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Of course, once I got home I immediately upgraded my iPhone 3G to the latest 3.0 firmware. After the interminable download, sync and install process, I got my first glimpse at the new front page. Almost immediately, I noticed that I not only had a battery icon, but also the percentage of battery power remaining!
My first thought was that it was a new feature of the OS. I was pleased, but not completely surprised, because I had a bit of a secret. You see, once upon a time I used a jailbreak on my phone. It was a heady time for me, running two apps simultaneously, recording video with Qik, and most importantly using a hack that turns the battery icon to a percentage view. And, once I decided to un-jailbreak, all my various interface hacks and other things vanished, except for that surreptitious little battery percentage toggle.
We have had our web experience controlled by the sites we visit for so long that for a lot of us, the web browser defaults no longer even come in to play when controlling what the text on a web page looks like, except in the case where we want to override whatever choice the site we are visiting has made.
This isn’t a rant. I actually think, by and large, that this is a good thing. CSS (or Cascading Style Sheets) allows precise control over the overall look of web sites, and when you are trying to walk that line between clean and detailed, CSS can be the razor that keeps your site from looking too busy or too cluttered. There are many precise tweaks that can enhance the presentability of a site, like the vertical spacing between lines of text.
I haven’t been doing much writing recently.
Anywhere.
After an extremely fun couple of months writing for ReadWriteWeb (thanks again for making that possible, Richard! Your team is absolutely the best folks to work with!) I found a full-time job working for CyberSource, working on the operations/support piece for a new product they (we) are developing for electronic payment processing. Sounds boring, doesn’t it?
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Actually, if you want to buy American, the Ford Fusion hybrid is a good choice. It's got decent power, roomy and has all those Ford gadgets, like the voice control system.
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Watch the Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet Exclusive Extended Trailer HD online at GameTrailers.com. Post comments online about Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet on the Game Trailers website.
Yesterday Twitter confirmed they would start suspending accounts that commonly game the system by rapidly following and unfollowing users in short periods of time.
Wolfram Alpha, a new "computational knowledge engine" based on the work of Stephen Wolfram. Some have dubbed Alpha a "Google killer," but, in reality, is very different from the standard search engines that we are all familiar with today.
Phil Glockner's shared items in Google Reader
We've already discussed the seemingly suicidal situation Tesla finds itself in with relation to its 2011 Roadster production cessation, but that SEC submission for the company's IPO is a long, long affair (which you may read below), and there were more nuggets of madness to be found. Apparently, CEO Elon Musk is a busy man -- with CEO and CTO functions at SpaceX and a chairmanship at SolarCity to attend to -- and so he couldn't possibly be expected to focus his full attention on ensuring that the half billion dollar state loan his company received gets spent as wisely as possible. Add Musk's corporate bigamy to an expectation of "continuing losses" and dwindling waiting lists and you have to wonder who, other than the US government, will be buying shares when this offering goes public.
What can we say about you, DOS? You've rocked the personal computer world and changed the way we all feel about white on black console screens. Your retirement is a well deserved one and... wait, you're getting a patch? Amazingly, Microsoft is fixing a bug that has existed in the Windows Virtual DOS Machine (VDM) subsystem since it was added to Windows NT way back in the simple days of 1993, when flannels were everywhere and 32 bits were more than we knew what to do with. Google engineer Tavis Ormandy found the exploit a few weeks ago, which grants an attacker the ability to run code in kernel mode, and a critical update has been issued to fix this most aged of vulnerabilities. Perhaps now, DOS, your work is finally done.
For decades, many have dreamed of having a virtual assistant to answer our questions and do our bidding. Through advances in artificial intelligence, speech recognition and a seemingly endless array of search engines and directories, we are getting ever closer to this fantasy becoming a reality. A new application, Siri, billed as a virtual personal assistant, debuts today on the iTunes store, and promises to be a new way to interact with the mobile Web. The application takes queries from natural speaking, and does its best not just to find the right answer, but the right action as well.Fueled by SRI International and powered by Nuance's voice recognition capability, Siri comes loaded with hooks to dozens of partners to help bring whatever you have in your mind to your phone.
Siri Sets Up Dinner and Gets You A Meal