Matt Croydon::Postneo

Day: May 25, 2004

  • Merry Christmas: Wonderfalls on DVD

    Hoorah!  Via Keith, it looks like we’ll be getting Wonderfalls on DVD for the holidays.  I caught bootlegs of Episodes 6 and 7, and they’re doozies.  I’ll be waiting in line at midnight somewhere on this one.

  • Access Point Infrastructure on a CD

    An article on Slashdot about open source hotspots has a lot of information that I was unaware of.  Most importantly, there are two livecd Linux distributions for Wi-Fi infrastructure that I did not know about.  First, Knoppix begat Morphix which begat PublicIP, which makes setting up and administering a free hotspot as easy as possible.  The second, LESS Networks, allows users to download and install a hotspot on their hardware.  LESS seems to be a bit more techie oriented, but that’s okay too.

    Also of note in the linked article is a French hotspot distro called Sesame.  It looks like at least some of these distros are building on top of well known free Wi-Fi projects like NoCat.  If mesh networking is more your bag, don’t forget to check out the Meshbox.  A less sophisticated version of a lot of the wi-fi hotspot distributions can be accomplished on a Linksys WRT54G and third party firmware.

    I’m so glad that we live in a world that includes niche Linux distributions for free wi-fi hotspots.

  • Treo 660: Subtle Changes for the Better

    While this prototype that may or may not be a Treo 660 does not look significantly different than the Treo 600, take a closer look.  The phone-first design is starting to come out even more.  Not only does it look like a flattened Sony Eircsson T616, but the overall look and feel of the phone is about as trimmed down as a phone with a qwerty keypad can be.

    It just screams “phone that also happens to be a PDA” so much more than the Treo 600 does.

  • Tomorrow is Towel Day

    Thanks to Frank for the heads up, tomorrow is Towel Day.  I found out a day too late last year, but I’ll be observing it this year.

  • Unit Testing for Symbian C++

    NewLC points to SymbianOSUnit, an open source unit testing architecture for Symbian C++.  This is awesome.  More information can be found at the project summary.  I’m glad that someone finally just did this, as it’s something that I had been thinking about off and on for quite some time.

  • T-Mobile and Cingular Cut Ties

    CNet:

    Wireless carriers Cingular Wireless and T-Mobile USA said Tuesday they will shelve a three-year-old network infrastructure joint venture, based on the former’s pending buyout of AT&T Wireless.

    Does that mean that my reception with T-Mobile is going to get worse when I’m in San Francisco, or better?  I’m hoping for the latter.

  • Visual Studio 2005 Team System

    A lot of bloggers in the .NET sphere are realy excited about Visual Studio 2005 Team System.  The overview of the Team System look quite promising.  I love to see words like “unit testing” make its way in to product pitches.  That really is A Good Thing.  The system looks solid and extensible.

    Time will tell if this is a  cool whizbang or a real time saver.

    Update: The Early Adopter weblog has links to video of this new feature.

  • Rawdog 1.12

    Via freshmeat, Rawdog 1.12 is out and about.  1.12 is a bugfix and minor feature release.  Rawdog is currently my aggregator of choice.  It’s simple, gets out of my way, and lets me view my news just about anywhere that I have access to a web browser.

  • The Monkey Links

    • There is a new version of mjabber, a J2ME jabber client, out and about.
    • This blog software breakdown is a nice at-a-glance comparison of some popular blogging platforms.
    • From the WS-Whatever department, Infoworld covers WS-MessegeDelivery.  In related news, Sam Gentile is excited about WSE 2.0.
    • Steve Olechowski notes the release of some new Moto iDEN MIDP 2.0 phones.  I for one knew that the i830 was on its way.  It’s a polished i730, which is A Good Thing.  I wonder if the other new phones are any good.
    • OSNews notes the torrentability of Mandrake 10 Official. *Slurp*
    • CNet: Mobile customers want streaming video.  I’d settle for working streaming audio on my 3650.
    • Wi Fi Networking News links to Wi-Fi penetration and demographics.  Also worth reading is the story of how Glenn got the scoop on the Cometa story.
    • I must listen to The FCC Song later.
    • OSNews links to a CNet story about CA open sourcing its Ingres database as well as partnering with several open source communities.
    • There are licensing issues with MySQL 4.x.
    • Mark deals with the aftermath of Freedom 0.  He was also slashdotted today.
    • Game Daily interviews Nada Usina about all things mobile gaming (via the awesome moconews)
    • El Reg reports that Sun is going to share Project Looking Glass Real Soon Now.
    • Simon Fell meditates on tool-generated WSDL.
    • Erik had a pulse today.