Thursday 18 September 2008

Mac OSX on the Eee PC

Yes, you can run Mac OSX on your EeePC. It will cost you much less than a MacBook.

Wired has a How-To that walks you through the steps to get Mac OS X on your Asus Eee PC.

http://howto.wired.com/wiki/Run_Mac_OS_X_on_an_Eee_PC

Wednesday 3 September 2008

Browser Wars - Return of the Choice

A long time ago before the dot com crash there was a war. The mighty Netscape lost the war and the evil Microsoft dominated the Internet ever since.

The rebel forces of Netscape went into hiding as Mozilla. Along came the New Hope, Firefox with new powers that the Death Star (a.k.a. Internet Explorer) could only dream of.

Yesterday the latest in the new breed browsers was released from Google which now means that all 3 of the big players in Web 2.0 have released browsers for Windows.

Apple Safari - http://www.apple.com/safari/

Google Chrome - http://www.google.com/chrome/

Microsoft IE8 - http://www.microsoft.com/ie8/

And Firefox is at Version 3 - http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/

Just like last time, these are all free products. The web has evolved into an application platform and it is clear the this is what Google aims to capture with it's release. I'm not sure why Google decided to go it alone when they did appear to have some kind of relationship with the Firefox group.

Guess time will tell as to who will win this round of the browser wars.

Tuesday 5 August 2008

Dr. Horrible is Awesome!

Dr. Doogie Howser is Dr. Horrible and he is as Awesome as Barney Stinson.

www.drhorrible.com

Have to thank Larry Osterman for pointing out this gem in his blog...

Joss Whedon, yes the guy who made Buffy, is behind this masterpiece. Note to Joss, please make it so iTunes will let me download it in Australia!

Sorry I blogged so late about it. Get it while it lasts and I hope you all enjoy it!

Thursday 10 July 2008

EeePC1000

It must be gadget buying season...

iPhone, Wii, EeePC, Tivo

The 10" EeePC1000 is out and about here in Australia. JB Hi-Fi have them for $698 which is a good deal as far as I can tell. I wanted a Dell XPS1330 or a Mac Book. Lately the choice has grown, HP, Toshiba, and Dell with the Studio all offer laptops which look the goods... Now the EeePC1000 is also available.

It is really a shame that the Rudd government to away the tax loophole for laptops.

The Tivo is finally coming to Australia... no ad skip and a fee at a later date to turn on the networking. Why can't they just make these things easy and not try to squeeze every last cent out of the consumers?

Toy Sale - Wii for me?

Well it seems everyone is having a toy sale. Big W, K Mart, Target, and  Myer. The XBox is on sale, someone even has it for $299!!

My house wants a Wii... yes we don't have one yet. I know it is hard to believe... They are on "sale" but are sold out EVERYWHERE!

Not much of a discount either, I think $388 is the best price I've seen. I guess we'll take the plunge this weekend and hunt one down.

I want an iPhone

iPhone goes on sale tomorrow and the only network that really have 3G where I live is Telstra. Now, I have shares in these guys and I want them to make money but I don't like been ripped off and so far they are the only Australian network not to release pricing information...

Their website is the worst out of all the players and I almost expect them to have got some crazy customisations done to the software to make it Telstra-ish.

I guess we will find out tomorrow at 8 am...

Wednesday 11 June 2008

Mobile Me ... Exchange for the rest of us?

Apple might be on a winner here.... www.me.com

Not sure if Google is involved since this is the replacement to .Mac and the rumour on the wire was that Google was involved in the replacement... 2 Weeks ago it became clear the .Mac was dead.

If Google isn't part of this, can they please build the same thing for those of us not wanting to pay the monthly fee or that run something other than Mac or Windows?

I actually thought that Microsoft's Mesh would offer more of this Exchange like capability but I guess that was too much to hope for...

Next question, how much is the iPhone going to cost here in Australia?

Monday 26 May 2008

I'm in the Mesh

Microsoft finally got around to sending me an invite to Mesh.

Installed and running... now what?

Saturday 3 May 2008

Microsoft Mesh and Google App Engine - Up in the clouds

Google App Engine was publicly discussed first but the Microsoft Live Mesh project wasn't far behind.

Somehow since I'm in Australia and that the weekend it all went live I was offline I can't seem to get an account with either.

The Google version at least lets you download a local test server and sandbox to play in but for now it is only in Python.

The Microsoft version has more freedom in terms of the programming language you choose to use by seems more restrictive as to who they will let play with the Beta.

Although these two technologies are different on the surface (and inside in many places) they WILL end up competing for the same applications, developers, and users.

Why? Well simply because if you breakdown what each of them really offer the application developer then you'll see that they are both going to do the same thing just in a slightly different way.

At this point in time I'd say that the Microsoft offering looks more featured and has the desktop support needed to ease users into the true Web 2.0 application world but Google isn't one to give up easily and they will have to Open Source/Linux community on side from day one... Will this become the browser war of next few years?

What if Apple only pick one to support natively on the iPhone? Who is the bigger threat to them, Google and Android or Microsoft and Windows Mobile?

Friday 7 March 2008

Apple iPhone SDK

iphonesdk

I should have known... Although this is the coolest and latest platform to develop applications for, you need a Mac (or PC) running Mac OS X. Oh well a MacBook is only $1,500... Anyone want to donate one to me? Apple, you listening?

http://developer.apple.com/iphone/

Internet Explorer 8

It is out now! Well sort of, it is Beta but it is a public beta so download it now.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/ie/ie8/default.mspx

 

Now I've got to learn what WebSlices are...

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/ie/ie8/webslices.mspx

logo_ie8

Monday 25 February 2008

Facebook Garage Melbourne

Last Friday was the first Melbourne Facebook developer Garage. I had Friday off work anyway so I popped in for a couple of hours and next thing I know I was sitting on the discussion panel with Markus Weichselbaum (The Broth), David Eedle (collectZing), Terri Dentry (thinkRED), and Tom Beeby (TravelApps).

For me it was just so great to meet these people, plus all the other people I met at the event.

The event itself can be found at http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=9997025951

And Facebook Developers Melbourne can be found at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=21606671216

Thursday 7 February 2008

Joost

Wow! This actually seems to work. http://www.joost.com/
Unlike Qtrax it did what it said it would do. One downside is that some of the content seems to be only avaliable in certain regions which is a shame.

Qtrax

Is it ever going to let me download music?
http://www.qtrax.com/

Wednesday 6 February 2008

Bebo Part II

Ok after a lot of messing around and thinking that Bebo was a broken platform I finally go my simple application to work.
http://apps.bebo.com/barcode/

I thought that the PHP library I was using was broken so I waited till the new version was released. Alas, it didn't work either...
I was getting error 101, my application key was invalid.

Time to turn to the forums and I found this post http://developer.bebo.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=235

My site is hosted on Joyent so I added the code suggested
ini_set('arg_separator.output', '&');

and everything started working!

Sunday 13 January 2008

Bebo...

I've been playing with applications on Facebook for about 2 months.
Yesterday I decided to see if I could port some of them to Bebo. Well, I though Facebook was buggy but Bebo is clearly still in the early stages of application development.

I hope by tonight I might have something I can release.

First Post

Why start a blog? Why now? Isn't it a little behind the times? Why start on on Blogger?
Why would anyone want to read anything I've got to say?

Well I woke up this morning with the urge to create a blog. That is the simple reason. Nothing more and nothing less.

The next question is Will I keep posting?