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Handhelds

Submission + - Bluetooth vs IR for Remote Controls

Submitted by StToast
StToast writes: Why haven't manufacturers adopted Bluetooth for home electronics remote controls? Aside from the backward compatibility/universal remote issues, how does Bluetooth measure up to IR for things like battery life and range? Obviously, Bluetooth performs better in regards to line of sight issues (my cat loves to lay in front of the DVD player, blocking the IR eye).
Handhelds

Submission + - Blackberry break and switch tactic

Submitted by dynomitejj
dynomitejj writes: My organization uses 4 Blackberry devices. We forward the users mail to those devices. After working fine for a year, all of the sudden, we're getting postfix error messages from Blackberry's server. When talking to Blackberry tech support, they suggested that we use the Blackberry Enterprise Server. If we had 50 devices, this might make sense, but we only have 4 devices and we're forwarding about 40 emails per day to each of those devices. Now, after a week of not being able to forward mail, I'm getting no response at all from Blackberry Tech Support. Have any other Slashdot readers had similar experiences with Blackberry ? Basically I feel like I'm being snubbed because I don't want to buy Blackberry Enterprise Server. There are several reasons for this. Cost is not the main factor. I don't want to be locked into Blackberry Software. I like using Postfix and just forwarding the email to the users Blackberry address. I can relay mail through my ISP to get around this issue, but that's not a good long term solution either.
Printer

Submission + - Will I Be Able To Print From The iPhone? (fixyourthinking.com)

Submitted by
Rus
Rus writes: "Since taking a job with AT&T (specifically focusing on iPhone support) the most repeated question I have received other than, "Can I get on a reserve list?" is; "Can I print from the iPhone?" I say there is a good possibility that the iPhone will be able to print via Bluetooth. If Apple advertises this as "this isn't the watered down version of the internet" — I say the internet is printable. If they advertise "a phone like no other" — I say the average smartphone is VERY difficult to learn how to print from — if you can print from it at all. This is one thing I loved about the Newton. If you bought an Apple Stylewriter inkjet printer — boom — you were printing with little to no effort. I'm interested in what informed Slashdot readers have to say about this."
Sony

Sony Looks to 'Refine' PS3 Price 182

Posted by Zonk from the that's-corpspeak-for-price-cut dept.
Via GameDaily a Financial Times interview with with Sir Howard Stringer, Sony's CEO, gives fans the first hope that price cuts may be coming soon. Lauding the Wii's performance in last month's NPD numbers, Stringer says that Sony is looking to 'refine' the PS3's pricepoint. "'Nintendo Wii has been a successful enterprise, and a very good business model, compared with ours . . . because it's cheaper,' Mr Stringer said in a video interview. 'That [price cuts] is what we are studying at the moment. That's what we are trying to refine.' Sir Howard said he expected 'energy [in PS3 sales] by Christmas, and then you will begin to see break-out games'. Sony is launching a virtual-world game called Home this year, and up to 30 other games."
Software

Submission + - Slackware Linux 12.0 RC1

Submitted by theologu
theologu writes: Patrick Volkerding has announced the first release candidate of Slackware Linux 12.0: "It's that time again, and here we have Slackware 12.0 release candidate 1! If we're lucky, we got it all right the first time. Big thanks to the crew." This message has been posted on the distribution's current changelog, together with a large number of package updates. The upcoming Slackware Linux 12.0 is a major new version; this is the first time a Slackware release will default to a 2.6 kernel (version 2.6.21.5), now compiled with GCC 4 (version 4.1.2). Many other packages also come in their latest versions: the modular X.Org 7.2 with Xgl and Compiz support, KDE 3.5.7, Xfce 4.4.1 and, at long last, Apache 2.2 with PHP 5. As usual, there is no ISO image available for download, but interested beta testers should keep an eye on this FTP server which periodically publishes unofficial ISO images built from the current tree; alternatively, you can build your own DVD image by following these instructions. Happy testing!
User Journal

Journal Journal: Where are the open source counterparts to popular web apps?

Journal by edmicman

Open source has given us very competitive alternatives to some commercial powerhouses in software. Office suites (OpenOffice.org vs Microsoft Office), Image editing (GIMP vs Photoshop), web browsers (Firefox vs IE), instant messengers (Gaim/Pidgin, millions of others vs the standard clients), plus a ton of other apps, both standalone and web hosted. But where are the open source counterparts to popular commercial web apps? Specifically, I'm looking at email and image galleries.
Google

Submission + - Google Calendar Broken - No response from Google (google.com)

Submitted by Porphyro
Porphyro writes: Many users of "Google Apps for Your Domain" have been experiencing problems with the Google-developed calendar gadget not displaying any information. This has been going on for over two months. The initial solution — upgrading to a new version of the gadget — worked for users of the recently-rebranded iGoogle, but not for users of GAfYD. While Google initially attempted to assist users with this problem via a thread on Google Groups, there has been no response from Google for over a week. It is important to note that the bug is also affecting paying users.
Utilities (Apple)

Submission + - Adium code forked over Leopard Dispute (livejournal.com)

Submitted by admiralfrijole
admiralfrijole writes: Earlier this week, several people opened tickets against Adium crashes occurring in the latest Leopard Beta, which started a veritable firestorm of controversy that included discussions of GPL violations, disabling features, and quite a spat across no less than 3 different IRC channels.

Today, one of the people who filed a ticket and was told that it would not be fixed until Leopard ships announced on his blog that he, and several other unnamed individuals, have forked Adium to create A.org.
Software

Submission + - Pidgin 2.0 Released

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: After nearly two years of development, Pidgin 2.0 has finally been released! Originally called Gaim, Pidgin is a powerful and robust open source instant messaging client that supports many protocols. Pidgin 2.0 features a completely redesigned interface with attractive new icons and and a new status management system that was designed for optimal usability. Pidgin 2.0 also adds support for universal buddy icon management and smooth-scroll functionality for conversation windows. A comprehensive review at Ars Technica explores the new features in Pidgin 2.0 and demonstrates how to use the new D-Bus bindings with Python to make Pidgin's status system send updates to Twitter.
Education

Journal Journal: Despair (again)

Journal by TiggsPanther

OK, I'm really beginning to despair about some of the students in the Digital Cameras class. Smoe of them are totally new to comptuers, but they're not the problem. There are students here who take computeing course here at other times, and they're having problems as they're getting stuck at this that they should already know.
I'm reasonably sure that they should already have been told about saving files to their network space, and that My Documents doesn't work for saving files

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