Digital Brainwaves

ArsTechnica is reporting on sources inside Apple that the iPhone will not plan to support native code on the iPhone “for the foreseeable future,” although they are working on adding additional capabilities to WebKit and Safari for iPhone, including offline storage, enhanced connections from JavaScript to iPhone functions, and potentially, the ability to have Home Screen icons point to offline web applications on the device.

This sounds to me like an interesting best-of-both-worlds compromise, particularly offline storage: web-based applications remain sandboxed in Safari, while allowing the ability to store data for faster access/offline access. Optimally, such web pages could be locally stored to run completely on the device, not needing to hit the web at all.

Ultimately, the question at this point is, when might something like this appear? Says Ars, “Apple is currently aiming for an unspecified ‘January’ deadline on these updates, and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that it will likely be announced at Macworld 2008.”

So, there’s a lot of talk in the technology news corner about the latest iPhone software update from Apple, that upgraded the phone to version 1.1.1. A lot of the comments I’ve read and heard are about how Apple is deliberately attacking hackers and unlockers who’ve opened up their iPhones to use third-party applications (called jailbreaking) and unlocking the SIM lock to use non-AT&T SIM cards.

I posit that there’s a simpler answer, one that’s a smidge more reasonable than that floating about the blogosphere and media.

Granted, it’s not as “sexy” as “Apple attacks hackers” so it won’t make headlines, but I think it makes a hell of a lot more sense.

Continue reading ‘iPhone 1.1.1: malicious intent?’ »

This one’s been sitting in my blog drafts since May, just hadn’t written the article for it.

Ben Kuchera posts on Ars Technica’s “Opposable Thumbs” blog about how, on many fronts, but definitely cost, the more effective way to purchase games isn’t the new stuff, it’s the old stuff.

We know from sales numbers that the PlayStation 2 still sells in ridiculous numbers, and we hear about people buying older systems for the first time on a regular basis. Why not? The game library is huge, the price is low, and it’s easy to find out which games are good. $100 could buy you a six-pack and a PlayStation 3 game, or it could buy you a stack of PS2 or GameCube games.

The newest console system I have is a Sega Dreamcast; I also own a Nintendo 64. The last four PC games I’ve purchased are Max Payne ($10), Grand Theft Auto Vice City ($20), Grand Theft Auto San Andreas ($30), and Doom 3 ($20). Granted, my PC is too old to play the last two (they’re waiting on my shelf for my next computer… Mmmmm MacBook Pro….), but buying them now when they’ve gotten cheaper beats buying them new for $40-50 or more brand-new. Prices come down, and if you don’t have top-of-the-line hardware, it’s better to wait on games anyway. Then you’ll get the best playing experience for less money.

The only downside I have on this, on the console front, anyway, is that I can’t get games in stores anymore, as no one markets them, even used. eBay has become my new friend on this front.

Oh, and anyone who wants to come over and play GoldenEye on N64, lemme know.

No, not a birthday fantasy, like the ones involving bikinis and whipped cream, weirdo.

Gary Gygax, commonly known as the father of role-playing games, turns 69 today.  Happy birthday, Gary!

Clive Thompson writes in this Wired article about how Twitter isn’t the self-centered outlet it’s usually made out to be. In fact, it’s more the opposite:

So why has Twitter been so misunderstood? Because it’s experiential. Scrolling through random Twitter messages can’t explain the appeal. You have to do it — and, more important, do it with friends. (Monitoring the lives of total strangers is fun but doesn’t have the same addictive effect.) Critics sneer at Twitter and Dodgeball as hipster narcissism, but the real appeal of Twitter is almost the inverse of narcissism. It’s practically collectivist — you’re creating a shared understanding larger than yourself.

This is, unfortunately, something I appear to be missing out on, as not very many of my friends use the service. I’ve attracted a few to at least follow me on the Twitter page, but only a couple have actually signed up for Twitter. I have to concede, it takes time to get into the habit of using it, but you do have to try it, and give it a fair amount of time before abandoning it. After a while, you get into it.

If anyone in my circle of “real” friends signs on, let me know, I’d love to add you to my list.

(Hat tip: David Hewlett — yes, that David Hewlett — via Twitter)

It started with the initial, invitation-only release of GMail, touting a gigabyte of mail storage online. Yahoo! and MSN Hotmail quickly followed suit, increasing their storage space to the same amount. Gmail doubled their own to two gigabytes, and kept continually increasing it:

Over 2833.644474 megabytes (and counting) of free storage so you’ll never need to delete another message.

…hinting that, as the space slowly increases, it’s effectively limitless.

Yahoo! has given up all pretense, and has announced that Yahoo! Mail will be switching to unlimited storage, with hints that other Yahoo! services, like Flickr (presumably the free version, as opposed to the Pro version, which is already unlimited), may not be too far behind.

First — classical horns.

Squeaker bike horns, that is.

(Hat tip: Dvorak Uncensored)

Then, a 1984 mashup — the original Apple Macintosh 1984 ad, assembled by someone who’s quite the Barack Obama fan. Obama doesn’t impress me all that much, but whomever assembled this clip certainly does.

(This got bounced down the page a ways pretty quickly after I initially posted it, so I’m bumping it back up for a while. — Pauley)

By now, if you’ve been paying attention, you’ve seen some of the new sections popping up over on the right.

Technorati and The Truth Laid Bear Ecosystem both show how Digital Brainwaves links to and gets links from other sites in the blogosphere. Technorati scans and spiders pretty much any blog that appears, when scanned, to be a blog. TTLB only catalogs and checks on those blogs that specifically apply to be listed. Each site has a widget in the sidebar to the right; TTLB shows my standing in the ecosystem, while Technorati’s shows links to details about incoming and outgoing links in addition to a search box for the site.

Pajamas Media has set up a weekly Predidential Straw Poll, where you can indicate your interest in one candidate for each party (you can choose just one, but they encourage picking one of each). Digital Brainwaves is now a voting precinct in the straw poll, kinda like real-life voting precints in the actual election. You can vote your preference here and see how it stacks up against other readers, as well as everyone who’s voted anywhere in the poll.

Of the four new widgets, though, the one I’m most excited about is the one at the top of the sidebar. Twitter is basically an IM “away message” that isn’t bound to an IM account, and asks only for the answer to one simple question: “What are you doing?” Users can post their responses and receive updates from others via their cell phones as SMS (text) messages, via IM (AIM, Gtalk, and some others), or they can post to the Twitter web page itself. Mac users can use the application Twitterific to post and receive updates from their menu bar, and I recently del.icio.us-ed a link to a “search box” widget for Firefox that allows you to post updates to Twitter from the search box that appears in the upper right corner of Firefox.

My Twitter network is pretty scant right now, so feel free to join if you’re interested. Please let me know if you join, so I can add you to my network, too.

MacWorld 2007 starts today. I’m at work, so I’m not going watching a video stream all that closely or anything. Instead, I’ll be watching for details most likely the same way you would find out (admittedly, if you care — Macs aren’t everyone’s cup o’tea) — madly hammering on the refresh button for live updates on a gadget blog.

That said, be sure to check out Engadget’s coverage of Steve Jobs’ MacWorld keynote. I’ll post about things heard later on tonight (I hope).