Tuesday, June 26, 2007

What the iPhone Doesn't Have


On Friday, at 6:00 PM local time Apple's ever popular iPhone is going to be released. With all the hype that the iPhone has been is getting, I think that many consumers will become very disappointed with the product. When your paying so much for a product, and that product has, lets just say "crippled" functionality it is completely unacceptable. Apple hurrying the release of this product and leaving end-users with a "crippled" phone is like saying we don't care about the users' experience, lets just bring in some revenue, and having that mind set is completely unprofessional of Apple. There are many thinks that the iPhone simply just can't do, over at Gizmodo they've compiled a list of those things, here they are:

Things the iPhone Doesn't Have

  • Songs as Ringtones
  • Games
  • Any flash support
  • Instant Messaging
  • Picture messages (MMS)
  • Video recording
  • Voice recognition or voice dialing
  • Wireless Bluetooth Stereo Streaming (A2DP)
  • One-size-fits-all headset jack (May have to buy an adapter for certain headphones)
  • 3G (EV-DO/HSDPA)
  • GPS
  • A real keyboard
  • Removable battery
  • Expandable Storage
  • Direct iTunes Music Store Access (Over Wi-Fi or EDGE)

[Via Gizmodo]

Friday, June 22, 2007

No Show Today

After, much thinking we've decided that we will not record episode 12 today because our schedules are full. We will continue with our usual episode releases starting again on Monday. We're very sorry once again for the inconvenience, and we hope to have all our technical problems fixed by then.

Dell Allows Users to Refuse 'Bloatware'


Finally, a company willing to give the user the choice of having 'bloatware' on their machines. 'Bloatware', if you aren't familiar with the term is all the software which comes on a PC when you buy it. It consists mostly of trials which give the user little to no functionality, with the 'bloatware' the companies try to lure you in to buying their software. How does the 'bloatware' get on the machines?, you might ask. Well, the software companies essentially pay the PC maker in this case that being Dell to put the software on those machines. PC makers allow this to occur because at the end of the whole process, they can sell the PC at a much lower price, allowing more consumers to afford the machines.

So, after many complaints from users Dell is giving the users a choice whether or not to have 'bloatware' on certain PC models. As of now buyers of Dimension desktops, Inspiron notebooks and XPS PCs can now click a field in Dell's online order form that will block the installation of 'bloatware' such as: productivity software, ISP (Internet service provider) software, and photo and music software. This is a great step for Dell, hopefully this will encourage other PC venders to do the same for their buyers.
[Via PC WORLD]

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Trillian "critical" patch released


Yesterday, Cerulean Studios, the maker of the multi-protocol chat software Trillian, issued a "critical" patch for Trillian 3.1.5.1, earlier versions of the software are also vulnerable to the attack. This vulnerability is in the character encoding in Trillian, mainly in the the word-wrapping handling of UTF-8, which is the Unicode Transformation Format used for encoding characters in e-mail, instant messages and Web pages. If an attacker takes advantage of this vulnerability, the attacker could then potentially launch a buffer overflow which would allow them to, remotely gain control of a user's system. The vulnerability can be exploited if the user views a malicious message which contains an unusually long UTF-8 string. The patch released on Monday updates Trillian to version 3.1.6.0, so make sure you update to fix the security flaws. To Learn more visit C|NET's News.com for a more detailed article.

If you aren't familiar with Trillian, from Cerulean Studios, it's a multi-protocol chat client. It enables users to use their Yahoo's Instant Messenger, AOL's AIM, MSN Messenger, IRC, and ICQ accounts all in one client. Which makes signing-in to multiple IM accounts very simple and convenient, ridding the user of launching all the various clients. I've used it for quite a while and I recommend it, if you want to give it a try visit their site for the download.
[via C|NET's News.com]