Archive for the 'Noteworthy' Category

Apple Welcomes Us to 2007

Published on Thursday, January 4, 2007 in Apple, Noteworthy and Technology. 1 Comment

If you haven’t already peaked at Apple’s frontpage, you would see the pretty large graphic that welcomes us to 2007 (above). Their bold title is this: “The first 30 years were just the beginning. Welcome to 2007.” Steve must have some big thing up his sleeve, if this year will top the past 30. Apple hasn’t publicised this much since the revealing of the original Mac, back in 1984 when they said:

On January 24^th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like “1984″

Now the Mac was pretty revolutionary, don’t you think? So I wonder what they’ll introduce this year to top that. Will it be something new about Leopard, an iPhone perhaps, a builtin DVR inside iTV? It won’t be over until Jobs springs on us that ever familiar phrase “One more thing…”

Month of Apple Bugs: So VLC is Apple software?

Published on Thursday, January 4, 2007 in Apple, Internet, Microsoft, Noteworthy, Software, Technology and Virus & Spyware. Closed

I have been reading up on this ubiqutous ‘Month of Apple Bugs’, and in light of this article, I have become increasingly angered with the website. The article on AppleGazette makes very valid points, as to why effectively the MOAB project has lost all of its credibility. I want to state upfront that I’m not writing this as an Apple Fanboy (though I am), I am writing this as a user of OS X and Windows, and various Apple products.

The MOAB project aims to show off a vunerability in Apple products over the 31 days of January. The first bug was understandable, a Quicktime based Buffer Overflow that has a “vulnerability in the handling of the rtsp:// URL handler allows remote arbitrary code execution.” This affects Windows an Mac OS X. This is a real flaw in Apple software, and can allow the execution of malcious code, via this buffer overrun, so it is critical.

The second vuneralibility however is debatable. In my eyes, this flaw is neither OS X, nor Apple. This flaw is based within the popular VLC Media Player. Now lets stop here for a second. VLC? Yes, the cross platform and open-source media player available on Windows, Linux, *nix and other platforms. However you look at it, I have no idea how this is an Apple Bug. Yes remember the title of the project. Other than running on OS X, and the actual vunerability allowing execution of arbitrary code (as with the Quicktime flaw above) which as you can see it would allow execution of code on OS X. But does this mean the problem is anything to do with Apple themselves? NO. Do we blame Microsoft for 3rd party software that has holes in it which can cause Windows to get a buffer overrun? Abosultely not. We blame the software developers. Why should Microsoft (or in this case Apple) deal with an application that they do not develop? It makes no sense. If you call your project ‘Month of Apple Bugs’ then please use Apple bugs, and not an open source software that has the same vunerability in every other distribution!
As AppleGazette pointed out, they do state on their website:

Are Apple products the only one target of this initiative?
Not at all, but they are the main focus. We’ll be looking over popular OS X applications as well.

Yeah they do defend themselves, but for goodness sake, if you create a title, which is then missleading what do you expect people to do? How is an OS X application an Apple Bug. It is only on the same OS. I’ll re-iterate myself: Do we blame Microsoft for flaws in developer ‘x’ software? Hell no. The developer is blamed. It seems that they are only seeking attention by putting Apple and Bugs in the same title. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m all for this. After all publicising vunerabilities helps to get them fixed faster, and thus leading to a more secure application. However I don’t like the other statement on their website:

John Doe has written a ‘post’ in his blog, saying he debunks the XXX bug, what’s that?
No worries. It’s probably someone begging for attention or PR-brainwashed.

Maybe they should have a look at their answer, because when you post titles of the project on social websites like Digg, del.icio.us, forums, etc, people will be miss-lead on what the actual flaws are on. Posting an open-source software bug on the second day is no good way to get started, and with their title it seems like they are the ones begging for attention.

The third vunerability is similar to the first one in that it is a vunerability which allows the execution of arbitrary code through Quicktime, but in Windows. Specifically it is “A vulnerability in the handling of the HREFTrack field allows to perform cross-zone scripting, leading to potential remote arbitrary code execution.” I understand that this is Apple bugs, and again this makes sense, even though the proof of concept “uses Microsoft Text Driver ADODB connection which requires an anonymous FTP login to the exploit location, for an unknown reason“. After all, Quicktime is Apple software. It’s like Microsoft patching flaws in Microsoft Office for Mac.

How many actual flaws do they have that are Apple software / OS X bugs? I would like to know, as it seems to me they have little. Displaying a flaw in an a open-source and cross-platform (Windows & Linux included) which is not even developed by Apple on the second day is really shoddy. I for one am quite annoyed, not for the fact that they are displaying Apple bugs, but because they don’t! Granted we have only seen three, and 2 out of these 3 were Apple software (Quicktime) related. I am saying this for all the Diggers and those alike who like to skim read articles and are a lot of time miss-informed by such things.

Get your act together MOAB, this is not a good start (a pretty bad one at that).

SonyEricsson Bluetooth Watch: Review

Published on Friday, December 29, 2006 in Noteworthy, Technology and Wireless. Closed

For Christmas we decided to get our dad the new SonyEricsson watch (made by FOSSIL). In more than a few not so unobvious ways he pointed out that he wanted the black version, and it was damn hard to find. I looked everywhere on the internet and I couldn’t find one that actually had it in stock. Or so I thought. On SonyEricsson’s online shop, they said that they had it in stock, which I was quite surprised at, and the price was cheaper than anywhere else (which surprised me even more). The key thing is it arrived before Christmas. It was great to see my dad’s face at Christmas, because he thought that we wouldn’t be able to get one.
I took some post-christmas photos of the unboxing, it didn’t seem fair to take photos while my dad opened his present . All of the following is based on my dad’s opinions of the watch.

The actual box of the watch (not the packaging), is designed like a real watch, so you can stow it away safely. It is really versatile and looks really sleek. The watch itself is extremely cool, and not surprisingly it is only compatible with selected SonyEricsson phones. However the phone does excel at what it does, as it displays the name of the person who’s calling the user as well as being able to play/pause the music being played on the phone, and skip a song. What is extra special, is the the watch can display accented characters (ie, á and é), which is important, as we are Hungarian and a lot of names have accents in them.
A feature, which my dad pointed out, is that if you have a bluetooth headset also paired with the phone, you can chose to accept the call, and the voice is forwarded to the headset. This means the watch doesn’t interfere with the headset, and you don’t need to even touch the phone. It also needs to be pointed out that although the watch itself is relatively heavy (~150g) it doesn’t feel heavy at all when it is on your hand, and you really don’t notice that extra weight. The digital time and date on the watch is received from your phone, so you don’t need to enter that in manually.

You can head over to my Flickr page to check out all of the photos of the watch, as well as the certificate card that comes with the watch to show that you own a genuine SonyEricsson watch.

PC to Mac Conversions

Published on Thursday, December 14, 2006 in Apple, Noteworthy and Technology. 4 Comments

A friend of mine informed me today that she got a iMac for her birthday. So far only one non-techy friend of mine has had a Mac, so now it is two! She said she got the “huge one” and commented that (on Mac OS X) “It is really different“. I hope she enjoys using it, with that massive screen, it really is humongous. I guessed it was the 24-inch one (judging by her comments), but it could have been the 20-inch one as well. I’ll make sure to ask her. I don’t think I even blogged about the release of it! BTW: That is not hers above, just some random one I found on Flickr. Now to somehow get all my other friends to get Macs (James, Ben I know you’re reading this!)… There should be a word for a person that has transitioned from Windows to Mac. I should invent one…

The Logitech MX Revolution: Review

Published on Tuesday, December 12, 2006 in Gaming, Noteworthy, PC, Technology and Wireless. 5 Comments

Score: (4/5)

Sadly this isn’t the Nintendo Revolution. It is however a brand new, and fantastic mouse! It’s fast, responsive and uses a laser. The best feature though, not including the fact that it’s cordless, is its scroll wheel. This is a unique wheel which can do both the normal ‘click to click’ mode and a free scroll mode. The free scroll mode allows the wheel to spin on its own for easy navigation where you have lots of pages. It truly is very ergonomic. You can also change it so that after a certain speed, it will automatically change from click to click, to free scroll mode. I use this all the time, and I love it!

I have been using it for around a week now, and is much better than the Mighty Mouse. I got rid of it after the scroll wheel failing me, and after trying to fix it numerous times (and replaced by Apple once, after which it worked for a while). I have configured the thmub button to turn on expose, and the forward and back buttons move through the tabs in Safari. The supposed ‘search’ button I didn’t have a need for, so I re-routed it to skip to the next new news item in NetNewsWire. When I press down on the scroll wheel, it triggers the desktop in expose. One minor annoyance, is that you can’t actually set Expose functions. You have to set it to a key (ie, I use F8, and F10) which you then change in OS X’s Keyboard System preferences pane to activate Expose, or whatever you want it to do. This does have the added benefit, that in any application, you can customise any of its shorcuts to a button. Another neat feature, is that you can customise these settings on an per application basis. So one click may trigger forward tab in Safari, but that same could activate the Cut tool in Photoshop, or something similar.

Click on to read the rest of the review, or to see the unboxing photos, go to the flickr page.
Continue reading ‘The Logitech MX Revolution: Review’

Contest Winner: James Gardner!

Published on Tuesday, December 12, 2006 in Apple, General, Noteworthy and Technology. 4 Comments

I know it’s later than the actual end date of the contest, so sorry! But James you have won the contest. Please send me an email to contest [at] theminiblog [dot] co [dott] uk with your choice of prize. Would you like the £15 iTMS voucher or the £10 by paypal. Make sure to include an email that I can reply to with your details and confirmation. Enjoy your prize!

HOW-TO: Cleaning the Apple Keyboard

Published on Thursday, November 16, 2006 in Apple, Noteworthy, Random Stuff and Technology. 155 Comments

There comes a time, when your shiny white Apple keyboard gets so dirty that you can’t bear one second more. For me, that day was today. I love the Apple keyboard, it is nice, ergonomic and looks very sleek. However the only ‘disadvantage’ (if you could call it that) is that it is white. It gets dirty easily and you can see really clearly everything. A simple wipe of the keyboard with a damp cloth was not enough. There was still remains of tons of different things, and I wanted it off. You never really notice how dirty your keyboard is, unless you use a white keyboard, or something of a similar colour. But with the Apple keyboard, the outer shell is clear, so you can see everything there too.
This little how-to guide will show you how I cleaned my keyboard to perfection. Click on for the detailed guide (with lots of photos).

UPDATE: I’ve been dugg, TUAW’d and del.icio.us‘d.
UPDATE 2: I had to change the photos to get them from flickr as I am burning through my bandwidth really quickly. I am at 18GB, and my max is 21GB per month!

Continue reading ‘HOW-TO: Cleaning the Apple Keyboard’

Gaming News in Review: Part 2

Published on Tuesday, November 14, 2006 in Gaming, Microsoft, Movies, Noteworthy, PC, Software, Technology and TV's. 1 Comment

xbox hd-dvd

Part deux of the gaming news round-up over the last few weeks.

Could the Wii not support game saves to SD memory cards? According to the manual it is, but not according to the console itself. That’s what Joystiq found out. Lets hope Nintendo fix this in time for the release, as we wouldn’t want to replay an entire game when at your friends house, do we? [link]
Engadget’s Wii software walkthrough video and gameplay walkthrough videos allow you to see what it would be like if you owned a Wii. Shortly it will come true for a lot of people, or at least we hope.
Microsoft revealed the HD download service for US Xbox 360 owners. These will allow you to download 720p HD TV shows from CBS, Comedy Central VH1 and more. Deleted TV shows can be re-downloaded for free in either HD or SD. Movies are ‘rent-only’, whereby you have two weeks to watch a movie, but after you start watching, you have 24 hours to finish the film. After that the film will no longer play. During the 24-hours, you can watch the film an unlimited number of times. [link]
Engadget open the retail version of the Xbox 360 HD-DVD player and have a play around with it, naturally with tons of photos (above) [link]
The PS3 gets dismantled before it is even in circulation. The four part videos take you through a detailed disassemblement of the PS3 showing the CPU, heatsink, the blu-ray drive, etc. [part 1] [part 2] [part 3] [part 4]
PS3 kiosk is a fake! The PS3 behind the glass in retail outlets are not even functional, no, it seems that Sony may be scared of the PS3 overheating or exploding, so they placed a separate version enclosed in the kiosk. The actual console is very well ventilated to make sure the heat dissipates as much as possible. My, my… [link]
Size comparison of the Wii, the PS3 and the Xbox 360. The PS3 is the largest, and the Wii is the smallest (though it’s not like we didn’t know that) [link]
The Xbox 360 HD-DVD player is fully functional in PC’s. Hook it up using the USB, and some Toshiba drivers you can not only view the files on the HD-DVD, but if your PC can handle it, it can also play back the movie. Nice. What’s more, the Mac recognises the drive instantaneously without any drivers, but there is no software to playback the video. Oh well! [link]
A DVD ‘enhanced’ version of the Wii will be released to the US and Japan in the 2nd half of 2007. The current Wii’s contain the DVD drive, however they do not have the software capable to play movies. The most likely reason for not including the software, is to avoid licencing fees which would increase the price of the console. [link]

Gaming News in Review: Part 1

Published on Tuesday, November 14, 2006 in Gaming, Microsoft, Movies, Noteworthy, Technology and Wireless. Closed

the wii house

While I was unable to post during the last two weeks, there has been plenty of gaming news floating around, so be prepared for a awfully long post.

New Halo 3 Info: 1up.com have revealed lots of new information about Halo 3. There will be three different editions of Halo 3, a standard, a collectors and a Legendary edition. New brute weapons, Spike Rifle and Spike Grenade. The Mongoose ATV, like the Warthog, however there is no turret. A new assault riffle as the starting weapon, Bungie hope to improve the tactics of the game, so it is more fair. Save multiplayer, and single player gameplay videos and watch them again. The left and right bumpers are being used as the reloading buttons for your weapons, so what happens with the X button now? [link]
PS3′s SIXAXIS controller is completely disassembled to reveal its innards. A layer by layer documentation takes you through the motion sensing parts, the non-replaceable battery, and the rest of the gadgetry. [link]
The Wii house of fun in London. SPOnG managed to take a look around Nintendo’s secret house which is kitted up with Wii gear, for the press. They took lots of photos and described their experience with the various games and such. Photo shown above. [link]
70GB Hard drive for the Xbox 360 spotted. While the photo could be a fake, the most likely explanation is, Microsoft wants you to be able to store those Movie and Video downloads somewhere (currently for the US only, more in the next post) The video marketplace allows you to download various movies, tv shows and short films, some in HD, which obviously needs plenty of space. [link]
Sony fanboys hijack the Nintendo Wikipedia entry and cover it with “nintendo sucks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1″, for a mere few minutes, until the Wikipedia admins notice. “In the short moments before Wikipedia admins could get the correct page back up, the assailant successfully misled several would-be Nintendo fans to assume the company had gone out of business, then deciding to ‘switch teams.’ [sarcasm]” [link]
Engadget get down to business, and get hands on with their final production unit of the Wii. Plenty of high-res images of the unboxing, the console and all its accessories. What more could you want? [link]

I split down the post into two separate articles. It’s probably more helpful for the eye.

MacHeist Invites: Get it here

Published on Tuesday, November 14, 2006 in Gaming, Noteworthy, Software and Technology. 4 Comments

I have seven MacHeist invites to dish out, and I will hopefully get more soon. To those who are unaware, and have been sitting under a rock for the past few weeks, MacHeist is created by the founders of MyDreamApp. The idea is, you follow cryptic messages and use all your geek knowledge to complete various missions. At the end, you will receive a code to put into the MacHeist safe to unlock the freebies for that mission. Lots of different applications (Mac-only, duh!) will be available to unlock during the six different missions. The first mission has started, and is nearly over, and you unlock three pieces of software in total that amount to a saving of $40.95. I won’t give any spoilers, so if you are seriously interested, then leave your email in the comments below. I will try to send out the email as soon as possible. This is based on a first come first served basis.