10 Software Bugs That Caused Disasters

Software bugs are part of a programmer's life, we deal with them on a daily basis but some of them slip through several stages of Quality Assurance and sometimes can cause headaches to the users. Here is a list of 10 software bugs that cascaded and ended up in real disasters.

1. In May 1996, a software bug caused bank accounts of over 800 customers of a major US bank to be credited with $924,844,208.32 each. The American Bankers Association claimed it was the largest such error in banking history.


2. A crew member of the guided missile cruiser USS Yorktown entered by mistake a 0 value when prompted by the computers. The lack of a validation mechanism generated a division by zero and the error crashed the ship's propulsion system and eventually left it dead in the water for several hours in November 1998.


3. The Ariane 5 rocket exploded in June 1996. The engineers installed software inherited from an older rocket (Ariane 4) which was not ready to handle the input generated by the latest hardware. The Ariane 5 flew faster, generating larger values of some variables. The software being unable to convert a 64 bit floating-point number to a 16 bit integer decided to shut down the navigation system.


4. In January 2001 a major European railroad company found that many of their trains would not function for being victims of the Y2K effects. Their software was unable to process the "31/12/2000" date.


5. Between 1985 and 1987 the Therac 25 radiation therapy system ran with a bug that issued lethal radiation doses to the patients who were treated by it, causing the death of five of them and injuries to others.


6. In July 1962 the Mariner I space probe was destroyed by the ground control team when they discovered that the rocket diverted from its original path. Further research indicated that a formula written on paper was improperly transcribed into source code, causing the computer to miscalculate the rocket's trajectory.


7. In 1978 the Hartford Coliseum collapsed after thousands of attendants left the building. The CAD software used to design the building contained a bug that miscalculated the resistance of the material.


8. In 1983 the Soviet Early Warning System triggered off alarms when it falsely detected that the United States had launched five ballistic missiles. The officer in charge reasoned that no such thing was possible since if the US really wanted to attack the Soviet Union they would be launching more than 5 missiles, so he reported it as a false alarm, preventing a massive Soviet military reaction.


9. During the first Gulf War, the Patriot Missile System installed in Saudi Arabia failed to intercept an incoming Iraqui Scud missile. The attack destroyed an Army barracks causing the death of 28 soldiers and 100 injured. The software that controled the Patriot system rounded wrongly a time value, making the defense mechanisms ignore the incoming threat.


10. In 1998 the Mars Climate Orbiter crashed on Mars after a 286 days journey from Earth. The software that controlled the thrusters was set up to use imperial units instead of the metric units as specified by NASA, causing the machine to malfunction and crash on the red planet.

Top 10 Geekiest T-shirts

Ever thought of buying a geek t-shirt to show off all your geekiness at work or among your friends? Would you even dare to wear one?

Here I will show you my 10 favorites:

Don't let those noobs bother you at the computer shop, your time is valuable!

And if you don't believe me, think of Google!

I'm gonna make my baby wear this one if I ever have one, a baby I mean.

Always show your feelings to your loved one, and do it in the most geeky way!

Dealing with 10 projects at a time? this t-shirt is for you.

If you find yourself speaking online-lingo more often than normal english, this t-shirt will suit you (IMHO).

Static t-shirts are boring! this one is dynamic and the hearts will blink when in proximity of a female with the same model.

Tired of being asked to fix other people's computers? If you truly abhor noobs, this t-shirt is the right one for you.

When dealing with computers there is always one more hole left to try.

Let normal people play rock-paper-scissors. But we normal geeks play rock-paper-scissors-spock-lizard.

Five Major Browsers Benchmarked

The WebDevelopment blog 6Revisions.com recently published an interesting infograph with the results of the benchmarking they performed on all five major browsers (Mozilla Firefox 3.5, Google Chrome 3.0, Microsoft Internet Explorer 8.0, Opera 10.0, and Apple Safari 4.0), measuring JavaScript speed, average CPU usage under stress, DOM selection, CSS rendering speed, page load time, and browser cache performance. Full article here.

CryEngine3 Available for Development

German developer Crytek made a public announcement today concerning its newest project the CryEngine3, which will power their upcoming game Crysis2. The new engine will be available for other developers to use in their own projects.



The developer of critically acclaimed titles such as Far Cry and Crysis has built a reputation of being the leading company when it comes to proficient technology and graphical innovation. Crysis has been released two years ago and still remains the most used benchmark when testing new graphic cards and processors.

Now the company is decided to turn this reputation into real money as they hope to make their engine be widely adopted by the industry, and represent a challenge to the already established Unreal Engine and others.

Work in Progress: TOMAX - Office Supplies in Poland

My brother in law recently asked me to help him develop a minimalistic, yet strongly corporate website to present his services through the web.

TOMAX offers high quality office supplies and distributes them in the region of Podkarpackie in Poland. The website features some pictures of his products, about-us summary, map localization, and contact form.

I'm looking for ideas to improve his website so if you have some, share them! :)

Free Tip: Always remove old drivers before upgrading

This is one very poorly documented fact about hardware maintenance: newer driver installation programs almost never take care of properly deleting their previous versions. And these driver leftovers (programs, libraries, or registry records) can cause you performance issues, startup problems and sometimes will not allow you to effectively install the newer versions.

I personally experienced this, when I bought the ASUS GTX285 video card I was running the nvidia v185 drivers. Those drivers are supposed to work fine with the card but when I tried some games I noticed that I was getting very low framerates on GTAIV and Empire: Total War, so I upgraded to the latest v186 drivers but the issues got even worse, giving me crashes and even lower FPS.

Troubleshooting my issue and with a little help from Google I stumbled upon this little program: DriverSweeper, whose purpose is to completely remove any specific driver that you indicate. So I fired up the utility, marked everything related to nVidia, and hit the "Clean" button.

Later reinstalled the 186 drivers and my games were working flawlessly again with the highest settings and I was always getting above 40fps.

So here is my tip: Always remove old drivers before upgrading!

DriverSweeper is free, there are paid counterparts that have additional features such as driver backup, safe recovery, online driver compatibility lookup, etc. So which one you use is up to you.

Google Recovers Market Share After Bing's Release

Several things have happened in the Search Engine market in the last year:

• Microsoft released Bing.
• An Alliance has been formed between Yahoo and Microsoft to fight Google's market domination.
• Windows Live Search and MSN search have disappeared.

All that led Google to lose some market share during that period, but recent figures at StatCounter show that the big internet giant has recovered their numbers and its market share is just above 80%, just as it was back in November 2008.

Source: StatCounter Global Stats - Search Engine Market Share

Oracle CEO on Cloud Computing Hype

If you are frequently reading tech, and more specifically software news, you would have noticed that this year the terms "Cloud", "Cloud Computing" are the most written ones all around the media. People seem to be going crazy about it. Every company owner wants to say that their company is on the cloud.

The truth is, nothing has really changed this year in terms of development or technology, there is more fashion in the term than novelty.

But there is so much hype that the sole term is getting companies funded. Only somebody well settled in the software industry would dare to say the truth, and that person is Oracle's CEO Larry Ellison.

Larry Ellison at Oracle OpenWorld 2009 said:
The interesting thing about cloud computing is that we've redefined cloud computing to include everything that we already do. I can't think of anything that isn't cloud computing with all of these announcements. The computer industry is the only industry that is more fashion-driven than women's fashion. Maybe I'm an idiot, but I have no idea what anyone is talking about. What is it? It's complete gibberish. It's insane. When is this idiocy going to stop?

We'll make cloud computing announcements. I'm not going to fight this thing. But I don't understand what we would do differently in the light of cloud.

Thief caught after checking Facebook on victim's house

Last week a 19 years old thief was caught after stopping to check his Facebook account whilst burgling a house and then forgetting to close his session.



The burglar, Jonathan G. Parker from Pennsylvania extracted around 3,500USD in jewelry from the house and left. When the owner returned home she noticed the obvious signs of robbery but also noticed that her computer was being used and a facebook account was still active.

Parker has been arrested with a bail of $10,000. If found guilty he could face between one and ten years in prison.

(Thanks Daiana for the contribution)

Monkey Island 2 In CryEngine 2

Crysis is a first person shooter released two years ago, the developer CryTek developed the CryEngine2 for building this game, and the results were simply amazing. The single player mode lasts about 8 hours but one of the things that prolonged the game length during the last two years was the ability to create custom maps and share them in communities.

Those maps are usually custom missions based on the same idea: the US Marines invading an island occupied by Koreans who have captured a certain alien technology.

But some users went further, and taking advantage of the benefits from the CryEngine 2 they have made one of the best creations I have seen, a remake of scenes from Monkey Island 2. The webmagazine gossipgamers.com recently posted a video:

Join Us at the V7N RoundTable!

V7Network, the friendliest webmaster community on the net is organizing a set of live training chats discussing some of the most interesting topics about Online Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, and Web Development in general.

And the best thing of all, the training is free for all V7N members :)

Originally Posted by Cricket Walker at V7N:

What: V7Network RoundTable
Where: http://www.v7n.com/chat/
When: Wed Sept 23 at 1:00 pm CST
Discussion: How to identify problem areas on your web site.
Cost: FREE to all V7N members.

I cannot begin to tell you how excited I am to introduce the V7Network RoundTable live training chats to the community. These will be structured interactive text chats covering a wide range of topics for webmasters and small business owners, focused 100% on helping our members build a highly successful online presence. At this time, our plan is to offer this training 2-4 times a month based on the response from the community.

Our first live training chat is scheduled for September 23, 2009 at 1:00 pm CST. We will be discussing ways to evaluate your site (and the tools that I personally use) to determine what types of changes you may need to consider making in terms of SEO and marketing techniques. Afterward, we will be opening things up for questions and answers.

If what you are currently doing is working, please do not consider changing a single thing. In fact, you probably don’t need this type of training. If however you find yourself not getting the results that you have hoped for, then perhaps it is time to think about sitting down and spending some time with us at the V7Network RoundTable and see if maybe we can brainstorm through some ideas for you!

We will open the chat area approximately 30 minutes prior to the start of the training session. If you are not already logged in, you will need to log in using your V7N user name and password. I expect the training session to last 1-2 hours, based on the number of member questions.

Not a member? sign up now!

Google Chrome 3, Faster, Smarter and Customizable

A few days ago Google announced the release of the third version of their flagship application: the Google Chrome browser.

New version highlights

• Speed: Chrome 3 remains the fastest browser to launch from the desktop, and in this new version it is supposed to run javascript 25% faster with a better handling of rich internet applications.


• Better New Tab page: The New Tab page has always been one of the best features from Chrome and on this version it has been redesigned and contains new features. It now allows you to rearrange the thumbnails, stick them to a particular position to preserve them even if you change your browsing habits, and even hide parts of the page that you do not wish to see.


• Improved Omnibox: The address bar with search capabilities has been tweaked to add icons to your websites allowing you to easily identify them.


• HTML 5 Support: Getting ready for the next generation of internet applications, Chrome just added new HTML 5 capabilities, such as the "video", "audio" and "canvas" tags.


• Themes: Following the steps of its main competitors, Google has been working on the customization side of Chrome, and it now allows you to install skins and theme your browser. Check out the theme gallery for samples.

If you are a customization junkie like me, you would have noticed that this and all the previous Chrome versions lack one big important feature: EXTENSIONS. If this is what keeps you from using Chrome as your default browser, you might want to check out the open source project Chromium which is shaping up quite well.

Microsoft Offering Anti-Linux Course To BestBuy Employees

It is a known fact that Microsoft did not always play nice when it comes to advertising the benefits of their products, specially when dealing against Apple. But today they crossed yet another line. Just when you think that Microsoft is beginning to do things right they somehow manage to screw up their own reputation again.

A Best Buy employee who either does not have a Non Disclosure Agreement or has a lot of guts revealed that Microsoft is giving a cheaper copy of Windows 7 (10 USD) to those Best Buy employees who take part in a training course online. Such course shows the basic aspects of Windows 7 and compares them to Linux (no indication of which distribution, just plain Linux). Published story and screenshots here. Mirror unlimited bandwidth for images here.

According to the course contents, the supposed features that make Windows 7 superior to linux are higher compatibility with Hardware, Software, Windows Essentials (doh!), "Free Downloads", "The games that your customers want: eg. World of Warcraft", and the fact that the OS receives less and bigger updates while a Linux distribution can receive hundreds in a month (honestly I didn't know that having your OS up to date daily was a bad thing!). It also mentions the fact that Linux documentation and support is limited while Windows is more documented and the support immediate and authorized.


Screenshots below:

Are You Ready For Windows Now?

I read some very nice reviews about the upcoming Windows 7 operating system, but most of those reviews came from Windows XP users.

Vista people do not seem to be so impressed about it. They find Windows 7 to be no more than a tweak to their current software.

Why is that? Why aren't Windows Vista users so hyped about it? Because it is not so different.

Some sad truths about Windows Vista

• We were not ready for it. Windows Vista was released in 2007 but the beta started back in 2005 when most of the user base was still running single core computers and 1Gb of RAM. Under those specs Vista would theoretically run, but in real life it is a bit different. As a person who spends most of his day in front of the computer I end up having at some point 8+ folders opened at the same time, a browser with 10+ tabs, a web server program for local testing, 2 database engines, Photoshop, and all the other junk (email, Winamp, some Widgets, etc.). Under those circumstances it is very unlikely that a single core machine and 1GbB RAM could stand Windows Vista running flawlessly.
  
  two-core CPUs and 3Gb RAM are today's standards. Every new mid-range machine comes with that hardware base. But of course people is not trying Vista now, they are trying W7 on their new machines. And of course it works! because it has the same requirements of a somewhat similar OS that was finished 5 years ago!
  
  
• Vista is a bad word. There is a largely spread prejudice about it. Last year Microsoft made a public case study called the Mojave Experiment. It consisted basically in asking users who never used Vista what do they think about it. Then they showed them a 10 minutes video about their upcoming project called Windows Mojave, and those users loved it! After picking up comments about Mojave they revealed that it was actually Windows Vista that they were seeing.
  
  
• There is a basic misconception about memory usage. People seem to think that an operating system that has a good memory handling is one that leaves most memory free, unused. This is absolutely wrong. A good operating system should try to occupy all the available memory with data that will be possibly used by the programs that are running, and it should do it wisely, cleaning data that is not going to be used anymore and replacing it with new data. Windows Vista does this, it will try to use from 50% to 70% of your available memory whenever possible in order to make your applications work faster. But sadly this is usually seen as a bad feature.
  
  If you bought 3Gbs of memory for your rig and installed a version of Windows that only occupies 1.5Gbs, basically you wasted your money! Instead of asking why is windows eating up all your memory you should ask yourself: why did all the previous OS sucked so badly on memory usage? I am actually very surprised that MS does not to clarify this more actively.
  
  
• Piracy didn't help. When Windows XP was released some people had fast broadband internet connections but software piracy was not such a big problem yet, since Torrents did not exist and pirating through P2P networks was a good way to get a virus.
  
  Unlike in the case of its predecessor, Windows Vista arrived on a time when everyone around the world had a fast broadband connection and Torrents were the best option for getting software for free. So installing a free activated and fully functional copy of Vista was just a matter of making a few clicks and waiting. XP had its issues with hardware compatibility on its time too, but not so many people tried to switch so fast to XP, because the only way you could get it was paying for it or buying a pirated CD version.
  
  When Vista was out, millions of people opened their torrent clients, got their copies, and a few hours later they started ranting about how bad it was. Perhaps if they had to wait at least a few months before getting it, the prejudice might have impacted in a smoother way.
  

These are not the only reasons but I think this pretty much sums up why people hate Vista. It does have some drawbacks but what software doesn't?

Maybe the next time you install a new operating system from Microsoft you should ask yourself not why they suck so much, but: am I ready to run this?

SUSE Studio: Build Your Customized OS in a Few Clicks

openSUSE and Enterprise SUSE have always been words associated with ease of use and fast setup amongst Linux users, specially those who are having a hard time migrating from Windows.

Many users regard openSUSE as the most user friendly Linux distribution, and it is not a bad description for it, since SUSE developers at Novell have been trying to focus on delivering not only what every other distro could bring, but also:

• An easy to use control-panel-like tool called YASU.
• Maximum compatibility with a wide range of hardware.
• Intuitive interface.
• Most popular out-of-the-box software for general purpose usage.

And I can confirm this as a Windows user, having installed openSUSE in three different machines never had the need to pull out the console screen to configure anything except for having fun and learning the basic commands.

But this ease of use and broad compatibility also brought a problem to openSUSE: every new release was a heavier download than the previous. Sure if you need software that can be installed on nearly every machine available today, its download file will be above 4 or 5 gigabytes and it will take quite long to install since the OS will have to search an extensive driver database to locate and deploy the drivers to your own hardware. Also delivering a huge driver and utilities/applications database sometimes can cause the user to get lost finding what he needs upon installation.

The guys at Novell have been trying very hard to workaround this problem and make it easy for users to find their desired programs and installing only their exact drivers but it all grew in complexity over time with the diversification of hardware. Now you should be able to install an OS also in laptops, netbooks, and all the hardware available in the market. And here is when I need to introduce a new concept before continuing.

"Appliance:" A configured, customized and ready to deploy operating system. It is by definition smaller than a full OS since it contains software aimed to cover one user's or business' needs.

The new solution that SUSE developers designed to overcome the weight problem and simplify the installation of Linux is allowing you to design your own appliances ONLINE! Yes, now you can set up your Linux distribution from the SUSE Studio website. The resulting appliance will only contain what you need, your drivers, your utilities, your theme, and you can download it in a file that has no more weight than a CD.

SUSE Studio Overview

SUSE Studio allows you to set up, configure and customize your own Linux distribution, not only of openSUSE but also of SUSE Enterprise Edition, the business oriented version of the OS. Being a newcomer you can start by picking a template, or as an expert you can choose to build your Linux from scratch. The system allows you to build nearly everything from general purpose systems to web servers and add any application you want to it by picking them from a repository.

A neat and friendly interface with wizards, tips and information will be your companion during the process to prevent you from getting lost in the deep Linux universe. As you add packages and components to your Appliance the wizard will calculate the space required to generate your design.

More advanced users will also find interesting tools for them, you can upload your own packages in case the default Novell repository does not have what you are looking for. Also if you are planning to use your OS in a business across several terminals, you can opt to give your Appliance a business look by picking your name and logo, which will be displayed once installed.

After you finished building your Linux Appliance (a process that according to the splash page, can only take a few clicks) you have the option to download it in any format you want (ISO images for installing, LiveCDs, etc). And if you are not absolutely sure about the resulting software, you can give it a test drive right there in the browser!

SUSE Studio is free to use, but due to the high traffic that it generates on the Novell Servers in the process of generating the Appliances, at the moment it is in closed beta and only accessible through invitations. Though you can sign up for a notification when the system is open to the public.

There is an enormous potential in Software Appliances, and Novell is determined to make the most of it. SUSE Studio is an idea that brings a new layer of satisfaction to an already satisfying experience created by the whole SUSE software family.

Recommended reading: SUSE Studio FAQs

Revisiting Monkey Island

There are hundreds of reasons to be a PC gamer this year, but I think that The Secret of Monkey Island is probably the most pleasant surprise I received in 2009.
LucasArts released the original version back in 1990 when the top gaming technology available was 256 colours on screen. It used the SCUMM engine on which many classic adventure games are based. A few years later (1992) it was re-released with improved graphics, a better UI and a MIDI soundtrack which enhanced the gameplay and put the game back on the shelves.

I was lucky enough to be able to play the earlier editions of the game but for those newcomers and the nostalgic ones who would like to revisit this timeless classic, LucasArts just launched a Special Edition!

Monkey Island Special Edition features:

• New high resolution 32-bits graphics


• Remastered soundtrack


• Voice acting


• A flashback feature that allows you to quickly switch between the original and the new edition by just hitting a key

I find myself hitting the F10 key all the time going back and forth with a smile remembering how great Monkey Island was and what an awesome job they did with the art on this one. The gameplay is almost untouched except by the UI which was simply truncated to gain space on the screen. The action panel was replaced by a smart pointer that can switch the actions with the mouse wheel or keyboard shortcuts.

The voice acting makes the game feel much more realistic, and the 2D-like graphics are charming and innovative but preserve that memorable touch that make nostalgic gamers smile on every screen. Some newcomers might not like the artistic work since it is not 3D like all the modern adventure games, but I think this was essential to preserve the game's classic feel.

The release of Monkey Island Special Edition is great news and this hopefully means the resurrection of a beautiful game genre, with many more titles to come.

Youtube and Digg to drop IE6 support, who's next?

At this point it is not necessary for me to tell you anything about Internet Explorer 6. If you are still using it you would not be reading this blog in the first place. And even if you were, you would find out the great deal of internet that you are missing. As you probably know IE6 does not support (or at least not out of the box) many CSS, javascript and multimedia features that are so widely spread in today's internet usage, not to mention its 142 security vulnerabilities, 22 of which are unpatched as of January 2009. But its market share ranges from 5% to 25% depending on which website you measure it, so it has been a real pain in the backside for every puny webmaster who is asked by his clients to add IE6 support in their websites.

Recently there has been a trend to bury IE6, led by many, many, many, many web developers who are sick of finding a workaround for every fancy feature that they want to add to their pages. But hey, nobody cares about developers!

Yeah nobody cares about developers, but companies care about their money, and they realized how much effort and money they have to spend on developing IE6 compliant applications. Many of them even have to create entirely different IE6 versions of their CSS stylesheets, JS libraries and images due to the differences between the assets needed to make a site run across the different browsers.

Youtube is the leading company in online video playback, and is daily watched by millions of people having reached its milestone of 100M US viewers in 2008. Anyone can watch videos in Youtube and registered members can upload an unlimited amount of videos which are immediately indexed by its powerful search engine. It is owned and powered by Google.

Digg is one of the biggest (about 3 million users strong) content-focused social networks, famous for its well known "Digg Effect", a consequence of driving insane amounts of web traffic towards smaller sites when posting links in the network.

Apple MobileMe is a service that allows Apple users to sync all their devices using one single application without wiring the devices together.

What do these three websites have in common? They all decided to stop supporting IE6.

Who else stopped supporting IE6?

There is no official list of websites known to have dropped IE6 support. Google already wrote in several occasions encouraging users to stop using IE6 in favour of Firefox or Chrome, also Microsoft, the browser's owner and developer often urges their users to upgrade to IE8. There are collaborative lists made by webmastwers who decided to end the support, such as IDroppedIE6.com. You can also find Facebook groups, Twitter, and forum campaigns and so on, but hey, we're not promoting hate here.

Is IE6 really so bad?

It is a bad browser for today's standards. When it was created there were not many devices or programs that could access the web, IE6 along with 5 held up to 95% of the market share in 2003, and most webmasters did not really care about the W3C HTML4 recommendation since nobody was thinking of the alternatives. IE6 was designed to work with the most common practises of web development in the late 90's and early 2000's. This lack of vision in the past, and the variety of browsers and internet devices widely adopted presently, led to the current situation with websites trying to be standard compliant but still topping 25% of traffic from IE6.

If you want to create a 100% IE6 compatible website today, you will end up losing many hours installing workarounds for features that it does not support, and chances are you will break any of the w3c recommendation rules. And if you are not so lucky to find the workarounds, your website will lack some features in IE6 that in the other browsers will work flawlessly.

Who uses IE6?

Users who browse internet on IE6 belong to any of the following groups:

• Companies/Organizations that have old versions of Windows on their machines, on which the newer browsers are not supported.
• Companies/Organizations that run Windows XP on their machines, but users don't have administrative permissions on their terminals to install new browsers.
• Novice users who were sold a PC with a pirated copy of Windows XP installed on it. Illegal WinXP copies have automatic updates disabled and those users may not know how to manually upgrade or install newer browsers.
• There are some users willingly browsing internet on IE6, but they are regarded as a minority.

Should I worry about them?

Some developers care about supporting IE6, but it is mostly the website owners and not the developers who ask for such feature. Any professional programmer can say that if your website is w3c compliant, it is not really your fault that it does not work with an eight-years-old browser.

My website is broken on IE6, what should I do?

Check your own statistics, if your traffic from IE6 is high enough to represent a threat, it would be worth to find the problems and workaround them. If your IE6 users are a minority you might want to put a warning to be displayed for IE6 users only. There are several pre-fabricated ones that you can easily implement.



Some useful links:

• Standalone IE6 Warning, published at Google Code, by the user: mihai.ile.
• Another standalone, but less intrusive message that is being used here at this blog.
• Shockingly Big IE6 Warning, a Wordpress plugin.
• IE6 Warning, Joomla extension.

Whatever option you use, try to follow these suggestions:

• Don't put a very intrusive message, some users are not able to upgrade and they will be annoyed to have a window popup on every screen.
• Don't mislead users, to keep a consistent user experience, encourage IE6 users to upgrade to newer versions of IE rather than showing biased messages in favour of FF or Chrome.

Geek Hero Comic

When you get to spend enough time in front of a computer you end up finding different ways to chill out during work breaks, and I one of my favorites is reading the Geek Hero Comic.



Geek Hero is a comic about Randall (friends call him Randie), a hardcore geek with the sweetest heart. Randall is an Open Source developer for a large company, a Debian user and sometimes doesn't relate well with his peers!



Geek Hero Comic is created and published under a Creative Commons license by Salvatore Iovene, if you are interested on his work feel free to visit his site, you may also find iPhone applications, iGoogle widgets and several other formats in which you can read the page.

Google Wave Preview

I must admit that I'm pretty hyped about the upcoming Google Wave. After seeing the video preview and some screenshots I realized how primitive are the communication tools that we are using, and how far advanced could user-interaction be, in Lars Rasmussen's words: "...if email was invented today."

It looks like Google is really decided to release an online all-in-one application that will run on the browser, with all the data being stored in the cloud. It will be a long road to travel but Google started with the right foot. Wave will open a closed beta of their system on September 30. With an official release later this year.


Given its wide range of possible applications and flexibility, it may not happen very fast but I am sure that it will certainly replace email and IM over time.

What is Google Wave?

Google Wave is a communication tool that will enable users to interact in different ways, taking advantage of the best of each of the current systems. Imagine the best features of email, IM, document edition, search and social networking, and try to mix them into one single product that allows you to do all of the above. And now imagine if that product was open source and any company could host it, without it being tied to one mega corporation. And also imagine being able to be able use it cross-platform, cross-server and for free. If you can imagine all that, you begin to have an approximate idea of what Google Wave is.



Using traditional technologies when you need to communicate with somebody over internet, you would do one of two things: 1) If that person is online then you would IM that person. 2) If not, you would use email to communicate and wait until that person checks email. Google Wave eliminates that differentiation. When you need to communicate you start a new Wave, an object that is remotely stored in the server and will handle your interaction and the activities associated to it. You will also add people to the Wave, and those would represent the recipients of the email or IM. The recipients are not online? it doesn't really matter, Waves are stored in the server and anyone of the people involved in it can see it from any device that uses the Wave protocol.

Google came up with this amazing idea of mixing all forms of communication together and making them one. But what makes it so amazing?
Well, nearly all the communication methods that you can imagine are available for your Waves, you can embed maps on them, videos, links, search results, images, collaborative edition. They are not separate services anymore, they are all ready to use within your Wave and you can get them in and share them with no more than a few clicks.

Google Wave Highlights

Open Protocol

You won't need a Google account to use Waves, by the time it is released it will be an open and well documented protocol that any development company can use to set up a Wave server. You will be able to send waves to anyone and your messages will not be stored in the Google farms. This independence also ensures the fact that a lot of interfaces will be built for it, and it will not be attached to one operating system, browser or specific hardware. Soon you will see it integrated to most social network systems, email and IM clients.

Enhanced Talk

Google Waves introduces "responding in context", when you receive a reply you will no longer get a copy of the previous message as a block of text as if it was email. Actually, messages are no longer plain blocks of texts, with Wave your messages will be true objects that can be analyzed, parsed, modified and displayed in many several ways. This improves interaction between people by reducing the gap between a real conversation and a virtual conversation.

You can respond to a certain part of the conversation only, and respond to the rest in a different message. The UI will display the responses and organize them accordingly.

Improvements in messaging systems, widgets and extensions

Have you seen the preview yet? no? go check it out! I'll mention a few that you can see in that video:

• conversation history,
• on the fly spell checking,
• dictionary suggestions,
• on the fly text transmission and language translations,
• games,
• integration with Media, Maps, and other services,
• instant image transmision, automatic thumbnail generation and transmission on a different connection thread

What makes all this worth is the fact that they are pushing us forward. Every step being made is for our benefit and I will be very glad to see this technology working on my computer soon.

Keep it up Google!

Dialogg with Google's Marissa Mayer

Kevin Rose from Digg interviews Google's Vice President, Search Products & User Experience: Marissa Mayer.



The top questions submitted and voted on by the Digg community are:

• Do you ever get disturbed at what you see as most searched topics? (+441 diggs, submitted by Abbeygargoyle)
• With products like Google Docs, Voice, Wave as well as Chrome OS, Google seems to strongly encourage the move to the cloud. However, a lot of users do not have fast internet access and have relatively low bandwith caps. Do you consider Internet Service Providers as a major bottleneck in the user experience of a cloud-oriented system? If so, what do you think can be done fix or circumvent that potential problem? (+418 diggs, submitted by Nephersir7)
• What are you going to do with all the data you are collecting on your users? (+362 diggs, submitted by Inceptious)
• What happened to the 10th to the 100th promise Google made on its last birthday to put $10 million into the best ideas submitted to Google and winnowed by a vote of the public with final selections made by a panel selected by Google? The initial decision-making was to have come in December, then it was delayed due to the huge response... and now it appears to have gone by the wayside. (This is very disappointing for all who trusted Google to honor its funding promise.) (+280 diggs, submitted by ClayT2)
• How do you feel about Bing? I believe the search engine has some very positive features. Does Google plan on implementing any significant changes in response to Bing's release? (+279 diggs, submitted by Rujtu)
• What product that Google has in beta are you most excited about at the moment? (+239 diggs, submitted by bamafun)
• What do you think of Wolfram|Alpha? (+223 diggs, submitted by seanieb)
• Who do you think is Google's biggest threat? (+191 diggs, submitted by DingoMD)
• Could you please take us through a day in the life of "the boss"? (+190 diggs, submitted by bzaks)
• Is Google Skynet? (+182 diggs, submitted by sjbdallas)

MS-Yahoo! Alliance: Bing Engine to be Used in Y! Search

During very long and hard negotiations, Microsoft and Yahoo have been trying to reach an agreement that would allow both companies to form an alliance to take advantage of each one's strengths and represent a more solid competition against Google, the so far undefeated internet giant.

Some progress has been made in such negotiations and they have agreed upon some terms, at least in Search Service matters. The Yahoo! search service is going to be powered by Microsoft and its brand new engine Bing, while Yahoo! will become the exclusive worldwide relationship sales force for both companies' premium search advertisers.

You can read the full details at the new press release from the Choice - Value - Innovation website, which is the public face on behalf of the MS-Yahoo! alliance.

Firefox 3.7 to Improve UI and Visual Effects

Long before the release of Firefox 3.5, developers at Mozilla were already working on v3.6, v3.7 and even 4.

In the next 2 updates of Firefox (3.6 and 3.7) we are going to see several interface improvements, being the most impressive the addition of Vista/W7 Aero effects. Check the screenshot below for a sneak peek:



As you can see not only the Aero effects have been activated. XP and non-Aero users are going to see improvements too, since this version also features several changes in the buttons positioning, menus and tabs navigation.

Visit the Firefox UI discussion page to see the UI changes as it progresses.

There is also some interesting progress, although still experimental, being worked on Firefox 4. It seems the designers are trying to implement a Chrome-like tabset. Take a look at the mockups, but keep in mind, these are mockups! and not the definitive look of Firefox 4.

Download IE8 or the Kitten Dies

It is a well known fact that Microsoft is losing ground in the web browsers market, specially in Europe where the laws are harder against the monopoly.

This plus the fact that the worldwide acclaimed Firefox has been capturing MS users since about 2004 when the 1.0 version was out. Back in 2005 Firefox had about 4% of the users around the world, and that number constantly increased to 13% in 2006, and 16% in 2007. Then Chrome appeared only to make the market even a bit more diverse.

As of today the statistics are mixed depending on who elaborates them, and where are they tracked. Net Applications Market Share says:

1. Internet Explorer: 65.85%
   
2. Firefox: 22.39%
3. Chrome: 1.74%

(Source: Wikipedia - Usage share of web browsers).
Check the link for other sources.
I edited this post due to wrong statistics. Thanks Daniel for clarification.

Internet Explorer 8 has been around for a few months now and since Microsoft already has bad numbers with the 7th version, they are beginning to do weird things to get people to install IE on their machines.

Browser for the Better

Browser for the Better is a Microsoft charity campaign that states that for every download of IE8 made through the website: http://www.browserforthebetter.com/index-htm.html, 8 meals will be donated to the organization Feeding America.

They were honest enough to explain below in small letters that the "8 meals" are for illustrative purposes only, and they will actually donate 1.15USD to that organization per download (because as we all know, in the US you can buy 8 meals with 1.15 bucks). Also it looks like tracking the downloads through the official MS website is an unattainable quest, because they will only donate money if you download through browserforthebetter.com, if you get IE8 from the MS page or through Windows Update, forget about the donation.

Dig up the treasure!

Now this is a funny one, they put somewhere in the internet a hidden element that is only viewable through IE8, and if you see it, you get 10.000 USD. Wouldn't it better to donate those 10 grand to Feeding America? I would have downloaded it!

Lets tell some lies...

Now MS created a get-the-facts website that shows you what are the IE8's "benefits" over the other browsers. I am afraid that one day they will get serious and remove this joke, so just in case this link gets removed or obsolete, I took a screenshot of it.

Videos

Well we can't deny that MS has more money than Google and Mozilla so they can spend a bit more money on their marketing campaign, just look up in Youtube the IE8 ads and you will see pretty much the same things that I wrote here but in film format.

What's next?

I can see it coming:

Come on Microsoft! You have the resources, spend some money on improving your browser, marketing can wait.

My First Apple Product Ever: iPod Nano

I used to be reticent towards Apple and its products. I still have some reserves about their software, but my wrong thought about their hardware was that it is unnecessarily overpriced and overrated.

But now I know that their hardware is overpriced for a reason: it is better than the rest. And it is not overrated at all, it is simply superior.

Recently I stumbled upon this little device on a store and bought it after an Apple representative showed it to me:

The iPod Nano is a beautifully engineered machine that covers your audio playback needs by far exceeding all your expectations. Being a Winamp lover I would usually despise iTunes and everything related to it but the representative told me that I can load music into the iPod with many different players so I bought it. Later I read that sometimes Apple releases firmware updates and I must use iTunes to install them so I had no other choice.



I will tell you a bit about the iPod in this post:

Features

• Audio and Video playback.
• Music browser and Cover Flow.
• Allows playlists, song rating, displays album arts and lyrics.
• Smart shuffling capabilities.
  
• Some small cool games.
• Alarm, notes, calendars, etc...
  

But hey most media players today come with those features, don't they?
I'll tell you why iPod is different.

Pros

• Audio with iPod is just better, the Apple earphones and the audio decoding capabilities of the iPod make music sound a lot better than on any other device.
• Cover Flow is the easiest way to browse for your music, simply turn the iPod on the side and it will display an art gallery of your music which you can browse with the wheel.
• The battery lasts longer than on any other player, it promises 24hs of non stop playback if you don't mess around with it too much.
• High amount of memory, iPod nano comes in versions of 4, 8 and 16 gbs. That should be more than enough to carry your favorite music around.
• Shuffling with iPod is funny, I don't shuffle too much but iPod comes with a little bot called Genius, that will seek your library for music that matches style and will shuffle in a smarter way than other players.
• Better screen, iPod has a high resolution 2" screen which will display your music covers, video, captions, menus and it has a few nice accessibility perks.
  

Cons

• iTunes dependency: you need iTunes to install firmware updates. Fortunately iTunes improved over the years and now it is not so heavy and invasive as before, but I still prefer my Winamp over it.
  
• Some media formats and album covers not supported. FLAC has been completely overlooked.
  
• It's pricey, but with technology you should know: you get what you pay for.
• It has a nice surface but it scratches easily if you don't keep it in a rubber wrap. And those accessories are expensive too.
  

The Wave is coming!

Google presented a developer demonstration of their brand new project, which will probably be the central piece of their future Operating System. Please welcome: Google Wave!