Yesterday I installed the latest radio available for my GSM Galaxy Nexus, version XXLF1. It works without any problems, didn't occur any signal drops or anything like that. The WiFi signal seems to be the same, while the GSM signal is significantly improved (HSDPA). It's difficult to notice any battery change, but it seem to be slightly improved (30% at the end of the day).
Please note the the beginning "XX" means that this is a radio only for the European networks, so don't try to install it if you live somewhere outside the Europe. It works very good in Romania, didn't have any issues after installing (Vodafone). Tested on Jelly Bean.
Download from XDA: link (flashable zip, flash in CWM recovery). If the link becomes broken, please report in a comment and I will change it.
Toshiba Camileo S20 is an low-level camcorder (it's somewhere around $150 in Romania), but it really impresses me. I was expecting to be just a camcorder with which you can just play a little, and nothing more (considering that I had before a P10 which I changed with the S20), but it definitely exceeded my expectations.
It's very thin (only 17mm), extremely light (I was searching the battery on the pack because I wasn't thinking that a camcorder can be that light with the battery inserted), and the design Toshiba gave to it makes it look really good (much better than the P10). It can record at both 1080p and 720p resolutions (the 4X zoom is available only for 720p and below), and some of the features it has are "Macro" mode, Slow Motion, Pre-recording, Motion Detect and many others (the P10 didn't have them, P20 might have them but as the specifications from Romanian websites selling these camcorders are very poor, I can't be sure it has).
It also has image stabilization, and the camera can shoot photos at 16 MP. The resolution is very good for a camera of this type, but, however, I wasn't able to take clear photos from a very short distance, even with Macro mode activated. Anyway, the photos I took outside look absolutely brilliant. The 3" LCD screen is quite poor, and even if the photos/videos don't look pretty good on it, when you put them on your computer, they are perfect.
Camera startup time is more than acceptable (it turns on and off automatically, but you also have a button to turn it on and off manually), and I think that the pre-recording and slow motion options are the features which make this camcorder to worth buying. You just push the pre-recording button, and when you see something interesting, you just push the recording button. This way, you can recording the lightnings very easy. Practically, when you push the record button with pre-recording on, the previous 3 seconds prior to pushing the record button are also added to the recording.
If you consider buying a camera like this, here is what you also need to know: in the pack, you're going to find the power cable, USB cable, a TV cable and a tripod (it's very useful), and of course, the quick start guide. And, if you buy one, don't forget to remove the insulator from the battery, otherwise it won't charge. Both photos and videos are accessible directly via USB, without the need of any additional software (like Sony does). What is also important is the container of movies, which, in this case, is AVI (QuickTime won't play it if you're on a Mac, but VLC does it smoothly, and it should be doing it on any platform).
Here is a video I recorded today in Hungary. My opinion is that the image is just perfect.
I know that this is not something new, but I saw it yesterday and I think that this is something that will drastically change the way we use and "communicate" with our phones in the future. I'm talking about a new screen from Samsung, which produces screens for many of available smartphones on the market. As we all know, AMOLED (or Active-Matrix organic light-emitting diode) and Super AMOLED (both from Samsung) are the best screens for smartphones, used by several manufacturers, competing directly with LG's Retina Display, which is used by Apple on the iPhone 4.
I think that with this new type of screen, Samsung continues to show its supremacy on the market, placing LG and its so congratulated (by Apple) Retina Display under it. In the video below, you'll see Samsung's new screen in action. Even if this flexible screen is folded in half, it continues to display the image without any problem, and to demonstrate its resistance, it was hit many times by a hammer, without getting broken at all.
An exact date of launch has not been specified, but it is expected to hit the market within the following two years.
As we all know, Mac is a really safe OS but the truth is that no platform is immune to any kind of malware. Even the Mac OS X. However, the risk on infection on Mac is really low, since most of the attacks are directed against Windows. So there isn't a real necessity to use an antivirus software if you're on Mac, but if you have "terrifying" experiences from Windows, you may use one.
iAntiVirus is a free antivirus solution for Mac, offering most of what a regular user needs. As the official site says, this application offers powerful malware protection (viruses, worms and trojans) - detection and removal-, spyware, adware and dialer protection, real-time protection via "IntelliGuard Real-Time Protection", free support by community and free "Smart Updates".
It offers just a basic interface, and uses very little resources as I even don't feel it working in the background. These are what the free version offers. If you need it for business and commercial purposes, 24/7 dedicated and phone support, paid version is also available.
Google uploaded an interesting video a few days ago, showing that their browser is faster than anything else. They've tested its speed against a potato which.."explodes", against sound waves, and against lighting, and the results are quite impressive. Google developed a new JavaScript engine, named V8, which is written in C++, and makes Google Chrome incontestably the fastest browser on earth. Here is the video.
The tests were done using a MacBook Pro with a Windows installed on it, connected on a Asus 24" monitor, and it was filmed using a Phantom v640 High Speed camera at 1920 x 1080 camera capable of filming up to 2700 fps, on a 15Mbps Internet connection. You see the color of the screen changing gradually, because this is the actual speed of pixels on the monitor which has been used.
A few days ago I had the opportunity of testing the product which Apple says that it's a revolutionary one, the iPad (they said the same when they launched any other product).
Firstly, I'll tell you its specifications. It has an Apple A4 1 GHz processor, based on ARM technology. The storage memory varies between 16, 32 and 64 GB, and, related to RAM memory, this is a complete mystery (yet). It is known that physically it seems to be having 512 MB of RAM, but in practice, it reveals only 256 MB of RAM (showed by different tests). It is certain only that the RAM is integrated into the chip of the processor.
It also has a 10 inch capacitive multi-touch screen, perfect for almost anything. On the connectivity side, we have the Wi-Fi model, which starts at $499 with 16 GB of storage, and the Wi-Fi + 3G model which is going to be available soon, this month. The battery offers 1 month for stand-by, and about 10 hours when surfing web on Wi-Fi and stuff like that.
On the Apple Store I've waited for a few minutes after I got one to play with (everybody was running to get one to test when somebody finished testing one). I think that there were about 15-20 iPads available (it is a quite big store, in Dadeland Mall, Miami).
The first sensation was that it was fast. But not as fast as I was expecting, but it was pretty good. The applications are launching like on the iPhone (slowly, showing who made them or things like that), and some of them really looked very well. But several were made especially for the iPhone, and looked very bad because they were running at a low resolution (I'm sure that this will be a problem for a long time).
I found it difficult to play with it using its accelerometer, considering that I used an iPhone for about 1 year and a half, and now I have the Nexus One. It is an updated version of iPhone OS, so the menus are updated in many basic applications (they look really good).
Many fans of Apple said that the iPad is very fast, faster than even the Nexus One. I don't agree with this. They probably said this even without ever touching a Nexus. It is clearly faster than the iPad.
There have been reported several problems with the iPad after only a few hours after it was launched, many users complaining that on their Windows machines and especially when connected to USB hubs the iPad refuses to charge. Apple says that when it gets into sleep, it starts charging automatically, but they can't actually prove that this happens at all times, because there is no icon indicating if it charges or not. And there are also problems with weak Wi-Fi signal and connection problems on LAN configurations.
And if you want one, if need to know that it has no camera and no GPS. You can buy additional accessories, and even if the iPad starts a $499, you can easily pass $1000, considering that Apple has only quite expensive accessories.
Apple has reached again, a great success with the iPad. In the first day of selling, the sells with the pre-orders passed 300 000 units. This is completely astonishing. To compare, Google sold only 135 000 Nexus One units after 74 days, while there were about 1 million iPhones (first generation) sold after the same period of days. I don't know how Apple does this, but it is known that Steve Jobs has currently the most profitable company in the domain of mobile devices.
Below is a video taken with my Nexus One, while I was testing some of iPad's functionalities:
Today I've fully upgraded my laptop which had Ubuntu 9.10 on it, to Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx. The whole upgrade process took some time, but the results are impressive. So, what I've observed in the following 30 mins after the installation:
The OS moves significantly faster than before
Notification problems from the previous Alpha release were resolved
Possible bug with the sound (or only with its icon)
Gwibber added (application, Twitter client)
Some changes in "Disk Utility" (interface)
Many programs have up-to-date versions
Human theme is pretty changed (most obvious changes are related to the panel)
2 Completely NEW themes included; one is called "Radiance", and the other one is called "Ambiance"
About the themes. Ubuntu now has on all its themes the buttons for the windows on left (minimize, maximize and close), pretty much like Mac OS X. The new "Radiance" theme is completely inspirited from Mac OS X (wallpaper, colours, buttons, etc), and nobody can tell me that it isn't.
But they are differently placed. They are in the following order: maximize-minimize-close, order which is not present on any other OS. This seemed a little strange, but it didn't create confusion for me. Many Linux users declared that they don't agree with these new buttons, but if you want my opinion, I really like it.Update: the buttons are now placed like in the Mac OS X: close-minimize-maximize.
The other new theme called "Ambiance" is exactly the same with "Radiance", except that it has dark colours. I'm currently really tired, and I observed that "Ambiance" is really relaxing, compared to "Radiance" which has very bright colours and it's pretty unpleasant now. Below is the "Ambiance". The OS is fully functional, like the previous version, and it is extremely stable (since it's an Alpha version, I was expecting to be pretty unstable). It offers quite a similar experience (compared to 9.10), except that is more responsive and moves faster.
This is the question I've putted myself many times since Nexus One has been launched in the United States. It is currently unavailable (normally) anywhere else into the world, with the exception of the UK, Hong Kong, and Singapore, which are "test" countries. This is pretty disappointing. I'm from Romania and I can't really understand why I can't get it here.
Hmmm...Ok, I can. A company is selling it here, but at about $740. Because, it is the only one who is selling it here, and there is no competition. Google says that Nexus One will probably be available in the spring 2010 with other carriers than T-mobile, so it might be available even in Romania then.
And this happens while HTC Desire is about to come. Google is now loosing millions of clients in the whole world, and the situation can get as bad as it can, because Desire is going to be a Nexus One replacement for the regions where it isn't available.
Ubuntu launched their 10.04 Alpha 2 release on 7th January, and I've decided to test it now. So far, it has nothing new comparing to 9.10 Karmic Koala. Except probably that it boots a little faster.
The installation took a normal time, similar to 9.10. The boot-up takes about 18 seconds, which is better than 9.10, but I'm curious if the final release will attend what Ubuntu promised, less than 10 seconds to boot. That would be a real performance and a big challenge for any OS developer.
On my Dell D610 laptop everything works out-of-the-box, including wi-fi. After the first boot the touchpad stopped responding, but, using the trackpoint I gave it a reboot and now it is working. There are some problems with the notifications, which appear in a strange way. View the following image to see how What else I can tell you is that at a first look, the OS moves pretty fast, but the applications are crashing frequently and easily. I observed several flickers of the screen, so I guess it might be a problem with the driver of something like that.
Ubuntu 10.04 (so far, Alpha 2) comes with Empathy as a default internet messenger, Firefox 3.5.7 for brwsing, and OpenOffice 3.1 suite. There's also a new application included, named Pitivi Video Editor.
The 10.04 will be a LTS (long term support) distribution, so it should be an high stable release, which will be supported for 3 years for desktop edition, and 5 years for the server one. The LTS releases are launched every two years, while normal releases are launched every 6 months.
Here's the calendar of the Ubuntu 10.04 release schedule:
Please consider that this is an unstable release ! Do NOT install it as your default OS, as it has frequent crashes that might cause you to lose data ! It is recommended for testing purposes only.
Opera 10.05 pre-alpha is now available. The new version has a nicer changed interface, and moves faster than the previous one. It seems that opera is again the leader when we are talking about the load time of the webpages, but I personally couldn't prove that. I will soon make some tests on the latest versions of browsers, and then I will tell you this version of Opera is the fastest browser available. As it is a pre-alpha, it is still recommended for testing purposes only. It might have problems displaying some websites, as it's not the final version. I can't actually post from it to my blog, because when I'm trying to do that, it gives me a 404 error and says that the page is not found (that's a strange error, Opera!). But I like it so far, so I think that the final version will be a real success.
Even if Google Chrome OS is still not available for complete installation on regular computers, it can still be ran on virtual machines. A good and free virtual machine is called VirtualBox, and it can be downloaded from the official site here. Everyone should be able to install and use VirtualBox, since it is very simple and efficient.
By the way, you should start downloading the image of Chrome OS from here, while I'll tell you what else you need to know. The image archivated, so if you are under Windows I would recommend you to download and install WinRar, and when the image download is completed, you can unarchive (or dearchive, or how it should be told) it. Leave the image as it is. In the VirtualBox, Google Chrome OS should be set as a Linux operating system, then as version Ubuntu. Everything you need to do is simple, and for additional informations you can either visit this link:
I've tested it on a Macbook with 2 GB of RAM and Intel Core2 Duo processor at 2.00 GHz, and it worked fine.
Attention!! Do not allocate to VirtualBox more than your current free RAM memory, otherwise the computer can become unstable or it can stop responding !! (it would be good if you save your work before starting the virtual machine)
