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Comment Mobile Browser Gmail Blows... (Score 1) 122

by Phaedra (#38019018) Attached to: Google Pulls the Plug On BlackBerry Gmail App
I'll be the first to admit that the Gmail app isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer but IMHO it is a much better experience than the terribly mischaracterized 'great Gmail experience in the mobile browser' on my 9700. The Gmail app is one click to see all of my incoming mail and to easily search and retrieve current or archived mail is another click with the refresh times an order of magnitude better than going through the browser or using the RIM mail app for Gmail. The Gmail app at least had a slight 'feel' of regular Gmail whereas the RIM catch-all mail & message emporium works like a twitter feed, with none of the handy Gmail specific tie-ins that make using the Gmail app a relative pleasure. I'm sorry to see that it's being dropped rather than improved.

Submission + - [Pics] ECS Shows Universal Padfone-like Tablet (itproportal.com)

Submitted by siliconbits
siliconbits writes: Just 24 hours after Asus launched its padfone, ECS is toying with an idea that resembles the Asus PadFone, in a nutshell, a tablet that becomes a docking station for your smartphone just by slotting it at the back. We spoke earlier today to Jaryson Wu, project manager at ICE Computer, ECS' partner for the project and he presented us with a mock, non-working prototype.

Submission + - /. QOTD Doesn't Update for Days!! (slashdot.org) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Quote Of The Day (QOTD), commonly found at the page bottom of the nerd-popular site, 'slashdto.org' has not updated for days!! Alien abduction of the site admins? Terrorist takeover? Government takeover? Is there a difference? (or is this just an 'IE-only' kind of thing?)

Struggling geeks everywhere turn their lonely eyes towards the interwebz and wait. And wonder: Will those tiny glimpses of joy ever return?
Book Reviews

Submission + - BookReview: Scribus Beginners Guide

Submitted by
JR0cket
JR0cket writes: "Scribus is an open source desktop publishing tool that helps you create professionally laid out documents, from simple documents to full blown magazines, corporate brochures or even books. Desktop publishing tools are not a replacement for word processors, instead they give you the freedom to create uniquely designed documents and help you manage large sets of text and graphic content. Scribus is similar to Adobe InDesign or Quarq Xpress and gives you a wide range of tools to layout content in either print or digital media form. Scribus is pretty easy to get to grips with and has good documentaton on the project website. The Scribus 1.3.5 beginners guide is a really handy guide through the workflow of desktop publishing and helps you clearly understand how to create professional looking results.

The book includes a simple comparison between Scribus and other desktop publsihing tools such as InDesign, Quark Express and Microsoft publisher, setting expectations clearly as to what you can get from Scribus and the kind of interoperability between desktop publishing tools (its a little limited, but the Scribus project is trying and is the most open).

The book begins by covering some theory behind desktop publishing, using the metaphor — What you see is what you mean — to get you thinking about the overal design that would appeal to your audience, whilst also considering the resource and media constraints you have. As with developing software, knowing the needs of your audience is an important factor in the layout of your documents. Knowing the limitations of what you can print out effectively or deliver as other media is an important set of constraints to consider.

An important concept to understand is the "graphic workflow" for desktop publishing. The first chapter therefore covers the use of Inkscape, Gimp and LibreOffice (open office) to create and manage your content (text and images) and then using Scribus to pull that content together in an appealing and productive layout. Also covered is the idea of using Inkscape as a tool for mock-up designs. I see Scribus as kind of the the big brother to Inkscape (review) in that Inkscape works with a single page document, whereas Scribus can manage content across a multiple page document. You can assemble some very intricate documents using Scribus that would take a lot of time and effort to do using Inkscape and word processors such as Libre office and Microsoft office.

Next is the overview of the Scribus workspace, including details of the menus and tool bars for which there are many. This overview is very easy to understand, especially for someone who has little or no experience. The coverage of the text, graphics and page layout options are very detailed and nicey sprinkled with mini-tutorials to help you get to grips with Scribus quickly. The first tutorial guides you through the creation of a simple business card, so you get a nice gentle start whilst still being practical.

Due to the good layout and extensive use of screenshots its easy for an advanced user to skip through to the parts of the workspace you want to learn about.

Once the Scribus workstation is covered, the book goes on to detail how to create your own layouts for desktop publishing using all the features of Scribus. Again you are guided step-by-step through the various options for choosing a document layout and managing the structure of your documents, using frames for importing and managing text and graphics, changing colours and styles, stacking and layers to manage the presentation, distorting shapes using resizing, rotating / scaling frames, alignment and distribution of objects. There are a lot of layout options in Scribus and the book does a good job of introducing each aspect. Again this is done using a step by step tutorial style and the odd pop-quiz that helps you quickly gain confidence with the tool.

There is good coverage of the how Scribus handles advanced colour features. Using shading, gradient fills, pattern fills and transparency of images and the use of layers, its shown how to create eye-catching effects to enhance your documents. Support for CMYK and colour profiles is covered when talking about profiling with the Argyll plugin for Scribus.

As printing documents is full of pitfalls, in part due to the wide range of printing hardware out there, there is a whole chapter on this topic. Scribus has a pre-flight verifier to check the quality of your document output and can give you a lot of information and highlight any errors in PDF generation. Using the print preview you can see examples of colour separation and ink coverage, all very important for print media. There is also some very useful information for book production, marks and bleeds, security for pdf's and all the various standards for pdf documents.

Overall the book gives a complete coverage of all the typical layout techniques you will need for your desktop publishing efforts the book. By the time you reach the end of the book you will know how to produce an Adobe portable document file (pdf) that is suitable for your print or online distribution.

Please note: Scribus has recently moved to a new file format its documents and the book referes to the Scribus version which uses this new file format. Documents created with older versions of Scribus are supported in all newer versions, but document created in 1.3.5 onwards are not backwards compatible. On Debian based system, both the older version of Scribus and newer version Scribus-NG can be run side by side.

The Scribus beginers guide book has a well presented layout with content nicely spaced through the books 348 pages, making it comfortable to read both in book and ebook form. Althought there is plenty of information online, the book is a great way to get started and give you confidence in your approach and use of Scribus, so you can make use of the reference materials online.

There are several books available for Scribus, however the Scribus 1.3.5 beginners guide is the most up to date, covering all the latest features of this evolving tool. This book makes a nice addition to the online reference documentation and the community resources available for Scribus.

About the reviewer

John coaches Lean Agile practices, organises London technical communities and is an OSS advocate. @JR0cket"
Image

Face-Mounted Nose Stylus Created For Phones Screenshot-sm 208

Posted by samzenpus from the because-he-can dept.
Lanxon writes "Designer Dominic Wilcox has come up with a Pinocchio-style 'finger-nose stylus' that lets you use your phone hands free, reports Wired. He came up with the design after he found that he wanted to use his touchphone in the bath. A wet hand is not a good touchscreen navigation device, so he found himself using his nose to scroll, but found it hard to see precisely where his nose was touching the screen. The solution was to create a nose extension 'finger' that would allow for navigation while holding the phone firmly in his one dry hand."
BSD

Submission + - FreeNAS 8.0 released: now roll your own NAS box (extremetech.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: FreeNAS 8.0, based on FreeBSD 8.2, was released a couple of days ago. If you haven't got a network-attached storage box, now's the time to make one — and all you need is an old rig, a 1GB memory stick, and about half an hour to put it all together.
Slashback

Journal Journal: Matt Welsh 3

Journal by Jeremiah Cornelius

Why is that damned quote stuck for over a week in the slashdot footer- without fortune rolling a new one?
Businesses

Submission + - Supreme Court: AT&T can force arbitration, blo (arstechnica.com)

Submitted by suraj.sun
suraj.sun writes: Supreme Court: AT&T can force arbitration, block class-action suits

The Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that AT&T—and indeed, any company—could block class-action suits arising from disputes with customers and instead force those customers into binding arbitration. The ruling reverses previous lower-court decisions that classified stipulations in AT&T's service contract which barred class arbitration as "unconscionable."

The decision, which fell precisely along ideological lines, could have far-reaching effects on consumers' ability to challenge corporations in court over future disputes. In cases where an unfair practice affects large numbers of customers, AT&T or other companies could quietly settle a few individual claims instead of being faced with larger class-action settlements which might include punitive awards designed to discourage future bad practices.

ars technica: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/04/scotus-rules-att-can-force-arbitration-block-class-action-suits.ars
Ubuntu

Submission + - Ubuntu 11.04 released (canonical.com)

Submitted by
tandiond
tandiond writes: "Finally...
"Canonical today announced the upcoming release of the Ubuntu operating system on April 28, 2011 for public download. Ubuntu 11.04 introduces Unity, Ubuntu’s new interface, which is simpler, easier to use and more beautiful than previous editions of Ubuntu. This is the culmination of two years’ design and engineering effort by Canonical and the Ubuntu community. Ubuntu 11.04 stands out from its competitors as a genuine free alternative to Windows, allowing users to personalize their PC with free and paid apps in a way that’s proven hugely popular in the smartphone and tablet market."

It is a bit hard to download the iso image. Several attempts to click the link failed. Looks like The download link was loaded with enthusiast users already."
The Internet

Submission + - Universities "fail students" (timeshighereducation.co.uk)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Universities fail students because they are based on 19th and 20th century heirarchies of learning and knowledge transfer and stratification and have ignored the revolutionary impact of the internet argues Cathy N. Davidson of Duke University. In future universities will have to recognise that "the world is flat" and subject barriers will be broken by the interconnection the internet brings. Not everyone agrees — science demands specialisation argues this blogger — http://cartesianproduct.wordpress.com/2011/04/28/do-universities-fail-science-students/
Microsoft

Submission + - Paul Allen on the Dark Side of the Ocean and More

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: A week after his 60 Minutes appearance, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen lets his guard down a bit more as he talks about his new book 'Idea Man' at Town Hall Seattle to a hometown audience that included his old college girlfriend Rita (who served up chicken that Bill Gates found spoon-eating good). In a wide-ranging interview, Allen cops to being a fan of Star Wars, Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica, says it took him 25 years to 'play a half-decent Purple Haze,' and explains the appeal of a personal submarine this way: 'It turns out if you go 1,000 feet down in the ocean, it's really dark, and the animals are really strange, but if you put on some Pink Floyd, it's fantastic.' Allen added that 'no one has disagreed or contradicted any fact or any memory' in the memoir, which includes a story of overhearing Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer plotting to dilute Allen's Microsoft shares into insignificance at a time with Allen was dying of non-Hodgkins lymphoma.
Patents

Submission + - Google Loses Bedrock Suit, All Linux May Infringe (cnet.com)

Submitted by blair1q
blair1q writes: cnet reports that Google has lost the lawsuit brought by Bedrock, is infringing on Patent 5,893,120 "Methods and apparatus for information storage and retrieval using a hashing technique with external chaining and on-the-fly removal of expired data," and has exposed the Linux kernel, in which the infringing code reportedly appears, to liability for patent-license fees. RedHat also participated in the suit, arguing that the patent was invalid, but the court decided otherwise.

Submission + - Android Devices Banned From Princeton Campus (nyud.net) 1

Submitted by pmdubs
pmdubs writes: A major bug in the Android DHCP implementation has forced network administrators to (effectively) ban the use of such devices on the Princeton campus. In the last few months, Princeton has had to kick more than 400 Android devices off the campus network for using IP addresses well beyond the alloted DHCP lease (to the detriment of other users), sending invalid DHCPREQUEST messages after lease expiration, and a variety of other wacky behaviors. The link provides a clearly documented explanation of the buggy behavior, as does this largely neglected bug report [http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=11236].

Without doubt, this buggy behavior is affecting other, less vigilant networks, and disrupting wifi traffic for android and non-android devices alike.

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