For the next shot in the search engine advertising war Google has launched image ads in addition to their popular text AdSense program
Telstra yesterday made a last-minute settlement of a dispute with one of its major software providers on the steps of the Victorian Federal Court
You can now get a desktop application that alerts you to a big breaking news story, courtesy of the BBC. The BBC already offers news via e-mail, but the alert will pop up in front of other applications when something big happens with a nice little BBC News theme sound alert, so it should be faster than e-mail. You need to download a small piece of software to get it working. It was developed for the BBC by Skinkers Communications who also created a similar product for Britain’s Channel 4 and Sky News and for Disney. News International is thinking of using it here in Australia — via JournOz
This guy has been doing some serious modifications on his iMac, giving it a G5 style case but in white polystyrene plastic.
Be sure to check out the 2nd last photo of the mini G5 along side a G4 to get and idea of size.
Pretty slick indeed.
Jason Eaton spent six months building this elaborate replica Ghostbusters pack, with powered blinkenlights and a multicoloured flashlight cannon and lots of other cool features, and now he’s selling it on eBay.
Tony Allenye, a UK science fiction fan and interior decorator, turned his 500²ft flat into a set for a Star Trek episode and is now auctioning it off for a starting price of $1,000,000.
A Norwegian guy is selling a fantastically detailed homebrew set of Star Wars Storm Trooper armour.
The new version of MovableType has been released to a less than enthusiastic response from current users — me included. Fair enough that they should be paid for their efforts, but they need to put some long hard thought into their pricing scheme.
The free version can’t be used on this site in its current form, so Six Apart’s commitment to a free version is going to be laughable to a large number of users. Even the paid versions are restricted to a set number of blogs and authors have already freaked out a sizeable portion of the community.
By adding these silly restriction to the commercial versions, they’re locking out small to medium companies who are looking for a CMS. Sure 20 authors may sound like a lot when you only have five employees, but considering the high staff turnover of some places I’ve worked, those author allocations will be used within the year.
Six Apart have termed the restrictions; Generous limits on weblogs and authors
. Apparently they have a different definition of generous than I do. Why on earth they didn’t give the upper end versions unlimited blogs and authors is beyond me.
I also have my doubts about the new versions comment spam filtering abilities. So far it only appears to be working because the software has been in beta. Give it a month in the real world and it will be back to the usual flood of crap as the spammers circumvent the security. It doesn’t help that the new version doesn’t support the plugins that were developed for the previous versions. A serious oversight when you rely on MT-Blacklist to kill frequent comment spamming attacks.
And so far, the new features are nothing to write home about. In fact, they’re almost non-existent. Sure, better comment control is nice, but some functionality like the long promised sub-categories wouldn’t have gone astray either. There are no features that don’t already exist as hacks, work-arounds or plugins.
If you want people to part with cash for something they currently use gratis, then adding shiny things to entice their inner geek is a great way to do it. Six Apart seem to have forgotten this.
Feòrag has already mentioned migrating the Pagan Prattle over to WordPress when the Prattle gets a shiny new server.
WordPress only seems to have one drawback — it’s a PHP application — but it would give me the excuse to dabble with a new toy. It has some nice features, like the afore-mentioned sub-categories.
Scriptygoddess also mentions the lack of features and suggests Drupal as another MovableType alternative.
I can’t see the site moving to MT 3.0 any time soon under the current ridiculous licensing system. If I need to upgrade, well, WordPress is looking pretty good.
Jay Allen has pointed out that most plugins will work with MovableType 3.0 with minor tweaking on developers behalfs.
However, due to the nature of MT-Blacklist — it replaces MT code, rather than working with it — its current incarnation, 1.63, will not work with the new version. It may even kill the database. Having done that once, I have no desire to do it again.
Jay Allen has hinted at an even more amazing version of MT-Blacklist to come, which means that I’ll probably hold off any changes of platform until MT3 leaves the developer version and goes into general release.
The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission has recommended that all children in immigration detention centres be released as soon as possible. And leaked details of the commission’s final draft report say Australia’s detention laws should be changed urgently, to comply with the international Convention on the Rights of the Child, with minimum standards of treatment enshrined in legislation. It will come as no surprise that John Howard and his simpering minions have dismissed the report, the Greens have slammed the government’s dismissal as bloody-minded and deliberated child neglect
Greenpeace, charged with the obscure crime of sailor mongering
that was last prosecuted 114 years ago, goes on trial on Monday in the first US criminal prosecution of an advocacy group for civil disobedience. The environmental group is accused of sailor mongering because it boarded a freighter in April 2002 that was carrying illegally felled Amazon mahogany to Miami. It says the prosecution is revenge for its criticism of the environmental policies of the retarded monkey boy, whom it calls the Toxic Texan
. Sailor mongering was rife in the 19th century when brothels sent prostitutes laden with booze onto ships as they made their way to harbour. The idea was to get the sailors so drunk they could be whisked to shore and held in bondage, and a law was passed against it in 1872. It has only been used in a court of law twice, the last time in 1890
The recent launch of IBM’s Office application suite is part of a broader challenge to Microsoft’s entire .Net development framework. On Monday, IBM announced it was launching a Web-based software suite that would offer Microsoft Office-like applications. But unlike Microsoft’s Office, IBM’s Lotus Workplace software is designed to be used over the Internet and is accessible from systems running Windows, Mac, Linux, Unix as well as handheld devices
Fifteen years after his trial, a convicted drug dealer in New York state belatedly got a chance to clear his name — thanks in part to an Internet search. In the United States and abroad, judges are turning to search engines such as Google to check facts, to look up information about companies embroiled in litigation, and to challenge statistics presented by attorneys in court. Dozens of judges have penned opinions describing Google as a valuable — and sometimes crucial — source of knowledge
Chemical giant Monsanto has confirmed it will withdraw from its attempt to grow genetically modified (GM) canola in Australia. The announcement comes just days after the company’s international arm announced it was pulling out of GM wheat trials in the United States and Canada
Researchers at the Queensland University of Technology have discovered an easily-exploited vulnerability which can be used to take down most 802.11 wireless networks. The flaw operates at lower network layers than most previously-discovered security flaws in 802.11 networking, and affect any network operating at the 2.4GHz frequency — which is the sole frequency used by the most popular wireless protocol, 802.11b
Lemurs, once believed to be cute but basically stupid, show startling intelligence when given a chance to win treats by playing a computer game
Activision and id Software have issued a press release announcing that Doom III will be released this summer. A Linux client has also been in development alongside the requisite Win32 version
The Government is to merge the Australian Broadcasting Authority (ABA) and the Australian Communications Authority (ACA) next year to establish a new-look media and communications regulator. The Australian Communications and Media Authority will regulate telecommunications, broadcasting, radio and online content from July 1 next year
A multinational group from Canberra’s Australian National University have become the first on this particular planet to demonstrate the sharing of secrets via teleportation using quantum physics. Who cares? Well, a lot of big businesses, because their discovery has moved unbreakable codes, superfast computers and communications inaccessible to cybercriminals a step closer. What the team’s find boils down to is that, using a laser, they can teleport to a network of recipients a signal which can only be reassembled by a majority of the recipients. Any less and the signal cannot be reconstituted — via Die Puny Humans
In an age of tech-mad multitasking, some big thinkers are asking questions about an emerging culture of distraction, interruption and inattention
I happened upon this site www.bootlegactionfigures.com you can’t buy any of these babies, just view ‘n’ chortle, but it’s worth a look see. One of my personal funny fav’s is this Telebabies set, scroll down to the second pic and you shall see.
For all you spandex super hero wannabes there is a comprehensive Spaderman set and Crappy Mexican Batman.
For the anime fans, there is disturbing Ranma 1/2 set, the panda (Genma) looks a bit like a dalmation. Then there’s New Centennial Evengelion.
Super cheap fun for all!
A German high-school student has confessed to creating the Sasser worm and several varients of Netsky
after apparently being reported by acquaintances seeking a reward from Microsoft
There’s a new material that could create relatively cheap solar cells which are up to 50% efficient. This is much better than the 25% efficient silicon solar cells (most common) or the 36% efficient multi-junction solar cells (very expensive). The material was created by forcing oxygen into a zinc-manganese-tellurium crystal
creating more band gaps, which allow the cell to create electrical energy with three seperate frequencies of light. This could lead to cheap, high-output solar cells in the future, but it will take at least three years to assess the feasibility of the new technology, according to the researchers
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