Hasta La Gadget!

Looks like Apple’s just released iPhone OS 3.0 beta 5, a little over one week after its last revision. That’s about half the time they’ve put between the previous updates — seems the boys in Cupertino are really starting to churn these things out. You know the drill by now, we don’t know yet what the update entails, but we’ll tell you when we find out. Oh, and just like last time, it appears iTunes 8.2 is required.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]

Update: We can confirm that MMS “support” can no longer be turned on in Settings (in quotes because we could never get it working in previous betas anyhow), and we’re hearing that trickery that allowed tethering to be enabled with the previous iTunes 8.2 build has been patched. Aww, you’re no fun, Apple… thanks, Rene!

Filed under: Cellphones

iPhone OS 3.0 beta 5 now available originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 06 May 2009 23:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Whether or not Windows 7 does launch in October as previously suggested, those who have (or plan to get) Release Candidate will be happy to hear that Microsoft won’t be pulling the plug until June 1, 2010, well over a year from now and 11 months after its initial expiration date. After that, you’re gonna have to fork over the Benjamins for one of the retail SKUs if you wanna keep 7 alive. As for those still living in Redmond’s past, the company’s also extended the life of XP, at least for OEMs. Companies using the older OS will still be able to install it on netbooks for up to one year after 7’s official shape date. Seeing as the new system’s likely to have a more expensive licensing fee, it’s probably the best move if the company plans on keeping that 96% grip on the netbook OS market.

[Via gadgetmix]

Read – Windows 7 RC extension
Read – Windows XP extension

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

Windows 7 RC and XP given extensions on life well into 2010 originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 01 May 2009 00:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Released into the developer wilds yesterday, Cupcake (Android 1.5) is already making its video debut on an Android Dev Phone. Arsen goes through some of the main new features including the camcorder (with YouTube sharing feature), new on-screen keyboard required for Android devices like the HTC Magic and Samsung I7500, and enhanced Web browser. 3GP videos captured by the G1 were a bit choppy with dropped frames and weak audio but on par with what we’d expect. The on-sceen keyboard and enhanced browser fared far better with Google providing real-time suggestions during URL lookups and the browser itself feeling a bit snappier when zooming and scrolling. All-in-all the latest build seems more stable than previous iterations and leaves us itching for the May release. See for yourself after the break.

Continue reading Video: Android 1.5 ‘Cupcake’ on-screen keyboard and camcorder action

Filed under: Cellphones

Video: Android 1.5 ‘Cupcake’ on-screen keyboard and camcorder action originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 28 Apr 2009 05:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This article was written on August 13, 2007 by CyberNet.

Pretty soon Firefox 3 is going to be feature complete, and all that will be left for them to do is fine-tune the things they have implemented. As we build up to that big moment there are some new features that are coming out of the shop for testers. This includes a spruced up download manager, resizable toolbar items, a plugin manager, and better looking menus.

So let’s go ahead and take a look at all the enhancements that have come about since Alpha 7 was released:

–Download Manager–

The download manager has gotten a lot more useful with the features they’ve added. First off it sorts your downloads with the ones currently in progress up top, and those that are completed down below:

For any of the completed downloads you can click on the blue "i" for more information, such as the location it was downloaded from.

Then there is also the search box located in the bottom-left corner. That does a live search of all your completed items, and the results are then immediately displayed:

At first I thought this might be really really nice, except I always setup Firefox to clear my completed downloads after they are finished. The reason why I do that is because it’s supposed to improve the startup time of the browser, and this feature is therefore rendered useless for me. So if you have Firefox setup to clear completed items in the Downloads window, the new layout and features won’t really do much for you.

–Resizable Toolbar Items–

This is a super sweet feature that I’m glad Mozilla got implemented. There is now a "Resizer" item in the Customization screen that can be added to the toolbars. It is the most useful for placing between the search box and address box, where you will then be able to drag it back and forth to resize the two boxes.

It also works when placed between toolbar buttons, but the results may not be what you expect. I noticed that the buttons scrunch together when trying to resize them, and if space gets really tight they are just hidden. It would be a lot better if Mozilla worked on a way to scale the buttons to a size that would allow all of them to remain visible, but that might be something they are working on.

–Plugin Manager–

Plugin management has been taken from about:plugins to the same place where you manage extensions and themes. One of the most notable things that I saw when opening the plugin management was that it easily lets you disable certain items. For example, if you don’t want Flash enabled you can disable it right from the plugin management screen.

The only problem, which can’t be seen in my screenshot, is that plugins with more than one file associated with them show up repeatedly. For me the issue was with Java, which had about 10 entries all given the same title.

–Menu Appearance–

The menus have also gotten a slight overhaul. Now Firefox 3 supports a Vista-like menu appearance. Some things take advantage of this, such as the History menu which shows the site’s icon next to the entries:

–Overall–

Still to come in Firefox 3 is integration with Vista’s parental control system, a visual refresh/new default theme, Places enhancements, as well as a few other things that are pretty high priority. The next milestone, which is due September 18th, could be either an Alpha or a Beta build. Mozilla appears to be picking up the pace and getting some much-needed features implemented, so it wouldn’t be a surprise to me if they are able to move on to the Beta releases.

Sources: The Burning Edge, Ars Technica, Mozilla Links, Firefox Extension Guru & Kyle’s Cove
Thanks for the tip Mohan!

Copyright © 2009 CyberNet | CyberNet Forum | Learn Firefox

Related Posts:

• Firefox 3 Smooth Tab Scrolling
• CyberNet’s Year in Review: July-August
• CyberNotes: How To Customize Firefox’s Toolbars
• Firefox 3 Bookmark Tagging Demo
• Firefox Replaces Extensions Manager With Add-ons Manager

Nokia just tip-toed out for a glimpse at innovation with the beta release of its new Point & Find application and service. Simply aim the camera of your Nokia phone at any object in meat-space and the Point & Find application will access relevant data off the Internet. Ok, not any object as the beta only recognizes movie posters at the moment, but that’s the long term plan. Point & Find uses real-time image processing to recognize real-world objects in a Nokia database of virtually tagged items using the phone’s camera, Internet connection, and GPS data. The software also recognizes bar codes and supports category-specific text-entry search. The beta software is a free download for Nokia owners in the UK and get this, the US too. Man, Nokia’s getting serious about US market share.

Filed under: Cellphones

Nokia’s Point & Find service makes reality better originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 01 Apr 2009 06:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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