Now, I’m about to permanently leave the town which I’m living for 14 years and the university which I’m working for nearly 9 years, thought that I would probably need something more efficient than email and IM for keeping connections with my friends and colleagues. Since all of them are using Facebook (just like the rest of the world must I say, if we consider the network is dwarfing any other alternative with its 400 million users!), using it seems inevitable. So, I decided to came out of the rock I’m hiding under for years, and created myself a profile.

Since every once in a while I read about privacy concerns of Facebook users on the net, I was skeptical about how it handles the privacy, and this was on top of my list of reasons for not using Facebook. However, I found their way of handling privacy more robust than I imagened. It looks like Facebook listens their users voice (“scream” could be more appropriate here), and evolves with their needs, which is good know.

I still have few annoyances about the service though;

• Joining a network shouldn’t automatically change your privacy settings
  There are a lot of options that lets you fine tune your privacy at the privacy settings section, but you probably know that already :) Anyway, I tuned everything, than I joined the network of my university and – almost – every setting on that page automatically changed to allow the members of my university network to see everything on my profile! Approximately 1000 people are working in my university and more than 20000 students are having education. There is obviously no chance I’m knowing them all :) Also, since anyone can join the network even if they are not affiliated with my university in any way, anyone can see my full profile, wall etc., regardless what I set on the privacy section. What is the point of “friending” then? I don’t know.
• There should be a way to moderate wall posts before they get published
  I know, this may be a stupid wish for a network like Facebook, but I really would like to have more moderation rights on my wall. We all know that not everybody in our friend list is really our “friend” (who has 500+ “friends” in real life, right?). We sometimes add people we see on the corridor to our office or people in our neighborhood just to be polite, who we just say “hello” or “good morning” once in a while. Can he/she turn into a jackass one day? You can’t be sure. Also, you may have bad times with your real friends, who can post things you may not want to see on your wall after your argument. It’s possible to think more scenarios here. What I’m trying to tell is just being able to remove posts from my wall is not enough, I should also be able to approve posts before they show themselves up on my wall. Being able to customize the group of people allowed to post on my wall with lists (rather than all my “friends”) could also work, I guess.
• Navigating through pages are difficult than I thought
  I don’t know what it’s like before, but I found the new design difficult to navigate. I think clicking on the “Facebook” on the header should take me to the home page (or refresh the homepage, if I’m already there) rather than just refreshing my news feed. Also, I didn’t like pop-up boxes and I’d love to see a direct link to my friend list somewhere on the top navigation menu.
• Applications are not descriptive enough
  There usually are very limited information on the application pages about their functionality and how they are handling privacy.

I’m looking for a useful Greasemonkey script for Facebook, like to hear your suggestions. Also, I’d like to hear which applications you are using. Couldn’t find anything interesting by myself. Looks like there are tons of alternatives if you are MMORPG gamer, but there is nothing really interesting if you are not :)

Now, I’ve dedicated myself enjoying the unusual emptiness in my life, which feels eternal for the time being but will last with the beginning of April :/ Military service is mandatory for every healthy men in Turkey and I have postponed it to date because of my studies. The first week of April will probably mark the beginning of that duty.

There are several alternative ways for serving in Turkish Military depending on your education and in my case it will either take ~6 months if I’m lucky or a whole year if I’m not!

So, please wish me luck :)

Anyway, my account came with 20 invitations. Please leave a comment to this post if you are looking for an invitation. You don’t need to publish your email address at your comments body, I’ll send the invitation to the email address you filled in the comments form. Invitations will be send first come, first serve basis.

And, please don’t forget to come back and tell your first impressions about the Google Wave, I’d love to hear what yo think.

UPDATE: All gone, no invitations left, sorry. Please don’t post anymore requests!

Also, note that Google Wave’s invitation system is more like “nominating you for an invite” than “directly issuing you an invitation”. Since I “nominated” you for an invitation, it’ll take some time before you actually receive an invitation.

Here is what’s been told on my invitation Wave;

Google Wave is more fun when you have others to wave with, so please nominate people you would like to add. Keep in mind that this is a preview so it could be a bit rocky at times.

Invitations will not be sent immediately. We have a lot of stamps to lick.

I’ll let you know if I receive more invitations. You can subscribe to my feed, or follow me on Twitter (@alikuru) for updates.

Bad news is Wheelman hangs on the start menu screen with the latest ATI drivers. Good news is downgrading your graphic cards drivers to previous versions can solve your problem.

I had ATI Catalyst v9.8 installed on my PC, which has a Sapphire ATI 4850, when I installed Wheelman, and it failed. Than I’ve tried the latest v9.9 (as of 11th of September, 2009), and it failed too. After that, I digged into Google and found a guy with the same problem, who told on the Ubisoft forums that downgrading the driver worked for him. I have uninstalled the latest drivers and installed v9.2, as he suggested, and game started working fine :)

You can download old drivers from AMD website here, if you are having the same problem.

This is kind of late reporting and I’m sorry about it. I was really busy at work and couldn’t create much time for an update. Anyway, it is always better late than never, right? So, here is the rest of the story;

A week after I blogged about the Philips customer service’s approach to my problem with my Philips earphones, a friend advised that “Why don’t you file a dispute at the local commission of consumer problems arbitrators at the district governorship? It’s a much more effective way than writing on about your problem on your web, just let the officials deal with them”. And I thought “Why not?”.

I called the office and they told me that all I need is a service report stating that my item neither can be repaired, nor can be replaced under the terms of its warranty. So, I went back to local Philips customer service center and insisted them to take my earphones for repairs and told them they should check my situation with their head office at Istanbul.

Well, I have to admit that I lied to the lady at the service center :) I told her that, after I blogged about my problem, somebody from their Istanbul head offices contacted me and told me that I should take my earphones to our local service center, then they will solve my problem. In reality, although my blog has been visited several times by some people from Philips (first an IP from Germany, then USA and lastly from Turkey), nobody had called me from their Istanbul head offices.

Another week passed by and I’ve got a call from Philips head office at Istanbul. Representative on the phone told me that my earphones has been fixed and I can get it back from my local service center. When I asked her “Both your local service center here and your representative on the toll free customer care line told me that the Philips does not produce spares for the part missing on my earphone. How could you find this part?”. She told me that they’ve tried really hard for my satisfaction.

Am I satisfied? Of course not. This should happen before I wrote about my problem on several places on the net and decided to go to commission of consumer problems arbitrators. Resolution should came at the moment I entered in their local service center, not a month later.

In the end: spares miraculously found and my earphones has been fixed free of charge, which feels like a happy ending.

Researchers at IBM have made a significant breakthrough in their quest to combine DNA strands with conventional lithographic techniques to create tiny circuit boards. The breakthrough, which allows for the DNA structures to be positioned precisely on substrates, could help shrink computer chips to about a 6-nanometer scale. Intel’s latest chips, by comparison, are on a 32-nanometer scale.

“The idea is to combine leading edge lithography that can offer feature size of 25 nanometers with some chemical magic to access much smaller dimensions,” says Robert Allen, senior manager of chemistry and materials at IBM Almaden Research. “This allows us to place nano objects with 6-nanometer resolution. You don’t have a hope of doing that with lithography today.”

Giving DNA to our computers? I guess we can start counting down for Skynet after that :)

Below is the method I used for unlocking my new Diamond. If you don’t want to use the overpriced unlocking services that certain web sites offering, you might find this free alternative useful ;)

It’s a three step process involves flashing. Please DO NOT use this method unless you understand and accept the risks of flashing your phone, which can brick your device if not applied properly. Also the process will hard reset your phone, which means you will loose all your personalized data on your phone’s memory (such as your contact list), so better back-up first.

Here is the unlocker archive: HTC Touch Diamond SIM-Unlocker. Download and extract it to an empty folder. Establish an Active Sync connection between your phone and your PC, and proceed to the steps described below.

Step 1: Hard SPL
Normally, vendors limit the devices they produce to only use the software created by themselves with a mechanism called “CID lock”. In this step you are going to flash your phone with an “Hard SPL” which will allow you to bypass the CID lock and install firmwares that has not been approved by HTC.

To make your phone open its gates for homebrewed firmwares, navigate to the “STEP 1″ folder where you’ve extracted the unlocker archive and run “diamond-sspl.bat”, then follow on screen instructions.

It will prompt you to copy JumpSSL.exe and SSPL (which is “sspl-1.01-reloc-mod.nb” file) to your phone’s root directory, when necessary. It will also ask you to “execute SPL now” after those copying steps. Just click any key on your keyboard and program will run the SSPL on your phone’s screen. Your screen will turn black after you tap “continue” on your Diamond, then your phone will restart.

After the process finish, you have to jump to HardSPL-1.24 sub-folder and run “DiamondCustomRUU.exe” to flash the Hard SPL.

Step 2: Radio
Here is an excerpt from XDA Developers forum post describing what does radio mean when it comes to PDAs;

The radio stack is responsible for the phone functionality of the device. This includes GPRS, GSM, UMTS, and GPS operations as well as camera functionality.

Because the official radio, which your phone ships with, prevents altering the SIM lock, we need to replace it with an unofficial one in this step. To do this, just navigate to “STEP 2″ folder and run “DiamonCustomRUU.exe”, then wait for it to complete the process.

An important note about this step: if your phone has a radio version above v1.02.XXX, you should downgrade its version first to make the radio installer on this step to work. Go check your radio version via “Start > Settings > System > Device Information > Radio Version”. If it is below 1.02.XXX, then it is fine, you are good to go. If it is above, then you should visit XDA Developers thread on the subject, find yourself a lower version and install it beforehand.

Step 3: SIM Unlocker
This is the last and the easiest step of the process. Just copy the “DiamUnlock.exe” from the “STEP 3″ folder to your phone’s root directory and run it on your phone. First mark the “Remove SIM lock” check box, then press “Commit Changes” button and you’re done.

Enjoy your fully unlocked Touch Diamond ;)

Note: DiamUnlock.exe you’ll find in the archive above is not the original one. Original unlocker was really hard to execute because its coder put a nasty joke in it, which closes the application less than a second after you run it, giving very limited time for checking the “Remove SIM lock” tick box and pressing the “Commit Changes” button afterwards. Archive in this post contains the patched version that does not close itself after its execution (thanks to sergeymkl from GSM Hosting forum).

If you still want the original one, here it is. And a usage tip for this unpactched version: Try selecting the “DiamUnlock” icon on the programs menu first, then position your stylus on the screen around the supposed location of “Commit Changes” button (you can use the screen shot at the top to figure its position). After that, hit the center circle button on your device twice and tap the screen with your stylus. I was able to catch the program after 15-20 tries :)

I’ve bought a pair of Philips earphones (SHE 3600) 6 months ago and, because they use a weak adhesive material putting it on while manufacturing, the rubber cover of the left earphone dropped last week. Since it is impossible to wear the naked earphone because of the uncovered sharp edges after the rubber cover dropped, I’ve decided to call Philips for help. I thought that 2 years warranty Philips offered is still valid, why not use it?

I called the toll free number written on the warranty and they gave me the number of the local service center.

I told my problem to the Philips representative at the local service center. She told me that “because the dropped part is an accessory, Philips doesn’t produce any replacements for it”. After a few seconds of shock, I told her back; “How could this part is considered as an accessory? It’s impossible to use the earphone without it because of the underlying sharp edges. If it is preventing my usage with its absence, then it is obviously a necessary part for the functioning of the earphone!”. Then I told her that if they are not producing spares for this part, they should replace the earphones. She told me that they can’t replace the earphones unless the sound is problematic or there is no sound coming.

After I felt the dead end, I left the service center and called the Philips customer care again, and told them her response to my problem. The lady on the line approved their approach to my problem and told me pretty much the same things. I told her that it’s written on the warranty that the “whole product, including all parts, is under warranty of Philips”. She told me that the warranty only covers “malfunctions”. Meaning; only sound complaints about the Phillips earphones are considered worth giving repairs or replacements under the warranty, according to Philips.

Well, that sucks.

I always believe that there are little or no differences between products of competing well-known consumer electronics brands and what makes a company “big” in its league is the customer support.

I can understand not producing spares for a product which itself retails between $15-20. But, if you are offering 2 years warranty to that cheap-labored product, you must at least show the courtesy of offering new one instead of lowering your reputation, which doesn’t come easy.

Opera Mobile will have an option for connecting Opera Turbo, the content compression service used in Opera Mini, which does a lot to reduce downloading times for a small sacrifice in image quality.

I’m happy to hear that it will support Flash and Gears, but I don’t think I will ever interest in Opera Turbo. It’s sounding like having a constant “men in the middle” :)

Enjoy the video demonstration of Opera Turbo below.

[via Gizmodo]

Disqus plugin tells Facebook Connect to look for the xd_receiver.htm at the Disqus plugin directory with the variable facebookXdReceiverPath. Problem is, Disqus plugin doesn’t ship with the xd_receiver.htm, and that’s why Facebook Connect’s attempts to reach this file are returning with errors, and causing statistics mess.

Here is my solution;

1. Remove the previous workaround code, if you’re still using it.
2. Download the xd_receiver.html file here (right click and save as) and change its extension from “.html” to “.htm”.
3. Upload the renamed file to your Disqus WordPress plugin directory (to /wp-content/plugins/disqus-comment-system).
4. You’re done.

Hope you find it useful.

Update: Disqus team repacked the plugin with the previously missing xd_receiver.htm. Just update the plugin and your problem will be solved.