Daily Jots @ d2zone.netMy jots and almost everything else under the sun

Better or not?

The new 3G iPhone, which is thinner at the edges, has a black plastic back and metal buttons on the side, has a flush-headphone jack, and also comes in white too. (Credit: Apple)

Steve Jobs unveils the new iPhone 2 with 3G to the world during the WWDC08 yesterday morning. But too bad we won’t be able to use it until July 11, 2008 when shipment is due. And too bad it won’t be available here in Malaysia, unless the “pirated” ones.

Even so, it won’t be as stable as the original version, as the software and the hardware are tweaked in order to make it compatible with the local providers.

As for the iPhone features, I’d say it has the best OS and the most beautiful of all available mobile phones on the market.

What I don’t like about the new iPhone is that there is almost no improvement on the camera functions. It is still using the 1.3 megapixel standard camera. If only they improve the camera functions not only in the megapixels, then it would be the most “complete” phones around.

I guess that’s the only function that I’m not happy with the iPhone. Other functions rocks big time.

Btw, the 8GB iPhone 2 is selling for only USD$199 in the US. That’s bloody cheap compared to the “altered” versions that some Malaysians are using.

Why, oh why don’t they make the iPhone available (legally) in Malaysia? Coz I want one! Sedih nyer.

Here goes another software evaluation. Previously I evaluated the Safari for Windows and then Ubuntu Linux with Wubi. Now, I will evaluate my personal favourite and default browser, Flock 0.9 Beta.

Why do I use Flock and not Firefox? It’s because I find that Flock is more user friendly and has a better interface than Firefox and besides, Flock is using exactly the same engine as Firefox. But what makes the beta version 0.9 better?

Alot has changed since version 0.8. I really mean alot. The most obvious change is the interface. Almost like a total revamp. It has a more shiny look on the main bar with more curves on the tab area. It also has a shortcut near the tab area for an easy access to Flocks main functions such as bookmarks, uploader, media bar, web clipboards, feed sidebar, “My World”, accounts & services and blog editor which I’m using to write this blog now.

Flock is made user friendly. For a beta version, it’s been stable thus far. I haven’t encounter any stability issues after trying this awesome browser the whole day although I’m sure there are some minor bugs here and there. That’s quite normal for a beta version.

I would love to go on evaluating this browser but I know I would take all night. It’s almost 7:30pm now and I’m still in the office. I need a break and time-out and have dinner. So, I’ll stop here for now. I know I’ll be using this browser again when I come to work tomorrow. Maybe I’ll continue on my review then.

At the moment, Flock gets a 5 star from me.

A screenshot of Flock on my PC.

Tags: Flock, Browser

Great news!

Game lovers (and Mac lovers), it’s finally here. Now you can look forward to play your favourite games on a Mac machine.

One of the many reasons why I don’t use Mac (other than it being expensive) is because the absense of games that can be played on Mac. Well, that will be a thing of the past now that EA and Id has announced at the recent WWDC that they are in the midst of completing a series of new and popular games for Mac.

A quote from one of the Mac-sites:

During the WWDC Keynote address, Apple CEO Steve Jobs invited EA CCO Bing Gordon and id Games Owner and CTO John Carmack on to the stage.

Citing that EA customers were moving to the Mac in droves, EA announced that it would once again begin developing games for the Mac platform with simultaneous releases as their Windows counterparts. Command and Conquer 3, Battlefield 2142, Need For Speed Carbon, and Harry Potter & the Order of the Phoenix are coming in July 2007, with Madden 08 and Tiger Woods 08 to follow.

id Games also previewed forthcoming technology that allows for unprecedented texture detail. The technology was being shown first at WWDC, and would be given more in-depth demonstrations at E3.

Games that I would love to see on a Mac are Half Life series (including Counter Strike), Quake series, Supreme Commander and Halo series.

When they have created more games for Mac machines, I will definitely save some $$ to buy myself a Mac, well, for starters maybe a Mac Mini. I’ve been looking forward to it ever since they launched the Mac Mini a few years ago. So now I will have a good reason to do so.

I guess this week is some sort of a review week for some of the new softwares that I’ve tried out. The other day I reviewed the Apple’s Safari browser for Windows. Today I will review on the new user-friendly Ubuntu Linux.

I have always been a fan of Linux distributions. I have tried Red Hat, Mandriva (and Mandrake), Suse, Fedora, Debian, Knoppix, Tiny Linux and now, Ubuntu.

Ubuntu is an African word meaning ‘Humanity to others’, or ‘I am what I am because of who we all are’. The Ubuntu distribution brings the spirit of Ubuntu to the software world.

Here’s a little quote about Ubuntu from its website:

Ubuntu is a community developed operating system that is perfect for laptops, desktops and servers. Whether you use it at home, at school or at work Ubuntu contains all the applications you’ll ever need, from word processing and email applications, to web server software and programming tools.

Ubuntu is and always will be free of charge. You do not pay any licensing fees. You can download, use and share Ubuntu with your friends, family, school or business for absolutely nothing.

The downloading and installation is made easy thanks to a new windows based software called Wubi. All you have to do is download Wubi to your pc and run the Wubi.exe file. What it does is that it will ask you for your prefered password and you’re ready to go. You can also select the “Settings” options where you can assign to which drive you want Ubuntu to be installed in and allocate the space for the system size, home size and the swap size. You can also select which environment you want your Ubuntu Linux to run on. In my case, I choose the default Ubuntu environment.

Once you have chosen and finalise your settings, it will then download the Ubuntu OS software from the Internet. The size for the whole download file is about 700MB and this usually takes about 5 hours on a broadband connection. It took about 4 hours on my Maxis iLink connection. But as for me, I left my pc on at the office to let it download overnight and ready for me to install everything when I get in the office the next day, and that was this morning.

On a side note, you can also download the Ubuntu Live CD in ISO format from the official website. What the Live CD does is that it will run the Ubuntu OS once you boot up your system, and the entire Ubuntu OS will be running Live from the CD. It’s like an instant operating system, without having to install anything. This is very similar to Knoppix Linux, except that with Ubuntu, you can actually install the OS in your pc using the same Live CD.

Now back to the Ubuntu installation. Once the Ubuntu has been downloaded, you will be prompt to restart your pc. While you pc is booting up, you will see an option to start your pc in Windows XP or Ubuntu. The dual OS boot programme will automatically be installed once you run the Wubi programme. In this case, select Ubuntu to start the initial installation.

The whole installation process goes on automatically. Unlike the other Linux distribution where you can select which programmes you’d like to be installed, Ubuntu runs everything seamlessly and will not bug you on anything during the installation process. The whole process took about 15 minutes. As what the Ubuntu developer says, “take a coffee break for 15 minutes and come back to Ubuntu”. I did exactly that, and it’s kinda true.

After 15 minutes or so, the system rebooted and again I have the option of starting up my machine in Windows or Ubuntu. Obviously I choose Ubuntu as I wanted to test how it’s like.

I was greeted by a tribal drum sound when it booted. Reminds me of the African tribe kinda sound. I guess it goes with the name Ubuntu itself.

The default Ubuntu desktop environment is very clean. They even placed the recycle bin onto the taskbar rather than on the desktop. The whole interface is beautiful and easy on the eyes. The menu navigation system is properly laid out on top of the screen, very similar to Fedora. Suse & Mandriva Linux placed the “start” menu at the bottom of the screen, similar to Windows.

The first thing I did was to check on the network connection. Guess what? I don’t have to configure anything. I fired up the Firefox and I’m blazin’ through cyberspace almost immediately. Then a message popped out saying that I need a flash player plugin to be installed. So I downloaded the flash plugin from Adobe website and the installation process have to be done via Linux terminal (like command prompt in Windows). This I don’t know how. But Adobe is kind enough to provide with the full instructions on how to go about it. After I managed to install the plugin using the terminal, I felt like a Linux expert all of a sudden. Why not? I don’t really know much about Unix commands. I’m still a beginner when it comes to Linux. But I can say that the whole process it easy.

Btw, I’m writing this blog using Ubuntu. So far it has been a great experience evaluating this free and useful operating system. It comes with pre-installed latest version of Open Office programme for word processing, so you can start on your work almost immediately. You can even browse through all the other drive partitions on your hard drive and I can open any documents that is on the Windows environment.

What if you wish to uninstall the whole Ubuntu OS from your system? Easy. Just run the Wubi programme again and select “uninstall”. This will remove all the Ubuntu files and OS together with the partitions it created during the initial installation. Done!

Conclusion.

I enjoyed using Ubuntu. It’s fast, easy and reliable. Best of all it’s free. As I said earlier, you can run the Ubuntu OS from the Live CD if you don’t wish to install it in your pc. That way you can evaluate Ubuntu without wasting your hard disk space. Still, I rely only Windows to get most of my work done in the office. But I’ll keep Ubuntu as my secondary OS in my machine for now. But if or when I have a new laptop, I’d certainly have Ubuntu as my main OS simply because it’s beautiful.

Apple launched its Windows version of Safari recently. When I came across the article on Download.com a moment ago, I do not waste any time to download the beta version of the programme. The download took me about 10 minutes for a total of 28MB. Once downloaded, I quickly install Safari and evaluate to see how good it is as how Apple claims.

To me, it’s just another clean and simple browser. Compared to Firefox, Safari still has a long way to go in terms of compatibility. It’s pretty stable compared to IE7, but Firefox still reigns as the best in stability and security.

At the moment, I’m using Flock, a project by a group of people who wants to create an alternative user friendly browser and its based on Mozilla engine. Safari however, has been a fast and reliable browser, mainly for Apple based computers. It has a clean interface, easy to use navigation system and for a beta version software, it has been stable thus far.

It is bundled with Quicktime player. The installation took about 4–5 minutes because it also installs a function called Bonjour. Bonjour, also known as zero-configuration networking, enables automatic discovery of computers, devices, and services on IP networks. Bonjour uses industry standard IP protocols to allow devices to automatically discover each other without the need to enter IP addresses or configure DNS servers.

Other than that, Safari is something that I’d use as an alternative option to Firefox, and it won’t be my default browser.

Note: I’ve always loved Mac. One of the reason I downloaded Safari is because I want to make my Windows machine to look like a Mac. Currently I’ve installed a skinning software called StyleXP and my default skin is Mac OS. So by using Safari, my pc will now look almost like a real Mac. (Can’t afford a Mac ler, too expensive ).

After a whole day of running errants for the office, I finally have some free time to rest and relax in my office room. 

I got the idea of manipulating images using Photoshop one day after stumbling upon a website from one of Firefox’s extension, StumbleUpon. I can’t remember the name of that website. I knew I should have bookmarked it. That particular website gives a few good Photoshop tutorials on how to manipulate and bring graphic images to life, like 3D.

After a quick look at the tutorials, I got an idea on how to go about creating that 3D effect on any photos taken with a digital camera.

Here’s the original photo that I have of my cats. It looks simple and plain. But after manipulating the photo using Photoshop and following some of the tips given by the tutorials, I manage create a quite good looking 3D like graphics.

Tadaa! Now I managed to get the photo to look like this. The 3D effect comes to life. But it is still abit dull and boring. What to do next? I know…add some background graphics and words to it.

Now this is what I’m talking about. The final “product”. After adding a background patern and a simple wordings in the background, the photo really comes to life.

Playing with Photoshop is really not that hard. I have been using Photoshop for almost 8 years now. But since I’ve started working in my current company, I have lost my touch with graphics and web designs. This is kinda like my own exercise to keep myself close to what I love most, designing.

Anyway, the image manipulation like above is not something new. I’ve seen many similar graphics done by Photoshop geeks out there. I’ve even seen some Malaysian bloggers managed to create their own versions of 3D like graphics like I did. Nevertheless, it’s fun when you can play with Photoshop.

So…like what I did with the photo above? Maybe one day I can create my own tutorials on how to play with Photoshop.