Google Talk For iPhone
The guys at Google have just released an iPhone version of the popular Google Talk chat app. But unlike normal Google Talk app, this one runs only through the Safari browser and do not have to download and install software. As with most apps on the iPhone, multitasking is a problem;
When you navigate away to another browser window or application, your status will be changed to “unavailable” and your Google Talk session will be restarted when you return.
Other than that Google Talk looks good bet as it still possess some of the main features of the standard version. But something tells me there will be better social communication apps come July 11 when the official iPhone App Store opens.
Google Quietly Launches a MediaServer
Google have quietly introduced a media server application that helps stream and display media content such Video clips, movies, music and photos from the PC to the TV via UPnP enabled devices using Google Desktop software.
Google Media Server is a Windows application that aims to bridge the gap between Google and your TV. It uses Google Desktop technology such as Desktop gadgets for the administration tool and Google Desktop Search to locate media files. All you need is a PC running Google Desktop and a UPnP-enabled device (e.g. a PlayStation 3). At the touch of a button, you can then: Access videos, music, and photos stored on your PC and also view Picasa Web Albums and YouTube videos.
If you are looking for an alternative checkout DivX Connected Server which is mature (currently version 1.3) and has a lot of features. It doesn’t need Google Desktop. It just requires installation of DivX Connected Server and a client (they come bundled) and a DivX Connected device (similar to UPnP-enabled device above) such as D-Link DSM-330 DivX Connected Wireless HD Media Player.
There are other decent media servers out there that you can set up via the PC while most come in the form of a set-top box like theis Sony HS1 Home Media Server.
Firefox 3 Officially Coming Out Today
The wait is almost over. Firefox 3 stable will officially be out today, June 17th. And with the official release it is supposed to be a world record breaking day where fans of the popular web browser will have to download it on the release day. The Firefox Download Day web event has been organized and being promoted by SpreadFirefox.com in order to get Firefox 3 into the Guinness World Records as the most downloaded software in a single day.
Firefox 3 boasts about 15000 changes and updates from Firefox 2. Some of the changes are;
- major improvements in memory usage
- improved security against phishing and malware
- performance and speed, especially the JavaScript engine
- smart address bar that remembers and suggests sites when a URL is typed into the address bar based on the sites you might have visited or are in your bookmarks.
- One-click bookmarking
- the whole list of features and improvements can be found here on the Mozilla site.
The blogosphere has been buzzing the whole day and some have been impatiently waiting. But for those of us who have been using Beta and Release Candidates for a while can testify that it is indeed the best version by a mile and from the first use you can feel and see the difference from Firefox 2.
Update 1
Both SpreadFirefox.com and Mozilla.com seem to either be down or at times busy.
Update 2
Download site up but still slow because of too many requests.
Mozilla say that downloads are taking place at the rate of 14,000 downloads/minute!
Mozilla.com web traffic is pushing well over 2 Gigabits a second of just pure HTTP traffic. That is in addition to the 13 Gigabits a second or so of download traffic. We are still at around and mozilla.com is responding well! Go Mozilla community and IT team!
Well it looks likes the record breaking is on course. If it continues at this rate, there will be approximately 20 million downloads after 24 hours. Wow!.
Google App Engine Crash Lands
Well it didn’t take long for Google’s App Engine to experience its first outage. Today the service went down several times and came up again, and the cause of these outages are not known as Google have not yet released a fully detailed explanation than one on Google App Engine Group page:
We’ve experienced several outages during the past 12 hours, the most
recent of which started at 6:30am PDT and is still ongoing. Â During
these outages, a significant percentage of requests resulted in
errors. The errors are related to usage of the Datastore.We’re working hard to determine the cause of these outages and will
continue updating as we make progress.
Google App Engine competes with Amazon’s Web Services and was launched a couple of months ago to the fun fare of appraisals from the developer community.
iPhone 3G Is Finally Here; Starts at $199
Well it is finally true. the iPhone 3G was finally unveiled today at the Apple today at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). Looking at the first images it is sleek as ever; full plastic back and thinner edges. And wait for it, in addition to the high speeds of 3G it also comes with iPhone 2.0 firmware which fully supports third party apps and it is also enterprise ready than iPhone 1.0.
The iPhone will for the first time launch in 70 countries this year with the top 22 markets such as US and UK launching on 11 July. It will come in different models and the prices will start from $199 for the 8GB model and $299 for 16GB with other models coming later I presume.
Some features:
- battery life: 300 hours of standby, 8-10 hours of 2G talk, 5 hours of 3G talk, 7 hours of video and 24 hours of audio
- navigation: A-GPS with a combination of Wi-Fi that will help location aware apps to pin-point exactly where you are.
More Updates to follow
Apple Kills .Mac and Launches MobileMe (Exchange For The Rest)
Good day as all rumors turned out true. Well .Mac is dead and Apple have launched MobileMe, to be at me.com, which is a service just like “Exchange for the rest of us” that will sync and provide push email, contacts, photos and calendar with the iPhone, iPod Touch, Mac and PC all from the cloud.
It works with Mail, Address Book, and iCal on a Mac; Microsoft Outlook on a PC with Windows XP or Vista; and the built-in applications on your iPhone or iPod touch.
Microsoft’s Lunch
Available in July at me.com, MobileMe will have a rich list of web apps that works well with devices and your desktop and with 20GB of cloud storage it will set you back $99 a year. This service aims at occupying the market share still untouched by Microsoft with their Exchange Online which caters for businesses only. Will Microsoft expand their business model, because if this goes well for Apple it will be easy for them to start targeting enterprise customers
Twitter Teams Up With Summize to Cover WWDC ‘08
Twitter has teamed up with Summize to cover the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) thats taking place today. With Twitter anticipating huge traffic surges during the conference and their downtime problems, who else can help them carry the load? Summize will track live all twitter posts that relate to the WWDC that is ones having Apple related keywords.
