Category Computing

Animusic 2: Resonant Chamber

Animusic Resonant Chamber
Since Apple announced their support for the H.264 codec back in early 2005 I never bothered revisiting their HD gallery. Until today that is. To many outside the world of computer graphics, Animusic became known from the real-time version of its 'Pipe Dream' piece, used for ATi's Radeon 9700 some years ago. The company has released two collections of tracks on DVD all featuring imagined animated (computer graphics) 'robotic' instruments accurately performing the tracks. Needless to say they are quite interesting to watch and very well done. The HD 'Resonant Chamber' sample presents a more 'acoustic' piece than 'Pipe Dream' and one that transcends several musical genres performed by an impossibly complex stringed instrument (a construction that combines guitar, lute, bass and harp) that might invoke images of Pat Metheny's Pikasso I 42-string guitar. Worth watching. [Update: Also available on the site is Starship Groove]

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.

The death of SimCity

I still remember clearly the first time I saw SimCity run on a friend’s computer, back in 1990. It is hard to describe the feeling, but it was more or less one of the most impressive pieces of software I’d seen, not for what it was as a game, but for what it represented: a […]

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.

'Leftovers' can be oh-so polished.

Yes, you guessed it. The most visible highlight of this year’s WWDC keynote is a brand spanking new web site for Apple.com. That’s it folks. Nothing to see here. Move along now. Or is it? More seriously, I bet the average Mac user is going to be baffled, still waiting for those über-features that were […]

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.]

Forthnet, η ελληνική Free;

Πριν από 6 μήνες έγραφα για τη παραπλανητική χρήση του Triple Play, που αποτελούσε βασικό θέμα της διαφημιστικής καμπάνιας της Forthnet. Η εν λόγω διαφήμιση έβαζε ‘λάδι στη φωτιά’, σε μια αγορά όπου η πρόσβαση στο διαδίκτυο παραμένει ίσως η προβληματικότερη στην Ευρώπη των 27 και τροχοπέδη για την ‘Κοινωνία της Πληροφορίας’, ή όπως θέλει […]

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.]

Αδεσμοποίητος Βρογχος και Downtime.

Προ 40 περίπου ημερών δημοσιεύθηκε στο ΦΕΚ (620/Β/25-4-2007) η απόφαση της ΕΕΤΤ σχετικά με την Προσφορά Αναφοράς (RUO) του ΟΤΕ για την διάθεση LLU γραμμών. Ένα από τα σημαντικότερα σημεία του RUO, το οποίο έχω καλύψει και παλαιότερα είναι η ρύθμιση της διαδικασίας μετάβασης μεταξύ ΟΤΕ και άλλων παροχέων στις περιπτώσεις χονδρικής προς πλήρη ή […]