Continue reading about "My Year in Review" on New Earth Online]]> What a year this has been, it’s been a busy one and I have a feeling next year will be even busier.

I started the year eager to get back to blogging, but as the weeks went by I found myself blogging less and less before months had gone by with no new posts. Maybe next year I'll do a little better. 

Starting 2012 off I went to Autosport International at the NEC where I took photos of loads of cars and watched a live event. Just a couple of weeks later I drove down the motorway through snow and thick fog to get to Warwick Castle for my fourth visit. This was the first time I’d ever seen the castle in snow so made a nice change to my pictures, but it was also an opportunity to test out my new tripod and thick coat ready for Iceland. The castle was pretty empty as most people were staying off the roads.

Warwick Castle in the Snow

In February I then went to Iceland for a very hectic few days with very little sleep. Upon arrival it started snowing and by the time I got up the next day the place was thick with snow. I did note they handle it far better than in the UK and they just carried on as if it wasn’t there. The snow did make the first day’s photography a little awkward, but it was still fun and they do get a decent amount of it. The second day brightened up and I even got my first opportunity to photograph the Northern Lights, though they weren’t as impressive as I’d hoped. The landscapes in Iceland were pretty amazing; on one of the glaciers (which I’d climbed under earlier) there was a moment when I stopped walking yet carried along sliding stood upright along what seemed to be a flat surface. It seemed comical at the time. I did of course write a book for this trip and published a photo album and video to the usual places.

Me on the Mýrdalsjökull Glacier

The following weekend I went to a Rugby game for the first time ever, and then went to a second one in December. Both were opportunities to try taking sports related photographs. One of the stewards though would not let me use my big lens at the first game, though no one objected at the second game. The second game was also the day of the work Christmas party.

The Forbidden City - Shishi

In April I went to China for two weeks, travelling around the Eastern parts of the country to see the Forbidden City, the Great Wall, the Terracotta Army, Giant Pandas, and sailing down both the Yangtze and Li rivers. I will admit it wasn’t the best of the trips I’d done - I think having been to the Galapagos Islands set my expectations too high for future trips. Saying this though, I did enjoy it and there were many good moments. It’s not every day you get to run along the Great Wall of China carrying your camera equipment!

Bombe machine at Bletchley Park

In May I went to Truckfest for the first time, I wasn’t that keen on it though so unsure if I’ll go again - but I'll leave that until next year to decide. Most things should be tried at least once. The following weekend I went to Bletchley Park, the home of the enigma machines, and also stopped by the museum of Computing next door. The weekend after that was then spent down in Poole, though I didn’t really bother with many photos this time - most of the ones I did take were taken around the Durlston Country Park area that had just been refurbished after a National Lottery grant.

Northern Gannet (Morus bassanus) on the RSPB Bempton Cliffs

It was then over a month before any more trips as I then spent a week in Yorkshire seeing sights such as Bempton Cliffs, Scarborough, York and a number of National Trust properties.

In September I went to the Making of Harry Potter Studio Tour in London, and whilst there also went round the Tower of London before flying up to Scotland for the best part of a week. In Scotland I hired a car and travelled around the country visiting many sights along the way.

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

As the year drew to a close the most unexpected news was announced by Lucasfilm - the sale of the company to Disney and the release date for Star Wars Episode 7, the first in a new series of films. I'm still a little mixed about this as it could mean that they'll be ruined further, though maybe taking them away from George Lucas is the best way to preserve them.

So to cut a long story short it's been a busy year and I look forward to 2013 hoping it will be as fun. I hope everyone reading this has a very merry Christmas and a happy new year.

Continue reading about "Sending Emails Without Becoming a Spammer" on New Earth Online]]> http://www.newearthonline.co.uk/article/913#commentWrapper http://www.newearthonline.co.uk/article/913 http://www.newearthonline.co.uk/article/913 Sun, 11 Nov 2012 19:39:20 +0000 Web Standards / Web Development (General Over a year ago I first spoke about methods to avoid spam submissions from forms. Now it's time to take another look at this with moderated comments, Project HoneyPot integration, and other methods.

Continue reading about "Anti-Spam Forms Revisited" on New Earth Online]]> Over a year ago I first spoke about methods to avoid spam submissions from forms. Now it's time to take another look at this with moderated comments, Project HoneyPot integration, and other methods.

Continue reading about "The Walking Dead" on New Earth Online]]> ]]> http://www.newearthonline.co.uk/article/912#commentWrapper http://www.newearthonline.co.uk/article/912 http://www.newearthonline.co.uk/article/912 Fri, 11 May 2012 07:07:23 +0000 Games Over the past several years there have been many MMORPGs of varying success, the most notable being World of Warcraft and the quickly growing Star Wars: The Old Republic. What I find surprising is how the MMO aspect hasn't easily transferred to other gaming genres such as the FPS. What I imagine is a first person shooter akin to Call of Duty and Battlefield 1942, but set in a persistent world where you can jump in and out of ongoing battles as you go. Now if this could be combined with elements of Minecraft or something similar so you could create your own defences and dig trenches that would be amazing. It is true though that this would then become close to being an RPG, though technically it would be limiting the RPG to PvP only.  The closest any game has yet come to this is when the browser based FPS, Man vs. Machine set the world record for the most players in a single game. This however was a one off attempt. Now what I imagine would be really cool would be a game set during World War 2 where the persistent world is actually the world as it was in the 1940's, with ability to drive military vehicles, drive boats and pilot planes. You would have to be forced to be either Allied or Axis, and have fast-travel to other parts of the world / country, so you could take part in conflicts all over Europe, or even in the Pacific theatre. I guess part of the issue why such a thing doesn't exist are the mechanics behind player progression, etc. though I think an XP system similar to online multiplayer in CoD and others such as R6:Vegas would still work. Maybe weaponry and ammunition would work the same as RPGs too, and have what you're allowed to carry limited by what class you are. So you maybe a class that "doesn't know" how to fly a plane, or maybe one that does but then doesn't know how to operate a mortar. Maybe this is something where a player could learn skills over time to gradually be able to use more. Maybe one day there will be massive 1000+ player battles on a regular basis. 

Continue reading about "Why no MMOFPS?" on New Earth Online]]> Over the past several years there have been many MMORPGs of varying success, the most notable being World of Warcraft and the quickly growing Star Wars: The Old Republic. What I find surprising is how the MMO aspect hasn't easily transferred to other gaming genres such as the FPS.

What I imagine is a first person shooter akin to Call of Duty and Battlefield 1942, but set in a persistent world where you can jump in and out of ongoing battles as you go. Now if this could be combined with elements of Minecraft or something similar so you could create your own defences and dig trenches that would be amazing. It is true though that this would then become close to being an RPG, though technically it would be limiting the RPG to PvP only. 

The closest any game has yet come to this is when the browser based FPS, Man vs. Machine set the world record for the most players in a single game. This however was a one off attempt. Now what I imagine would be really cool would be a game set during World War 2 where the persistent world is actually the world as it was in the 1940's, with ability to drive military vehicles, drive boats and pilot planes. You would have to be forced to be either Allied or Axis, and have fast-travel to other parts of the world / country, so you could take part in conflicts all over Europe, or even in the Pacific theatre.

I guess part of the issue why such a thing doesn't exist are the mechanics behind player progression, etc. though I think an XP system similar to online multiplayer in CoD and others such as R6:Vegas would still work. Maybe weaponry and ammunition would work the same as RPGs too, and have what you're allowed to carry limited by what class you are. So you maybe a class that "doesn't know" how to fly a plane, or maybe one that does but then doesn't know how to operate a mortar. Maybe this is something where a player could learn skills over time to gradually be able to use more.

Maybe one day there will be massive 1000+ player battles on a regular basis. 

Continue reading about "Nintendo 3DS" on New Earth Online]]>

Since I got my Nintendo 3DS (I got the 25th anniversary Zelda edition) I'd been unable to connect to the eShop or use the social features of the device. The error message I got when searched for online indicated in pretty much every post that it meant the Wi-Fi wasn't working and that I should check the "Hotspot"... wish they just call it a router, anyway I digress, and I knew that wasn't the case.

The reason I knew otherwise was that the network test worked okay and the web browser did too - I did a search on Google and loaded up the website of the company I work for. This made little sense whatsoever as it was the same issue on my home network and also when trying the device in the office. Although on my home network there's very little diagnostics I can do (in part due to shockingly bad router firmware) I was fortunate enough to get some diagnostics done whilst in the office. When browsing around I'd seen mention that the eShop app uses port 9103 however unblocking this still didn't help. Fortunately a colleague was able to get a list of the ports via our firewall and the list was actually a little longer. In the end though it provided the information required to reconfigure my router at home and I can now enjoy the social aspect of owning a 3DS as well as downloading small games, etc. that Nintendo make available in their eStore.

To start with I've downloaded the Zelda: Four Swords Anniversary Edition - I'll review this at a later date. For now though I'm pleased to see my 3DS working the way it should!

Continue reading about "C&C 4" on New Earth Online]]> When I said I intended on blogging more this year I certainly didn't mean three days running. Yesterday however after having spent 5 hours on Star Wars: The Old Republic (in which time I constructed a lightsaber, did a flashpoint, and arrived on Coruscant) I decided to try out Command and Conquer 4.

For those that have played previous games in the series, including other spin-offs such as Red Alert 3 will remember that there are always minerals that you have to mine in order to create units, and buildings such as power plants that are required. Other buildings would normally affect what units from the tech-tree you can build. In co-op mode at least, this is very different in C&C4. The first noticeable difference is the choosing of a class. These are:

• Support
  
• Offence
• Defence

With Support you get "powers" similar to those you'd get in Generals. Though for Support and Offence you get no building other than your MCV. If you're playing as the defence class then you do get defensive structures. Instead of buying units you instead expend command points which for the first couple of maps at least is around 50. This gives you the ability to construct a very limited force. A tank for example is 6 command points so you have to plan ahead as much as you can. You can change your class if you decide you've chosen the wrong one, but your MCV must be destroyed first. This can be done a maximum of 3 times.

It does feel like a dumbed down version of C&C where you can just keep on playing until you win. For example the first GDI mission was to save 12 vehicles from the convoy. We must have lost twice that before we eventually figured out what we were doing and started to save some.

Quite a disappointing instalment, but it's one I'll still try to complete at some point and wasn't too bad for the £3.74 price tag I bought it for off Steam during their sale.

Continue reading about "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 (Xbox 360)" on New Earth Online]]> As I said in the previous post, as I pretty much neglected this blog last year this year I intend on posting more articles and reviews starting with an article on "Compression methods". If there are any topics or reviews you'd like to see here, please comment! Over the next few weeks I also plan on finishing the new design and putting that live, but will be finishing the design for http://davidgpaul.co.uk first.

Yesterday I played Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1, a game intended to be played on the Xbox 360 using Kinect. Sadly I've not yet got round to getting one so it does restrict what challenges you can do in the game but does not restrict you from playing the story missions (there also 3 non-Kinect series of challenges too). This game has been a huge change from the previous two Harry Potter games that I played in that it no longer feels like a "chore simulator" but closer to what the early Potter games were like. The story varies drastically from both the book and the film and includes extra side missions that are compulsory as a way of artificially lengthening the game. These side missions feel repetitive as they generally follow a "Free X number of captured Muggle-borns from Y" pattern where Y might be Acrmantulas or Deatheaters. It seems it's possible to complete the game mostly using "Stupify" and can be completed in very little time. I'd only recommend this game if you\'re a fan of Harry Potter otherwise you may get fed up of this game quite quickly.

It's taken me months to get round to playing this game, and as I've now finished as much of it as I want to it's time to move on to Part 2. Hopefully this one will be better... 

Continue reading about "Happy New Year! 2012" on New Earth Online]]> Happy 2012 to everyone! Last year was a pretty busy year and I never really felt like blogging that often with the exception of the Apple related events that were on. In February I did a bit more diving at Stoney Cove, to complete my Dry Suit diver specialty qualification. I had started that one a few days before Christmas but the friend I was diving with got hypothermia due to the icy cold temperature of the lake (it was 4 degree Celsius on the surface and snowing!).

April saw another diving course to get the "Peak Performance Buoyancy" qualification just in time for a 2 week trip to Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands at the end of the month. It was a great trip and had many memorably moments such as free-diving with Galapagos Penguins and scuba-diving with white-tipped sharks and rays.

In the gaming world May saw the end of a long running joke wait with the eventual release of Duke Nukem Forever. Sadly May was also a time when Smallville came to an end after 10 years, but the release of Team Bondi's L.A. Noire sure helped pass the time without it! I also placed a large order with Jedi Collectibles that month, which to this day I'm still waiting for and doubt will ever actually arrive.

In July I returned to Stoney Cove yet again to do my Advanced Open Water qualification - this one consisted of some underwater navigation, wreck diving, deep diving and multi-level diving. I also had another holiday to Weston-Supermare and finally got to see the Roman Baths in Bath.

In August I went camping for a weekend, something I'd never done before. It was at Silverstone for the Renault World Series - prior to this I'd barely seen any racing whatsoever as it's just so boring on the television, yet it was an enjoyable weekend with plenty of photography and hopefully something we'll do again in 2012. About a week later I then went with some fellow Jadugars to Wales to retry Mount Snowdon. Our previous attempt whilst doing the 3 Peaks failed due to high(ish) wind speeds making the climb unsafe. This time the winds weren't nearly as bad but we pushed on and made it to the top (and found there was a 4x4 up there which later made the national news - when we were there we'd assumed it was a park ranger). The rain had been severe and despite  heavy waterproofs still managed to get drenched.

In October there was a lot going on - the Harry Potter film series came to an end in an epic conclusion. The iPhone 4S was released, and Steve Jobs died. In the gaming world there was the release of Rage amd Batman: Arkham City.

November was a month to remember - the release of Skyrim, the fifth game in The Elder Scrolls series. Over the weeks that followed many hours were sunk into that game which also meant I'd not got round to playing Halo or Assassin's Creed. December was the release of The Old Republic, though that was not without it's issues.

In 2012 I'll be visiting Iceland and China as well as a few Harry Potter related places (the film studios being one of them) so it's looking like it may be another busy year. This time however I'll attempt to blog and/or post a review at least once a week.

Hope everyone has a great 2012!! 

Continue reading about "Let's Talk iPhone" on New Earth Online]]> With no announcement of a new iPhone at WWDC 2011 the rumour mill started working overtime with most rumours slating two new iPhones would be released in October 2011 - an iPhone 4S and the iPhone 5. A few short weeks after Steve Jobs stepped down as CEO of Apple to be replaced by Tim Cook, they announced they'd be holding a press conference at the Apple campus on October 4th simply titled "Let's Talk iPhone". Apple have always big on symbolism so it didn't take long before people drew conclusions that the "1" on the phone image meant there would be one phone announced. Just minutes before the event was due to start Apple accidentally let slip on their Japanese site that the new phone is indeed the 4S and apparently dual-mode (both CDMA and GSM).

They announced that iOS 5 and the associated iTunes update would be released worldwide on October 12th. For the iTunes Match feature this will come later, an end of October release for the US and an unspecified date for elsewhere (but by the end of the year). They then went on to detail how their iPod line-up would change with a minor update to the iPod Nano to have bigger icons, 16 new clock skins, etc. and would be $129 for the 8Gb model, and $149 for the 16Gb. In bringing out iOS 5 it will also be added to the iPod touch which will massively update it's capability with iMessage and iCloud. This updated model will be priced at $199 (8Gb), $299 (32Gb) and $399 (64Gb).

Finally, after about an hour of these minor news bits from Apple they finally announced the iPhone 4S, an update that keeps the same general design as the iPhone 4 but with an A5 dual-core processor. What this processor means is improved performance and increased graphics capability. Despite this upgrade it will still offer battery life as follows:

 3G Talk Time 8

2G Talk Time 14

3G browsing 6

Wi-Fi Browsing 9

Video 10

Music 40

The new wireless system will now intelligently switch between the two antennas between transmit and receive to make even better call quality. They claim this should give a theoretical maximum speed of 14.4Mbs which is twice as fast as the iPhone 4. There will also be a new 8MP camera bringing the resolution up to 3264x2448 which is also faster at taking pictures meaning only 0.5 seconds between shots. In updating the camera it also means that video recording gets a bit of a boost to allow 1080p HD recording with image stabilisation and noise reduction.

One of the best new features for the iPhone 4S is the addition of Siri which is a voice control application with so intelligence behind the voice commands so you don't have strict things to say to get a result. You could for example say "What's the time in London" and it would return the current time in London, UK. In adding Siri they've also opened up dictation options everywhere so you can even dictate an email. At present Siri understands English (US, UK and Australia), French and German.

There will be 3 models available priced at $199 (16Gb), $299 (32Gb), $399 (64Gb) on a two year contract. The iPhone 4 16Gb will lower in price to $199 and the 3GS 8Gb will be priced at $49 (or free on contract). On October 7th you'll be able to pre-order the new phone, and in the US, UK, France, Germany and Japan it will be available from October 14th.

Continue reading about "Google+" on New Earth Online]]>

Google+ is yet another foray into the social media market for Google. Although there were previous communities (mainly what Google had bought up), its first attempt was with Google Wave. When Wave first appeared on the scene it gained a lot of people quite quickly but was hampered by performance as conversations got larger and more people joined. Eventually its popularity waned, and what was a unique and interesting concept for social interaction on the web started to die out.

Google Buzz was another attempt; one that is still around today and is integrated with Google Mail (and now Google+) was a way of bringing a minimal degree of sharing between contacts. With Buzz you had the option of posting to it with links and/or photos and could even connect other sites to it so any updates from you elsewhere on the web would also get posted to Buzz.

Now, with Google+ they're setting themselves up as a direct competitor to Facebook. This is a comparison that is unavoidable, ever since Facebook became the most well known social media site any that have launched since no matter what their intentions, they have been compared to it. Whist there are a number of similarities between Google+ and Facebook there are also a number of differences (which I'll come back to shortly).

This being a Google project it is fairly obvious the focus will be on information. Once you're signed up to use Google+ the "Google bar" (I don't know it's official name) changes to include extra options to show the number of notifications you have on Google+ and a link to quickly share "stuff" with people on Google+.

When you share something you can type a message and then, like Buzz, you can attach a link or photo too it, though in this case you can also attach video or your current geo-location. Once shared this then appears in your stream and will be visible to those "circles" that you've chosen to allow the post to be seen by.

A circle, in Google+ terms, is a collection of people that have been grouped for easy categorization for when you want to communicate with multiple people. By default you have circles for Friends, Family, Acquaintances, and Following; but you can also add your own. To add people to a circle they have quite a nice interface where you visually see circles and thumbnails of people that are available to add/invite to join a circle. When you hover over the circle it expands out show who is in the circle and includes a nicely styled tooltip explaining the circle. To add people to a circle you can either drag and drop them in, or click on a circle and add them by searching for a name or email address.

The next new concept for Google+ is a "Spark" - this is a way of displaying news from popular sites based upon your interests. Each spark you add can then be viewed individually from the left-hand navigation and can be used to share posts with your circles.

Finally, there are hangouts. A hangout is where multiple people can have video chats using Google Talk - this does however require a plugin to first be installed to allow the use of your webcam and microphone. This currently supports up to 10 people in a single conversation.

Overall the design of the interface is nice and is a huge improvement over what Google Wave was. It's also similar in layout to Facebook which means anyone who has already used Facebook should find using Google+ to be a fairly familiar experience. The user experience when using the mobile application is actually even better though - it takes the familiar elements of Google's other mobile applications and builds upon them making the interaction feel smoother and easier.

When registering it will ask you to join your account with a Picasa account - this is what it will use for sharing your posted images with others. Hopefully there will also be a way of using Flickr, or at least automatically streaming from Flickr in the future.

From the point of view of a developer there are several key areas where you could potentially have API access for, and hopefully it won't be long before Google release an API for it. To some degree it is already possible to post to it due to the use of the Google +1 button but this is only for sending links to posts on other sites.

Over the coming few weeks as the site grows and evolves I'll carry on using this new site to see how it compares and to better determine what advantages and disadvantages it has.

Continue reading about "Firefox 5" on New Earth Online]]> Today was the release of the first Firefox update as part of it's shortened release cycle. The release of Firefox 5 does highlight what is currently wrong with the browser.

Extensions -  as you have to specify what versions of the browser the extension is compatible with when you're creating one a developer will typically go for 4.0.x for example, though this means unless extension developers update their extensions as regular as Firefox (and ahead of the releases) it means that the extensions will disable themselves when you update. Other browsers that use extensions, such as Chrome do not do this - they continue to work without a required update.

Installer - whilst Google Chrome silently updates itself, Firefox still requires an installer be run and the browser restarted. There are arguments that Google Chrome doing this is annoying if for example you're a web developer and need to test on a particular version, but even having an option there for it to be a non-intrusive update would be nice.

Performance - the performance has improved quite a bit since Firefox 4, and even more so since Firefox 3.5 - but from a cold boot it is still quicker to launch Google Chrome or even the ancient IE6 (forget IE7+ they have far slower load times). Whilst I put this down as a negative, I am quite pleased with the improvements they have made to the start up time, even JavaScript performance is faster.

The features added in Firefox 5 are:

• Added support for CSS animations
• The Do-Not-Track header preference has been moved to increase discoverability
• Improved canvas, JavaScript, memory, and networking performance
• Improved standards support for HTML5, XHR, MathML, SMIL, and canvas
• Improved spell checking for some locales
• Improved desktop environment integration for Linux users
• WebGL content can no longer load cross-domain textures
• Background tabs have setTimeout and setInterval clamped to 1000ms to improve performance
• The Firefox development channel switcher introduced in previous Firefox Beta updates has been removed

Out of these the CSS3 Animations is the most interesting point, and may produce some interesting results. Hopefully we'll start to see a lot more innovation with Firefox in future releases.

Continue reading about "E3 Day 1, Lion, iOS 5 and the iCloud" on New Earth Online]]> It was a big day for announcements, not only was it the start of this years E3, but also WWDC. Whilst the E3 event kicked off with an Xbox keynote featuring demos of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 and the great looking new Tomb Raider game, it was announced that all future Tom Clancy titles would feature Kinect support - as will Mass Effect 3. Gears of War 3 was then demonstrated, as was Crytek's new Kinect supported game - Ryse. A big surprise for me was not the release of a remastered Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary Edition (due out November 15th 2011), but the announcement of Halo 4 (to be released in 2012) being the start of a new trilogy. Peter Molyneux also announced Fable: The Journey would be the first Fable title to support Kinect and will be out in 2012. Plenty of Kinect empowered titles, but the one that may get me to buy a Kinect is the announcement of the Star Wars game for Kinect. It's been seen previously as a tech demo, but this time it's an actual game set in the Clone Wars era. Sadly it doesn't actually look that good, but I'll have to give a try anyway.

On the WWDC side of things Steve Jobs took the stage despite a leave of absence due to health problems and introduced the crowd to the topics of Lion, iOS 5 and "some interesting cloud stuff".  Out of the 250 new features they report as being in Lion they started with demonstrating 10 of these. To start with they're making a big deal of multi-touch gestures in Lion. If gestures is enabled you will no longer see the scrollbars - an interesting idea, one which I wonder how effective it will be as in some designs it may not always be obvious there is more to see if the scrollbar isn't there.

Full-screen applications was mentioned at the last Apple event, here they announced that it would be available for more applications. There was also talk of Mission Control, though they didn't talk of any aspects of it that were not covered at the previous Lion themed event. Strangely the Mac Store also got included as one of the 10 new features for Lion, despite it being available in Snow Leopard - only difference is it will come pre-installed. For all people with Mac Store installed it will be better though - when updating software it will now only download changes rather than the full application every time.

Launchpad was again mentioned, the interface that takes it's inspiration from the iOS interface. There was also more talk of "Resume" a feature that saves the current state of an application, just as the new Auto-save feature will auto-save your work. I'll be interested to find out what sort of support it has for existing applications - if any. The autosave feature will use deltas to store versions so that it will save space and will also allow you to halt auto-saving and allow easy creation of duplicates. This then follows into the new "Versions" feature which is basically a repository for version controlling your files, but will be easy for all to use whether you're used to using SVN or not.

The next feature was "AirDrop", an application used for sharing files with other users on your network using it. It uses auto-discovery to see people on your network, but will require confirmation to send and receive files using an encrypted transfer.

Finally they demonstrated some big improvements to the Mail.app which now features better searching and rule creation, conversation view - all of which brings it closer to being level with the Google Mail web interface. Also, as previously rumoured, the Lion upgrade will only be available to buy via the Mac Store (and of course with new Macs!) sometime in July for $29.99 and will be a 4Gb download. A single download will also work for all Macs that you're authorised for meaning you only need to download it once. Apparently it won't even need a reboot!

Moving on to iOS 5 they announced that with selling over 200 million iOS devices they now have a 44% share of the mobile operating system market. With the new iOS 5 upgrade there are over 1,500 new APIs available. First off, notifications have had a bit of an overhaul. To solve the annoyances of notifications not only have they introduced a new notification centre, but the entire system. If you're using your phone when a new push notification arrives it will slide down at the top of your screen (even if in a full screen app), and if your phone is locked it will display in a great looking list above the slide to unlock part. On the unlock screen and in the notification centre they are all categorised and are easy to remove, read, and use. The notification centre is accessible by swiping downwards from the top of the screen.

The second new feature is Newstands - a new application in a similar vein to iBooks, but is aimed at subscription based magazines, etc. that are issue based. A lot of magazine publishers have already signed up for this and popular ones such as National Geographic will be available from launch. Next up is Twitter integration - the iOS settings page will now feature Twitter settings that can be made available via an API to any iOS application. It will also be integrated with Safari, Maps, Photos and Camera including others so that you can tweet straight from the application. It will also be possible to automatically update contacts via Twitter.

Safari Reading List seems like Apple's solution to Instapaper with the ability to save things to read later, and a Safari Reader for reading articles without any distractions. The articles you bookmark in Reading List will also be synchronised with other iOS devices too. Safari will also be changing it's multiple window view for tabs - hopefully they won't feel too clumsy on small screens.

Reminders is another new feature to use for creating "To Do" lists that will synchronise across devices and with iCal. Each reminder will allow a title, location,  and dates. The Reminders can also be based on location so that if you go somewhere it uses the "geofence" feature to determine a reminder is applicable.

The camera is getting some improvements too - to start with they have added a camera icon to the lock screen to make it quicker to get to for taking pictures (hopefully it won't result in many people taking photos in their pockets!) as well as the "volume up" button. The camera will now support an AE/AF lock to help handle exposure of an image, and also has a good pinch to zoom feature complete with bar to show level of zoom. Some minor editing on the phone will now also be possible - crop, rotate, reduce red-eye and a 1-click enhance.

Mail for iOS has been updated with Rich text formatting, indentation, flagging, and dragging addresses between To, CC, and BCC fields. The new dictionary API being used with Mail on the iPad actually looks quite good and will show definitions as well.

Recently we saw that Windows 8 will feature a split-keyboard option for touch based devices - well so is iOS. In iOS 5 you can scroll up through the keyboard to split the keyboard for easy thumb typing. 

Inline with the Mac Store change for only transferring changes in updates they will be doing the same with the App Store. In addition to this it will no longer be necessary to own a PC in order to download large applications or to register in iTunes - updates will now be possible over the air. This iTunes synchronisation over Wi-Fi will also allow music to be copied over in the same way.

The Game Centre will be getting some updates to it's social features (including a friends of friends feature), and will allow games to be bought and downloaded directly from it rather than going through the App Store.

The messaging functionality on the iPhone has now been renamed to "iMessage" and will expand beyond being SMS and MMS to also supporting videos, contacts, group messaging, and delivery/read receipts. The messages will now also be synchronised so that they will be available on both your iPhone and iPad. Interestingly it will also show if the other user is typing a message - similar to a lot of modern IM applications making this application more like a combination of iChat and SMS. The iChat-like functionality will work over 3G or Wi-Fi.

The iOS 5 SDK is available as of today, and will be released to devices in the Autumn and will be compatible with iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPod Touch (3rd and 4th gen), iPad and iPad2. 

Finally they discussed the iCloud -  it will automatically store your content in the cloud and wirelessly push it to all your devices. Apparently the way this will work is that it will synchronise all content without any interaction required. All the MobileMe applications have been rewritten from scratch to work with iCloud - for example any contacts added on a device will automatically be uploaded to iCloud and will synchronise with your other devices. All mail stored with a @me account will also be synchronised between devices - basically just like using IMAP.

As of now MobileMe will cease to exist, and iCloud will be free. It will also be possible to use this to see purchased applications so that they can be downloaded and synchronised on other devices - this is also applicable to purchases within iBooks. This means your entire device is backed up to the cloud and can be easily transferred to another device or restored if need be. Daily backups to the iCloud will be over Wi-Fi only. This is also applicable via "Documents in the Cloud" for Pages, Keynote and Numbers. To complete the iCloud picture it will also be getting it's own APIs for developers to use.

• Apps can stores documents in iCloud
• iCloud pushes documents to user's devices automatically
• Documents update on all devices when changed on any device

The iCloud functionality isn't limited to just iOS devices - it will work on PCs and Macs too! On the photo side of things it will have new photos automatically pushed to other devices using "Photostream". On the Mac it will be added as a new album in iPhoto (no mention of Aperture, but presumably the same). On the PC it will synchronise to a new Photostream folder in your "Pictures" folder - it will even stream to AppleTV. In the cloud photos will be stored for 30 days, and on devices it will store the last 1,000 photos - only on Macs and PCs will a photo be stored permanently in order to save space where needed.

The final iCloud announcement is for iTunes - it will now store your music purchases in the cloud so that it can be automatically downloaded on other devices. This can be done on a track by track basis, or by album and will not be chargeable for redownloading. It's also possible for new purchases to automatically appear on your other devices without manual intervention. It is limited to 10 devices, but will transfer 256kbps AAC files to ensure good quality.

The storage space available for iCloud will be 5Gb but doesn't include music, apps and books - these are counted separately. The synchronisation does also include non-purchases of music via iTunes Match - assuming the song is available in the iTunes store, but costs $24.99 a year to use. With iTunes Match it will automatically update the songs in your library to 256 kbps AAC DRM-free files, and comparitively doing the same with Amazon or Google would take weeks and would cost around twice as much.

Continue reading about "iCloud" on New Earth Online]]> As part of the press release announcing the agenda for the WWDC event next week Apple have not only confirmed that cloud based services will play a part in it, but that the name has been confirmed as being iCloud. Over the past few months there has been a lot of speculation about this and even sightings of trademark applications and domain registrations to confirm suspicions. A lot of music labels have reportedly already signed up to the new framework, but I would doubt it will yet cover the full extent of the library available in the iTunes store.

Both Google and Amazon have recently announced cloud based services for storing and listening to music so it would come as not surprise that the long anticipated offering from Apple would be imminent. There are also a lot of rumours flying around that Apple is also trying to sign up for distribution of TV episodes and films using the iCloud service as well. With the big push for digital distribution (which even DC Comics is getting in on the act with) it is starting to seem more likely that we'll see the end of physical media within the coming years.

So between iCloud, OS X Lion, and iOS 5 it sounds like WWDC 2011 is going to be good whether they announce an "iPhone 4S" or not.

Continue reading about "Alan Wake" on New Earth Online]]> The thrilling game by the developers of Max Payne available exclusively on the XBox 360 and powered using the Havok engine. It is the result of 5 years of hard-work by the award winning Remedy.]]> http://www.newearthonline.co.uk/article/901#commentWrapper http://www.newearthonline.co.uk/article/901 http://www.newearthonline.co.uk/article/901 Sun, 17 Apr 2011 13:11:29 +0000 Games If you own a digital camera then no matter wheter you take pictures to record memories of your holidays, as a hobby, or as a professional, you are likely going to want to keep your photographs safe from harm. Most people when they get back from a trip they will transfer their photographs from their Flash media to their computer. An increasingly common practice is to leave your photos on the card past this point until a time when you need to use the card again. This does offer some redundancy for you to fall back on should your hard drive fail - but it's a very temporary solution and is not practical once your photos start taking up many gigs of space. This is when you should start looking at alternative ways of backing up.

Continue reading about "Keeping your photos safe" on New Earth Online]]> http://www.newearthonline.co.uk/article/899#commentWrapper http://www.newearthonline.co.uk/article/899 http://www.newearthonline.co.uk/article/899 Sat, 16 Apr 2011 09:51:44 +0000 Hardware and Gadgets On March 2nd Apple, with Steve Jobs in attendance, held an event to announce the release of the iPad 2. As always they started off with the normal statistics that would show Apple to be better than everyone else - so the usual type of marketing really. Apparently they have so far sold 100 million books via iBooks and with Random House now joining them it will add a catalogue of 17, 000 more books to choose from. After having sold nearly 15 million iPads in 2010 (April to December) and amassing more than 90% of the market share it's obvious that whatever they did with their latest release they'd have to stay ahead of the competition and continue pleasing consumers. The new iPad 2 uses the A5 dual-core processor and is up to 2x faster than the old one. It has a front and rear camera, a gyroscope, and is actually a third thinner than it's predecessor now measuring only 8mm. This means the iPad 2 is actually thinner with than the iPhone 4, and unlike the iPhone 4 will ship in white straight away with support for both AT&T and Verizon in the US. The battery life is apparently the same as it was before with it being estimated to last 10 hours, and costs the same as the previous model also. iPad 2 Pricing 16Gb 32Gb 64Gb Wi-Fi only $499 $599 $699 Wi-Fi + 3G $629 $729 $829 This new model will be shipped in the US on March 11th, and other countries on March 25th (including the UK). At this time it will be running iOS 4.3 which includes PhotoBooth, improved performance in Safari, and other improvements. This will also bring Personal Hotspot to the iPhone 4, and FaceTime to the iPad. Existing devices will also get the iOS 4.3 upgrade on March 11th. At the launch there will also be a special new cover designed for the iPad 2 which attaches magnetically, and has a microfibre covering to help keep the screen clean. The iPad will turn on when the cover is removed, and turn off when it is put back on.  New to the iPad 2 is iMovie with precision editor, multi-track audio recording, 3 new themes, AirPlay to Apple TV, HD video sharing, and is a Universal App so this new version will work with your iPhone 4 also. This new Universal app will be $4.99 and will be available at launch. Garage Band will also be making it to the iPad with touch instruments (grand piano, organ, guitars, drums, and bass), guitar amps and effects, 8 track recording and mixing, 250+ loops, AAC emailing of your song, and is compatible with the Mac OS X version. This will also be available March 11th for $4.99. Sadly no iPad 2 version of iPhoto was announced. 

Continue reading about "Apple iPad (2nd Gen)" on New Earth Online]]> On March 2nd Apple, with Steve Jobs in attendance, held an event to announce the release of the iPad 2. As always they started off with the normal statistics that would show Apple to be better than everyone else - so the usual type of marketing really. Apparently they have so far sold 100 million books via iBooks and with Random House now joining them it will add a catalogue of 17, 000 more books to choose from. After having sold nearly 15 million iPads in 2010 (April to December) and amassing more than 90% of the market share it's obvious that whatever they did with their latest release they'd have to stay ahead of the competition and continue pleasing consumers.

The new iPad 2 uses the A5 dual-core processor and is up to 2x faster than the old one. It has a front and rear camera, a gyroscope, and is actually a third thinner than it's predecessor now measuring only 8mm. This means the iPad 2 is actually thinner with than the iPhone 4, and unlike the iPhone 4 will ship in white straight away with support for both AT&T and Verizon in the US. The battery life is apparently the same as it was before with it being estimated to last 10 hours, and costs the same as the previous model also.

This new model will be shipped in the US on March 11th, and other countries on March 25th (including the UK). At this time it will be running iOS 4.3 which includes PhotoBooth, improved performance in Safari, and other improvements. This will also bring Personal Hotspot to the iPhone 4, and FaceTime to the iPad. Existing devices will also get the iOS 4.3 upgrade on March 11th.

At the launch there will also be a special new cover designed for the iPad 2 which attaches magnetically, and has a microfibre covering to help keep the screen clean. The iPad will turn on when the cover is removed, and turn off when it is put back on. 

New to the iPad 2 is iMovie with precision editor, multi-track audio recording, 3 new themes, AirPlay to Apple TV, HD video sharing, and is a Universal App so this new version will work with your iPhone 4 also. This new Universal app will be $4.99 and will be available at launch.

Garage Band will also be making it to the iPad with touch instruments (grand piano, organ, guitars, drums, and bass), guitar amps and effects, 8 track recording and mixing, 250+ loops, AAC emailing of your song, and is compatible with the Mac OS X version. This will also be available March 11th for $4.99.

Sadly no iPad 2 version of iPhoto was announced. 

Continue reading about "Introducing Fauna.me" on New Earth Online]]>

Almost two years after starting work on an iPhone application for recording wildlife I've finally released a Beta - but not of the application it started off as.

Linnaeus was going to be released in Pro and Lite versions for the iPhone with some hope that I'd also do a version for the Blackberry. Just as I was about to release Linnaeus Lite to Beta testers I found that the species and taxonomy data I had compiled took so much space I was having trouble getting it to be included in the package. As a result the data was put on my webserver with the intention of getting the iPhone application to use this instead, however whilst testing the data I started using my Fauna.me domain as a place for testing query performance to make sure that getting an iPhone application to connect to it was going to be feasible. As a result the test became more and more detailed until it was on the verge of becoming a website, thus the Fauna.me website was born.

To tie in with the site being created on the fauna.me domain I have also changed the name of the application to match the domain name. Fauna.me is now available for people to start registering on and will allow people to add their sightings to a map. The details each sighting can store are:

• Species name (can be found using a search),
• Trip (a user can group sightings into trips),
• Country the sighting was made in,
• Location - a friendly place name such as a city or park,
  
• Latitude and longitude,
• Notes about the sighting,
• The number of sightings made at that time,
• and the date / time the sighting was made.

The majority of this information is private to the user, but each sighting is used anonymously with the country details to show species distributions on the map. This map can be viewed by anyone whether they're registered or not. By not having the specific location of endangered species on the map it helps protect them against poachers knowing their whereabouts whilst also helping the conservation community know a general location of where a species has been sighted. The data is used anonymously to protect the user's privacy and uses no no information other than "country" and "species name" - nothing can be linked to the user.

If you're a keen spotter of wildlife then you can also use the "life list" feature to see a list of each species you have seen without them being tied to a particular trip. By navigating or searching for species whilst logged in it will also provide a list of your sightings with each species record.

Whilst not yet available, the Fauna.me application will soon expand to include a "friends" feature so you can share your sightings with people you know; but you can already start posting links to species easily on Facebook and Twitter using the social networking links. If you're a photographer then feel free to also post photos in the Flickr group (at the time of writing we have 55 members and 803 photos), and let me know if you're willing to have your photos included on different species pages.

It is also planned that this will make it's way onto mobile platforms shortly.

Link: fauna.me

Continue reading about "Clickjacking Protection" on New Earth Online]]> http://www.newearthonline.co.uk/article/897#commentWrapper http://www.newearthonline.co.uk/article/897 http://www.newearthonline.co.uk/article/897 Sat, 19 Feb 2011 22:44:31 +0000 Web Standards / Web Development (General

Continue reading about "HTML5 Video is broken..." on New Earth Online]]>

... or is it? I don't mean to be harsh, but as it currently stands it is true and likely the reason why Adobe Flash will not die just yet.

Historically, with the various methods of using the embed and object tags there was always the problem that the codec used with uploaded videos was dependent on the end-user having that codec installed. The biggest issue though was that different browsers required different code in order for the video to be embedded and playable. People eventually solved this by using a video player built in Flash to play videos - a method popularised by YouTube. To make this easier for the end user there would also be video encoding done behind the scenes to standardise the format used so it could be played by the Flash player.

Now flashing forward to HTML 5 we saw the addition of the video tag which promised to help solve this and it looked like it may have been the final nail in the coffin for Adobe Flash (after already being categorically refused from being supported by iOS devices). To further cement this we saw Google use the H.264 codec in a HTML 5 beta of YouTube and support for it was added to Google Chrome.

Between then and today though they started work on their own video standard and instead of adding support for that alongside H.264 they are in fact going to be phasing out support for H.264 from their browser. So that's it, Google are ditching H.264 and are replacing it with WebM. So what this means is that the codec which was most widely used (it's also used in other applications) is now going to be ditched leaving web developers with the same problem that drove them to Flash in the first place.

We expect even more rapid innovation in the web media platform in the coming year and are focusing our investments in those technologies that are developed and licensed based on open web principles. To that end, we are changing Chrome's HTML5 <video> support to make it consistent with the codecs already supported by the open Chromium project. Specifically, we are supporting the WebM (VP8) and Theora video codecs, and will consider adding support for other high-quality open codecs in the future. Though H.264 plays an important role in video, as our goal is to enable open innovation, support for the codec will be removed and our resources directed towards completely open codec technologies.

So the landscape is now going to be that IE9 will support H.264 and no other codec, but Chrome and upcoming revisions of other browsers will add support for WebM. So is it fair to see HTML5 video is broken? Upon reflection and thinking about the situation in more detail probably not. Unless Microsoft feel pressured to add WebM support to IE9 it will be necessary for web developers to have a solution of how to keep their videos cross-browser. This could mean having videos uploaded as both H.264 and WebM and switching between the file extension using JavaScript for example depending on the browser used.

Continue reading about "Hidden.app" on New Earth Online]]> There are quite a few anti-theft solutions out there for many types of devices and there have been many success stories from people using the one that's part of MobileMe to locate iPhone thieves. In the case of Macbooks they're probably a little more desirable and tend to be worth a bit more but there hasn't really been anything on par with what MobileMe gives iOS devices.

That is until Hidden.app; a similar solution which will help you locate your OS X based device should it be stolen. Over the Christmas period it had an introductory special offer at a reduced price which has helped to gather a lot of attention to this new application/service but even now it's only $10 so it's still not a bad price!

When you activate tracking, Hidden will locate your stolen computer anywhere on the planet, collect photos of the thief and screen shots of the computer in use. (We also collect lots of nerdy network information, but we won’t bore you with the details!)

Once you've bought the software you will be asked to register your device during the installation process and this will add your device to the Hidden.app website (you can change the name of the device once you're signed in there). After restarting your Mac the application will be more or less invisible (you could always view the process list from the bash prompt) and will be ready for use. In the online interface you're then able to put your device into test mode, or state that it is stolen and it will begin to gather network information, screenshots and image captures from the built-in iSight if it's a Macbook or Macbook Pro. With the network information it gathers it is then able to pinpoint the location of your Macbook on a map. It is however possible to fool this but viewing the full network information will help to identify when this is the case.

Remember though, this only works if it has an internet connection and doesn't stop people stealing it in the first place so it is recommended that it is used in conjunction with other security measures if necessary.

Continue reading about "blueSLR" on New Earth Online]]> Although photography is one of my favourite hobbies (with the exception of the previous post) it's not something that makes it way onto my main blog often as I like to keep it's focus on web development and design (with some geek reviews too). As this one is about an iPhone application I decided there was enough overlap with the normal topics to warrant a post.

At night or when photographing wildlife it can be quite useful to have a remote release for your camera, such as the RC-1 for the Canon cameras. Though this does mean carrying extra equipment and spare batteries with you, so if you were able to somehow use your phone it would be more ideal as it's something you're bound to carry around with you anyway. This is what blueSLR does - it uses the iPhone as a remote release for your camera by allowing control over bluetooth (which requires an adapter for your camera).

At present it only supports 11 Nikon models (between 3 different adapters) on the iPhone but they plan on adding Canon cameras and Android / Blackberry support soon. Personally I can't wait for support to be added for the Canon EOS 5D mkII because it according to reviews I've read elsewhere it also adds the ability to geotag your photographs by adding GPS information from your mobile phone.

At the time of writing the following models are supported:

• Nikon D3100
• Nikon D5000
• Nikon D90
• Nikon D2Xx
• Nikon D3
  
• Nikon D3s
• Nikon D3x
• Nikon D200
• Nikon D300
• Nikon D300S
• Nikon D700

Continue reading about "lenshero" on New Earth Online]]>

Next year I'll be making my way to Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands for two weeks. As I'm sure you know the Galapagos Islands were made famous by Charles Darwin, naturalist author of "The Origin of the Species", and are host to a wide variety of species of animals not seen anywhere else in the world. A trip like this is often a once in a lifetime opportunity and so decided that I would have to make sure I take the right camera equipment with me.

To start with I replaced my old EOS 300D from previous trips with a shiny new EOS 5D mkII and a 28-135mm IS lens so I could take pictures at a higher resolution. This now left me with decisions to make on whether I would need any other lenses, and what lenses they should be. A lot of the wildlife of note on the Galapagos Islands is large enough to take photos of from a good range so I knew a decent telephoto lens would also be required. I already have a 75-300mm lens but felt that something with greater range would be better. This is where the new lenshero website becomes one of the most useful tools in a photographers arsenal when looking for a new lens. Before looking at the site I had already been looking around and felt certain the lens I should get was a Tamron 200-500mm. Now what lenshero does is allow you to search for lens based upon your needs, price range and current camera as well as a normal keyword search. So searching for "Canon 500mm" comes up with a number of options from Canon, Sigma and Tamron. Out of the six matches I could instantly rule out the prime lenses as I knew I didn't want one of those at this time.

Distinguishing the different lenses in the different results is nice and easy due to it displaying the basic technical information such as "Di LD IF" on the Tamron lens. So going with the 200-500mm Tamron lens first it displayed an approximate price, rating and comments from B&H Photo Video followed by details about the angle and focal length on different types of camera. Whilst the comments and pricing isn't particularly useful due to it being limited to one source, it is helpful that it lists the pros and cons of the lens, basic specification details and a discussion area for people interested in the lens.

Going back to the search and looking at the Sigma 150mm-500mm lens it then gave me the chance to make comparisons easier so I could decide between this Sigma one and the previous Tamron lens. If it hadn't been for the breakdown that lenshero provides I probably wouldn't have realised that the Sigma lens takes filters 86mm, is silent, and has image stablisation. These simple things actually made all the difference in choosing a lens and it had changed my mind into getting another Sigma lens instead.

When the time comes for me to buy a Tamron 90mm lens I will have to try lenshero again to see if there are any other alternatives which are better at that range. Maybe if by then they have added more sources for pricing and reviews (such as what InvisibleHand does) it will be an even better user experience than it already is.

Continue reading about "sIFR - Should it stay or should it go?" on New Earth Online]]> So the question is, what is sIFR? What can it be used for, and what are the advantages or possible disadvantages of using it? Although it's been around for a while now, these are questions which are answered here as well as reasons why it's best to no longer user it.]]> http://www.newearthonline.co.uk/article/440#commentWrapper http://www.newearthonline.co.uk/article/440 http://www.newearthonline.co.uk/article/440 Sun, 12 Dec 2010 21:40:00 +0000 Java / JavaScript / JSP

Continue reading about "Apple iPad (1st Gen)" on New Earth Online]]> After a few weeks of using the iPad without it having access to the same feature-set the US get to enjoy I've finally gotten around to reviewing the latest piece of hardware from the almighty Apple. The question in many people's minds is whether it's a netbook killer, just a large iPod or something fundamentally different...]]> http://www.newearthonline.co.uk/article/860#commentWrapper http://www.newearthonline.co.uk/article/860 http://www.newearthonline.co.uk/article/860 Sun, 12 Dec 2010 14:11:01 +0000 Hardware and Gadgets

Continue reading about "PHPEM Returns..." on New Earth Online]]>

The East Midlands very own PHP group is returning on December 2nd 2010 with a talk by Simon Lewis on optimising MySQL queries. The talk will be held in Gateway House, part of the DeMontfort University in Leicester at 19:00 - attendees will be going for drinks afterwards.

Previous PHPEM talks have covered topics such as using the Zend Library, and how PHP developers can approach other languages such as Cocoa when developing iPhone applications. Hopefully this will be the first PHPEM meet-up of many more to come. Please feel free to also join their Facebook group. 

Continue reading about "phpBB v3.0.8" on New Earth Online]]>

The developers of the forum software phpBB have released a critical update that fixes numerous issues including a vulnerability in the CAPTCHA implementation. The most important part of the update however is to fix an XSS vulnerability on boards that allow Flash to be embedded using BBCode.

On WebKit based browsers like Safari or Chrome, as well as Opera, the flash BBCode can be used to execute JavaScript causing a cross site scripting vulnerability.

The fix they detail for 3.0.7 users is to go to line 354 of includes/message_parser.php and to add the following code:

$in = str_replace(' ', '%20', $in);
// Make sure $in is a URL.
if (!preg_match('#^' . get_preg_expression('url') . '$#i', $in) &&
    !preg_match('#^' . get_preg_expression('www_url') . '$#i', $in))
{
       return '[flash=' . $width . ',' . $height . ']' . $in . '[/flash]';
}

immediately before:

// Apply the same size checks on flash files as on images

As this is not a retroactive fix it will require owners of phpBB forums to scan previous posts for any that may be affected by this. In order to help with this task they have provided a handy script for uploading to your server which when run will display affected posts.

Continue reading about "Facebook Mail" on New Earth Online]]>

There have been rumours about Project Titan since around February 2010, but today Facebook have unveiled their own email system which according to TechCrunch they have spoken of internally as being a Gmail killer. Now I'm sure Facebook would like to think they can beat Gmail, but even with the saturation of their current user base they may struggle to compete considering many people who have a Google Accounts email for work are likely to have at least one Gmail account for personal use as well. Also, it would have to have some pretty killer features in order to beat what Gmail provides.

Mark Zuckerberg at a press conference in San Francisco has spoken of how it provides seamless integration across all the different ways people communicate". What he tried to make clear was that this was not an email service, at least not an ordinary one at any rate. What this does is it links Facebook chat, social events from your timeline, and text messages in one interface. All people who use this service will be able to get their own @facebook.com email addresses. He also made a point of saying that this service is not an email killer (obviously referring to previous comments regarding Gmail) as email is only part of the service.

We are also providing an @facebook.com email address to every person on Facebook who wants one. Now people can share with friends over email, whether they're on Facebook or not. To be clear, Messages is not email. There are no subject lines, no cc, no bcc, and you can send a message by hitting the Enter key. We modeled it more closely to chat and reduced the number of things you need to do to send a message. We wanted to make this more like a conversation.

So what this basically means is that it's not email, it's actually just a form of offline messaging similar to what is available with most IM mediums. 

Many people on Twitter have commented that they would not trust Facebook with their email, and I do understand where these concerns are coming from. Considering Facebook's history of having serious privacy issues it's fair to assume that these concerns are also going to expand into this new service. This being said, I think I will at least try out this new service when it is launched.

Continue reading about "Adobe HTML5 Video Player widget" on New Earth Online]]> Just days after it is revealed the new Apple MacBook Air doesn't include Adobe Flash initially, Adobe unveil their HTML 5 video player widget which is available via their widget browser.

However, the limited browser support for the HTML5 <video> tag has forced web designers to scramble for a solution that would work across platforms as well as browsers. To help customers overcome these challenges, Adobe has released an easy-to-use, totally CSS-customizable solution that shifts gracefully from the HTML5 <video> tag to the Flash Player when the tag is not supported. The shift takes place regardless of the screen—from phone to monitor to TV.

The widget is based on the Kaltura open source library and reportedly works in unspecified versions of Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Opera and Chrome. To download this widget you have to either have Dreamweaver CS (which they seem to think most people should) or use their AIR powered widget browser. Either way they force you to install some Adobe software before you can use their HTML 5 widget.

Continue reading about "The (Lion) King of Operating Systems" on New Earth Online]]>

Apple's "Back to Mac" event kicked off with the normal statistics showing how well their products have done - it's something you always expect from their marketing team. Amazingly it is only 33% of their revenue for the past year that came from the Mac. What is even more surprising was them giving Microsoft a pat on the back for their work on the latest version of Office for Mac. Another interesting fact is that they are #1 for consumer satisfaction by ACSI for 7 years in a row, #1 in Consumer reports for the past decade and #1 from PCWorld for reliability.

So, moving on to their announcements the started with announcing the release of iLife 11 with new iPhoto, iMovie and Garageband (iDVD and iWeb were there but not mentioned). The three applications now all support full-screen views (which they revealed more about later) but have only minor changes to them. iLife 11 features new book making options, new sharing options and new slide shows. iMovie has added a few features such as instant replay, "movie trailers", and new sharing options including the ability to send to Vimeo. The movie trailers feature includes movie studio logos (surprised there aren't any legal issues with this), a new project view, and music tracks performed by the London Symphony Orchestra. Garageband 11 has new features to help fix tracks, new training videos, and a "How did I do" feature for seeing how well you're learning to play the guitar or keyboard.

FaceTime has also been released as a Beta for the Mac and will work seamless with iPhone 4 and the latest range of iPod Touch devices. I've downloaded and tried it, but it's nothing special really and by not releasing it for Windows as well it's not as versatile as Skype. 

The event, "Back to Mac", referred to how features from iOS are going to be finding their way back into OS X for version 10.7, titled "Lion". This new version will have "many features" but they've not yet all been announced. The main focus of the announcement was:

• Multi-touch gestures,
• App Store,
• Full screen applications,
  
• Application home screens,
• Auto-save,
• Resume application on load.

The App Store for the Mac will have free and paid for apps where developers get a 70/30 split. Probably the best feature for App Store is the ability to update all the applications (downloaded from the App Store) on your Mac to the latest versions. To easily see these applications you now have the "launch pad" which is the application home screen in OS X Lion. The paging for Launchpad is pretty much the same as on iOS and support multi-touch gestures and folders.

The dashboard has now moved and can be accessed by swiping to the left, similar to accessing the search page on iOS - with these changes Dashboard, Spaces and Fullscreen are now a unified feature they call "Mission control" (which is basically Expose). The expose view did look a little clumsy to operate using multi-touch gestures and at one point the demonstrator even had slight problems using it.

Their current plan is to release OS X Lion in the Summer of 2011 with more features being revealed over the coming months. The App Store will open in 90 days, but developers will be able to submit applications as of November.

Their "one more thing" was a new Macbook Air which resembled some photos leaked recently - it's small, light weight and features "instant on", a SSD for storage, and 30-day standby time.