Can’t wait for iOS 4.1? Get it Early!

Steve Jobs made his usual September conference about iPods and the state of the Apple Universe last week in a keynote that not only showed off the new Apple TV, a new line of iPods but also the next version of the iOS software. iOS 4.1 is scheduled for release sometime next week however over at uneasysilence, they’ve found out that you don’t need to be a developer to try out the new 4.1 iOS (which you usually have to be) and they’ve stuck links up online for where you can get the new version without having to wait till next week. Word of warning, I haven’t tested these out myself so do so at your own risk but as far as I can tell, it’s all perfectly legit.

 

iPhone 3G – iPhone1,2_4.1_8B117_Restore.ipsw – Multiupload
iPhone 3GS – iPhone3,1_4.1_8B117_Restore.ipsw – Multiupload
iPhone 4 – iPhone1,2_4.1_8B117_Restore.ipsw – Multiupload
iPod Touch 2G – iPod2,1_4.1_8B117_Restore.ipsw – Multiupload
iPod Touch 3G – iPod3,1_4.1_8B117_Restore.ipsw – Multiupload

 

Source: Uneasysilence

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JailbreakMe.com Jailbreaks your iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad Directly from Safari

A lot of you with have seen an old post on how to jailbreak the new iOS4 on this site however it seems like as if the Dev-Team has done it again and released a simple jailbreak right from your device. Created by comex, this jailbreak actually works entirely from your iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad without needing to download any pesky ispw’s or any other third party tool such as Blackra1n, YellowSn0w, L1onT1gerWaterCrestP1nkYell0w0range 3.2.1.4.5.2 jailbreak!

 

It’s very simple, you just go to the JailbreakMe site directly from your iPod Touch or iPhone, follow the single instruction that says “Slide to Jailbreak” and let it do it’s business. By the way, if you try to access the site from a desktop or non iPhone or iPod Touch, it’ll just redirect you to their FAQ section. The site works due to a loophole in the way these devices handles Adobe .pdf files which is a slightly bit ironic if you’ve been following the Apple vs Adobe Flash war in the last few months.

 

Now I’ve only tested this on my iPhone 3GS running iOS4 with the new Bootrom but it works! The first time I tried it, it cut off due to my Edge signal dropping off, but at the second time of asking it jail broke my phone in a whoppingly fast 4 and a half minutes. So go ahead and give it a go but check out the Dev-Team’s site just in case of any warnings or issues that crop up. Of course, jailbreak at your own risk and I do not accept any responsibility for anything that might go wrong. 

 

Jailbreakme.com

 

Also in case the site is down due to excess traffic, the awesome guys at Modmyi have set up a mirror site at:

 

Jailbreakme.modmyi.com

Source: AppAdvice

 

EDIT: There are currently early reports indicating that iPhone 4 iOS4.0 users may lose the facetime and MMS features on their phone. So far no other issues to report, my 3GS is working like a gem. Oh SbSettings how much I’ve missed you …

 

EDIT 2: Just a few hours after the problem was discovered, the guy’s over at Jailbreakme have managed to fix the two issues so you shouldn’t have any more problems. So go ahead and jailbreak, so far there haven't been any more reports of issues with the site

 

Technorati Tags: iOS4,Jailbreak,iphone,ipod tod,apple

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Essential Software: WinDirStat

There are an absolute wealth of system disk space managers and visualisers out in the software market. However on my quite regular quests to scrounge out every megabyte from my disk like a junkie on crack, WinDirStat is easily my personal recommended choice.

 

For anybody who is unfamiliar with WinDirStat or indeed other disk space visualisers, the purpose of these types of software is to map out your hard drive and give the user a graphical image of where their space is taken up. This is often an amazing time saver when it comes to freeing up some free space or even occasionally finding something you’d forgotten and left lying around (such as in my case, my BSG series 1-4 collection).

 

Click to enlarge

 

At first launch, WinDirStat allows you to select one or more drives you’d like it to scan first. It then does it’s business and presents an image similar to the one you see just above. Every folder is arranged in an oblong formation and every subfolder of that becomes arranged within that formation. Every coloured block you see in the display actually represents a single file.

 

So for example the white segment highlighted above represents how much space “Edwin’s Music” occupies. Similarly if I were to click that middle yellow square at the centre-top of that, it would show me that that block is an episode of The Engadget Show podcast that I’m subscribed to. From there I can decide to delete the block, open up the containing folder etc etc.

 

All in all, a great piece of software if you’ve got a mass of data and/or multiples hard drives to keep up with (like me and my 2 terabytes of storage over 4 drives). WinDirStat is available only for Windows.

 

You can find WinDirStat and the download links on their homepage here.

Technorati Tags: WinDirStat,drive imager

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Google set to enter the Operating System arena

Google has announced earlier today that it’s set to challenge Microsoft and the new Windows 7 with it’s Google Chrome OS. This piece of news announced on the Google Blogs site will be the first time that Google has attempted to create an operating system for a desktop pc and looks to go straight for Microsoft’s new baby, Windows 7.

 

Over 30 million people use the Google Chrome Browser which was launched just over 9 months ago in 2008 and has been widely hailed as a success namely for it’s speed and simplicity. This philosophy is what Google aims to bring to it’s new operating system.

 

An extract from the blog post on the Google Blogs site:

 

Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We're designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don't have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.

 

Initially, they’ll be aiming this new operating system at netbooks due to it’s smaller storage capacities and slower CPU’s but the Chrome OS will look to eventually be used on PC’s too. Who needs to watch out next year? Clearly the Linux crowd will be most affected by this announcement. The Linux OS has slowly but steadily been building steam over the last decade or so entering into the mainstream market and consumers alike with it’s community driven open sourced system, however with the entering of one of the big boys, who is to say that Google won’t eventually kick Linux out of the netbook market for which it’s beginning to gain a foothold on.

 

Apple can be rest assured that for now, Chrome OS appears to be designed for the PC infrastructure and Microsoft, although having around a 90% dominance in market share for the OS market will certainly have to look over it’s shoulder. The key is whether or not they’ll respond to this announcement by throwing the kitchen sink at netbooks and developing a smaller and more lightweight version of either XP or 7 to challenge what’ll inevitably be a very lightweight Chrome OS.

 

What we can expect from the Chrome OS will likely be a marring of both the Chrome Browser and the Google Wave concept which was announced a few months back. That is, the synchronisation of all the Google services with your desktop. For example, your Gmail will appear as a desktop widget, your Google calendar will replace the one on the system tray and be instantly synchronised. Forget the saving office documents to your hard drive, we may see your My Documents turn to Google Documents and be accessible online. If you’re on blogger, a native software application that allows you to post directly to your Google Blogspot account. All in all, that future of cloud computing could yet become a sooner reality than we thought.

 

The new OS is expecting to ship by summer 2010.

 

Technorati Tags: Google,Chrome,operating Systems,windows,apple,mac,microsoft

 

Related articles

• Google Chrome OS: Web developers rule! :) (ajaxian.com)
• Introducing the Google Chrome OS (googleblog.blogspot.com)
• Google Drops A Nuclear Bomb On Microsoft. And It's Made of Chrome. (techcrunch.com)
• More Operating Systems News (computerworld.com)
• Google Chrome - Next A Google OS? (lockergnome.com)
• Linux, A Preferred OS In The Cloud Based World (cloudave.com)

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Firefox … Because God uses it too

The following images have not been photo shopped in any way shape or form (aside from the actual icon obviously) and is irrefutably a clear sign from the big man upstairs that he too uses Firefox.

These incredible images were taken in March 2004 by the Hubble Space Telescope. The actual star in question is the rather charismatically named, V838 Monocerotis.

Whatever. Clearly the “Firefox Star: Heaven Edition” holds the cosmological higher ground against Internet Explorer. So suck it Microsoft. Because God says so.

Technorati Tags: Firefox,Astrology,God

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Top 10: Reviews of the Most Essential Software around

I figured it’s probably now a good time to be a charitable citizen of the inter-webs and to publish my list of essential software nobody should go on without. The best thing is that everything on this list is absolutely free and available like the no-strings-attached one nighter you picked up last weekend.

For those of you who aren’t as tech savvy as the rest of us, some of the following list contains Open Source Software which are basically alternative software to their more commercialised counterparts such as Adobe Photoshop, Microsoft Office etc etc. These can become absolute lifesavers if you’re running out of coins in the old piggy bank and can’t afford to dish out the $2,500 it costs for Adobe’s Creative Suite Collection.

Also I’ve noted down any other notable software that might be related for you to check out in case my choices don’t quite fly with you along with the URLs as to where you can find more information about the software and where to download them from.

Considering how diverse a category this bunch of software is, I’ll order them in terms of what I use most and find most useful. So let’s kick off the list with the one, the only …

 

OpenOffice.org

You might have read my recent review of the Microsoft’s latest offering: Office 2010 but what you might not have known is that there are several open source variations which are more often or not free. Leading the way in this department is OpenOffice.Org. This suite of applications incorporate most the programs you would normally find in Office but free and developed by the community. Their latest offering (Version 3.1) runs on all platforms, so whether you’re a MAC, Linux or Windows user, you can not only edit on one machine, but you can then take it over to another platform without any hassle. It’s also available in a variety of languages and can handle most common document types.

Personally I don’t use this (which explains why it’s last) but I do know of many people who do on a daily basis and recommend it to me if you don’t have Office. I’ve always been a bit of an MS Office user myself and if you can get Office 2007/2010, I’d recommend them first but for those instances where you can’t, OpenOffice.org is definitely the way to go.

Notable alternatives:  Google Docs, Lotus Symphony, NeoOffice

Find it here: http://www.openoffice.org/

 

Polaris

Many of you reading this will be either bloggers or own a website, for those who aren’t just skip ahead to the next one on the list or at least drool at the Adobe Air Interface. This is the second application I’ve used based on the Adobe Air Platform (the other being Tweetdeck) and I must say, I’m very very impressed with how it runs on a whole new GUI and brings a breath of fresh air to what would otherwise be ordinary applications. Everything from the Installation to the setup and the final product makes you sit up and pay attention.

After experimenting with a couple of website tracking utilities, Google Analytics has been far and away the best in terms of ease of use and the way in which it represents data to you (not to mention free!). Google Analytics itself will be covered in a review on a later date when I run the comb over my favourite websites but Polaris brings essentially a beautiful dashboard to your desktop via the Analytics engine.

This free version allows for tracking of only one site, but this is perfect for me (as I only have one site) and apart from that, appears to have no other limitations. It’s quick and from the drop down menu, you can easily pull a variety of useful data you can glance at without the need of opening up a browsing and navigating the Analytics Website. All in all, an absolutely superb piece of software for those who need to track your website.

Notable Alternative: Awstats

Find it here: http://www.desktop-reporting.com/polaris.html

 

Virtual CloneDrive

Now I must admit that this is a new one on the list for me, and if I hadn’t switched over to Windows 7 RC that I would have probably never stumbled across this. However, seeing as my once preferred Daemon Tools (including Lite) doesn’t work with the new Windows as of yet, I’ve had to go looking elsewhere for a drive emulator. That is how I met Virtual CloneDrive and I haven’t looked back since. It runs in much the same way as Daemon Tools in that it sets up virtualised drives on your computer in order to run .iso files. This won’t mean much to people who don’t backup files and folders onto discs or who don’t download illegal educational games and software from the internet. But to those who do, this is an absolute gem and hasn’t failed me thus far.

Notable Alternatives: Daemon Tools, Alcohol 120%

Find it here: http://www.slysoft.com/en/virtual-clonedrive.html

 

Windows Movie Maker 2.1

Now this one might come as a bit of a surprise to you but yes Microsoft does release free software *recoil in horror*. Now once you’ve caught your breath back, Windows Movie Maker is my choice for a simple to use movie maker with a variety of customizable options such as title screens, transitions, text overlays etc. Just check the rest of my site, and you’ll find a few examples of my (amateurish) video editing skills. Yes I’m also perfectly aware that the Windows Live Movie Maker Beta is out but the library of effects and the customisability appears to be stripped down for some unknown reason. There might be a way of displaying and showing the timeline in the new one, but I haven’t found it and it looks to me like Microsoft have taken a step backwards.

A lot of you on the Mac platform will have the iCanMakeAnAmazingMovie software anyways and other more serious video makers with probably use Avidemux but that requires a bit of time and patience to get around the software. So if you’re not too concerned with making top notch productions and like me, mostly just post your videos to YouTube, this is a smart and easy to use piece of kit. Although they’ve taken a step backwards with new software it at least makes clear that not all new software upgrades actually upgrades software.

Notable Alternatives: Avidemux, Adobe Premier Pro, iMovie, Pinnacle Studio

Find it here: http://bit.ly/Lg8Xq

 

AVG

What has been the most reliable and unobtrusive anti-virus for the past few years in my opinion? Only one answer. AVG. For someone who downloads an obscene quantity of data on a daily basis, I’m really quite surprised that I haven’t had a major virus or anything come through ( cue the shooting myself in the foot scenario aka waves of hackers ). On the off chance that I do download a dodgy piece of software, up pops AVG like an experienced bouncer at a London nightclub. Without AVG, I’d definitely have a stockpile of buggered up CPU’s around my dorm and a general wasteland of Trojans and Worms all over my system.

Yet thanks to AVG, it runs nicely in the background and you won’t even notice it. It does have a few handy features such as being able to scan links sent to you via email or highlighting dangerous sites on Google. This is certainly a much sweeter answer than Norton Antivirus which in my opinion is way over-bloated and acts like an annoying child, asking permission of this, permission for that, permission to …

Notable Alternatives: Avast, NOD32, Avira AntiVir Personal , Clam Antivirus

Find it here: http://free.avg.com/

 

Live Messenger + Messenger Plus!

Chat. Some people do it, and some people don’t. For those who do, I’m not going to talk about the new Live Messenger as such but instead focus on the superb add-on: Messenger Plus! (the exclamation mark is actually the title, I didn’t just feel excited ..). This Live Messenger Extension practically beefs up Messenger to a point which Arnie would be proud of. There is a huge list of features which would take me months to get through (minutes really but I’m feeling lazy) so check out the site to see the full list. The one’s I think you should pay attention to the most because I couldn’t live without them is Tabbed Chats, Boss Protection and HTML Chat Logging.The first feature makes organising all your chat windows into one box with the ability to Ctrl + Tab your way through conversations. The second makes pressing a preset keyboard shortcut minimise all windows to one icon in the system tray and hide any sounds or pop ups from appearing. The third includes secure encrypting of logs and displaying them in a much nicer fashion.

Notable Alternatives: none that i would trust not to break msn

Find it here: http://www.msgplus.net/

 

7-Zip

Anyone whose ever come across a .zip or .rar or even the .001 type files will know that the inbuilt windows extractor is deeply out of it’s depth. Here I bring you 7-Zip, a free file extraction utility that can quickly and easily extract virtually any file, whether the file was even meant for this type of extraction or not. What makes this really easy to use is that you can change the Windows context menu in order to make extracting a simple two click process and absolutely hassle free.

The screenshot below shows  the built in Windows Context Menu in action. Just right click and then on extract here and it’ll do the rest.

Notable Alternatives: WinZip, WinRAR, IZArc

Find it here: http://www.7-zip.org/download.html

 

Picasa 3

As I was searching for a better way of organising and viewing my tens upon thousands of pornographic personal images, I came across Picasa 3. Under the heading of Google, Picasa 3 provides a very quick and easy solution to managing photo libraries small and large. Picasa 3 has features such as being able to automatically update the library any time it detects new images in any assigned folders, it can detect duplicates in all your folders to keep your photo library clean and also create fancy collages to your viewing delight.

Also it includes native support for uploading to the Picasa Web Albums directory and although it’s not too apparent from the screenshot below, the interface does make it both very simple to navigate and provides very cool looking graphicsSomething that I hadn’t noticed before was that opening pictures from Windows Explorer opens up a Cooliris-esque picture viewer which overlays the image you want to see on top of windows which looks incredibly sleek and if your GPU is up to it, is a very satisfying piece of eye candy. In terms of the UI, this definitely has one leg up over Windows Live Photo Gallery.

Notable Alternatives: IrfanView, Flickr

Find it here: http://picasa.google.com/

 

FeedDemon

Anybody who reads the news particularly a lot or needs to keep track of their favourite websites, subscribes to the RSS or Atom feeds right? Well with NewsGator’s FeedDemon, the software essentially aggregates all your news feeds and delivers it right to your desktop. Usually it’s the first thing i open when I switch on my laptop and keep up to date in the world of tech and news and (rightly or wrongly) takes priority over breakfast.

It’s as simple as clicking subscribe, typing in the name of your website, it'll find the feed for that site and once you’re done, it’ll  automatically download new posts depending on how often you would like to be updated. Whether that be once every 30 minutes or every 3 hours is up to you. If you’re done reading but wish to keep it in the background, closing it via the X can be altered to minimise to the system tray.

There’s the added functionality of clipping which is HUGELY useful if like me, you have half a kazillion feeds and say you see something interesting but don’t have time to read it, you can send it straight to the local or online clippings folder and access it later whenever you want.

Notable Alternatives: Google Reader, Vienna

Find it here: http://www.newsgator.com/Individuals/FeedDemon/Default.aspx 

 

VLC Media Player

Quite literally the definition of multi-format media players. I’ve yet to come across a video or audio file on my daily use that this multi-faceted player could not handle. When installed, it can either be used “straight out the box” or a further delve into the options reveals the ability to rip CDs, to convert file formats and even enabling simple re-skinning of the entire interface. Not much else to say but once you’ve installed VLC, then you won’t ever have to find a reason to rummage around for codecs.

Notable Alternatives: Media Player Classic, Kantaris, GOM Player, Real Alternative

Find it here: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/ 

 

Firefox

Yup, as the photo up top was probably a big clue, the number one spot goes to Firefox. Now where to begin with Firefox. Firefox has in my opinion not only provided a great open source platform for which millions of users browse the web from but has also changed our behaviour in how we interact with the Web. From simple features that we often take for granted such as tabbed browsing to the more complex and forward thinking ideas of Ubiquity, Firefox has managed to bring internet browsing to the next generation of users.

Now I’ll keep this short and sweet because I’ll do a separate article specifically just about Firefox at a later date highlighting everything from the best extensions to new upcoming ideas and a review of the new Firefox 3.5 ridiculously quick TraceMonkey Javascript engine. But to the 90% of my readers who are reading this on Firefox, when was the last time you went a day without clicking on the Orange and Blue icon? Case Closed?

Notable Alternatives: Google Chrome, Safari, Opera

Find it here:http://getfirefox.com/

 

Feel free to leave a comment just down below and subcribe to the site. It would be very much appreciated. If you think i’ve missed a trick somewhere software wise then throw down what you think should’ve been in this list and have yourselves a little debate.

 

Technorati Tags: Openoffice,polaris,firefox,vlc,open source,applications,software,avg,7-zip,feeddemon,picasa,google,msn

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Office 2010 First Look Review

Aside from the Windows Operating System, name one piece of software that’s become totally synonymous amongst students, working professionals and academics? Microsoft Office. Just try to imagine a world without Word, Excel and (to probably 99% of work spaces) Outlook. It’s no wonder that Microsoft have such a stranglehold over academic centres and businesses alike. Here I’ll be taking you through a brief look at the new Office suite due for release in the first quarter of 2010. Bare in mind that this is based on just a few days of usage and is based upon the Office 2010 Technical Preview edition so there may be features which could be implemented into later release editions.

Here is just a quick screencast of some of the applications in Office. The observant among you will have realised that Outlook has deliberately been left out, the reason being that I need to find a way of screencasting this without showing the world my personal emails and account details. Apologies for the weird screen resolution, I didn’t realise i had the wrong one until all the editing was done and was posted to YouTube and all. But hopefully the screenshots will make up for it.

For some still largely unknown reason to me, Office 2007 was slated upon it’s release. Either this is because of the negative press of Vista dripping onto it’s other Microsoft products or because people genuinely didn’t like it. Either way, for the last few years the Development team for Office has focused on three main items which are Productivity, Simplicity and Design. Although Office 2010 will be released as a new package, it does seem to me like it’s more an evolution of the existing software rather than a revolution.

Ribbon System

The much criticised ribbon system found in Office 2007 is back and clearly here to stay in Office 2010. In fact it’s been rolled out to not only across the Office Suite (notably Outlook 2010) but also across much of Windows 7 (notably Paint and Wordpad). Personally I’ve held the opinion that this Ribbon system is a good thing in office applications because once you’ve gotten used to it, it makes things like updating your bibliography or inserting a chart an absolute doddle.

But note when I say once you’ve gotten used to it because i feel that’s exactly what has put people off updating to Office 2007. Yes things were good the way they were in previous editions of Office and people have come to live with the drop-down

menu way of navigating and clearly the saying “If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it” comes to mind. However I think that with proper prolonged use it’s not too hard to see the benefits of this new system of navigating. Of course if you feel that you’re still reluctant or struggling to use even Office 2007, there are utilities out there which mix the menu bar and ribbon systems.

New Splash Screen

Now with new software clearly in order to sell, the design interface has to look different in order to actually get copies off the shelves. There’s been a few changes notably to the ribbon(look up) and also to the splash screen and almost a fancy “start page”.

The thing i did notice about the splash screen is the almost innocuous looking minimize and close button in the top right hand corner. It really is not noticeable unless you do a screenshot and actually look at it. Truth be told, this splash screen only shows for a second on a computer with average specs so you probably won’t be needing it all that much.

Office Button Page

The most notable new change from a design aspect is without a doubt the new “Office Button” page. I’m not too sure what to call this exactly because it appears as a very bold and in my opinion, very appealing on the eye. However in order to reach this page, you’ll need to access it via the “Office Button” in the top left which are colour coded according to which application you use.

  

This colour co-ordination i think is really quite smart. Try looking at the images of the coloured buttons above and try and guess what applications they came from. Guessed yet? It’s Word, Excel and Outlook.

Anyways one thing which i am a little confused at with this new fancy pants page is why not make it load at startup. Would it not be easier for it load as soon as Word or Excel finishes loading?  They do it in Publisher which works well, why not Word or Excel or Powerpoint? That said, the UI does look very impressive and for those who seemingly NEVER get the hang of printing, it does make life a little easier.

And here are a few screenshots of the Office button page in some of the other applications.

  

Jumplists

One feature that I couldn’t get working on my computer was that of jumplists. I think the following screenshot is fairly selfexplantory about what this does. Screenshot comes from Robert McLaw’s blog demonstrating jump lists in Outlook 2010.

Conclusions

There haven’t been any bugs just yet but it’s still early days and what I’d like to see implemented is more across the board implementation. Rather than a suite of applications that launch in a stand alone fashion, would it not perhaps be easier to be able to have the ability to get into Excel FROM Word and vice versa. Rather than having two windows open, maybe just the one where you could interact with both simultaneously. However beautiful the windows taskbar is, items can become impossible to manage when you have a few office documents running at the same time.

Clearly not much has actually changed from Office 2007 and this blog post isn’t a comprehensive review of all the new features but only a First Look. There were minor changes to placement of icons and different ribbon buttons here and there but as I mentioned above, they clearly wouldn’t want to constantly have to reinvent the office every 3 years causing customers to re-learn their computing habits. For that reason, this should be seen as more an evolution of Office 2007 rather than a revolution which in my book makes just a whole lot of sense.

 

Office Humour

I guess the guys over at Microsoft do have a sense of humour after all.

Technorati Tags: office,word,excel,access,outlook,pdf,microsoft,technical preview,screenshots,office 2010

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