Upon the Death of Michael Jackson on Thursday just after midday, there wasn’t much media attention for over two hours. At first, media stories circulated while everyone tried to make sense of it all. When Jackson’s brother made a statement at 2.26 pm LA time, the news papers and TV broadcasters went into a frenzy thinking up headlines for the evening papers and the 6 o’ clock news – all the while the web was left to its own disorganised devices.
Wikipedia and Twitter came under attack with slanderous comments and hoax stories of what really happened. Numerous posts were made to Jackson’s Wikipedia page while many blogged about the singer’s life, and at that time ‘apparent’ death.
The first confirmed reports surfaced after 4pm just when the American nation were settling in from work. However, the Europeans were already tucked up in bed none the wiser.
Here I am in Ireland waking up on Friday morning with a text message from a friend in America. It was a joke about the singer’s death. I couldn’t make head or tails of it but when I powered up my laptop Yahoo! Headlines carried the story in full. I was shocked by the story while America was already fully informed.
Astonishingly, many ticket sales sites carried on selling tickets to fans unaware of the singer’s death until midday Friday. Other sites carried news stories of Jackson’s death while displaying advertisements for his upcoming concerts dubbed ‘The Final Curtain’.
In my mind, and the mind of many others, serious questions have been raised about the internet. I had always assumed that news stories travelled the world in hours, even minutes. With YouTube, Twitter, MySpace and even good old e-mail, everyone thought that if something happened in the States we’d all know about it in a few minutes – I guess we were wrong. The internet still has some serious cracks that need patching up.
Mandriva Linux, one of the most known distributions, it’s preparing the new version and already has an alpha (previous stage for a beta): Mandriva Linux 2010 Alpha 1.
Mandriva was originally called Mandrake Linux (started in 1998), but after a litigation about the name (related, of course, with Mandrake the Magician) was forced to change it; and at the same time MandrakeSoft acquired Conectiva Linux (my first Linux installation ever), so the combination of those two did all the rest, and Madriva was created.
Related to Mandriva 2010, here are some of the improvements related with previous versions:
Boot time improved.
Clean and complete grub and install menu (failsafe, init3 entry, recovery entry, check tool for istallation media)
Use of Plymouth and fallback on Splashy for non supported chipsets
Switch to Tomoyo as security framework, provide GUI for common setup, integrated also in msec tool
Guest account created on the fly when needed
Packaging of Moblin, use it as default environment if stable enough when light hardware configuration is detected
Manage end of life distribution through mdkonline applet
Autodetection of local urpmi repositories
Improved hybrid isos use
I know what you are thinking, Why I would even consider to install an Alpha Linux distribution? Well, there’s no direct and simple answer to that one. As I mentioned before in 40 years of Unix post, the history of Linux has a long way and it is responsible for several other projects like Mac OS X, BSD and Sun operating system. The spirit is what did all the work.
And that’s the idea, go ahead, download it, test it, give your feedback, contribute and improve the work; that’s the spirit.
Final version for Mandriva 2010 will be available in October 21st.
The main differences are related in bugs fixing about the previous version. Here are some of them:
Translation of role names fixed
wp_page_menu() defaults to sorting by the user specified menu order rather than the page title
Upload error messages are now correctly reported
Autosave error experienced by some IE users is fixed
Styling glitch in the plugin editor fixed
SSH2 filesystem requirements updated
Switched back to curl as the default transport
Updated the translation library to avoid a problem with mbstring.func_overload
To see all tickets that were fixed from Beta 1, check this link. I really enjoy watching this kind of transparency in projects, where you can give your feedback, insert about a bug and see the evolution about it: owner, priority, state.
Google keeps up with his strategy to amaze ourselves constantly. Google Voice is a very interesting project that will allow you to receive all of your calls and messages in one number, and apply special rules whenever you receive these phone calls or messages.
Not convinced yet? There is more:
Integration with Gmail contacts and phones.
Recording conversations.
Manage and listen your voice mails. Including forwarding voice mails to other users.
Forward calls or messages to other six phones.
Text and phone calls within the US completely free.
Conference calls up to four members per conference.
You can set up rules to route each call to a specific number. For example, customers call -> automatically routed to my business phone; daughters call -> rings every phone; wife calling -> blocked
Google Voice can even transcript voice mail via e-mail. Yeap, that is right, you dont have time to listen your voice mails? Google Voice can send it that message as an e-mail with 90% accuracy in the transcript.
Service cost? Completely Free.
Availability? Currently available only for GrandCentral customers. But it is expected an official Google statement about general availability of this service.
Even though we dont have any confirmation about the release of this new feature, get ready because I am sure it is going to change the way you communicate.
We’ve announced earlier the release for Firefox 3.5 RC1, but the Mozilla development team already prepared a new build: Firefox 3.5 RC2. This new version has no bigger differences with the RC1, mostly fixing some bugs before making it the final version.
Company’s strategy it is quite interesting actually, releasing two RC versions in one week. They sure are very confident about the beta and RC stability, I can’t imagine Microsoft releasing release candidates versions of the same product in such short period of time.
He is quite sure that the real value from the web platform resides in multiple websites and applications across the Internet, and Facebook it’s not going to try to centralize all that; even better, Facebook will represent the entire platform that any user will need as for identification, business, relationship, etc. etc.
Here’s the interview with the whole concept that Mark gave it to Robert Scoble:
Arvind Bhatia, analyst from Sterne Agee, has an stunning prediction for Play Station 3: it is expected a considerable price drop by $100.
Hard to believe? Here’s his opinion: “Industry sources indicate Sony is planning a $100 price cut on the PS3 in mid-August, just prior the launch of Madden (8/18) and the start of the back to school shopping season. This will naturally be a positive for the industry.”
I’m sure that, if this is happening, will make a very important hit in the market, considering previous reports about Blu-Ray high insertion level among users making this a “here to stay” media format. Adding to the mix, the leaked photos that appeared that, could be, the new slim model for PS3:
How are other consoles going to compete with that? Xbox it’s ready to make a similar price cut and maintain the price difference with PS3?
Facebook, the largest social network in the planet, has just announced that they are introducing a very cool feature for all users: including your name/nickname to the Facebook URL.
Meaning that whenever you want someone to visit your Facebook profile you don’t need to copy/paste that awful undescriptive URL, you will only need to choose an available name for you and your profile will be http://www.facebook.com/john.smith
This sounds like an option that could be published earlier, other important social networks already has this feature available (like Hi5). But anyway, it would represent a huge change for the network, making your profile easier to share; or even including the URL in your mail signature.
McAfee has just released a new product within the family security and safety: McAfee Family Protection. This is a response OnlineFamily.Norton that was released previously by Symantec. Both suites are very similar and a very clear purpouse idea: control and monitor the content that is browse/download in your home PCs.
Block websites according different categories (over 35 by default) and content filtering.
Blocking applications.
Block unpermitted YouTube videos.
Measure the internet time for each user or PC.
Email and text alerts to notify when some configured rule is trying to be break.
Monitoring and recording IM conversations and social networking sites.
As the rest of this type of products, it highly depends on a internet connection to validate latests changes in blocked categories and even uses a remote server to validate date and time (this way, if you have restriction accordin to a time window when your childrens can use internet, modifying system clock wont help avoiding this rule).
The cost it is based for three computers at $39.99.
It is a nice price for a security suite that can help you a lot with content filtering, as well as monitoring the type of information that your family is using.
In this autumn Sony will be releasing the new PSP version: PSP Go! And again, the gamer community has a lot of expectation with this new toy that will include several improvements from the earlier version.
Some of them:
~ 43% lighter. The previous version didn’t feel like too heavy, but if this one is lighter, even better.
Versions with 8/16 gb internal memory.
3.8-inch screen. It is not a touch-screen if you want to ask. Maybe we can expect that feature on next version.
Bluetooth and Wi-Fi support.
Games announced so far: Little Big Planet, Jak & Daxter, Gran Turismo and Metal Gear Solid.
Price: So far, Unknown. But it should be around $250 or $300, don’t you think?
Most of this information it is not “official” and we are expecting the response from Sony any moment now. Considering that not only all this data has been revealed (leaked or not), there was also photos of this new model (Eurogamer photo gallery).
And this interview from Sony Qore with John Koller:
They sure will be insisting on having this PSP as the portable PS3. And I love that!
Microsoft just announced that they are releasing a new product: Zune HD, that will be available in the US this fall.
This will be the first portable device that will include a built-in HD Radio Receiver, HD video, OLED touch screen, WiFi and Internet browser.
Here’s a quick look for what’s coming:
Zune HD comes with a built-in HD Radio receiver so users can listen to higher-quality sound than traditional radio on the go. Users also will have access to the additional song and artist data broadcast by HD Radio stations as well as additional channels from their favorite stations multicasting in HD. If you don’t like the song playing on your station’s HD channel, switch to its HD2 or HD3 channels for additional programming.
The bright OLED touch screen interface allows users to flip through music, movies and other content with ease, and the 16:9 widescreen format display (480×272 resolution) offers a premium viewing experience on the go.
The HD-compatible output lets Zune HD customers playback supported HD video files from the device through a premium high-definition multimedia interface (HDMI) audiovisual docking station (sold separately) direct to an HD TV in 720p.
Zune HD will include a full-screen Internet browser optimized for multitouch functionality.
Zune HD is Wi-Fi enabled, allowing for instant streaming to the device from the more than 5 million-track Zune music store.
And from where you can access the HD videos? From Xbox LIVE Video Marketplace. Take notice that the HD TV will be 720p, not in 1080p.
Well indeed this is a great news to the market, that has been for several years now completely dominated by Apple and their iPod versions. When the MP3 player Zune made the appearance we all knew that it was too late to compete with Apple, several rumors appeared since then that the Zune will be removed entirely from the market. But know, they are striking back with a nice piece of device.
What do you think? Can Zune take an important place in the market now? Or the market will wait for the iPod HD?
We all know that the Vista big buzz that was made by Microsoft a few years back didn’t pay off as they expected and the great response received by Windows 7 beta users it is already generating a lot of expectations among all users.
Those expectations translates in a lot of curiosity, information and builds leaked around the web. This time the turn is for the official Windows 7 logo and some other features that appeared in Stephen Chapman’s blog, including a presentation template and the OS primary typeface.
Check them out:
Windows 7 green logo
Presentation template used for Windows 7
Primary typeface: Segoe Light
I know having a few logos and stuff it’s not a big deal, but these are all the small things that people keeps caring about. Most of Windows “power users” are strongly deciding about choosing Windows 7 instead of Vista. Tons and tons of Vista migrations were already canceled and companies are deciding to wait to this new OS that has shown so far much better performance and in most cases (like mine) even more stability.
Upon the Death of Michael Jackson on Thursday just after midday, there wasn’t much media attention for over two hours. At first, media stories circulated while everyone tried to make sense of it all. When Jackson’s brother made a statement at 2.26 pm LA time, the news papers and TV broadcasters went into a frenzy thinking up headlines for the evening papers and the 6 o’ clock news – all the while the web was left to its own disorganised devices.
Mandriva Linux, one of the most known distributions, it’s preparing the new version and already has an alpha (previous stage for a beta): 
As we’ve announced earlier 
We’ve announced earlier the release for 
Who said it? Mark Zuckeberg, Facebook’s CEO.
Arvind Bhatia, analyst from 
Facebook
McAfee has just released a new product within the family security and safety: 
In this autumn Sony will be releasing the new PSP version: PSP Go! And again, the gamer community has a lot of expectation with this new toy that will include several improvements from the earlier version.
Microsoft just announced that they are releasing a new product: 
We all know that the Vista big buzz that was made by Microsoft a few years back didn’t pay off as they expected and the great response received by Windows 7 beta users it is already generating a lot of expectations among all users.
