toufeeq - Slashdot User

Palm Pre To Sync Seamlessly With iTunes 178

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday May 29, 2009 @12:46PM from the middle-finger-included dept.

Wired is reporting that Palm's new handheld device, the Pre, will be able to sync automagically with Apple's iTunes. Thanks to a team of ex-Apple engineers the Pre will sync everything but iPhone applications and some of the older Fairplay DRM music. "It does it by faking out iTunes, making the jukebox software think that it is connected to a real iPod. Hook it up and you'll be given three options: USB mass storage device, charging only or iTunes sync. This is a ballsy move from Palm, and we totally love it: a big fat middle finger at Apple. Apple will, we are sure, be readying its legal attack dogs as I write, and don't be at all surprised if an iTunes update pops up around June 6th. This fight just got a lot more interesting."

Top 10 Disappointing Technologies 682

Posted by timothy on Sunday May 17, 2009 @07:46PM from the top-10-lists-are-a-disappointing-technology dept.

Slatterz writes "Every once in a while, a product comes along that everyone from the executives to the analysts to even the crusty old reporters thinks will change the IT world. Sadly, they are often misguided. This article lists some of the top ten technology disappointments that failed to change the world, from the ludicrously priced Apple Lisa, to voice recognition, to Intel's ill-fated Itanium chip, and virtual reality, this article lists some of the top ten technology disappointments that failed to change the world." But wait! Don't give up too quickly on the Itanium, says the Register.

Extrapolating the Near Future of Gaming 196

Posted by Soulskill on Sunday May 17, 2009 @02:17PM from the no-duke-nukem-forever-jokes dept.

Sci-fi author Charlie Stross gave a keynote address at the recent LOGIN 2009 conference about what we can reasonably expect from games and game-related technology over the next 10 to 20 years. He takes a realistic look at the limitations we'll face with regard to processing power and bandwidth, and goes on to talk about how augmented reality software and aging gamers will affect future titles. Quoting: "But the sixty-something gamers of 2020 are not the same as the sixty-somethings you know today. They're you, only twenty years older. By then, you'll have a forty year history of gaming; you won't take kindly to being patronised, or given in-game tasks calibrated for today's sixty-somethings. The codgergamers of 2030 will be comfortable with the narrative flow of games. They're much more likely to be bored by trite plotting and cliched dialog than todays gamers. They're going to need less twitchy user interfaces — ones compatible with aging reflexes and presbyopic eyes — but better plot, character, and narrative development. And they're going to be playing on these exotic gizmos descended from the iPhone and its clones: gadgets that don't so much provide access to the internet as smear the internet all over the meatspace world around their owners."

Spider Missing After Trip To Space Station 507

Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday November 20, 2008 @11:56AM from the lost-in-space dept.

Garabito writes "A spider that had been sent to the International Space Station for a school science program was lost. Two arachnids were sent in order to know if spiders can survive and make webs in space, but now only one spider can be seen in the container. NASA isn't sure where the other spider could have gone. I, for one, welcome our new arachnid overlords."

Comment the KKKPc (Score 2, Interesting) 311

by toufeeq on Monday January 28, 2008 @11:59AM (#22208772) Attached to: Nokia Buys Trolltech

Sure, with the purchase of Trolltech, Nokia now can think of building an answer for Android. Sure they can now look at having a better widget toolkit than the one that ships with Symbian but here's my hunch..

The laptop segment is starting to see a wide range of ultr-portable low-cost PC's like the eeePC and the Everex Cloudbook. These run Linux with a lightweight GUI. Maybe Nokia is viewing this as the future of the ultramobile laptop segment and thinks it needs to have a foothold in that. Paying $150 million for that actually looks cheap IMHO.

Think about it, they have Maemo which is targetted at web-tablets and is stabilising quite well. They have Symbian , OpenC and Python for their high-end NSeries and ESeries phones. The one area of the "mobile" segement wherein they are currently lacking is the UMPC/el-cheapo laptop and by acquiring Trolltech and with it Qtopia/Qt they can make serious inroads into this upcoming area.

Bookmark Debian preferred Distro for Linux Device Developers (smokinglinux.com)

by crashlab on Sunday October 14, 2007 @07:57AM

Bookmark SPAM: Transparent Touch Screen Video

by tvsm22 on Sunday October 14, 2007 @06:44AM

Link to Original Source

Submission + - IBM Patents Checking a Box

Submitted by

theodp

on Tuesday October 02, 2007 @03:42AM

theodp writes: "Q. What do you call it when you drag a pointer over a checkbox to select or deselect it depending on its original state? A. US Patent 7,278,116! On Tuesday, the USPTO awarded IBM a patent for Mode Switching for Ad Hoc Checkbox Selection, aka Making an 'X'. BTW, isn't this essentially the same concept as the older Lotus Notes selection model that IBM was recently asked to reintroduce?"

Journal Journal: More Microsoft-Novell stuff ...

Journal by trolltalk.com on Monday October 01, 2007 @11:08AM

Everyone's still in a twist over the Microsoft-Novell deal, and the latest marketing spin "Do you want the linux that works with Windows ...". Like most, I wish the deal had never happened, but that doesn't mean I'm going to write off Novell just yet. The deal has 4 more years to go, and I believe that in those intervening 4 years, Novell will do the smart thing and abandon Miguel de Icaza, Mono, and Silverlight.

Nokia responds to iPhone by Promoting 'Open' 278

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday October 01, 2007 @10:38AM from the well-isn't-that-interesting dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Nokia has responded instantly to the iPhone update-bricking fiasco by running a series of flyposter ads pointing out its own hardware and software is open. While this is to be applauded, it'd be better if companies like this opened their products because they truly believed in openness, rather than to beat the competition over the head. After all, Apple itself used open source with OS X (kernel, web browser) mainly because they knew it would irritate Microsoft. Since that initial blow, they've been a lot less eager to promote open source."

Spam Sites Infesting Google Search Results 207

Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday October 01, 2007 @09:16AM from the hate-when-that-happens dept.

The Google Watchdog blog is reporting that "Spam and virus sites infesting the Google SERPs in several categories" and speculates, ...Google's own index has been hacked. The circumvention of a guideline normally picked up by the Googlebot quickly is worrisome. The fact that none of the sites have real content and don't appear to even be hosted anywhere is even more scary. How did millions of sites get indexed if they don't exist?

Sony Launches 3mm Thin XEL-1 OLED TV 160

Posted by kdawson on Monday October 01, 2007 @08:06AM from the techno-lust dept.

i4u writes "Sony introduces their first commercial OLED TV, the XEL-1. The stunning XEL-1 is what Sony teased on Friday on their site in Japan. The XEL-1 is an 11-inch display that is only 3 mm thin. It features a dramatic 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio and the power consumption is a low 45 W. Sony plans to start shipping the XEL-1 OLED TV on December 1 for 200,000 Yen (~$1,740). Here is Sony's OLED TV product page (in Japanese)."

A Concrete Solution To Pollution 276

Posted by CowboyNeal on Friday November 10, 2006 @07:49AM from the cleaning-up-the-town dept.

PreacherTom writes "With concerns over global warming and pollution control reaching an all-time high, an Italian company has developed an interesting solution. It is called TX Active: a concrete that literally breaks down pollutants in the air. The effects are significant: 'In large cities with persistent pollution problems caused by car emissions, smoke from heating systems, and industrial activities, both the company and outside experts estimate that covering 15% of all visible urban surfaces (painting the walls, repaving the roads) with products containing TX Active could abate pollution by up to 50%.' Even more significant is that the cost is only 30% over that of normal concrete. Remarkable."

A Look at FreeNAS Server 214

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Tuesday May 30, 2006 @01:37PM from the you-can-never-have-too-much-storage-space dept.

NewsForge (Also owned by VA) has a quick look at FreeNAS, an open source network attached storage server that can be deployed on pretty much any old PC you have sitting around the house. From the article: "The software, which is based on FreeBSD, Samba, and PHP, includes an operating system that supports various software RAID models and a Web user interface. The server supports access from Windows machines, Apple Macs, FTP, SSH, and Network File System (NFS), and it takes up less than 16MB of disk space on a hard drive or removable media."

The Treo 700p Confirmed 107

Posted by CmdrTaco on Sunday May 14, 2006 @10:09AM from the thank-god-we-can-sleep-easy dept.

Tam Hanna writes "People have been rumoring about the Treo 700p for quite some time, Now, HandMark has "officially" confirmed the Treo 700p's existance on their home page. While developers have had access to the machine for quite some time; this is the first "real" sighting""

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