WTH is up with Gmail lately? As of the last month or so it's been going down faster and more often than a $5.00 crack whore on a $100.00 bill. It's a sad day when Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail are more reliable.
Month of March, 2006
Fedora Core 5 out
Fedora Core 5 is out. You can download it at these links:
x86 ISOs
x86_64 ISOs
PPC ISOs
Mirrors
Torrent
If you choose to download via a Torrent then please leave your downloader running (once your download has finished) so it can help upload to the other clients. This is seeding and what makes bittorrent efficient.
Dear Mr. Ballmer
After Sony announced on Tuesday that the Playstation 3 won't launch until November, the Xbox 360 is in a better position to become the top gaming console, says Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.
"In every other generation, the first guy to 10 million consoles was the number one seller in the generation," Ballmer told FORTUNE in an interview on Thursday afternoon. "Did we just get an even better opportunity to be the first guy to 10 million? Yeah, of course we did."
There is still a production bottleneck because of problems with a component vendor, whom Ballmer declined to name, but he expects Microsoft to sell 5 million systems by June. "We're sort-of on track," he says, "though it would've been nice at Christmas to have one for everyone who wanted one."
Dear Mr. Ballmer,
Yes you got a wonderful opportunity to finally become the premier gaming console on the planet. If, and only if, you guys can pull your collective heads out of your asses and fix the damn production issues you've had that have dramatically impacted availability. (come on, 600,000 units sold worldwide in the 6 weeks it was released in 2005)
In short quit fiddle fucking around with shit like "Origami" and fix those issues. There are only 10 weeks until June and at your current rate there's no way you're going to sell 5 million systems by then. You might sell another million but that would be pushing it.
And for god's sakes....quit shipping units to Japan where they will just occupy space on shelves and sell them here in the USA.
Sincerely,
Just Another Gamer
Gmail Contacts to OS X Address Book
As mentioned before on this blog, Nicole has made the switch over to OS X with the purchase of a Mac Book Pro. One of the issues that has arisen is that when she left her old company she also made the move from hotmail to gmail and she had converted all of her contacts into a format that gmail could deal with. ***She is still using gmail but has since moved off the web based client and is now using Mail.App as her client of choice primarily due to the fact that she can use "folders" under Mail.App.***
Well now that she's using Mail.App it was time to export her gmail contacts into a file then import them into Address Book. Only issue is that Address Book doesn't like importing .csv files (it will only import vCards, LDIF, Text) and gmail doesn't export into any other format.
After doing a bit of research I was able to locate Address Book Importer. This tool performed the import flawlessly after a modification or two to the original .csv file. The main issue was that gmail exports the contacts first name, last name into a single name field and Address Book didn't appreciate that. After breaking the name field into 2 separate fields the import went smoothly.
The tool itself is free (for a single use) although the author requests that if you use more than that you donate $10.00. A big thank you Steve Roy for writing this wonderful tool.
Sprint Power Vision Phone A920
As mentioned in this post a few weeks ago I was asked to participate in the Sprint Ambassador Program and evaluate the Sprint Power Vision Service as well as a Sprint Power Vision Phone A920 (aka Samsung Model SPH-A920 Digital Dual Band Phone).
Well about a week ago I received a package from FedEx that contained the following items:
- One SPH-A920 Phone by Samsung with Sprint Power Vision Access
- Lithium Ion Battery
- AC Travel Charger
- 32MB TransFLASH Memory Card and Adapter
- USB Cable
- Stereo Headset
- Activation Guide
- Phone User Guide
- Sprint Power Vision Guide
After unpacking everything and laying it out on my desk the first thing that caught my eye was the warning label affixed to the Stereo Headset packaging. It stated:
Use of this headset with both ears covered while driving may not be permitted by law in certain states.
I'm not sure why that struck me as funny but it did. Well actually I know why. If you're stupid enough to be driving a motor vehicle while wearing headphones then you are a prime candidate for a Darwin Award.
Regardless, so I unpacked the phone and charged it fully, once charged I decided that it was time to start playing with it. Here are my thoughts on the phone itself and NOT the service.
First up we have the Technical Specs:
| Band | CDMA 900/1900Mhz |
| Data | 1xRTT/EV-DO |
| Size | 91mm x 48mm x 24mm (3.59" x 1.91" x 0.95") |
| Weight | 107.7g (3.8oz) |
| Battery Life | Unknown stand by time |
| 3 hours talk time | |
| Main Display | 262k color TFT LCD, 176x220 pixel resolution |
| Sub-Display | 65k color STN LCD, 128x96 pixel resolution |
| Camera | 1.3 megapixel |
| Video | Video capture/playback |
| Messaging | MMS/EMS/SMS |
| Unknown | |
| Bluetooth | Yes |
| Infrared | No |
| Java | Yes |
| Polyphonics | Yes |
| Memory | Unknown on board memory, TransFlash expansion slot |
I'm not a huge fan of "flip phones" but this one I'm liking. It's not too bulky and fits nicely into my pockets. The screen is crisp and clear and I was able to customize the phone to my liking without too much trouble (hello "IT Crowd ringtone"). The only real issue I've had so far after a week of using it is that adding contacts can be a pain in the butt until you get used to the way they do it.
I'll be blogging more this week in regards to the service.
