Ubuntu 10.10 Alpha 2 getting out of control.

A few days ago I presented you Ubuntu 10.10 Alpha 2 (here), telling you that it has some bugs at sound (it doesn't work at all with some sound cards) and at booting procedure (or more exactly, it fails the installation procedures and is forced to boot in live CD). However, there is another critical bug that I experienced a few minutes ago.

Here are some details: Pidgin + Chrome were running (nothing else) while I was notified that Gwibber crashed (it was not running, I didn't open it). Everything is...normal until now, I periodically receive notifications telling me that Gwibber crashes (even without running it). But what happened after was....let's say, normal for a pre-release version of Ubuntu. The main problem is that you it makes it difficult to save what you were working on at that time. This is what I'm talking about.

When Gwibber crashed, "Report a problem" has opened, in order to let me send details to developers, to help them fixing the problem. And it seems that, I don't know why, "Report a problem" crashed after that, too. And again. And over and over again. I think that every second, two windows of that type were appearing. That's not much, I know, but for my desktop, which doesn't have video hardware acceleration (lack of drivers), they are a real problem, as it is hard to save anything.

So, here's a new bug that developers need to fix for the final release of Ubuntu 10.10.

iPhone 4 just arrived, as well as major problems.

iPhone 4, the phone which "changes everything, again", seems to fail quite much this time. The guys from Engadget have been using the iPhone 4 for 6 days now (this is really interesting), and they noticed some scratches on the back of the device. Apple said that this "Gorilla Glass" which covers the front and the back of the device is...I don't know how many times resistant than normal plastic, and it is very hard to scratch.  However, the guys from Engadget got it scratched. More here (+photos).

The front of the unit doesn't stay better, also. After just 4 drops on asphalt, the screen broke. Probably the screen didn't work anymore, but they (the guys from Engadget) couldn't test that, because the device stopped working from the second drop already!!! More here (photo+video).

There are problems, again, with the screen. Many users are seeing yellow spots at the bottom of the screen. It is not known if this is a manufacturing fail or an IPS LCD issue, but it is clear that there are problems with the screen. Apple said that they are working on a fix, but it is improbable that they are going to resolve something as they had 600 000 requests on the first day of pre-orders, and most probably there are over 1 million devices coming to their customers currently. Anyway, it seems that IPS screens are harder to create than it was thought, so only a half of Apple 4 units can be delivered at expected time. So, I think that it is 99% sure that we'll have problems with the stocks, again.

There are also problems with the signal. Cellular signal. We don't know yet if there are problems with the Wi-Fi, because there weren't any reports saying this, but as Apple's products are usually having problems with the  Wi-Fi, it is expected to come in the following period reports confirming this or not. Certain is that there are major problems with the cellular signal. If the device is kept on a flat table, the signal is excellent, the new construction of Apple does it's job excellent (the antenna is integrated on the structure of the device). But in the moment you take the device in your hand, the signal decreases, until it loses it. If you put the device on the table, it gets the signal again and goes even until full.

More about these two problems here (photos+video+polls).

Are you having any of these problems? Please leave a comment to let us know if you have or not.

Problems with TweetDeck shortcuts on Ubuntu Linux.

I've turned my laptop to Ubuntu a few hours ago, and, like usual, I installed a few programs, including TweetDeck. After I rebooted, I noticed that there were no shortcuts for TweetDeck anymore. I searched for it on Applications -> Internet, where isn't, and it is not even on my panel (where I put it after installation). It's not the first time I get this problem, so I've decided to report the problem to TweetDeck, hoping they have a solution (I searched through Google, but it seems that no one has reported problems like these with TweetDeck).

TweetDeck launches and works if I press "Launch TweetDeck" button on their website, so the installation is intact. I guess there are only some issues with shortcuts.If guys from TweetDeck will give me a solution, I'll post it here, even it will be to go where TweetDeck is installed and send from there a shortcut to desktop.

Update: I've talked to somebody from TweetDeck support team, and he told me that it sounds like being an issue with Adobe Air. He recommended me to reinstall TweetDeck, but since Adobe Air is managing it, I wasn't able to find a solution to uninstall it. I've just played a little with Adobe Air (just a few clicks inside it) and after I found TweetDeck into "Accessories". I don't know how it got there, what I know is that it was reseated in somehow, because that "welcome" window appears again (I set it when everything was normal not to open again).

So, I recommend you searching for the shortcut into "Accessories", and if you can't find it there, try to play a little with Adobe Air, eventually give it an uninstall, and then install it again.

Informations about skiing locations on your iPhone.

Getting informations about skiing locations from all over the world on your iPhone is very simple. There are several applications that can do this job, but the application that I'm using is called "Snow Report". After the last update, the application loads really fast, and works without any problem. It can automatically detect the location where you are via GPS, or you can choose the location from a list. The maximum number of locations it can store is 12.


For each location, it will display how much snow is expected for the following 24 hours, 48 hours, and the following 7 days, the depth of the snow on top and on base, then, if the resort is open or not and how many lifts and trails are open and closed. Then it will show the temperature at the resort and the condition of the skiing surface, followed by three buttons which will show the following when pressed: five day forecast, resort webcam, and resort information. At the bottom, it will show how much time ago the informations were last updated.


The application is, of course, free, and it can be found on the AppStore by searching "snow and ski report by rei" (the application will have an icon on which is written "REI").