath, I would like to play with one of these for pure entertainment reasons.

What do you think?

M

Pentium 1 shoes by Gabriel Dishaw

These unique shoes were made by the junk artist Gabriel Dishaw. It is part of a series of art pieces where he is revisiting his favourite classic sneakers silhouettes. He creates the shoes with a matching box as a set.


The Blazer Pentium 1.0 naturally caught my eye, but his other art pieces are done just as well. The greenies must love him, with the whole reuse of junk thing he has going. I like the initiative and creativity.

If you check out the link you can see more pictures of the shoes. The detail is astonishing, from the laces, to the bottom of the shoes, to the nike signs.

On a side note, I wonder how much these bad boys bench.


M

V1 computer desk

The Version One computer desk has been developed over three years of planning to make your gaming experience even better.

It looks pretty sweet with its bucket chair, surround sound and strategically placed tops. This chair has a lot of potential for games like flight simulator, racing and even the theater experience. It is like your own little bubble.

There are a few versions like the original, corner and flagship edition to meet different peoples needs.

I like it.





M

Xobni Enterprise Edition

Xobni ('inbox' spelled backwards) is releasing an Enterprise version. It is said that this server software lets IT managers centrally deploy and manage the company's plug-in to employees' client PCs.

Additional to the free version of Xobni, it includes support for LDAP networking, IT policies and the ability to swap out Twitter links for Salesforce.com or other business-oriented custom ones.

Xobni Enterprise starts at $30 per user per year for small companies, with volume discounts available. For South Africans it might be expensive, but for countries working in dollars, it is less than 8sents a day.

Xobni is aimed at anyone receiving more than 80 e-mails a day, people like a sales executive who sends and receives an average of 500 e-mails daily and manages that through more than 200 folders.

Xobni is already compatible with Windows 7 and will be compatible with Outlook 2010 when it is released by the middle of next year.

Microsoft has said that it plans to improve search for Outlook 2010. ,but Xobni CEO Jeff Bonforte isn't worried about Microsoft killing demand for Xobni, in part because he guesses that users would likely be forced to upgrade to the latest 2010 versions of Exchange and SharePoint in order to see any improvements.

M

The Keyboard for Blonds

The Keyboard for blonds is fabulous and totally fashionable. It has replaced boring old traditional keys like Enter into “Yes! I want it!”, Caps Lock into “WARNING! size XXL letters”, Backspace into “Oops!”, Escape into “No!”, Page Up into “Way Up”, Page Down into “Way Down”, and other very "blond" sayings. At last using a computer is easy for everyone.

This fabulous keyboard is not just a gimmick, it is fully functional and works with all desktops and laptops including MAC, Windows, and Linux.

Never thought any one could fall in love with a keyboard. ;-)

M

Force Dynamics - Game Force Simulation

This is a great "toy" from Force Dynamics. It is a high fidelity motion system that brings the rider inside whatever simulation, game or training system is running by making the simulated forces and impacts real.

It features 3 degrees of freedom, control by three Force Dynamics actuators, which provide 3hp peak and 500lbs of peak thrust each; 2gs of vertical acceleration, a 51.5-inch 16:9 LCD projection screen, and +/- 30 degrees of pitch/roll, 5.1 Surround sound.

I was wondering what happens to the driver if he hits a wall. Ouch! It might make ma a bit nauseous, but I could just imagine the experience that you could get out of this bad boy. Loads of fun.

M

AMD unveils Eyefinity and next-gen Radeon GPU - LAN on 6 Screens

AMD had a press confirence where they unveiled the next generation ATI graphics parts.
AMD's new GPUs support a brand new feature called Eyefinity, a method by which to connect up to six monitors to a single video card. There are no limitations in the size of the screens either.

This is exciting stuff. Personally I feel completely lost if I don't have two screens. With six screens you would have a heck of a lot of desktop space. This would make development and analysis a lot easier. No more flicking between screens. What a convenience.

On the gaming side of things, it's a dream. Now when you play WOW, flight simulator or most first person shooters, it's going to feel like you are actually there. I recall the difference that wide-screen did to my lanning experience. It gives you a great advantage.

I would love to have one.




See the full article Here.

M

Windows Live Writer – Offline posting

Windows Live Writer is a windows tool that you can use to post on your blog.  The layout of the tool is, to my opinion, better than the one blogger uses, but mostly because it resembles the office look and feel. It captures the layout of your blog and then uses it for preview purposes.  The best feature for me is the ability to write posts offline and then save them as drafts.

You have a lot more options when it comes to inserting objects like pictures, tables, maps(you can add maps!?), hyperlinks, videos etc. For example, on the pictures you can now watermark, tilt, make it sepia and add borders like rounded corners, photo paper, drop shadow and even reflections. 

If this is not enough you can always add a plug-in or five.  Check what we’ve done with the “Polaroid Picture” plug-in.  Pretty awesome stuff. 

 

If you are one of those crazy people that has more then one blog, it’s fine.  You can add them all, even your windows live space and SharePoint blogs. 

This is just to mention a few of the things I like about this tool, and I haven’t even started to push it’s boundaries.  I would strongly suggest this app to any blogger.  It feels like Christmas! :-)

Download Windows Live Writer here. 

M

.Net Development for the IPhone

Novell has for many years been accredited with the development of Security software. They love building their own runtimes and making sure that everything works to the point. They recently developed an environment called “Mono” that simulates the .Net framework. They are going to port this technology to the IPhone that will allow .Net programmers to develop applications for the IPhone by moving away from Objective-C. Here is the catch: The monoTouch Enterprise Edition is available at a 1 year subscription for $999. I Sure hope you develop a kick ass up to cover this cost. Oh well here is hoping for some richer applications

Bing 2.0 Comming Soon

Should Google be worrying? Microsoft had a big employee meeting in a baseball stadium in Seattle yesterday. And wow was the employees shocked. Apparently Bing 2.0 will be coming soon, the date is quite unsure but it will definitely be delivered with in the next couple of months.

Monte Enbysk, a senior editor of Microsoft Office Live, tweeted following a demo there, "Bing 2.0, out this month, has some exciting new features. Imagine seeing maps plus pics from the neighborhood of a restaurant to try."

Pigeon beats Telkom ADSL in data race

Yesterday Winston a homing pigeon made history in a race against Telkom ADSL line in delivering 4GB of data from Howick to Hillcrest, in KwaZule-Natal, South Africa.

He had to carry the data over 70km and managed to deliver the 4GB in 2 hours 6 minutes and 57 seconds. When he arrived at the destination, the Telkom line had downloaded just under four percent of the data. This is after he gave them a 26 minute head start as he waited for the company data to be downloaded onto the memory card. It was stated that it could take up to two days to download all of the data over a Telkom ADSL line.

The Rules of Pigeonrace2009

1. No Cats allowed
2. The same amount of data will be sent on the landline and via the pigeon, on a SD card ( 4 gigabytes)
3. The race is from Howick to Hillcrest
4. The Pigeon flys from Howick to Gillits, and then will be transported via car to the finish site ( where the landline data will arrive)
5. The day will be announced closer to the time
6. Birdseed must not have any performance enhancing seeds within.
7. Data is not to be compressed.

For years now South Africa has been in a cyber stone age, with slow, high cost internet. The Unlimited Group initiated the pidgeon race to enphasize the problem. They surely made a big statement.

Read the full article or check out the home page.

M

Swarm Testing by Mozilla Labs

TestSwarm is a really innovative and awesome idea from Mozilla Labs.
Question : How do i get my javascript tested to run on all browser types?
Old Answer: Install every single browser.
New Answer: TestSwarm by Mozilla Labs.

You can install and run TestSwarm on your own servers which will give you great functionality if you are a web developer. But other than that it is still in a alpha phase. It looks very promising and i signed up to participate my browser in this. Very awesome idea for an IT driven Community
Check it out : TestSwarm

Robots that Deceive and Lie

Robots are the creation of logic, and it seems that to lie is logical in sum situations and that this logic can be translated into computer code. A Swiss laboratory create 10 robots and gave them the ability to communicate with each other. They ran an experiment to see if these robots can deceive one another.

The experiment worked as followed: (extract taken from LiveScience )
10 robots with downward-facing sensors competed for "food" - a light-colored ring on the floor. At the other end of the space, a darker ring - "poison" - was placed. The robots earned points for how much time they spent near food as opposed to poison.
Each robot can produce a blue light that can be seen by the others and which can give away the position of the "food" ring. Over time, the robots evolved to deceive each other about the food ring.

Their evolution was made possible by the artificial neural network that controlled each of the robots. The network consisted of 11 "neurons" that were connected to the robot's sensors and 3 that controlled its two tracks and its blue light. The neurons were linked via 33 connections - "synapses" - and the strength of these connections was each controlled by a single 8-bit gene. In total, each robot's 264-bit genome determines how it reacts to information gleaned from its senses.

The results:

The more successful robots became more secretive. By the 50th generation, they became much less likely to shine their lights near the food than elsewhere in the arena.

My Conclusion :

Does anyone know where we can find John Conner?

Robotic Hand Coordination

Coordination and a dexterity comes natural to you and me. For a long time we were superior because we had finite control over small objects and fast processing for great feats of dexterity like dribbling a ball. Well the day of the terminator draws closer as this video shows the finite and dexterous control a robotic hand with 3 fingers has. It has the ability to dribble a ping pong ball, throw a and catch a cellphone and it cab even rotate a pen. I was stunned when i saw this. This hand is already capable of picking up a rice grain with a piece of tweezers, imagine the stability it will have to do transplants and operations.
Really impressive stuff :P

watch the video here.



and read the article here.

Microsoft Office 2010 ad

This is the ad for Microsoft Office 2010. They played it at teched this year and I thought I would share it with the rest of the people that were not there.

The ad is a bit cliche with the matrix elements in it, but at the same time it is amusing.


M

A new version of Google Search

The new Microsoft search engine has been the talk of town and market shares. Bing was launched recently as Microsoft search engine with a lot of yahoo`s under the hood technologies. The new search engine is clean and fast and Google is feeling the pinch. In fact they are getting a bit worried, so much that they recently started to work on improvements in speed and indexing.

Google specifically states that its goal for the new version of Google Search is to improve its indexing speed, accuracy, size, and comprehensiveness. Here’s what they wrote:

“For the last several months, a large team of Googlers has been working on a secret project: a next-generation architecture for Google’s web search. It’s the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions. The new infrastructure sits “under the hood” of Google’s search engine, which means that most users won’t notice a difference in search results. But web developers and power searchers might notice a few differences, so we’re opening up a web developer preview to collect feedback.”

Give it a go at : NEW GOOGLE but remember it still a beta :)

Skype might Shut Down

Skype has more than 480 million user accounts - almost twice as many as Facebook - and the application comes bundled with more than 50 mobile phones and even the Sony PSP.

The funny thing is that Skype isn't even a financial success story, but it has long been a leader in Internet telephony.

The online auction powerhouse, eBay, bought Skype from entrepreneurs Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis for $US2.6 billion in 2005, but the agreement did not include a fundamental piece of peer-to-peer communications technology that drives the software.

eBay may have to shut down Skype due to this licensing dispute.

eBay has since been licensing the technology from the founders’ new company, Joltid, but the pair recently decided to revoke the licensing agreement. eBay is now trying to force Joltid to let it continue using the technology through legal battle in the English High Court of Justice.

Will you be able to function without skype?

Hacker group L0pht makes a comeback

L0pht is a hacker group focusing on security. This group did crazy theoretical stuff with the internet, one of the crazy things they did was to tell the U.S. Congress that they could take down the Internet in about 30 minutes.

Impressive stuff, these guys are really helping out the security companies.
Here is their punch line:
Watch http://www.hackernews.com for the ALL NEW Hacker News Network! Featuring your charming host, Space Rogue, and his velvet wonderglove John Tan, this video documentary and news coverage channel will keep you firmly in your chair as it chronicles the exploits and goings-on of the underground's finest. Don't be a f00l, watch HNN!