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Speaking of games, if you’re in London or not too far from there, you might want to join Tom Hume and other mobile games developers at the Playtime event.
About 3 months ago I received an unexpected present that was REALLY welcome.
I received a Dionaea Muscipula, probably the most famouse carnivorous plant after Audrey II.
In two words, the plant usually lives in swamps and is used to very poor water so you not should give it “normal” water, but only distilled or rain water. The plant will take the rest from the animals that it captures.
Initially I was really curious to see how it would do. After about a week I was concerned that it was not catching enough insects and bees. Then it started catching something, a mosquito, an ant, really tiny animals and insects.
Now about 3 months have passed and obviously these were the months in which nature is most active in Italy.
Here are a couple of pictures of an incredible catch from the plant. Obviously the bee was just about to escape, but could not make it.
In this picture you can see the plant from “far”, you can see the leaves which are actually the traps and in the center the poor bee that could not make it.
As you can see, most of the traps are open. They always stay open and close when something activates the sensors in the center of the leave. At that time the trap snaps close and hopefully catches the prey.
This is a zoom on the bee. As you can see only half of it was actually caught, but it has been enough for it to be trapped.
When the animal is trapped the plant secretes an enzyme that slowly eats it. After a few days the leave will return open and the little animal or insect is generally somehow “dried”, often looking squished. Once the leave is back open, it is ready to eat more.
Here is the last picture that I’m publishing. It was one of the first “big” preis and I was pretty amazed, unfortunately I could not see it, so I took this picture.
I’m pretty happy of the move to the new Beta of Blogger. Nothing to regret.
It’s just sad that my Safari browser crashes when visiting the articles. First time I got a javascript error, when reloaded the same article that was supposed to have a new comment, Safari crashed. 😦
I’m still waiting for the editing aids for Safari. It should not be so hard to add the bold and italic buttons for Safari. That’s plain javascript, isn’t it?
Anyway, I just love the ability of moving blocks up and down dragging blocks within the browser. Sometimes this makes me think of when we used to write pages with notepad with HTML 3.2, gray backgrounds, <hr> to separate sections and that was it.
Very nice the ability to edit links to external pages with a guided menu.
All these features were really needed!
Labels are added manually, filling an text field. After you have at least once, while typing you get suggestions. Very useful to avoid typos!
How much do I love suggestions while typing? A LOT!
Recently Google/Blogger launched a new Beta version.
All long due update, IMHO, infact I was considering to move to WordPress. After a few tests (a smooth import of the contents) a little customization and a chat with my girlfriend… I decided to stay here.
It looks like Google was scared to lose me and all the hits that I bring, because they added most of the features that I was looking for, such as labels and better templates.
I am still missing some statistics. Would be good to know who reads what and so on, but anyway this is already a big step ahead and hopefully more features will come soon.
Would also be good to have a better integration with other sites such as Technorati and Company, but maybe the Google guys are not so keen at integrating with competing engines… Can you blame them?
So this is my first post with a label.
Thanks to Paul for pointing me to a new site called Pocket Picks. There’s a news item about a new Sony device called Mylo.
More info about it directly from Sony. In short, it’s a pocket device that can get attached to Wi-Fi networks. Once you’re attached you can get on Internet with the Opera browser pre-installed, chat over Yahoo! Messenger or GTalk and listen to music streamed from online or your desktop computer.
Seems a lot like the Nokia 770, very nice gadget, but it is worth anything serious? Am I going to sit on the couch and chat on Yahoo! Messenger? Is that the whole point?
I still don’t see the real use of this kind of devices. MAYBE with Wi-MAX when I’ll be able to walk around and ALWAYS be connected.
The device is supposed to arrive in USA first for “only” 350$!
We’ll see.
I was just browsing around, checking some links and bookmarks and stumbled on the SonyEricsson’s developers site homepage where I read this very intriguing news. Shozu has now released a new J2ME application for devices that support JSR 75, this lets you take a picture with your camera and then upload to Flickr or your favourite web album easily.
This was a long awaited feature that has been available for Symbian from the first release of Shozu, but was lacking in the J2ME space. Of course the ability to upload pictures you take with the camera is not most important feature, so we’re happy to see it.
You can read the full article on the SonyEricsson site, title name is ShoZu, Java ME mobile blogging app using JSR 75
I just read from the Google Blog that blogger.com is now embedded in a new SonyEricsson phone.
Very nice feature. Too bad that we could probably do this with MMS, but unfortunately they seem to be too expensive for people to use them. This should probably be a hint for mobile operators!
Some worth links.
Shozu, a client to upload pictures to Flickr and other web albums:
http://www.shozu.com/portal/
MobUp, a J2ME client to upload images, much like Shozu, but J2ME and open-source:
http://mobup.org/
And of course, the long lasting “Peffisaur”, as the author calls it, “A Multiuser MMS Weblog community”. It has been offering web albums to all MMS users from around the world. If you are geek enough you can even configure your MMS client to use Peffis’ MMS gateway and avoid paying the MMS message (but you will pay for the data you transfer). Here’s the site FAQ:
http://peffis.com/faq.php
Read the news here:
http://buzz.blogger.com/2006/08/go-mobile.html
And the SonyEricsson device page:
http://www.sonyericsson.com/product/blog/
I am now an almost 4 years old Apple computer user. I have initially bought a PowerBook 15″ 1Ghz, then a PowerBook 15.2″ 1.67Ghz and plenty of accessories such as a Mighty Mouse, an iPod Nano and an iPod Shuffle that I got for free (thank you DADA!).
My first PowerBook immediately went to get repaired because my monitor was defective, all colors were messed. I got it back, but I haven’t even seen it, as the shopkeeper sent it back. The new monitor they installed was not installed properly. It took about 2 months to go back and forth to Netherlands and then to the Italian repair shops.
My Might Mouse was changed because the wheel stopped working after about 1 month.
My PowerBook 15.2″ is going to be changed with a new MacBook Pro because they can’t make it handle more than 512MB RAM. Works fine with 512MB freezes with 1GB or more. They changed the logic board twice and now I am going to get a new computer, hopefully. I would like to add that I called the AppleCare, they gave me a ticket number, called me about 10 days later to tell me that they tried again to fix it with the repair center, but was not possible. When I am ready (after backups) I call them they will come, pick up the computer and deliver the new one all for free. It took a little bit but seems like a reasonable service. My warranty is going to expire in two months.
Now here come the results to a survey about the new MacTel notebooks. 87% satisfaction is LOW, in my opinion. I wonder about the level of satisfaction with Dell, Gateway 2000, IBM or less known brands.
Today I found another article about the now ancient Apple Newton, compared to the new PDA by Samsung.
It is interesting how often the Newton is compared to modern PDA’s. I never had a Newton, but it seems clear to me that many former users of that innovative PDA still miss it.
Andrea Trasatti's tech notes and more 