Category Pointers

Stub it out.

England bans smoking in public places. Hip hip! Hurray! Excellent news for the many non-addicts among us that still possess tar-free lungs, a sense of smell and brains. Sadly, I live in the Banana Tobacco Republic and can only dream of the day the 'smoking fascism' will end here. If it ever becomes reality, I guess it'll probably end up being another case of "EU law saving the monkeys from self-annihilation" given the incompetence of politicians, legislators and voters alike in this country. Let's hope they do it before the death rate explodes.

Like many successful revolutions, this one might come from the bottom.

John Gruber writes about the iPhone's support for Open standards and the reality of enterprise email that's still predominantly based on proprietary solutions by a handful of companies. 'Revolution' is a strong term for what's at stake here, but It will --- nevertheless --- be interesting to see if this will another case of the people forcing corporations to embrace/promote/develop superior, Open technology. Given the iPhone's appeal to the relevant demographics, I guess it might be easier than previously thought.

Apple may be forced to go retail-only in Europe [iPhone]

While Apple has found a willing partner in AT&T (Monopoly MkII in the making) in the States, the much healthier (and far more advanced) European market finds many of the company's demands unacceptable. A retail-only iPhone in Europe seems like a possibility for Apple, if no operator concedes. This will increase the device's price, but it'll probably mean an unlocked phone too; the fact that the iPhone is the archetypal 'form over function' Apple product and the fact that the competition in high-end phones is much more intense in Europe than it is in the U.S. is possibly going to limit how expensive the iPhone can get. And that, it seems to me, is A Good Thing.

A How-to manual for the Megacity

Διαβολεμένη σύμπτωση;. Το τεύχος Ιουνίου 2007 του πολύ καλού περιοδικού Spectrum του IEEE είναι αφιερωμένο στις μεγαλουπόλεις. Σε μια εκτενέστατη και ιδιαίτερα ενδιαφέρουσα αναφορά περιγράφει στατιστικές, προβλήματα και πιθανές λύσεις αυτών ανα τον κόσμο, ενδιαφέρουσες προτάσεις αντιμετώπισης της κλιμάκωσης αυτών εν'όψει του αυξανόμενου πληθυσμού καθώς και κάποιες καινοτόμες λύσεις από ειδικούς. Πραγματικα αξίζει να το διαβάσετε! [στα Αγγλικά] [Eπίσης ενδιαφέρον το σχετικό αφιέρωμα του Forbes.]

Νέα έκδοση του HRDL Widget

HRDLΑπό τη διάθεση του στο κοινό στα τέλη Μαΐου, μέχρι σήμερα το HRDL 'κατέβηκε' αρκετές εκατοντάδες φορές! Σας ευχαριστώ πολύ όλους για τα καλά σας λόγια και χαίρομαι ιδιαίτερα που το βρήκατε χρήσιμο. Αρκετοί από εσάς ζητήσατε ένα πιο ολοκληρωμένο Whitepages Widget. Υπομονή... έρχεται :) Τώρα στα δυσάρεστα: Το Safari 3.0 Public Beta σε Tiger που μόλις κυκλοφόρησε 'σπάει' το Hellenic Reverse Directory Lookup Widget όπως και πολλά άλλα (για διάφορους λόγους)! Το πρόβλημα με το δικό μου widget έγκειται στο search input field και το γεγονός πως επέτρεπα saved searches (υπάρχει το drop down μενουδάκι στα αριστερά που εμφανίζεται μόλις κάνετε κλικ στον μικρό φακό). Δυστυχώς με τη νεα προ-έκδοση του Safari η δυνατότητα αυτή δε λειτουργεί όπως πρέπει. Γι'αυτόν τον λόγο, εαν χρησιμοποιείτε τη β του Safari 3.0 κατεβάστε την έκδοση 1.01 του HRDL Widget από τη σελίδα λογισμικού.

ZFS for Leopard according to Schwartz [video]

That Leopard would support Sun Microsystems' ZFS was known for several months, since a screenshot from an earlier α release of the upcoming version of OS X was leaked late in 2006 showing support in the Disk Utility. At the time of that leak, several developers reported that 10.5 did not support ZFS as its default filesystem, meaning it could not boot from it or use it for the system partition. Well, now it can. Jonathan Schwartz, Sun's CEO claims that ZFS is going to be the default filesystem on Leopard replacing the ageing HFS+ Journaling. Great news for the Mac and further proof of the value that Open Source software adds to commercial products. [P.S.: Schwartz's video is quite interesting for FOSS and Sun customers too. I'll have to revisit the topic of Sun Microsystems and its relationship with Open Source in an article some time.]

Some of the biggest companies in the world have tried and failed

Siemens, Philips, Fujitsu. The iPhone is coming and Jobs' prediction for 1% of the global market within 2008 seems so detached from reality it's not even funny despite it coming from the Worlds_Best_Used_Car_Salesman. What I kept from this article by The Reg is the quote above. The mobile phone market is huge and very lucrative and over the years had practically every single electronics giant in the world giving it a try. Many of the best ones failed and merged (viz. Sony Ericsson), others just gave up (Siemens). Can Apple make it? Update: The new iPhone Ads are impressive, although the expectations are very high too.

Unlimited!

Yahoo! Mail unlimited storage is here.

Yahoo! Mail just started providing unlimited storage space for free to all of its users making good on their promise. Yahoo! seems to have invested quite a lot to Mail! (contrary to Microsoft which more or less hung Hotmail out to dry) and offers an amazing alternative to Google's Mail. If you haven't used the new Yahoo! Mail yet, now you have another reason to do so.

[Update: Microsoft just announced its new Windows Live Hotmail with 2GB of storage and a new AJAX interface. Sadly for them, it sucks.]

Microsoft Surface

Microsoft enters the multi-touch world with Surface. And what a pleasant surprise that is! The wireless interaction with objects placed on the 'table' is fantastic news and a true innovation as far as a finished product is concerned. Seeing the Microsoft promotional videos as well as the Popular Mechanics video embedded below I wonder what this will mean to companies like Wacom (and how they are going to respond to this) and to the many thousands of digital artists that will, sooner or later, get this amazing technology on their desks and workstations. Its exhilarating to see a company of this size (and reputation) accelerate the proliferation of such amazing technology, spur competition and lower the cost. At last something truly impressive from Redmond!