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AppleFeed is an apple-related news aggregator. An RSS feed is provided for those who doesn’t want to subscribe to more than one Apple-related sites. The rollyo powered search engine will enable visitors to search through apple related sites.
You can contact Apple Feed maintainer at contact@applefeed.com if you wish to submit an rss feed/site to AppleFeed.
PHP Developer Center is now available at Yahoo! Developer Center. It provide information for developers who wish to use PHP with Yahoo! Web services.
It has some useful code samples, HOWTO articles, and other resources on using REST and SOAP, parsing XML, caching, and many more.
Now that the MacBook Pro started shipping to consumers, Apple has discontinued the sales of 15-inch PowerBook G4. This morning Apple Store was updated and the only PowerBook G4 you can buy is the 12 and 17-inch.
I went to Apple Center this afternoon to get an Airport Extreme Card and I notice the 15-inch PowerBook G4 is really gone from the display. I asked the shop employee if MacBook Pro is available, and the answer is “No, and we’re NOT even sure when we’ll get it”.
Haoli, the author of Saft, the popular plugin for Safari just released Saft Lite 3.0.0 for MacOS 10.4.4 and 10.4.5 and Safari 2.0.3. Saft Lite 3.0.0 is a free plugin that offers a work-around to the “Mac OS X Command Execution Vulnerability”.
Here’s the detail of the vulnerability:
The vulnerability is caused due to an error in the processing of file association meta data in ZIP archives (stored in the “__MACOSX” folder) and mail messages (defined via the AppleDouble MIME format). This can be exploited to trick users into executing a malicious shell script renamed to a safe file extension stored in a ZIP archive or in a mail attachment.
This can also be exploited automatically via the Safari browser when visiting a malicious web site.
Please note that this is only a WORK-AROUND for Safari. The problem is in the MacOSX, and if the file is downloaded via Mail or other browsers, it still can damage your system when you double-click to “open” it. The best way to prevent your system from this vulnerability is not to open files in archives or mail attachment originating from untrusted sources.
You can also check your system if it is affected by this issue.
Australian ISP, BigPond has released a new video download service called “BigPond Movie Downloads”. Customers can rent movies, television shows, sports, short films and music videos. Movies available for download are sized around 1GB and it cost between $1.95 and $5.95.
This video download service is similar to Apple’s iTunes Music store which offered customers to download TV shows, music videos and short films. Because of the Digital Rights Management (DRM) restrictions which will cause the contents downloaded to expire after the rental period, you cannot upload the video to your iPod.
Microsoft is carrying a contest called “Spring Cleaning Sweepstakes” offering people the chance to win Apple products such as MacBook Pro laptops, iPods, and Apple Cinema Display. Some microsoft products such as Microsoft Office 2004 (Mac), Xbox 360, Microsoft Wireless keyboard/mouse are also being offered. Additional items being offered are Bose speakers and Herman Miller Office Chair.
This contest is only available to residents of United States. You can visit the contest page for more information. Good luck!
A new version of iTerm, the alternative terminal emulation program for Mac OS X is finally out. iTerm is now a universal binary application, that means it will run on your new Intel Macs.
iTerm is a really good alternative to Mac OS X default’s terminal program because of it’s multi-tab version. If you’re a sysadmin who needs to make a remote connection to other computers, this software is recommended.
Choosing a wiki software can be a difficult task because there are too many wiki software to choose from. WikiMatrix provide a very useful service for people who are confused which wiki system is best for them. The service is called Wiki Choice Wizard.
Wiki Choice Wizard will help you to choose which wiki software is right for your needs. The wizard will ask you a few questions about your needs, then it will narrow down the list of wikis and lets you compare them.
Camino 1.0 has been released on Valentine’s Day. Camino is a Mac OS X open source web browser based on the Gecko rendering engine. It replaces Mozilla’s XUL-based user interface with a native Cocoa implementation. Just like Mozilla Firefox, Camino is a browser only and does not include Mozilla’s email / composer.
For the past few months, I have been using Camino browser instead of Mozilla Firefox because it runs so much faster on Mac OS X. Most features of Mozilla Firefox such as tabbed browsing, search as you type, and search bar is included with Camino. Unfortunately, you cannot install Firefox extension with Camino. However you can install CamiTools which will provide additional features such as:
After rumors of being delayed 3 - 4 weeks, Apple has started shipping the new MacBook Pro plus speed bump. The MacBook Pro is being offered in 1.83 GHz (Up from 2.67 GHz) and 2GHz (Up from 1.83). You can pay additional $300 to upgrade the processor to 2.16 GHz. I don’t think 160 MHz would make a lot of difference though, if you’re crazy enough you can overclock your 2GHz to 2.16 GHz yourself.
I wonder what happened to those who ordered the MacBook Pro, will the speed increase included with their MacBook Pro, or they will have to live with their slower MacBook Pro.
CNN is reporting that MySpace, the popular social networking site, now has 2 1/2 times the traffic of Google and it quickly eclipsed Friendster as the top social-networking site where users build larger and larger circles of friends. With 50 million users, MySpace is the most popular social networking site on the planet.
Flash Tennis Game is a web-based game by Gamedesign. It’s a very interesting and addictive game, the game is also available for download. Too bad it’s windows only.
This game have two modes available, the exhibition and the tournament. With the tournament, you get to play as famous women tennis player such as Davenport, Hingis, Graf, etc. The exhibition mode is good for practice, once you’re used to the game you can try the tournament.
The game is very simple just use your keyboard, and left/right arrow key to aim the ball direction. Have Fun!
According to the Apple’s online store, the MacBook Pro availability was changed to 3 - 4 weeks pushing it back to March. However, according to Razorblade, apple already began shipping MacBook Pro to Apple reseller in Indonesia.
This delay is probably cause by limited supplies of Intel Core Duo processor. There was a review on iMac Intel, over at Anandtech that mention this shortage of supplies problem. Quoting from the article:
With the Core Duo, Intel not only introduced a reasonably sized change in microarchitecture, they also made the shift to 65nm on this semi-new architecture. The end result seems to be that availability of Core Duo processors and chipsets just isn’t all that great. In fact, unless you are a Tier 1 OEM or ODM, we’re hearing that you aren’t getting Core Duo chips until sometime next quarter!
With limited supplies, all of Intel’s partners were limited in what they could bring to market based on Core Duo, and when. That’s why one of Intel’s strongest partners, Dell, made their first Core Duo product a higher priced 17” model that would sell in lower quantities than a lower priced mainstream solution.
I’m not sure if anyone who pre-ordered their MacBook Pro would receive anything this month. Let’s just wait and see!
Google has released Google Desktop 3 Beta, with several new features.
You can now drag and drop panels from the Sidebar onto the desktop and leave it floating on your desktop. The reverse action is to “Dock to Sidebar”, which is selecting a panels floating on your desktop back into the Sidebar.
Another feature that is new to Google Desktop is the “Search Across Computers” which allows you to search through your hard drives on any computers. Imagine if you can search through the content of your hard drives from your laptop or using your computer at your office. In order to use this feature, you will need to enable it and have a Google Account (the same login you use for Gmail).
In order to share your indexed files between computers, Google Desktop must first copy the content of the file to servers located at Google. The “Search Across Computers” feature raises concern over privacy on some people.
I’m not worried about enabling this search feature because the data is automatically deleted from Google’s server and you can also manually remove all files from Google Desktop servers using the “Clear my Files from Google button”. Sensitive information you access via the web such as your Internet Banking information will not be shared with other computers because your HTTPS web history will never be shared across computers.
Are you worried if you enable this feature on your PC?
The New York Times is reporting that Google will integrate it’s instant messaging service with the Gmail services.
The new web-based instant messaging called Gmail Chat, will allow users to exchange text messages from their e-mail account, see when contacts are online, and save chat history like an e-mail messages.
coComment is a service to help you keep track of comments and conversations you and other people are making on blogs. With coComment, you won’t lose track of a conversation because you forgot the URL. coComment will also inform you when someone respond to your comment.
It is very easy to use coComment, all you have to do is sign up (invitation is required at this time), sign in and install a bookmarklet on your browser.
Once the bookmarklet is installed, you can now go to a blog and find a great blog entry that you’d like to comment on. You can write comment as usual but you need to click on the coComment bookmarklet before you submit the comment. Once you submitted the comment, you can go back to cocomment.com and go to the personal conversation page.
coComment currently support six blogging platforms: Blogger, Wordpress, MSN Spaces, MySpaces, Typead, and Xanga. They are planning to support more in the future. Browser supported are: Firefox 1.0/1.5, Internet Explorer 6.0 and Safari 2.0.
Unfortunately, coComment does not work on William Computer Blog when I tried it because it is running Movable Type. If you really want to test it, you can use coComment Test Blog located at http://cocomment-test.blogspot.com/.
While DSL is getting cheaper in the US, because AT&T cut DSL prices to $12.99 USD, Australian broadband users are set to face a hike in broadband internet prices.
According to Sydney Morning Herald article, Telstra announced yesterday it would increase the price it charges its competitors to access the copper lines between households and telephone exchanges.
Ouch, that sucks!
Internet Explorer 7.0 Beta 2 is available for everyone to download. This release is only for Windows XP Service Pack 2 for x86 processors. Other versions of Windows are not supported. I’ve been testing Microsoft beta software latetly so I decided to install IE7. I am now a beta tester of Windows Live Messenger, Windows Live Mail, and Microsoft IE 7.0 Beta 2.
Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 Preview replaces Internet Explorer 6, so you cannot run the preview along with Internet Explorer 6. Fortunately, you can uninstall Internet Explorer 6 if you’re uncomfortable with the beta software. You can read the instruction on how to uninstall Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 Preview on The release note.
It’s time to test my sites with IE7!