Hasta La Gadget!

Dell’s thin update to the Vostro V13 adds newer processors to the mix.

This article was written on December 13, 2006 by CyberNet.

With the release of Firefox 3 Alpha many people are left wondering what the benefits are of Mozilla switching to Cairo for the rendering engine. As demonstrated above the corners that are rendered using the latest Firefox 3 Alpha are anti-aliased meaning they are smoother. There is only a slight difference when looking at the two comparisons but it is a little more noticeable when you look at the zoomed-in portion. According to the Cairo Homepage these are some of the other things that it is capable of:

Operations in cairo including stroking and filling cubic Bézier splines, transforming and compositing translucent images, and antialiased text rendering. All drawing operations can be transformed by any affine transformation (scale, rotation, shear, etc.).

As if that isn’t great enough news for Firefox fans, the latest nightly builds are also passing the Acid 2 test. That can’t be found in the Alpha 1 release but it will surely be a hit when Alpha 2 is released (which is currently scheduled for the first quarter of 2007). For those of you wanting more information on Firefox 3 here are some links that CoryC pointed out along with certain features highlighted from each:

• Firefox:3.0 PRD
• Firefox:Password Manager
  • The “Should Firefox remember this password?” dialog shouldn’t block the loading of the new page.
  • Password generation (eg, hash site name and a common password.) Has anti-phishing benefits because user doesn’t even really know their own password.
• Firefox:Configurable Keybindings
• Firefox:3.0 Tabbed Browsing
  • If there are a lot of tabs, a second row of tabs may be useful.
• Firefox:Safer Extension Installation
• Firefox:Download Manager
  • Media support for:
    • BitTorrent
    • Podcast
    • Podcast through BitTorrent
    • RSS
    • RSS feed of BitTorrents (Goodbye hard disk space)
• Firefox:3.0 Unified XPInstall Download Back End
• Firefox:Info Window
• Firefox:3.0 Options Dialog reorg
• Firefox:3.0 Accessibility
  • Do something like the gesture command of Opera, when you push the right mouse button and make a specific movement to issue a command. I use the close window gesture intensivly. I think that is the fastest of all ways to issue a commands.
• Firefox:3.0 Customizable Toolbars
• Firefox:3.0 Bookmarks
  • I’m sure everyone has read what I’ve read, but it doesn’t hurt to write a reminder. Here’s a link to UIWeb’s “How to build a better web browser” essay: http://www.scottberkun.com/essays/essay37.htm
• Firefox:3.0 Places
  • Detect duplicates
  • Sync mode. Keep Delicious/Shadows/etc bookmark services constantly in sync with bookmarks.
  • Online mode. Do not store bookmarks locally. Retrieve them from bookmark services. Store some heavily accessed bookmarks (i.e. Bookmarks Toolbar) to lessen traffic.
• Firefox:3.0 User Information Management and Privacy
  • A personal information manager would be great to have in Firefox – like “saved forms”, only more structured, maybe with the user filling in their information in the preferences dialog.

There we go, I went through each of those topics and what’s listed are the things I found interesting on each of the pages. All of those aren’t guaranteed to be implemented but I would like to see support for BitTorrent and definitely an online bookmark manager which mixed into a few of the pages. Sure there are a lot of extensions that will manage your bookmarks online but I think that a majority of users (especially a lot of my friends) never bother to install extensions and they would be amazed if Firefox synchronized their bookmarks.

Bring on Firefox 3!

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We already knew the Nook Color was capable of something a bit more than its initial offering, having seen Angry Birds run fairly smoothly on a dev unit. In fact, it’s exactly what we want in between chapters of Animal Farm, and the xda-developers community, right on schedule, are providing pictorial evidence of its rooting conquests. So far we’ve seen the aforementioned game / addiction, a few other additions to the extras menu, and even Launcher Pro (image after the break). NookDevs has a page going with instructions, but even it admits to being a work in progress, so we’re gonna emphasis a little stronger than usual: don’t try this at home unless you’re absolutely sure what you’re doing — or don’t mind a broken tablet or two.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Continue reading Nook Color finds its roots? Angry Birds say yes

Nook Color finds its roots? Angry Birds say yes originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 29 Nov 2010 22:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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He just had to beat Rupert Murdoch, didn’t he? Project, Richard Branson’s iPad magazine, is now available in the iTunes store — at least in Italy and the United Kingdom, since it’s past midnight there. App is free, cost per issue is $2.99 for “a full month’s worth of updating content.” We suspect it’ll hit US, too, the next few hours, but for now, those across the pond can read up on Jeff Bridges (audio and video interview), Earth 2.0, and a “well-informed Godzilla.” Take that, yet-to-be-released The Daily.

Richard Branson’s ‘Project’ iPad magazine now hitting European iTunes stores originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 29 Nov 2010 21:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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According to networking company Level 3 Communications, Comcast just couldn’t wait for its NBC deal to go through before getting all jerky with the access to online video, telling Level 3 on November 19th that it would need to pay a fee to deliver video to Comcast customers. Level 3 delivers videos from many companies over its networks, but the timing is particularly notable since on November 11th it signed up bandwidth-chewing Netflix as a major customer. While this sounds like exactly the kind of anti-net neutrality nonsense that makes us want to crank some OK Go, Comcast has responded saying it’s doing no such thing, and it’s actually Level 3 seeking a competitive advantage by suddenly sending far more information onto Comcast’s network than it accepts. The cable company goes on to claim this situation is no different than its existing deals with Level 3’s competitors, and that as long as traffic remains in balance it is willing to allow access settlement free, but if they want to push their growth (read: Netflix) onto Comcast’s pipes, they’ll have to pay up. We’ll wait and see if this is all just a simple negotiating ploy or a true strike in the battle over net neutrality, but you may still want to get a refresher course on exactly what net neutrality is all about from our friend Tim Wu just in case.

Continue reading Comcast, Level 3 Communications square off over video streaming, network neutrality principles

Comcast, Level 3 Communications square off over video streaming, network neutrality principles originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 29 Nov 2010 20:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Level 3, Comcast Voices  | Email this | Comments