Potpourri Of Tech: Blu-Ray, Starbucks Wireless, Firefly, And More!
It has been a slow weekend in the tech world… not really, but most of it is boring to regular people so I thought I’d spare most of you.
There are few things that have come to mind I thought I’d let you know about.
Apple released a large update to their Leopard operating system. Lots of fixes and tweaks. Be sure to run Software Update again after installing because there is a graphics update as well. Also, open Disk Utility (from Utilities folder in Applications) and run the “Repair Disk Permissions” on your system hard drive.
WHDb.com released an article with the top 50 proprietary programs that drive you crazy and their open source alternatives. I don’t necessarily agree with some of their “top” picks, but the list is pretty complete. I suggest you check it out when you get a chance. It is mostly Windows centric, but there are a variety of Apple apps on there as well.
I’ve been using twitter regularly lately and I think I’ve finally settled on a desktop app. It is called Twhirl and does all the things I liked in the other programs I tried and none of the usual irritations. It will run on Windows and Mac using Adobe AIR (AIR will be coming to Linux soon). If you have a Blackberry, I recommend TwitterBerry. You can find me on twitter here.
Steven Brust has written a short story based in the Firefly world called My Own Kind of Freedom. It is free to download under Creative Commons and it is a nice added episode to the Firefly world. Yes… the entire crew is in it. It’s a pretty good read and since it’s free you really can’t complain can you? I think it is a worthy addition to the rest of the canon.
Starbucks is leaving T-Mobile and moving to AT&T for their wireless services in their billions of coffee shops. Current T-Mobile customers will still get 5 years of usage while AT&T broadband customers will have free access to even more wireless locations. AT&T Cellular customers will be getting the same benefits soon. Check here for current AT&T wireless hotspots around the world.
It looks like Blu-ray Disc may come out the winner in the HD Disc format wars. Two more big players are backing Blu-ray. Best Buy and Netflix have both stated that they are backing Blu-ray. Netflix will no longer refresh their inventory of current HDDVDs and Best Buy will be recommending Blu-ray over HDDVD. Ars has the details about this latest development in the “format wars”.
As always – if you are looking for distractions, check out My Pownce or the feed to the right. Watch the Delicious bookmarks at the right too as interesting sites I find will end up there as well.
So it wasn’t too boring… was it?
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yeah good thing i read this because i didn’t know about the graphics update. thanks for that.
i read about the hd-dvd snub, and was going to make a post about it, but you beat me to it, and besides i had that contest going on. LOL
Poor, poor HD-DVD.