Safari 4 Public beta – A Quick Look

I used the new Safari 4 public beta all day yesterday rather than my usual browser of choice, Firefox. Obviously because it is still in beta there are a few sites that it doesn’t work correctly on. For example it couldn’t load up my banks site, and even had a few issues with the wordpress dashboard. However, I expect these little blips to be ironed out before it’s a full release.

Scream if you wanna go faster

The first thing I noticed when using it was how fast it was loading pages, and navigating sites. Firefox 3 made a huge leap when it was released, but Safari 4 just feels so much faster. I haven’t ran any comparisons to confirm this, but I believe other people have. There didn’t seem to be any lag whatsoever with most of the sites I browse. It appeared to load them up almost instantly, which is an improvement over my firefox installation. That could be caused by the lack of plugins installed on this installation of Safari, but it certainly felt crisper and quicker to work with.

Visual Flair

Apple have a thing for their coverflow technology. A lot of the time I never use it because when I’m quickly scanning for something I don’t want any unneccessary lag time. However, I really liked the Top Sites implementation. That it gives you a quick look at your most visited sites, and allows you to pin sites to always show there is a very handy feature. It was an aspect of Google’s Chrome that I really liked too.

The most useful implementation of the cover flow technology in safari 4 is the “Search History” function. The fact that it shows you a snapshot of the screen as your browsing through the hstory list is fantastic. This, in my opinion, is the most useful implementation of cover flow Apple have released. The reason it’s useful is that I may have been browsing the web for a few hours, and looking at multiple sites for a piece of information. If I find one of them is more useful than the others I’l normally bookmark it. Though not always. So now with this cover flow searching function I can get the batch of the sites in one place, and find the exact one I’m looking for without having to open them all up.

It’s a very useful tool.

Overall Look & Feel

The look and feel of Safari is pretty much the same as all the other, older, implementations of the browser. Apple have changed the Tabs within the browser so that they now run as the Title Bar instead of a separate toolbar. That took a little while to get used to, simply because it’s a different take on the Tab layout. Once I had gotten used to the fact that the tabs were at the top of the screen instead of where they had been previously I found I was using them just as I normally would.

This version of Safari is not massively different from the last version. There are a few tweaks here and there, it has a few more tools, but ultimately the selling point of this browser is going to be it’s speed. Will it make me switch back over from Firefox?… not yet. Is there a possibility of that happening in the future?… I would have to say yes.

I look forward to the full release of the browser, and will certainly be downloading it when it comes out.

The Internet Blackout – New Zealand makes Twitter turn black.

Last week, those of you on Twitter may have noticed that many peoples avatars turned Black. Some thought it an error, a fault perhaps. But in fact this was a protest by a wide variety of people against an amendment to a Copyright law in my Native New Zealand.

So why what was the protest all about and why would some of the high profile twitter users like Stephen Fry be protesting in this manner against an amendment to a law in a small country on the far side of the planet?

The reason is this… Section 92 of the Copyright Amendment Act assumes Guilt Upon Accusation. In other words, if you are accused of a copyright infringement, then ISPs will be forced by law to cut you off.

So if the RIAA accuse you (note this is an accusation, not a trial that finds you guilty), New Zealanders will be punished by the ISPs. Not by the judiciary, after a trial, by a private business after a mere accusation.

There are some great media out there explaining why this is bad. They all basically boil down to the fact that if you commit any other crime, even much more heinous crimes like murder, rape or genocide even, you will get a fair trial and be punished AFTER being found guilty. If Section 92 of the  Copyright Amendment Act goes through, then this changes and you will be able to be punished for a crime without a trial, without evidence, without a defence, nothing!

This is a fundamental change to the way justice operates in most western countries, including New Zealand. The whole “Innocent until proven guilty” goes out the window and Kiwi’s are then guilty until proven innocent! And not for terrorism, murder, rape or other serious crimes, for allegedly breaking a copyright law. For downloading some tunes of the web. Maybe even for watching a movie or TV off YouTube, thetas a breach of copyright too. Heck, quoting text in your blog  could be classified as a breach by some people and once an allegation is made section 92 will demand that you are cut off! Not trial, not lawyers, just cut off!

The concern I think non-New Zealanders have is that this sets a precedence for the rest of the world. Just as the DMCA has been copied all over the world (how that for irony?). The UK, USA and the rest of the world will find it easier to pass similarly draconian, human rights busting laws if they can quote nice little New Zealand as an example of this law “working”.

With all this in mind, an online protest was organised via http://creativefreedom.org.nz/blackout.html and mainly Twitter. the #blackout hashtag was number one on twitter trends for days. Meaning it was the number one topic of discussion on Twitter. Some of the big names got onboard, most notably Stephen Fry the amazing British comedian, actor and technology junky!

People replaced their avatars on Twitter, Facebook and elsewhere with black GIFs. I did and many many many other people did. The point being that if this law gets through, then anyone could have an internet blackout, they could be cut off from the internet without any judicial process.

Some will argue that “hey, it’s just internet access; it’s not like it’s important”. But that just is not right in this day and age. When the internet goes down in my house and in any office I have worked in, it’s the end of the world. I work from a home office, if I got cut off my income would be affected. I am not the only one, and lets not forget that people break copyright in offices everyday.

What happens if this law is passed and copies of it spring up in your country? Imagine the havoc it could cause. You work from home, your son downloads a CD from the internet (worth lets say $20). The RIAA spot this and cut off your access to the internet, now you can’t work. Of course you didn’t commit a crime, but you are punished without trial.

If there was a trial with evidence prior to a punishment then the facts could be shown and your livelihood would not be affected by an allegation!

What is interesting here also is that copyright is different from country to country, who’s copyright law is being broken? The one in your country or the one in another country? So if the RIAA contact a NZ based ISP, will they cut the user off? Or only if a New Zealand rights holder complains?

What if I write a spurious (but legitimate looking) letter/email to an ISP saying you breached my copyright of…. say this blog post. The ISP will cut you off, no evidence required, not court case, no nothing. What if I accuse my business competitors? What a great way of getting rid of them. or maybe an ex-girlfriend/boyfriend?

What this comes down to is this, do you want to live in a country/world where you can be punished for a crime without evidence? We do not accept guilt upon accusation anywhere else in the criminal justice system, why on earth would we want to accept it over copyright.

So don’t stand for it, visit http://creativefreedom.org.nz/blackout.html and see what you can do. Visit sites like http://www.eff.org/ (USA) and http://www.openrightsgroup.org/ (UK) and make sure you stay informed to threats of this sort.

Also you can protest, you can lobby your representatives in government, you can blog, you can write letters, print leaflets, stand and shout on street corners. Me, I am starting with this blog post.

Lance

* Cross posted at LanceWicks.com *

Database Work

I’ve re-imported all the posts, pages, and comments form the previous database. I can see a few little errors behind the scenes that make no difference on the actual site.

If anyone does come across any bugs, please let me know straight away. Thanks.

Up and Running

Finally!

The DNS has updated, and all the issues I had with the server move in the background is over. When the initial problems moving the site were discovered, it looked as though the move wasn’t going to happen for quite a while. Then completely out of nowhere, my hosts emailed me to say the problem had been resolved, and the account on the old server was being deleted that day. Even though I was extremely busy at work, I quickly FTP’d everything down to my mac, and waited.

Two days passed and I couldn’t set the site up on the new server because the old account was still in their systems conflicting with anything I tried to setup. They said it could take 48 hours so I waited another day.

That day came and went, and still I was unable to create the new account. I contacted my hosts, and they quickly got on the case. They discovered a replica of my user account that was causing the issue, and removed it. That let me create the account on the new server, and setup a few tings behind the scenes in preparation for the DNS updating. Which if you’re now reading this has happened.

I’m still in the process of setting everything up, and I’ll be re-importing the old posts into the new database soon. At the moment, my day job is taking up 99.9% of my time because of a stupid fecking virus outbreak that ripped our network apart, killing 80+ machines and 5 servers (all windows).

Things will be fully up and running again soon, and there will be a large batch of content I’ve been holding back until this move happened coming to you in the next few weeks.

Until then, I’m off to rebuild some more machines at work. Stupid bloody virus.

Downtime Posponed

There have been a few problems behind the scenes which means the move server work is going to have to be posponed. I’m in discussions with my hosts to see when we can actually do the move, and I’ll post up here when it’s all going to happen.

At the moment there’s a good chance it’s not going to happen this month, and so until I get a solid date for it all to go ahead, I’m going to resume posting up here as I have a few things I’ve been holding back.

Downtime

This weekend I’m going to be carrying out some work on the server this site is hosted on.

This might possibly result in the site going down for a few days, and will almost certainly mean the content that’s already here will be missing in action for a day or two after that because of some database work I’ll be doing.

Depending on how crazy I’m feeling, I may have a new theme up and running for when the site comes back up, so things may look a little different around these parts.

Hopefully the downtime will be minimal, but with these things you never really know.

Jailbreak that iPhone today!

The other day I read Sarah Perez’s article on ReadWriteWeb on why you should Jailbreak your iPhone; it was the catalyst that made me try it and boy was it worth it!

I found http://www.quickpwn.com/ pretty quick and after a little encouragement by the twitter community I fired it up. A few minutes later a pineapple was showing on my iPhone as it started up and my iPhone was Jailbroken.

Having Jailbroken my phone I immediately started playing about in Cydia (the clever app manager that you get) and started installing things. First up was Qik (www.qik.com) which I had on my old Nokia E90 and it works great! It allows my to capture video and stream it to Qik.com and on to YouTube. EXCELLENT news!

I have a slightly faulty home button on my phone, since I dropped it. So I grabbed the “Close Button Widget” which is part of SBSettings. After reverting to RTFM mode, I worked out that I can swipe my thumb across the status bar and up pops a window with a close button. The window also has toggle buttons for things like Bluetooth, Wifi, airplane mode and brightness. All those things you need to save battery on a iPhone. Super handy!

Next I played around with some ringtones and themes. I have settled for now on the Lea theme, which totally changes the look of your iPhone interface, including changing alert tones. It’s really slick and makes my phone a little more me.

Next was iPhoneModem, which allows me (finally!!!) to use my iPhone as a modem for my laptop.
This is a must have feature that every other mobile I have had has been able to do for years, why it is not possible on an unbroken iPhone I do not know!

MxTube was next, this is a replacement for the standard YouTube client and allows you not only to stream YouTube videos and watch them, but also to save them to the iPhone for viewing later! Very cool!

Snapture was next, I don’t take many pictures with my iPhone, but might now. Snapture lets you do much more with your camera. Thinsg like zooming are now possible, for that alone it is worth installing. There is a paid version too, I have not forked out for that… yet.

There is plenty more, but I’ll save you the pain of me listing them all.

Jailbreaking your phone, does one thing really; make the iPhone live up to it’s potential!
The iPhone is a great phone out of the box, but the limitations and Apple Silliness do hamper it as a device. Once you Jailbreak the iPhone it is suddenly open and more like a mobile computer. It goes from being a basic phone with slick interface to being a great phone with the best interface around.
You have to Jailbreak your phone, now!

If Apple are clever, they will find Saurik and hire him; then make the Jailbroken iPhone the norm. The closed model has a short term future, but in the long-term you have to think making the iPhone platform more open stands a better chance of survival.

I don’t see Jailbreaking preventing people buying apps from the Apple appstore (I bet a majority of downloads from it are the free apps anyway). I see a Jailbroken iPhone as a place where I could write an app, without the extra hassle of going via the Apple AppStore. I don’t want to put the time, money and energy into writing an app just to wait for Apple to reject it.

As a user, I want to be able to use applications that I want. So Qik for me was a massive plus. I have missed it badly since changing phones. This was getting so bad I have been thinking about how I might move back to my Nokia; just to use Qik! But now I shall stay on iPhone, Apple this is purely because Qik can do what they need to do on a Jailbroken phone not on your closed environment, take note!

So, go jailbreak your iPhone. It is dead easy (and reversible), and once you have done it, you won’t regret it!

2009: Looking Forward

Happy New Year everyone!

I have several plans and ideas bubbling around in my head for SSDC in 2009. I’m not going to share them all with you just yet because I think it’s more important that I get everything in place before I say some things that may not happen until much later. One thing I will tell you about is that there is going to be some behind the scenes work on SSDC. I’m going to be moving it from it’s current server with my hosts to another server and try to streamline the current setup, which could be better. There’s also a redesign in the works because, if I’m being honest, I’m not that happy with the way the site looks and I never really have been.

One other major thing I’m going to say right now is that there is going to be a LOT more content on the site. The guys and I tried to write here more last year, but real life got in the way a lot of the time, meaning the site didn’t get the attention I really wanted to give it. 2009 is the year that changes and I plan on making SSDC a great place to come and get news and information on all things tech.

I’m really excited about 2009 here at SSDC, and I hope you continue to stop by to share in the sites development.

If you want to get in touch about anything please email us at contactssdc[at]gmail.com and you can follow us on Twitter here

Callpod Drone Phones Home

And is much easier than trying to configure the ol’ “Speak and Spell”, rusty sawblade and Columbian coffee can to complete the call.  Callpods Drone is a USB bluetooth adapter that delivers.

Simply plug the Drone into the USB port of your computer, and it will immediately connect with your Bluetooth headset or headphones to provide streaming music and voice over a 100 meter (328ft) range. There is no software to install because the Drone has on-board software which communicates with your headset. The computer sees the Drone as a USB speaker and simply routes the audio automatically.

As a Skype user, I have been searching for a Bluetooth solution for some time.  Numerous past attempts have not been able to fool the party on the other end of the line.  But finally, with the Drone, I was able to make a call over the Atlantic to Lance with no sound quality loss.  Usually, there is no difference on my end, but there is an obvious loss of sound quality and interference on the other end.

The Drone, a $49 adapter works with both Mac and Windows, and as stated above, needs no installation due ot the the software actually being loaded on the device.  The device itself feels heavier and much more durable than most USB adapters.  Use was as simple as it sounds above too, as I plugged it into my Macbook and within seconds, it was automatically recognized and used by Skype.  To stream stereo sound, I changed the audio in system preferences and it immediately started streaming stereo from iTunes.  I was using a Jabra BT620S headset, which provided good sound, and seemed better quality than using other bluetooth adapters in the past.  The Callpod Dragon V2 headset apparently provides instant connection with the Drone and streams audio an extended range of 100 meters (over 320 feet).  Based on my experience with the Drone, I’d believe it!

Using Recovery Console to Remove XP Service Pack 3

As I work in the IT Industry I tend to find myself facing problems with software going awry on a daily basis. None more so than the operating systems developed by the bunch from Redmond. These problems range from minor system crashes and corruptions to full blown system meltdowns. It’s a problem that is firmly lodged in the meltdown category that I’m going to explain how to repair in this post.

The Problem:

Have you just installed “Windows XP Service Pack 3“? Has your machine completely died, and is in a constant state of “Blue Screen of Death“, and reboots? Have you just discovered restoring to the “Last Known Good Configuration”, or booting into “Safe Mode” do absolutely nothing? You really don’t want to have to wipe the machine and lose all your files, but can’t see another way around it. You’re not alone. Thankfully, there is a fix that doesn’t require a complete re-installation of your system.

The Solution:

To resolve this problem you need two things:

1) The Administrator password for your PC

2) A Genuine Windows XP Disc

In order to repair your Windows installation you will need to remove SP3 from your PC. This may seem slightly tricky since you can’t actually boot into Windows in any way to do that. Which is why we remove the service pack without actually going into Windows.

You need to insert your Genuine XP Disc into the CD/DVD Drive and boot your PC from it. The method for doing this various from machine, to machine, but if your disc drive isn’t your current default booting device, there is usaually an F key that can be pressed to give you a one time boot menu, (Usually F12 in my experience). Use this menu to boot from the disc drive, and when prompted press any key to boot from the CD.

This will startup the Windows Setup program which is used when you want to install/reinstall Windows. Once it’s loaded all it’s drivers, you will be prompted to choice one of three options. You want to choose to start the System Recovery Console by pressing the R key.

You will be shown a black screen with white writing asking you which XP Installation you would like to select, and there is probably only one option “1: C:\Windows”. Type 1 at the command prompt and press enter.

You will then be prompted to enter the Administrator password. You should have done the sensible thing and changed this previously, but if you haven’t, (and most people haven’t), it is usually blank so just hit the enter key.

At the command prompt you will need to type cd $ntservicepackuninstall$\spuninst and press enter. This will give you another command prompt, at which you need to type batch spuninst.txt and then press enter again. This will begin to uninstall the service pack. You should see text scrolling down the screen, occasionally saying it is copying files. This goes on for a few minutes, and then when it’s finished you will be left sitting at another command prompt. At this prompt type exit and your PC will restart.

You will need to start the PC in Safe Mode at this point, and by pressing F8 as the PC starts should give you this option.

Once the PC has started in safe mode you will need to finalise the removal of Service Pack 3. This can be done by going into the Control Panel, and opening Add/Remove Programs. In Add/Remove Programs, make sure the Show Updates check box is ticked. Browse through the list of programs and updates until you find Service Pack 3. Highlight it, and select Uninstall, and follow the prompts it gives you. Once it has uninstalled it will ask you to reboot your PC.

You should now have a working PC again.

Hopefully this post has helped those of you who have been stuck in this situation, and please leave a comment or email us at contactssdc [at} gmail [dot] com if you have any questions.