Archive for marzo 9th, 2010
This nicely designed, easy-to-use app that may provide a valuable service for some users. But My Med ID is not without its downsides.
Filed under: Deals
Today's deals are all generated from a friendly search-based robot courtesy DealNews. We didn't pick 'em this time, so no warranties expressed or implied. Aol uses a referral code for these deals.- Apple Store: [iPods] Refurbished Apple iPod touch MP3 Players from $139 + free shipping
- iTunes Music Store: [iPhone / iPod Apps] App Store Price Drops: Pocket Heart, Diner Dash, Magellan RoadMate, more
- MacUpdate Promo: [Security/Anti-Virus Software] Lockngo 4 for Mac downloads for $10
- Buy.com: [Networkable Hard Drive (NAS)] Linksys NMH300 Two-Bay Media Hub for $130 + free shipping
- eBay: [Supplies] Quartet Magnetic Dry-Erase Board for $8 + free shipping
- Buy.com: [802.11g Wireless] Zyxel 802.11g Wireless Powerline Router for $40 + free shipping
- Adorama: [Printers] Canon SELPHY ES30 Compact Dye Sublimation Printer for $50 + free shipping
- Dell Home: [40" - 42" LCD TVs] Sharp 42" 1080p Widescreen LCD HDTV for $539 + free shipping
- Shop4Tech: [Cell Phone Accessories] Universal GPS Car Mount for $5 + free shipping
- ThingFling: [Surge Protectors] Philips 8-Outlet Home Theater System Surge Protector for $50 + $6 s&h
- Buy.com: [Mice/Trackballs] Logitech Trackman Trackball Mouse for $22 + free shipping
- 6ave: [42" And Smaller Plasma HDTVs] Panasonic VIERA 42" 1080p Plasma HDTV, Blu-ray, more for $833 + free shipping
TUAWDaily Deals for March 9, 2010 originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Filed under: Productivity, Software Update
Microsoft has just released updates to the 2004 and 2008 versions of Microsoft Office. According to the company, the updates, which weigh in at 9.7 MB and 221.5 MB respectively, provide "fixes for vulnerabilities that an attacker can use to overwrite the contents of your computer's memory with malicious code" as well as improvements to stability and performance.
The update for Microsoft Office 2004 can be downloaded here, while those with the 2008 version can find it at this link.
As with most Mac OS X-related updates, whether from a third party app or a system update, you should consider backing up your data before proceeding.
Keep in mind, as you install this update, that right around the corner is Microsoft Office for Mac 2011. Notable updates for the next version of the suite for the Mac include the replacement of Entourage with Outlook, the return of VBA and, gasp (or hurrah!), a more ribbon-oriented user interface, à la the Windows version of Office.
TUAWMicrosoft updates Office for Mac 2008 and 2004 originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Produttore: Recession | Download Via: AppStore | Prezzo: 2,39€
System Activity Monitor è un’applicazione per iPhone ed iPod Touch che permette di monitorare tutte le attività di sistema attraverso dei grafici del tutto simili a quelli che si ottengono dall’applicazione “Monitoraggio Attività” del Mac. E’ utile sopratutto per la possibilità di Killare i processi e liberare memoria.
L’applicazione si compone di vari tab. Il primo è quello “Memory” dove troviamo il grafico a torta con la Memoria disponibile, attiva, inattiva ed in uso. Cliccando sul tastino Free Memory riusciremo a killare i processi che non sono essenziali al funzionamento del telefono, in basso troviamo le informazioni sul Disco e lo Spazio utilizzato.
Spostandoci nel Tab “Processes” invece, avremo la lista dei processi attivi ed un altro piccolo grafico dove verrà mostrato l’andamento e l’utilizzo della CPU.
Tramite il Tab “Network” conosceremo l’indirizzo IP con il quale siamo collegati al nostro Router, l’indirizzo MAC, il modello del nostro dispositivo, la versione del Firmware, l’UDID e tanto altro. In basso troviamo la batteria con un segnalatore in percentuale.
Tramite le impostazioni potremo di liberare memoria non appena lanciamo l’applicazione e di terminare tutte le applicazioni che girano in background come Safari, iPod, Mail etc. E’ un’applicazione veramente completa e ben fatta anche se il costo non è dei più agevoli.
Ci è stata segnalata dall’utente Niranav che dopo un costante utilizzo ha appurato che funziona meglio del “Free Mem” integrato in SBSettings e che terminando i vari processi si ottiene anche una durata maggiore della batteria.
Produttore: Alfredo delli Bovi | Download: AppStore | Prezzo: 0,79€*
iSutras, il Kamasutra per iPhone che integra anche tanti giochini da provare con il proprio partner, entra in fase promozionale che porta uno sconto per un’intera settimana a partire dalla giornata della festa della donna, al prezzo di 0.79€.
Abbiamo anche avuto delle informazioni riguardanti il prossimo aggiornamento, ovvero la versione 3.0 che vedrà una riscrittura completa, migliorando prestazioni e grafica.
iSutras è disponibile per iPhone e iPod Touch, richiede la versione del firmware 3.1 o successivi ed è localizzato in Inglese e italiano. Qui trovate la recensione completa di iSpazio.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Google has teamed up with Dish Network to offer a set-top box based on the Android operating system.
Apple today released the fourth beta of iPhone SDK 3.2 which is aimed solely at the iPad due for United States release on April 3. The update continues Apple’s trend of bi-weekly updates.
iPhone SDK 3.2 provides support for developing iPad applications. This beta of iPhone SDK 3.2 includes the complete set of Xcode 3.2.2 tools, compilers, and frameworks for creating applications for iPhone OS and Mac OS X. These tools include the Xcode IDE and the Instruments analysis tool among many others.
With this software you can develop applications that run on iPad using the included iPhone Simulator, which runs iPhone OS 3.2. Additionally, you can develop applications for iPhone and iPod touch, which run on iPhone OS 3.1.3. (This software does not include all of the iPhone OS 2.x SDKs.) Installing the iPhone SDK 3.2 beta requires a Macintosh computer running Mac OS X 10.6.2 (Snow Leopard) or later.
The latest build of iPhone SDK 3.2 is labelled beta 4 (10M2144).
Filed under: Multimedia, Odds and ends, iPhone, iPod touch, App Review
I've always liked Slate Magazine on the web. It's sometimes sassy and irreverent, but always interesting -- an eclectic mix of politics, culture and tech news.Now, Slate has come to the iPhone in a US$1.99 app that features all the articles from the site, as well as the blog posts, staff tweets and streaming video from the Slate podcasts. Once content is downloaded you can read it off-line, which is a worthwhile feature. Access to Slate on the web is free, and you can read Slate from any mobile browser by going to mobile.slate.com.
So why the charge for the iPhone app? Slate says it cost something to develop it, and it gives you a much richer experience in a portable form. I can't argue with that, but I can argue with the ads that appear absolutely everywhere. Even the splash screen popped up with an ad. I think that's a bit much after I've paid for the app, but I'm beginning to see a lot of this in other apps as well.
I do like the app a lot, and it is a better experience for me than reading Slate stories in Safari on the iPhone. I even prefer the app to reading the site on my desktop or laptop. I just think the constant intrusive ads are a turn-off that will keep some people from pulling the trigger on what is an otherwise laudable effort.
Slate works on any iPhone or iPod touch with OS 3.0 or greater. I expect we'll see an iPad version as well.
Full disclosure: In the dim, distant past I worked at the Washington Post Company, which owns Slate.
Take a gander at some screen shots below:
TUAWSlate comes to the iPhone, along with a lot of advertising originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Produttore: Natium | Download Via: AppStore | Prezzo: 0,79€
Un po’ di tempo fa vi abbiamo palrato di mySmsCounter, una utility che permette di aggiungere un contacaratteri agli SMS, conoscendo la lunghezza dei propri messaggi prima dell’invio. Contrariamente all’applicazione nativa infatti, oltre al contacaratteri, troviamo un conta parole ed un segnalatore di messaggi che eviterà di farci inviare SMS multipli soltanto per un paio di lettere in eccesso. Adesso vi segnaliamo la disponibilità della versione 2.0 e le diverse novità:
In primo luogo è stata migliorata l’interfaccia grafica ed è stata aggiunta la modalità Portrait oltre alla classica Landscape.
Adesso l’applicazione è anche in grado di comprimere il messaggio automaticamente e questo ridurrà la possibilità di inviare SMS multipli. Dopo aver attivato la funzione infatti, non dovremo fare altro che scrivere le parole integralmente lasciando all’applicazione la conversione. Ad esempio la parola “comunque” verrà rimpiazzata da “cmq” e cosi via.
Abbiamo 5 codici Redeem che vi permetteranno di scaricare l’applicazione gratuitamente. Per vincerne uno vi basta seguirci su Twitter ed essere i più veloci ad inserirli in iTunes non appena li pubblicheremo. (E’ necessario un account USA che potete creare seguendo questa guida).
Filed under: Gaming, Software, Other Events, Developer, iPhone
They looked first at commercial solutions for game networking, and it turns out that the Quake 3 engine that they eventually used fit their ideas well. The toughest obstacle was of course the lag -- in a fast-paced game like Eliminate, even a delay of 200 milliseconds is too much. But it turns out that the way the Quake 3 engine handled dialup Internet back in the day is very similar to the way many developers are handling the slower speeds of mobile 3G. As the devs said, "a dialup connection from 1999 looks a lot like a 3G connection today."
In addition to the networking code, the Quake engine also gave them lots of other benefits during development, including graphics and lighting engines, a map editor, and an easy way to model animations in the game. The engineers said that using a commercial engine like Quake 3 allowed them to spend much more time on the out-of-game experience (the lobbies, the in-app purchases, and so on), and they really appreciated that.
Matchmaking was a little tougher -- they used console games by companies like Microsoft, Infinity Ward, and Blizzard as a model, and decided that they wanted to have players wait a max of about 10% of the time they spent playing. For console games, that turns out to be about a minute of waiting to make a game versus ten minutes of actual gameplay, but for Eliminate's shorter three minute games, Ngmoco decided they only had about fifteen seconds to make a match. Still, they were able to put a pretty robust system in the game even in that short time -- they assign players a number of various qualities (character skill, level, ping time, and so on), and then the matchmaking system searches for other game players, slowly expanding the limits on the search criteria.
In other words, when players first start searching, they'll be matched up with players of approximately the same skill, but as time goes on, that skill window grows. Fifteen seconds in, the skill differential could be up to ten times what it was when the search first started. Not all qualities "degrade" the same -- party size, for example, degrades much slower, so someone looking for four players won't get hooked up with just two or three for a while. And while the devs originally didn't include character level in matchmaking at all (they figured skill was a better match for players than actual level), a "HUGE outcry" by players made them include level in the process. Players really didn't like being connected with opponents who were at a much higher character level, even if the skill level was the same.
Ngmoco runs 16 different servers for each implementation of Eliminate: four for messaging with the clients, two for matchmaking, eight for what they call "game managers" (which are servers that run multiple game instances), and two management consoles that oversee the actual Ubuntu-based servers they're running, and update the 24 apt-get packages that make up the actual game software. Messaging servers are based in San Francisco with the company, but game servers are co-located around the world, in Chicago, Virginia, Amsterdam and Tokyo. Unfortunately, they didn't mention how many people are actually playing, but the servers were tested for up to 30,000 users just for messaging and 50,000 for matchmaking -- Ngmoco actually made a headless version of the game for OS X, installed it on "all of the hardware" in their offices, and ran it like crazy to load-test their software.
It was a pretty interesting talk -- very much on the technical side, but Ngmoco set out to create a competitive online FPS on the iPhone and that's what they did. It was cool to hear some behind-the-scenes details on how a very complicated iPhone gaming network is designed and run.
We'll have more from GDC 2010 all this week, including hands-on of the latest games from Ngmoco and lots of other game developers. Stay tuned!
TUAWGDC 2010: Ngmoco explains how Eliminate was built originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.