sneakyBlog

Probably you’ve already heard of Apple’s Sudden Motion Sensor (if the description “I keep track of everything with ‘Apple’ on it” fits you), a very useful feature built into Apple’s notebooks (both the MacBook Pro’s and the MacBooks, and the last generation of the PowerBooks). It allows your notebook to shut down your HDD whenever it detects a sudden motion, hence its name. It prevents major damage to your HDD. But Apple has provided an API that allows 3rd party developers to use it as well.

After iAlertU and MacSaber, I present to you: the SmackBook. I know I’m a bit late with this post, but I’ve been very busy with my DriverPacks project, which has since 2 days its own forum, with already 50 members and about 150 posts at the time of writing.

No more dawdling, here’s the superb trailer!

Finally… the end is there! The end of my high school ‘career’. It’s about time! I’ve really had enough of French, Dutch and - in particuler - of Latin. I’m glad I’ll be rid of them for the rest of my life, except for math of course, which I will still need the next two years when I’ll be studying Computer Science. And in fifteen days I’ll now probably be at a party, since that day I’ll have finished my last exam (oral exam of history, eaaasy ).

And after that… 3 months of vacation… summer job… and a new pc. The current one is about 3 years old and quite often lagging these days (probably that’s Windows though…). So… what to do to get a faster system, that doesnt'’t crash on an almost regular basis and that will remain rock solid, blazingly fast and just a pleasure to work on the next four years? (That’s how long it should take to get my Master Degree in Computer Science (don’t know which one yet).)

Probably I’ll order one of these:

But then the ‘Fully Pimped Edition’: 2 GB RAM and a Seagate Momentus 7200 RPM 100 GB SATA HDD. That’s the double of RAM I’ve got now, the double of the GHz’s I have now (”faster GHz’s” by the way) and roughly the same HDD speed I’ve got now. This baby is gonna fly!

Note that I’ll be paying for this powerful machine myself: not a penny will be paid by my parents (which doesn’t bother me either). A large chunk will be payed by the money I’ve saved with summer jobs and a minor (but still significant) chunk will be paid by the donations I’ve received for my DriverPacks project. A big thanks to all who’ve made a donation!

Technorati Tags: highschool, graduation, macbook pro, driverpacks, driverpacks.net

Once more a superb macZOT offer! This time it’s all about HoudahSpot, an application that uses the Spotlight API. It allows you to enter a complete set of conditions, in much more detail than Apple’s Spotlight allows. This allows even faster searching of specific content! If you remember the filename, you’re fine with Spotlight. No need for anything more advanced then. But when you need to find an image file, don’t remember its name and only remember that the resolution is 1600×1200 for example, then HoudahSpot is certainly a must-have! See the screenshot below to see what kind of filters you can set (yes, that’s right, you can set any filter!). It’s like Apple’s forgotten missing link between fast and advanced searching of (local) content!

If it’s still the 16th of June when you’re reading this, you might be able to get a free copy of HoudahSpot at macZOT!

Technorati Tags: mac os x software, spotlight

Imagine a review with a general tendency like this:

Imagine a desktop publishing program or word processor that allows only a single document. Now imagine that document doesn’t exist. This is the document model for iWeb.

With this final conclusion:

Four big problems and a handful of smaller ones means iWeb 1.1.whatever gets a 5, but it could have been worse. It could have been Aperture 1.0. Does it suck? Yes, iWeb kind of sucks, but it sucks like ingesting smoke from a torch while calling forth the spirits of beasts to hunt by placing them on a wall. It sucks, but it sucks in the way of the worst program you have ever loved, the one that lets you create.

Just go on and read the review for fun… it’ll definetely make you laugh

Technorati Tags: arstechnica, iweb, apple

Valve’s next game will be built around a - at the least - very interesting concept. Be amazed by this demo!

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Technorati Tags: concept, valve, portal

The “Web 2.0 Bullshit Generator” will generate “bullshit-compliant products and services” with the click of a button. I also appreciate that the creator has included links to related services to give the budding entrepreneur all of the tools they need to “sell your company to Yahoo”.

Use Bullshitr to define your product
Use Buzzphrase Generator for your marketing materials
Name your company with Andrew Woolridge’s Web 2.0 Company Name Generator
Create your logo with the Web 2.0 Logo Generator
Sell your company to Yahoo
Repeat
Very funny stuff. My bullshit was “disintermediate blogging platforms” which sounds pretty good to me.

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Technorati Tags: web 2.0, funny

Got this in my mailbox from Amazon this morning:

…

Just as Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) enables storage in the
cloud, Amazon EC2 enables “compute” in the cloud. Amazon EC2’s simple web
service interface allows you to obtain and configure capacity with minimal
friction. It provides you with complete control of your computing resources
and lets you run on Amazon’s proven computing environment. Amazon EC2
reduces the time required to obtain and boot new server instances to
minutes, allowing you to quickly scale capacity, both up and down, as your
computing requirements change. Amazon EC2 changes the economics of
computing by allowing you to pay only for capacity that you actually use.

…

This will definitely result in some very nifty new apps: no more fixed server costs, but truly dynamical, based on the amount of traffic you get. Every one says Google is the most innovative company when it comes to new web services. To the end-user, that’s perhaps the case. But I think Amazon is definitely surpassing Google when it comes to providing the services necessary for creating The Next Web 2.0 Killer app. First S3, now EC2. Amazon does have other web services available, but I think many will agree with me that these are the most revolutionary ones.
The main difference with Sun’s Grid Compute Utility is the scale: Sun’s Grid Compute Utility is basically ‘rent-a-grid’ on demand, while Amazon’s EC2 is more ‘rent-a-server’-esque.

Unfortunately this is a limited beta, and I was too late… I will definitely track EC2, also here at my blog. I bet it will be very beneficial for Amazon in the end! (In let’s say 5 years from now.)

UPDATE
I forgot to mention one of the main features: the price. The price is very reasonable (as is S3’s pricing scheme): $0.10/hour. That’s only $2.40 for a day. I’d say that’s incredibly cheap for keeping your website online during a traffic peek!

Technorati Tags: web 2.0, amazon, amazon ec2, computing on demand, web services

Today I stumbled upon this very interesting article at bit-tech.net. You might not expect this kind of article on a website that labels itself as a casemodding/overclocking/hardware reviews/gaming site, but it’s really interesting. No complete book of course, but a very interesting evolution analysis of the HCI during the past decades.

Multi-touch is anything but a gimmick, but to manipulate 3D space with the mouse we need to add extra inputs. If using a normal touchscreen is like using a single mouse then multi-touch is like using ten - or more! In fact, you’ve probably seen a multi-touch in action – or a representation of one. If you’ve seen Minority Report then you have, the diminutive Mr Cruise and his cronies use one to edit video.

All the scenes where he’s flapping his arm around aren’t actually as far from reality as you might think, because those are the kind of intuitive gestures and feedback that you can expect to use and receive from a multi-touch device when it’s used with an appropriate user interface.

Appropriate interfaces are needed, and fortunately they’re almost ready to hit the streets. Jeff Hann’s work on multi touch interfaces uses simple gestures to manipulate objects on the screen. When you watch him use the interface, all the motions he makes to control the world seem intuitive and easy to learn and experiment with.

While Jeff’s work may be confined to the world of research, both Microsoft and Apple are working on their own versions behind the scenes. Microsoft’s PhotoSynth uses an interface that seems designed to be used with a multitouch display. While the application itself is incredibly cool, it’s interesting to see how the interface works, seeming very similar to the photo browser Jeff uses in his multi-touch demonstration. You can hear the operator’s mouse wheel whizzing away as he jerkily zooms into the images; in Jeff’s demonstration the same actions are performed effortlessly by placing two fingertips on the screen and moving them away from one another.

The complete article.

Technorati Tags: HCI, interfaces, GUI, multi-touch

Hmmmm….

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A picture can say more than a thousand words, once again…

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