Without further adieu: iTunes App Store

Note: The above link should open your iTunes application and navigate to the currently hidden iTunes App Store.

Disclaimer: Please DO NOT update to iTunes 7.7 or the latest v2.0 of the iPhone software if you are currently using a jailbroken or unlocked iPhone.  The software will relock your iPhone!

Note: The above tests were run on a 2.16ghz MacBook Pro with 2GB of memory.

Of course these are not extensive tests in regards to the robustness and overall performance of each web browser, but it does give us a sense of how they compare.  According to Apple’s estimates, on average Safari pushes the envelope and runs ~3x faster than Firefox 2.

I would have to agree with Apple’s assessment when comparing the old version, but I believe Firefox 3 has raised the bar and should give Safari a run for the money in many areas.  It is also important to note that Firefox has numerous spectacular plugins, skins, etc!  The one aspect where Safari consistently beat Firefox 3 was in loading the application itself after a cold startup of the computer.

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I would like to start out by saying that this desktop was a steal when it was on sale about two months ago for under $1000, including a 24″ LCD monitor.  After eBaying the monitor (since I already had a nice one) and selling off my old desktop, it came out to only about $300!  I recently added 8GB of RAM (after installing a crucial BIOS update), so my total became a paltry $450 to turn this machine into a beast.

Installing Fedora 8 on any system has been relatively straight-forward, and their base install has been quite good by including many of the important libraries necessary to build other software from source.  However, on the Vostro it was non-trivial.  After a lot of googling and yelling at the computer, I was able to get Fedora 8 installed using a kernel option irqpoll during bootup, since the SATA drivers I needed didn’t come with the install DVD.

After getting most everything up and running, I had to deal with the 50 foot ethernet cable running from my bedroom to my study/office.  I decided to use my old wireless card and figure out if it’ll work with linux.  To make a much longer story short, the answer was an emphatic NO (after working on it for about 2.5 days).  During my research, I came across madwifi which is a group devoting their time and efforts to build drivers for wifi cards that include an Atheros chipset.

Unfortunately, their compatibility list leaves much to be desired, since it hasn’t been updated often and many of the cards are discontinued or impossible to find.  After wasting even more of my time, I settled on a handful of cards that are available online, but are not carried in any local store.  Finally, I happened to come across the D-Link WDA-2320 PCI wireless adapter, shown below.

I read that this card apparently works very easily with most newer and older linux distributions and kernels.  I also happened to have found it in stock at my local Officemax (the only local retailer that actually had them).  After $50 and a simple one-click install, I was on my way to wireless freedom!

Needless to say, I am very happy with the price, performance, and installation ease that this desktop wifi card has provided, and I recommend it to anyone who uses linux and hates running CAT 5 around their home or office.

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I have been very busy at work trying to juggle three different projects at the same time, while trying to avoid the fuzz on the way to work since I recently was handed a $174 jaywalking ticket for not crossing at the crosswalk, even though there were dozens who crossed the street “illegally” while the ticket was being written to me. If I wasn’t in the lab doing my work, I was trying to relax at home trying to fight this recurring cold that I’ve been having for the past two weeks, and have since been drained of some energy because of it, and have not been able to enjoy the beautiful spring weather outside.  I have submitted two abstracts for two different conferences and am planning to submit a third later this month, with the hopes of actually being able to go to two of them later this year, perhaps to do a presentation as opposed to just a poster viewing session, but since we’re on the topic of potentially traveling to different places I cannot wait for a much-needed vacation, a vacation anywhere but here, and here as in Ohio.  Finally, other than doing some coding for work related stuff, I have tried to do some coding for the iPhone, and unfortunately since I had very little free time, coding for my little toy has been unfortunately slow, but I do hope that before the iTunes applications store comes around in the next couple months I’ll have a sweet little application that many of you will find use.

Well, I should get back to writing some more useless…  err useful posts to my blog with the hopes that someone out there reading this may not waste their time entirely.

Needless to say, it’s not about the body (although for $34,000 it kind of is in this special case), rather it’s all about the glass.  It seems like they have quite a nice selection of various prime and zoom lenses available for it.  Unfortunately, they are pricey as well at around $3000 a pop.  When compared to the L-lenses from Canon, I can’t really say if they are worth it, since Canon makes some very nice products, a larger variety, and cheaper.  However, if money is no object (as it probably isn’t if you own this camera) then $3000/lens is a drop in the bucket.

Basically, it appears my $99+tax membership fee only gave me an activation code to access the “secret” developer’s portal and nothing else.  Although the initial checkout what misleading, I guess nowadays since we can transfer most things electronically what could Apple possibly have mailed me?

The best part of this theme is that not only has the author kindly made it publicly available for download, but he has also spent some time maintaining the theme by adding new icons, features, etc. You can download the theme from here if you’re interested: [linky]

So I guess it’ll be the same as it is every year… snow until Spring, one week of Spring (max), then a blistering hot Summer.

I received my “rejection letter” (that most of you received) the day after the Keynote address and haven’t heard from Apple until yesterday. They sent me a simple email thanking me for my application and included an activation code link. That link opened up to a special portal in the Apple Store which allowed me to purchase the Standard Program for $99+tax, as shown below…

Oddly enough I was unable to change the shipping method, so who knows what I’ll be getting in the mail by the end of the week. Anyways, a few hours later I received another email asking me to activate my membership to the program, as well as a courtesy call from someone at Apple!

Due to some valid concerns, I have removed the screenshots and documents outlying some of the features of the beta 2.0 release. However, you can read more about it in Erica’s blog: [linky]

Needless to say, there is obviously the new iPhone 2.0 (5A147) beta OS software available for download, more documentation describing the ability to transfer your built apps to your iPhone for testing (as opposed to just using the built-in emulator), and other pertinent information regarding the digital certificate licensing, etc. I will not have any downloads of the beta software available, so please don’t ask!

There are also quite a few disclaimers dealing with actually using the 2.0 beta software (regarding AT&T and such), but I won’t go into too many details there. There doesn’t appear to be an extra sample code from Apple compared to what is freely available to everyone.