Head on over to MacHeist to grab some free software after you sign up as an “agent” and solve the assorted mysteries on offer (actually, from what I can tell, you don’t even really need to solve them?). Now available:
Via the Guardian, Richard Stallman’s take on Cloud Computing:
Cloud computing is a trap, warns GNU founder | guardian.co.uk “One reason you should not use web applications to do your computing is that you lose control,” he said. “It’s just as bad as using a proprietary program. Do your own computing on your own computer with your copy of a freedom-respecting program. If you use a proprietary program or somebody else’s web server, you’re defenceless. You’re putty in the hands of whoever developed that software.”
Cloud computing is a trap, warns GNU founder | guardian.co.uk
“One reason you should not use web applications to do your computing is that you lose control,” he said. “It’s just as bad as using a proprietary program. Do your own computing on your own computer with your copy of a freedom-respecting program. If you use a proprietary program or somebody else’s web server, you’re defenceless. You’re putty in the hands of whoever developed that software.”
[ Link ]
[via Ars Technica]
From the site:
Cappuccino is an open source framework that makes it easy to build desktop-caliber applications that run in a web browser.
Visit the site for a demo (and to understand the “Cocoa” reference) of their application 280 Slides. Very cool!
If you cannot download Google Chrome (not available for us Mac and Unix types :-(), you can at least spend time reading the most excellent comic book that explains the browser. Why? Because, IMHO, it is a veritable modern CS 101 (operating systems, process/memory management, threading, interpreted languages, and so on)! Check it out!
How cool is this?
Mozilla drags IE into the future with Canvas element plugin Most browser implementors are quick to adopt emerging Internet technologies, but Microsoft can’t or won’t make Internet Explorer a modern web browser. Despite some positive steps in the right direction, Internet Explorer still lacks many important features. Its mediocrity has arguably hampered the evolution of the web and forced many site designers to depend on suboptimal proprietary solutions. IE’s shortcomings won’t hold back the Internet for much longer, however, because Mozilla plans to drag IE into the next generation of open web technologies without Microsoft’s help. One of the first steps towards achieving this goal is a new experimental plugin that adapts Mozilla’s implementation of the HTML5 Canvas element so that it can be used in Internet Explorer.
Mozilla drags IE into the future with Canvas element plugin
Most browser implementors are quick to adopt emerging Internet technologies, but Microsoft can’t or won’t make Internet Explorer a modern web browser. Despite some positive steps in the right direction, Internet Explorer still lacks many important features. Its mediocrity has arguably hampered the evolution of the web and forced many site designers to depend on suboptimal proprietary solutions.
IE’s shortcomings won’t hold back the Internet for much longer, however, because Mozilla plans to drag IE into the next generation of open web technologies without Microsoft’s help. One of the first steps towards achieving this goal is a new experimental plugin that adapts Mozilla’s implementation of the HTML5 Canvas element so that it can be used in Internet Explorer.
Via Ars, a bit of news that Nokia and Mozilla Foundation (or whatever they are called now!) have ported Firefox to use the Qt GUI toolkit:
Nokia helps port Firefox to Qt The Firefox web browser has been ported to the Qt widget toolkit through a collaborative development effort by Nokia and Mozilla. This port will facilitate much stronger visual integration between Firefox and KDE-based Linux environments and will also simplify the process of bringing Firefox to mobile platforms that support Qt.
Nokia helps port Firefox to Qt
The Firefox web browser has been ported to the Qt widget toolkit through a collaborative development effort by Nokia and Mozilla. This port will facilitate much stronger visual integration between Firefox and KDE-based Linux environments and will also simplify the process of bringing Firefox to mobile platforms that support Qt.
Next up for Nokia: figure out a way to reserve 200MB of memory for Firefox. ;-)
From the Beijing 2008 website, a front page link points you to the IPv6 version of the site:
ipv6 You are about to visit the IPv6 (Internet Protocol Version 6) version of the official website of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.
ipv6
You are about to visit the IPv6 (Internet Protocol Version 6) version of the official website of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.
Now how cool is that? Especially in comparison to the dudes at home whose only answer to IPv6 is NAT! ;-)
Excellent bit of news: Google Calendar now supports CalDAV including in Google Apps! Too bad Outlook doesn’t!
From the Calgoo blog:
Calendar free for all « Calgoo Blog Calgoo’s calendaring products are all free as of Jul 22 with the release of our v2.0. This is consistent with our company’s move to in-calendar advertising business models.
Calendar free for all « Calgoo Blog
Calgoo’s calendaring products are all free as of Jul 22 with the release of our v2.0. This is consistent with our company’s move to in-calendar advertising business models.
Calgoo is a neat service/application that provides a desktop client, an online “hub”, and a “connect” tool that synchronises calendars across applications (Apple iCal, MS Outlook, etc) and services (Google Calendar, 30Boxes, etc). If SpanningSync‘s crazy pricing model ($25/year subscription!) has bothered you as much as it has me, then you have an alternative now. Though, to be fair there was always the fairly priced GSync ($20 one-time).
Looks like NewsFire has gone free a la NetNewsWire. I downloaded and played with it for a while, and while it is impressive, I do not plan on switching from NetNewsWire. One nice feature that NewsFire does have is that when a feed (in the left sidebar/column) has no unread articles, NewsFire moves it to the bottom of the list. I would like such feeds to be entirely hidden, as Google Reader does, but this NewsFire feature is at least better than the lack of any such feature in NetNewsWire or other readers.
If you are looking for other free options for a Mac RSS reader I also recommend Vienna RSS reader.
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