CubeDesktop imitates Compiz Fusion even more closely, costs money

Remember Compiz Fusion, the special effects plugin system from the world of GNU/Linux that brought heaps of cool shiz like cube workspaces, wobbly window movements, and raindrops? I’ve probably mentioned it somewhere before. Well thanks to the publicity Compiz Fusion gets, envious Windows users go around creating look-a-likes.

CubeDesktop seems to be the most recent addition to this plethora of clones. The website doesn’t mention it, but it imitates Compiz Fusion disturbingly closely – down to the control panel itself, with 32×32 icons found on a grid with labels on the side. It has the standard cube, as well as a Mac OS X Leopard-like workspaces display which is found in Compiz Fusion as the “expo” plugin. It also has a whole bunch of flipping and rotating workspace views, which are pretty similar to the cube apart from the fact that they look slightly different.

The software also has a “Window Exposer”, much like the one found on Compiz Fusion, except it failed to work on my computer so I will not comment further on it.

The speed is alright, although it definitely can’t compare to Compiz Fusion – yet. I had to switch off a few effects (well, actually, a lot) to make the thing run at a decent pace – and even then it would cause iTunes to momentarily freeze whenever activated. Not good.

And why am I giving free publicity to these expensive pieces of software? Because they are essentially proof-of-concepts. I mean, the creators can advertise all they want about how they “boost your productivity”, but realistically, they probably reduce your productivity. The important thing is that they prove that these effects can actually be achieved on Windows, and hopefully, after a few more release cycles, these clones will be useful enough to actually, as aforementioned, “boost your productivity”.

Annoyingly, CubeDesktop costs money – 9.95 euros, which, at the current exchange rate, is 16.8667851 Australian dollars – cheaper than DeskSpace, another cube thing, but hey, there’s always Yod’m, and then again Compiz Fusion gives it to you for free. After the jump for screenshots.

Flickr Adds Video Sharing for ‘Pro’ Members

Yahoo’s popular photo-sharing site is making the leap into video sharing, the company has announced.

Starting late Tuesday or early Wednesday, Flickr “Pro” users will be able to upload video clips to the Flickr website. Videos will appear in the users’ photostreams alongside their still photos, and users will be able to tag them, organize them into sets and share them with all of the same privacy and licensing options available for still photos. There will also be an embedable player so users can place publicly-shared videos, YouTube-style, on blogs.

Facebook To Settle With ConnectU

Facebook is said to be finalizing a settlement with founders of ConnectU, according to sources quoted by the NY Times .

For those unfamiliar with the case , a lawsuit before the US Federal Court alleged that Facebook CEO and Founder Mark Zuckerberg stole the original code for Facebook. Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, and Divya Narendra (ConnectU) accused Zuckerberg of stealing the source code, design, and business plan for Facebook in 2003 when he worked in the Harvard dorms as a programmer for their own tertiary education focused social-networking site HarvardConnect.com, now known as ConnectU.

steve jobs sends pointed email to macbook pro owner, poor customer service

Recently the owner of a MacBook Pro that had suffered water damage contacted Apple to find about repair costs. When they were informed that it would cost $300 just to have his MBP looked at with no guarantee of whether or not it could even be repaired that wasn’t quite what they wanted to hear.

This [so far] nameless customer decided to email Steve jobs at sjobs@apple.com and said this:

Dear Steve Jobs,

I wanted to write and express my concern about some recent problems that I have had with Apple Care. This week, my MacBook Pro unfortunately sustained water damage. I understand this is entirely my fault but it is still something I would like to get fixed. After three or four calls I was finally able to get a straight answer. While I was happy to get a straight answer, I was not at all happy with the answer. It is very worrisome to me that the only way to get my computer fixed is to pay almost $300.00 up front with no guarantee that this will fix the problem. I was horrified to learn that their is no system to assess the problem and bill once all damage is known. I am reluctant to put money into a problem that could easily grow. I have had three Apple computers in a row. I love using them but I am not sure if my replacement will be one. I feel powerless in the situation and the whole experience has turned me off of the Apple company.

Sounds like a pretty reasonable email…nice tone of voice, the customer wasn’t blaming Apple for not making their laptops water-proof–nothing like that.

The response that this customer claims to have received was as follows:

This is what happens when your MacBook Pro sustains water damage.They are pro machines and they don’t like water. It sounds like you’re just looking for someone to get mad at other than yourself.

Steve

Is it real? As far as I know, yes it is. Poor customer service? Yes, that too.

If it is legit and is in fact from Steve, is anyone really surprised? Its not like he hasn’t acted like an ass/jerk/whatever word you’d prefer in the past and he’ll certainly do it again.

[Via CrunchGear]

Blu-Ray cracked by Slysoft, rips pouring from air

The recent massive increase in amount of Blu-Ray rips has an obvious reason: cracked protection BD+. A Caribbean firm called SlySoft claims to have broken the copy protection technology used on some Blu-ray discs designed to prevent video content from being copied and pirated. SlySoft has long sold a product called AnyDVD which is a utility that disables a DVD’s Content Scramble System (CSS) copy protection technology. Once a DVD’s copy protection is disabled, you can copy its content using one of several third-party programs. Now the company SlySoft is upping the DRM-busting ante with a new version of AnyDVD HD 6.4.0.0 ($47) that promises to crack Blu-ray disc copy protection.

The copy protection cracked by SlySoft is called BD+. According Macrovision, the company that owns the rights to the BD+ technology, the copy protection has been adopted by “more than 20 companies including major CE manufactures, motion picture studios, as well as The Blu-ray Disc Association.” It’s likely that Macrovision and the Blu-ray Disc Association will knock heads and thwart SlySoft’s crack of BD+. In fact SlySoft representatives have publicly stated the it’s not only likely but probable that the BD+ copy protection technology could be tweaked to prevent Blu-ray discs from being cracked. DRM-cracking technology has long been a thorn in the side of Hollywood anti-piracy fighters. Despite the Motion Picture Association of America’s efforts to crack down on DVD-ripping and despite U.S. copyright laws that make it illegal, sales of software that bypass DVD copy protection continue online and at retail stores. While this may be a sad day for MPAA, it’s a much welcomed breakthrough for the scene.

Source: Pc World

Digital downloads will be Blu-ray’s downfall

With the fall of HD DVD, Blu-ray has assumed the throne as the next format of choice, but its reign will be short-lived.

Blu-ray won’t enjoy the same decade-long dominance DVD did after it succeeded VHS. But that’s not because there will be other challenger physical disc formats. Rather, instead of buying discs from Amazon, Best Buy or Wal-Mart, people will begin getting their entertainment in the form of digital downloads in larger volumes.

Blu-Ray prices significantly increase, no competition

Blu-ray Disc players from Samsung, Sony and Sharp are now the most expensive they have been all year, presumably because HD DVD’s exit from the high-def disc arena has removed some of Blu-ray’s pricing pressure. Although HD DVD was always seen as a distant second in the HD format war, it constantly received attention because of the lower cost of its players. Because of this, standalone Blu-ray players were not moving off store shelves very steadily. The majority of Blu-ray Disc movie purchases have to date been for consumers who own a Playstation 3, which has BD playback capabilities.In a move to expedite HD DVD’s downfall, Blu-ray manufacturers and retailers aggressively cut prices earlier this year, to the point where it was possible to buy a standalone BD player for less than $300. Now, however, according to Pricegrabber.com’s most recent information, the average price for Blu-ray hardware is around $400, which is right around where it was last year. The players from Samsung, Sony, Sharp and Panasonic included here are the least expensive on the market and also the most widely available. LG’s BH200 is a dual format player with support for Blu-ray and HD DVD.

TeraDisk to have 1TB Capacity

It is called the TeraDisk and it is really small, like a ordinary CD/DVD. But it’s really huge in terms of space. 1 TB (1000 GB). How can this be done? The process is easy (or not). All existing optical media record data on semitransparent layers. A regular CD has 1 layer and a Blu-Ray disk has up to 8. The reason nobody can add more layers on a regular CD/DVD/Blu-Ray disk is because when the light passes through these layers it becomes distorted and by the time it reaches the final layers it becomes almost impossible to read/write on the disk.TeraDisk achieved the 1TB limit by using 200 layers, each storing 5GB of data. So basically the data support stay the same (TeraDisk will be made out of the same plexiglas like material used in other disks) but the write/read laser technology is completely new. They say it’s going to be cheap and it will be available for the public in 2010.

For more info on how this is done visit here or here.

 

Source: The Tech Don

Google Maps banned for military pictures

Pentagon bans Google from taking images and video of military installations. Services like Google Earth are viewed by many to be nothing more than an interesting curiosity. However, for the U.S. military and other world governments the satellite images and other footage Google offers on its Earth service represents a big security risk. BBC News reports that the Pentagon has banned Google from filming inside and making detailed studies of U.S. military bases. The ban comes after detailed footage from inside and outside of the U.S. military base at Fort Sam Houston in Texas turned on up Google Earth’s Street View service. Street View is a service of Google Earth that allows users of the application to travel down streets from the perspective of a car driver.

The problem the Pentagon had with these images was that they were shot with great detail and were found to represent a significant security risk. The defense department said in a statement quoted by BBC News, “Images include 360-degree views of the covered area to include access control points, barriers, headquarters, facilities and community areas.” The fear is that terrorists could use the detailed images to develop plans to attack the base. The U.S. military isn’t the only military force that has had problem with images shown on Google Earth. In July of 2007 that satellite imagery form Google Earth had shown a new Chinese ballistic missile sub in dock. Indian officials became irate when images of its new Sukhoi 30 MK1 aircraft turned up on Google Earth as well.

Source: Dailytech, BBC

13 Email Addresses That Can Be Useful

12. wav@koolwire.com – attach wav to get a mp3

11. mp3@koolwire.com – attach mp3 to get a wav

10. pdf@koolwire.com – You have an Office document or a picture on your computer or mobile phone that you wish to convert into a PDF file. Just email that file an email attachment to the above address and it will soon return to your Inbox as a PDF file. [koolwire review]

9. ..@photos.flickr.com – Flickr provides a unique email upload address here – you can send your photographs to this email address as attachments and they’ll show up in Flick Photo gallery almost instantly. The subject line of email becomes the photo’s title while the body of the email becomes the photo’s description.

8. e@xpenser.com – This is like filling data in a travel spreadsheet through email. You can use this address to gather and record your travel expenses while on the road.

7. go@blogger.com – You can use this address to post pictures on any Blogger hosted blog. Any picture that you send to this email address will appear as a new blog post in your mobile blog. You can also use this service to post regular text entries to your Blogspot blog. In that case, the “Send to Blogger” email address is available under Blogger Dashboard.

6. upload@upload.slideshare.net – If you have (one or more) PowerPoint Presentations and PDF documents that you quickly want to share with friends, just email the files to Slideshare and they’ll instantly turn them into a web slideshow.

5. …@mms.youtube.com – YouTube member can create an MMS profile here – if you have a video clip on your mobile phone or comptuer but no access to YouTube website, you can easily upload that video file to YouTube through that email address. [Details on Youtube Email upload]

4. pdf2txt@adobe.com – Send a PDF document to this email address as an attachment and it will come back as a plain text file. Handy when your don’t have a PDF viewer to open the PDF document. Alternatively, you can send the PDF file to pdf2html@adobe.com for conversion to HTML format. [Extract Text from PDF]

3. ..@prod.writely.com – Google Docs provides a unique email address here – you can upload your documents, spreadsheets and presentations to Google Docs through this address and read them on your mobile phone using the just launched Google Docs mobile at docs.google.com/m. [Google Docs Upload]

2. …@rmilk.com – When you signup for Remember The Milk, you are assigned a unique email address. Emails sent to this special address are automatically converted into tasks and appear in your Inbox. Click on Settings -> Info -> Inbox Email Address. Very handy for keeping a track of your unfinished tasks and getting things done while on the move.

1. wsmith@wordsmith.org – Get the dictionary definition and synonyms of any word by sending a blank email to this email address. Make the subject line as: define myword

And now the most useful email address that will help you read webpages through email without requiring a web connection:

0. www@web2mail.com – Send an email with the URL of the web page in the Subject field (e.g. www.cnn.com) and you’ll soon find a copy of that web page in your Inbox. A perfect option when there’s no Internet access in the area or access is restricted (for instance, you want to read the BBC homepage in China).