Threatening their own customers?
25/12/2004 19:29 | Categories: News | 0 Comments
Looks like US broadband internet provider Comcast is now sending threatening letters to users who download a lot of data (more here), according to their yet undisclosed "standards" and rates. The whole issue here seems to be that Comcast was advertising the service as "unlimited", so it has now come as a big surprise to many users.Things like this are very annoying and I wonder if it will ever happen in Europe...
iPods played an important role in making the LotR trilogy
25/12/2004 19:29 | Categories: Apple | 0 Comments
According to this article, the crew of the LotR used 30Gb iPods to quickly move data from one location to another. But the relationship between LotR and Apple gadgets does not end there. Peter Jackson watched the daily shots from his iPod connected to his G4 laptop on a Apple Cinema Display. I guess this shows how much valued are Apple products amongst creative people!
Apple and Pepsi iTunes campaign
25/12/2004 19:29 | Categories: Apple | 0 Comments
Pepsi and Apple are starting tonight during the SuperBowl a capaign that will grive away 100 million free songs downloadable from iTunes. The songs are hidden in Pepsi caps. To kick off the promotion, Apple has created a very "nice" commercial, kind of giving a hint to our beloved anti-piracy american friends 
Enjoy the add (QT required):
Small size
Medium size
Large size
Btw, is the girl appearing in the ad really one of the persons being sued by the RIAA?
More info on this from this article from the BBC.
Spyware removal software, installing more spyware?
25/12/2004 19:29 | Categories: Privacy | 0 Comments
That the Internet is a jungle, we all knew that... But how about this now? Spyware cures may cause more harm than good.Apparently there was a piece of software called SpyBan which advertised as a tool to remove unwanted spyware software from one's computer. Instead, what it was really doing was removing the competitor's spyware software and installing its own... I can't believe that. I mean, couldn't that be made illegal? Isn't my computer my own private property? If somebody installed a hidden camera in my place without my consent and monitored what I do at every moment, wouldn't be that considered illegal? If so, why are all these companies that monitor people's browser usage left untouched, without punishment?
Two comments: if all software was open, this wouldn't happen. And second, I might not have as many games as PC-Windows users have (both before in Linux and now in OS X) but the feeling of security that I have is priceless (well, perhaps not in the case of OS X
) Linux is more than ever a serious alternative to Windows and if I would really consider it for things like web browsing, email and text processing. It does all that (and more!) in a even better way.
Moblogging with a Nokia 7610 via Atom
25/12/2004 19:29 | Categories: Blogging | 0 Comments
I managed to get my hands on a loaned Nokia 7610 terminal, since I decided to join the beta-testing program of the Lifeblog tool, which will be provided for free by Nokia. The goog thing about Lifeblog is that it makes very very easy to take pictures with the camera and post them to your blog, all via Atom. Nokia also provided the beta-testers with a 3-month free account in TypePad, SixApart's blogging service based on MovableType. At the moment my plans are as follows: I have to help test this cute little tool (there's nothing like having your company pay your bills) but my bigger plans include developing an Atom layer for our beloved pLog, the tool that powers this site and many more out there (last version was downloaded over 8000 times!) For those of you interested, Atom is an XML-based protocol that uses the REST paradigm to build web-enabled applications. Sort of web service, but instead of only relying on POST requests, it uses all the request modes as provided by the HTTP specification: POST, GET, PUT and DELETE. There is lots more information in the Atom wiki and webpage so please take a look!The target is to have everything ready before I leave to Spain in 2 weeks (it's about f*cking time I had holidays!) so that I can use Lifeblog from there to photoblog my holidays for all of you
Atom is not a very easy API to implement but I'll do my best... I can't miss this chance now that I have a testing terminal, which I will only be enjoying until the end of August (as I said, it's just a loan 
)My TypePad blog is http://oscar.typepad.com so during the first few days I'll be posting things there. I'm quite excited about moblogging, it might be the solution for people like me who still would like to share their thoughts (or pictures
) with the rest of the world but do not have so much time to write! Stay tuned Rediscover the web with a different browser: Firefox
25/12/2004 19:29 | Categories: General | 0 Comments
The Mozilla project launched a couple of days ago the newest version of its browser Firefox (formerly known as Firebird). It's fast as hell (way faster than IE, and it's not just my own perception of it), provides pop-up blocking, tabbed-browsing, which is a thing I can't live without and has awesome add-ons such as AdBlock.
About the browser, I can't really recommend it enough... specially because of its amazing rendering speed, not to mention that its memory footprint is lower than its bigger brother Mozilla, and that it's way more secure than IE to use. Also, about AdBlock, I don't see any more flash adds, annoying animated ads and so on. It takes a while to configure it since you have to manually tell what content you'd like to block and from which servers, but once you've done that, browsing feels soooo much better!
Firefox also runs in Mac OS X if anybody's interested, even though its speed is not as fast as its Windows counterpart. It feels a little faster than Safari 1.2, though.