Entropy

Image via Wikipedia

Another info packed post with some exciting news making waves in the technology world.

• 3G iPhone update
• Vista - uptake inevitable
• Twitter rising
• Javascript curvy corners
• Worthy mentions

3G iPhone update

We have reported previously on speculation regarding the launch date of the 3G iPhone, now more information is starting to filter through. One hot topic drawing much attention is the price the new model will go on the market for. $199. While this price is contract dependant, it is still a hefty saving of $200. Apple are also expecting huge sales, with reports coming in that they have ordered 25million units to be manufactured by the same company, Foxconn, that put the first gen iPhone on shelves. 3 million of which will be ready for sale by the end of May.

the author of the story also says that the new phones will be available in “8-gigabit-memory and… 16-gigabit-memory” versions (for $399 and $499, respectively), so take that as you like. In addition to these discounts, the source says the new iPhone will be 2.5mm thinner than the previous iteration, although we understand that right after telling Fortune this information, the “person” burst into a cloud of rainbow-colored sparkles and went flying off into the night sky.

Vista - uptake inevitable

Let’s not beat around the bush on this subject. Vista has been a disappointment. I personally prefer it to Windows XP, but I am not the majority in this issue. XP is end of life with it being pulled from sale in the near future. Once this happens what choices do consumers have other than linux distros? You can order a new pc with Ubuntu, for example, installed. While Ubuntu is a worthy alternative, you must again remember about a corporate roll out of a new desktop environment. I know that companies have switched to linux over windows solutions, but the majority have been in the server market. We are talking about the average employee having to make the change and with that comes training (read expenses). I find Ubuntu quite easy to navigate and fx uses it on his laptop, but not everyone adjusts well. A computerworld article goes into more detail on this topic, while another reminds us about current uptake problems.

“They are sort of in a ‘caught between a rock and a hard place’ situation,” said Gray. Administrators may not want to move to Vista, but neither of the alternatives — the older XP and the not-even-officially-scheduled Windows 7 — is attractive, he said.

Twitter Rising.

Seen as pointless by some and indisposable by others, the stats don’t lie. Twitter usage is rising. I think the number of mashups using the API to do abstract things with what users are pumping into the system has a direct influence on the stats. Repeat users loyal to the service are also a big  influence in the increase of market share seen by Twitter, which is a healthy sign the site is gaining a strong foothold in the social network arena. fx and I were actually throwing around an idea for a Twitter mashup, so you might see something from us in the future putting a spin on what people are doing.

The chart makes the growth look impressive - and it is. However, to put things into context, the site ranked #439 among Social Networks and Forums last week and #4309 among All Categories of websites. Twitter’s size is notoriously difficult to measure as there are so many access points (mobile phones in particular). However, the website traffic data does give some idea of the rate of growth and also reveals that the service still hasn’t reached mainstream adoption.

Javascript curvy corners.

The rounded look of Web 2.0 designs can be a pain at the best of times. Most of the time you will need a few images combined in a bit of CSS to pull it off.  Being able to apply curvy corners on the fly is a huge step in the right direction, and Curvy Corners offer just that.

curvyCorners will automatically pickup style information from the DIV element. So for example if you give the DIV a 2px black border in a stylesheet then the borders will be automatically added to the rounded corners.

Worthy Mentions

Seeing as we have covered some news on Twitter, why not give you the Linux desktop options to make Tweeting easier - 6 Twitter clients for the Linux desktop and one for the road.

Twitter is a popular social networking utility that’s gaining popularity as a micro-blogging tool. Registered users can post messages — also called Tweets — via the Web interface, but many prefer to use desktop applications that offer additional functionality and move Tweeting out of the browser entirely.

Cool web stuff for April 2008 brought to you by WebKak - April 2008 round up of cool web stuff.

Well before we kick off with yet more cool web apps & stuff next month, it’s time for a round-up of the most popular posts for the month of April

Mighty Mouse Easter Egg

Since it’s Easter for a lot of people, and there are still things to be done, I don’t want to keep you waiting. Today, I just found an older picture of Apple’s Mighty Mouse, and I think it’s something great to see. Yes, it’s a hardware Easter Egg. No, this is not a fake image, is a picture made more than 2 years ago, but I guess this is still true today.

Ever wondered why your grandmothers hiccup cures never worked? Because not many people have bothered to pay attention to the real reason you get hiccups — “spasming diaphragm muscles”. There is a solution though, according to Growing Happiness –

“And what do you do when a you get a muscle cramp? You apply heat. Does this method work? You bet. It works like a charm every time. The hiccups will resolve in less than a minute (usually about 15 seconds). If it doesn’t, what you’re drinking isn’t warm enough, try something warmer.”

Image via Wikipedia

Every now and again you come across something on YouTube that you have to have forever. Up until now you had to download the video in the, now common, .flv format. Here’s a website that allows you to add a bookmarklet to grab the video. In case you are not sure what I mean by bookmarklet, it’s essentially a link that will sit in your bookmarks that executes some JavaScript allowing you to download the video. Alternatively, you could install greasemonkey and have it do all the clicking for you.

An interesting side-effect of YouTube’s recent push for higher quality videos is that most videos can be downloaded as MP4 files directly from YouTube. Until now, you could only get FLV files from your browser’s cache or using one of the many websites that let you download YouTube videos. In fact, to download the MP4 files, you need to use the same URL like for FLV files and append “&fmt=18″:

You can find the full guide here.

Goodbye Xbox laptop of 2007; hello Playstation 3 Laptop of 2008. Ben Heck has taken 14 months to create the next in his line of portable gaming hardware - the PS3 Laptop.

Some of the features of his Playstation Laptop include –

• Original 60 gig PS3 model with backwards compatibility.
• 17″ HDTV 720p screen, with HDMI connection. (Same as last Xbox 360 laptop)
• Built-in keyboard and stereo audio amplifier.
• Measures 17″ x 13.75″ x 3″ (actually thinner than a stock PS3) and weighs 16 pounds!

Read more at BenHeck.com, or Engadget.

Everybody knows pills are awesome. Everyone also knows gaming is awesome. Game Suppli is the gaming supplement (to be taken orally, not buttockally as Gizmodo has let us know) for the ultimate gamer.

Tripletags –

There’s a new Japanese pill out called ‘Game Suppli’ that geared specifically towards gamers. Do you have tired eyes? Can’t focus on where the hell you’re going and everything’s turning to mush? Then you need ‘Game Suppli’.

Gizmodo –

These Japanese Game Suppli vitamins come in two varieties, “Blue Berry”, which refreshes you after a gaming session, and DHA, which boosts your attention during a session.

Ubergizmo –

Now this is taking things a bit too far - supplement pills for gamers known as “Game Suppli”. I wonder whether taking these will actually allow you to beat those crazy Japanese Tetris players on Tetris DS, or will it allow me to compose faster text messages on my BlackBerry?

Image via Wikipedia

If you’re rocking dual (or triple/quad) monitors like the staff here at Entropy you’ll no doubt need to rock out some kicking wallpaper. Tips like making one an active desktop so you can have different backgrounds etc are just too 2007 for us - so we’ve found DisplayFusion.

DisplayFusion is the ultimate dual-screen background tool, and is capable of a junkload of kicking features, mostly focused around being able to pimp your background of course.

Here are just a few of the things you can do with DisplayFusion:

• Set a different desktop wallpaper on each monitor (either a picture or solid colour)
• Set a desktop wallpaper that spans all monitors (either a picture or colour)
• Change your desktop wallpaper on a timer
• Easily manage application windows with fully customizable hotkeys:
  • Move windows to the next monitor
  • Move windows to the next monitor and maximize them
  • Move windows to centre of the screen
  • Move windows to centre of the screen and size it to 75% of the work area
  • Tile windows along the top, bottom, left or right side
  • Maximize windows so that they span all monitors
  • Customize your own hotkey to do anything you can imagine
• Integrated Flickr image search & download
• Drag maximized windows to other screens

Download

DisplayFusion v2.0.2 ~ With Installer ~ Recommended ~ February 18, 2008
DisplayFusion v2.0.2 ~ No Installer ~ February 7, 2008

Image from Wikipedia

While animated gifs are all but dead and buried (though personally I’d rather see them than a damned image map), don’t discard them altogether as they can be an easy way to make a (very) cross-platform, easy to display video file.

Obviously this tip is not for reencoding your wedding into an image and mailing it to you aunts on 56K - but if you have a small clip this works great - LH link to Ubuntu Forums finally to The 4 Steps Guide on Making Animated GIFs from Videos. Oh, and its all free!

Today is in fact April fools and has been a rather dull one for me, other than my girlfriend managing to trick me, it was just a regular day. For anyone that is interested, here is a link to the story behind April Fools as well as some links for you to enjoy.

Digg Joke, Top 100 Hoaxes of all time, Google Earth Aliens, Jokes for the office

As well as the drama the Gmail hoax started.

 

Ever wanted to watch Starwars in ASCII? No? Well now you can anyway; just type “telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl” and get the popcorn as the shows about to begin!

Via LifeHacker

Source: WikipediaWhat comics do you read daily? Here’s my list of “daily” reads - although some are published only 3 times a week :/

• Penny Arcade
• Sinfest
• White Ninja
• XKCD