Category Technology

We don’t have 64 bit support for Linux in 3.5

That's for Tracemonkey, the new, somewhat faster javascript engine that's included with Firefox 3.5. Don't be alarmed then when Firefox 3.5 performs only marginally faster on javascript heavy sites than Firefox 3.0. No 64bit support for the new javascript engine, on the platform where Firefox pretty much dominates. In my view, that should've been Mozilla's first priority on Linux: many linux users choose 64bit because they are not hindered by missing drivers or applications. Linux users are typically more computer-savvy than your average windows or OS X users and could serve as good guinea pigs for a 64bit version of Tracemonkey. In any case, irrespectively of operating system, Tracemonkey 'feels' slower than Nitro (or v8) in 32bits too, but giving 64bit linux such a low priority is somewhat dumb, especially given the ever increasing interest and market share for 64bit linux among linux users (after years of requests Adobe released its exceptionally stable 64bit flash player for linux a few months ago). Hopefully a 64bit version of tracemonkey will be included in one of the minor upgrades before 2010, but I feel like Mozilla has made a mistake here. Update: It seems that there is no 64bit Tracemonkey code, linux or otherwise, which is surprising; I am not exactly clear as to what prevents them from releasing a 64bit version.

They'll never learn.

The Nokia N97 is out. And what a disappointment this is. Still great hardware features. Still the same mediocre system software, the poor usability that comes 'for free' with Symbian, and average industrial design [from the moment a phone is that bulky, it's bad --- it doesn't matter how many Mpixels its camera has or what the resolution of its display is]. I find the idea of a resistive touchscreen dated and wrong, although I understand why Nokia might have chosen it over the capacitive kind that everyone else is currently using, given the subpar feel that its software has as a touch interface and the possibility for the need of a stylus. I'm really surprised however: given the success of the iPhone, the huge challenge that Android is going to pose to low and mid-level phone manufacturers (especially given how customisable it is) in the near future and the dwindling profits, mind and marketshare, why on earth isn't Nokia caring more about the user experience?

For a hacker, the Pre is incredible

Great stuff. Perhaps I should start looking at the Pre as one of the candidate platforms for the Geo|Ads platform and the apps it is currently featured on. Since AthensBook 1.0.0 came out in early March we've been focusing on way too many things and looking at what Palm has to one of them --- besides registering for the early SDK access back in April, there were few reasons to focus on the Pre: it is only available stateside for now, and we're already focusing on providing current releases of our apps and ad SDK on iPhone/Android and Blackberry. Still, with Android still featuring a decade-old UI and no devices not being available in Hellas in any sort of mainstream way yet [soon that's bound to change of course] and with the BlackBerry OS seeming increasingly dated, perhaps the Pre should be getting some more developer love from us. If only we could get a device in this part of the world. =)

Palm Pre's Custom Font 'Prelude'

While the Palm Pre is intriguing in many respects, I am not particularly excited about its User Interface; it's modern and has that 'new' feel that seems to be gone from the iPhone [something Android never had] and it seems sophisticated and well-designed from a usability point of view, but it also seems somewhat busy and over-the-top æsthetically. One of the things that did catch my eye, however, is the new font that the Pre includes. Very similar to Avenir, the font, apparently called Prelude, is a sans-serif design with good readability and a look that makes it distinguishable from many other fonts in use in modern operating systems today. There are various reports online stating that Prelude does not support non-Roman character sets, such as Hellenic, Cyrillic, or East-asian. I'm not even sure how good its support is for Central European languages either. If this is true, it strikes me as very naive on Palm's part: given that this is a font that was custom designed in 2008 (?) for a product that's bound to be internationally sold, proper international character support should've been a high priority. If anything the omission will make the Pre much less attractive to customers outside of North America and Western Europe, something that other companies learnt the hard way over the years. Hopefully Palm won't have to do so too.

Positive Side-effects.

Perhaps the single positive thing that may come out of the continuing and utterly pointless legal wrangling between Microsoft and the European Commission is that the totally sub-par, archetypical Windows administrator will now be forced to either go on and download the equally sub-par Internet Explorer 8 or choose one of the far superior alternatives, instead of just sitting there idle, counting the number of hotfixes that have come out of Redmond in the last month. =)

Υψηλό Δυναμικό. Χαμηλή Απόδοση.

Γράφει το σχετικό άρθρο του BBC: But to meet targets on renewable energy, the scientists say a grid is required that will take energy from the areas with an abundance of sun, wind and tidal power to those without. Βρίσκω την ιδέα αρκετά ενδιαφέρουσα αλλά κυρίως στρατηγικά άρτια και ουσιαστικότερη, πέραν του συνηθισμένου, της αλλοτριωμένης […]

Internet User Who Joins Service And Then Quits Immediately

Yep, it's about Twitter, one of the most, if not the most pointless, time-wasting fads that came out of the big ol' Web 2.0. Like it or not, more than half of Twitter's users never even posted a single tweet, let alone 'followed' anyone. Read the report at Ars.

Forget me not!

Canonical announces its support for Moblin, just a year after Intel dropped Ubuntu as the basis for the project in favour of Fedora. A great move by Canonical, as Moblin seems to provide the best overall optimisations for netbooks --- and some really great æsthetics/usability --- for that class of devices.

Google Wave First Impressions

Google Wave, a new API/protocol and platform was presented on Google I It’s a hosted, embeddable communications and collaboration platform that introduces quite a few interesting features that are currently either not available or require multiple service vendors It was written in Java Google has made it clear that the protocol is going to be […]

Moblin: Proof that Corporate Support Needed.

If anything the sudden appearance of Moblin 2.0 Beta and its excellent User Interface has proven, beyond any doubt, that corporate support is essential if linux — and the open source community — is going to survive beyond a very very small niche. Linux on the server has been doing well despite Microsoft’s pretty good […]