Apple Are Unoriginal

Well, their marketing department seems to be lacking in the "original ideas" department...

Some of you may remember that Apple copyied a Postal Service video to advertise their new alliance with Intel. Hmmmm....an Apple + Intel = Appel??
Anyways, the peeps at Engadget have summarized Apple's 2006-2007 commercials and the bits that they bit.

All this from a company that encourages us to "Think Different", and whose user base is was mainly made up of creative professionals (now sadly made up of.......don't get me started....especially with that iPhone).

So read on for Engadget's "Apple's little problem with ripping off artists".

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J Wants A Laptop

So, I'm in the market for a lappy.....well, at least I think I am. Mainly because my main PC has everything I could want, it is was a highly spec'd machine. I guess it's either an upper mid-tier, or a low upper-tier computer nowadays (especially 'coz one of my DIMMs is now corrupt - don't ask).
Anyways, my PC is used for everything except development!! You'd think that I'd be using my PC for development, seeing its what I (should) do at work, right? Well I don't because there are many distractions from doing work/development in my room, namely:

• PC Games
• Movies (on my pc or DVD)
• Internet
• Facebook
• Wii
• PS2
• Nintendo DS
• Sony PSP
• TV shows (on my pc or TV)
• My electric guitar
• My acoustic guitar (they don'r make it anymore, maybe I'll find the model and update this list)
• My other electric guitar (except with covered humbuckers and trapezoid fret inlays)
• My guitar rig modeler
• My wah pedal

I think that's about it, so whenever I'm on my PC I always find something else to do....but anyways, back to my point.
See I need a lappy-top so that I can escape the confines of my room and the distractions lying within. So I could buy a laptop (or is it notebook these days?), and go to....the kitchen, or the front room, or even my rooftop balcony outside my window, and from there concentrate on the development.

But my predicament is this:
My lack of familiarity with laptops leads me to not know what to buy. Especially since I made my last PC, I want the parts in my laptop to be "above average", this is part is due to my snobbishness at the specifications and to brand loyalty. For example, I don't want to buy a Intel Core 2 Duo T5600 with a CPU speed of 1.83GHz because I know that it only has 2MiB of level 2 cache with the FSB of 667 MT/s with the multiplier set at x11. Whereas the next model up (also my starting processor of choice), the Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, has 4MiB of L2 cache and a FSB of 800MT/s with a x10 multiplier.
But, I will buy an AMD Turion 64 X2 processor over an Intel Core Duo (pre-Merom chips), as they are better value for money, they run cooler (I think, I read that somewhere, or they're more energy efficient), they have double the memory bandwidth of the Intels (10.7 Gbytes/s as opposed to 5.3 Gbytes/s), the AMDs are 64-bit (note the Core 2 Duos are 64-bit), and because I'm an AMD whore.
So I don't want a low/mid spec laptop, but I don't need a high spec laptop just for development or media, but then I also don't want to spend too much money...

Then I see THIS on my RSS feed, and now I'm kinda feeling those tablet PCs. It's even got a Wacom digitizer!! And it's not badly priced.....shame Gateway are only USA based....

So I'm at a loss as to what to buy....if anyone can offer some advice or recommendations, please feel free to suggest in the comments. I might post my minimum/optimum system requirements later.

Peace out.
J

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Homebrew Makes Wii More Fun!!

How could the Wii be more fun than it is already?

Well obviously, Nintendo have to do something that no other video game console manufacturer has ever done (actually Microsoft released the XNA Studio for development of XBox 360 games, but not much has come of this yet).......open up the platform to allow for homebrew apps!!

Apparently, Nintendo are releasing the WiiWare development platform. Not many deets have been released yet, except that you'll be able to sell your games to other people....
So keep your eyes open for the upcoming onslaught of Wii Homebrew, well, that is if people are actually interested in making their own games for the Wii....

Read more from Joystiq

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10 Programming Suggestions You Shouldn't Follow?!

Here's an interesting link I found on Digg today, its an article called the Top Ten of Programming Advice NOT to follow.

It's an interesting read but remember, it's only the author's opinion, not a paradigm for programming.

So enjoy.

Read on

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Rediscovering The Button Element

Well, I never knew the WC3 has a button element!!! Apparently it was created to be better than the submit type input. Meh, I use ASP anyways....

Read about it here Rediscovering the Button Element

Thanks to Digg for links

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Hey kids!! Let me introduce you to my friend Scratch....

So.....pretty ambiguous title huh?
Now, why would you be reading this? Because of the kids? Because of the word "Scratch"? Maybe because you're bored and will read anything I write? Who knows.....

Anyways if you haven't Googled it yet, Scratch is a new programming language!!! But wait!!! (that means you Zi). It's not for everyone, especially Professional Developers. It's actually designed for kids, as an entry level language designed to be much easier than many of those high level languages we were all taught/learned.
Apparently (read as: I haven't read it yet), Scratch takes a more GUI approach, with kids able to develop apps by "snapping" blocks together in Duplo type fashion (I would've said Lego, but Duplo is more appropriate, no?). It kinda separates the code from the kids as the code is all stored in 'blocks', therefore not really being programming but teaching them the theory of OOP and design. I'm also guessing it will help kids to develop logical thought processes and maybe even help them in general learning. So sounds good....

So if you have any kids, know of any, or have little nieces or nephews running around, it might be nice to introduce them to this.

Read what I couldn't be bothered to here: BBC Science & Technology Article

Check it out direct from MIT: http://scratch.mit.edu/

and dont' forget:


The children are our future.


Thanks to Digg for the linkage.

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Orgoo

So here's a new web app that might interest some of you. It's called Orgoo, and it supposedly integrates web mail and instant messaging into one web page. Think of using a mixture of Outlook and MSN Live Messenger, or GMail and GoogleTalk, or Yahoo....oh wait, who uses Yahoo?! I mean, come on, their Yahoo Mail Beta is utter shit...

Anyways it apparently supports most of the popular IM clients and web mail hosts, so should be good if you have many different accounts. Think of it as like Meebo, but with email.

Check it out: www.Orgoo.com (sadly the open BETA is full at the moment)

and here's an article about Orgoo (just so you can read about what you're missing).

Seacrest out!!!


Thanks to Digg for linkage.

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