TechnoMagicians Blog

Ever since I picked up an Apple iTouch (iPhone) I immediately knew Apple had to make a tablet sized device.

The reality has been coming closer and closer with the various rumor sites announcing various things. The latest is right along the right lines Apple should be heading down. And hopefully they are. If only they could get there sooner so that I don’t have to wait around to purchase the thing.

Also see this post and this post.

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The folks at Digg have come up with what they are calling Multipart XHLHttpRequests (MXHR). Basically it is a method for bundling multiple HTTP requests into a single HTTP request and unbundling on the client side through a Javascript handler.

As described by the Digg’s blog post:

We call this technique MXHR (short for Multipart XMLHttpRequests), and we wrote an addition to our Digg User Interface library called DUI.Stream to implement it. Specifically, DUI.Stream opens and reads multipart HTTP responses piece-by-piece through an XHR, passing each chunk to a JavaScript handler as it loads.

Why do this? Well, DUI.Stream will allow developers to drastically improve the speed of uncached page loads by bundling most of their resources into a single HTTP request, with a single time-to-first-byte and no request throttling by the user agent. Additionally, the size of the response has no effect on the rendering time of each chunk, as the client handles each piece of the response on the fly and can inject it into the DOM for rendering immediately, in the exact order you specify. On a high traffic, high-activity site like Digg, we have to display incredible amounts of data on each permalink — typically hundreds of user images within the first 50 comment threads on a page alone, not to mention the UI chrome and actual comment data. (You can see this for yourself: notice the number of HTTP requests that queue up when you expand a page of comments). So our primary use case for DUI.Stream is turning that first long, arduous page load on an empty cache into something nearly indistinguishable from a page of data with fully cached resources.

Try out the 2nd demo with the images to really see how this works.

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The most popular game for all of the 90’s has just been released for the iPhone. Myst by Cyan. This is a perfectly suitable game for the iPhone interface. I predict that this will quickly rise to the #1 selling game on the iPhone for a whole new generation of folks. I can’t recommend it highly enough. It might be one of the first and only purchases I make if and when I get an iPhone. It will bring back fond memories exploring the “ages” again.

Myst was the best selling PC game since released in the early 90’s until The Sims in 2002. And it remains as the best selling adventure game to this day.

Myst was so popular that it helped drive adoption of the CD-ROM. It must have been one of the first games produced on CD-ROM.

Myst was created by, in my opinion, the genius brothers Rand and Robyn Miller.

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Cover It Live (www.coveritlive.com) is a new tool that you can add to your website to enable live blogging. Basically a much more advanced BlogChat. Other features include publishing pictures, video, and email. Instant replay when the live event is over. Not sure what other features are available as the website isn’t that great at pointing things out and I can’t be bothered to investigate any further.

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Looks like the Google GMail team is doing some interesting things with HTML5:

The HTML5 draft adds a lot of exciting functionality to browsers. Perhaps the most exciting is adding a way for websites to be launched offline. For devices that have a high bandwidth and highly available connection, offline functionality might not be so important. For web applications running on mobile devices however, being able to launch offline can dramatically improve the web application experience.

AppCache support on the iPhone is still under development, but as of firmware 2.2.1, it is usable.

via Google Code Blog: Gmail for mobile HTML5 Series: Using AppCache to Launch Offline – Part 1.

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I agree 100% with this so am reposting the entire blog post here from GigaOM. Microsoft always used these techniques and I always thought it was one of the worst methods of conducting an interview.

If Sergey Brin applied for an engineering position at Google today, would he pass the requisite phone screening? Don’t be so sure: While he might look good on paper, he’d probably have to brush up on his Python programming skills first. Even if he passed, would it tell his potential employer anything useful about the value he could bring to the company?

Most engineers are familiar with the initial phone interview: a short, technical interview prepared by the prospective employer, and used to verify that the programmer meets the minimum technical qualifications of the job. Lots of employers think these screenings are a quick way to weed out bad engineers, but personally, I refuse to do them. Here are three reasons those looking to hire the best engineers should reconsider the “phone screen” interview altogether and jump right to a full-length phone or in-person interview:

1. Recruiters and other non-technical people typically don’t understand the questions they ask, and that leads to a one-way conversation. In addition, questions are often stated incorrectly, or without the originally intended context and as such suffer from lost-in-translation syndrome. Correctly evaluating a candidate over the phone takes longer than a typical “screening” interview, and should be done by equally tech-savvy individuals on the employer’s side.

2. From the perspective of an engineer, if an employer asks a lot of trivial coding or algorithm questions, it usually means the job they’re hiring for isn’t going to be that interesting (activate the big-company-coding-job radar). Phone interviewers do occasionally ask deeper questions, but given the limited time of a screening interview, and the inability of a candidate to present code or design diagrams, they are often forced to ask trivial ones.

3. Intelligence assessments can be a good indicator of talent, but don’t waste time asking them to solve puzzles pulled off the Internet: Look at SAT or GRE scores, school transcripts, or some other substantial proof of intelligence (or lack thereof). This kind of background on a candidate can usually be found without the need for a phone interview.

Only good engineers can accurately measure the skills of other good engineers, and it takes a lot of probing in an in-person, back-and-forth conversation to get there. A meaningful engineering interview has to be conducted in person, with multiple engineers, and over the course of several hours (if not an entire day). It’s worth the effort.

via Looking to Hire an Engineer? 3 Reasons to Forgo the Phone Screening.

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When I first heard of this I dismissed it as I thought they were talking about the demise of email due to Twitter. That would be a ridiculous notion. However, after getting into the presentation further, (found here) I realized Daniel Sandler might be onto something.

From the BirdFeeder website:

Birdfeeder is the prototype implementation of a RESTful, interoperable, Internet-scale microblogging protocol, tentatively called Fethr (Featherweight Entangled Timelines over HTTP Requests).

Although this would need some traction to really get going. Look at Instant Messaging. How long has it been a great tool for communication and still there is little to no interopability between the various systems. Only Google / GTalk and a few others have adopted XMPP so that there is the possibility of interopability. The big guys, ICQ, Yahoo, MSN, AIM still haven’t bothered to interoparate much if at all.

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See this old post for history.

I finally got Dell to replace the GPU today. I was mistaken about them replacing absolutely everything except the nVidia GPU. Apparently the heat sinks and fans were not replaced either. I found out that there is one heatsink and fan for the CPU and another for the GPU. Well, of course they replaced the GPU and heatsink and fan for the CPU but for some reason DID NOT replace the GPU fan. My guess is that should definitely be replaced and with talking to the tech on the phone it sounded like they would replace it. Of course they only sent the CPU fan for replacement.

So, this computer is basically completely replaced except for the GPU FAN. We’ll see how long this goes before the next blue screen.

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• Apple and the Nvidia ‘problem’ (news.cnet.com)

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BCE Inc. is proposing to change the way it bills independent internet service providers who rent portions of its network, changes that small ISPs say will ultimately mean the end of “unlimited” plans for consumers

via Bell proposal puts ‘unlimited internet’ plans in jeopardy, critics say.

Also see this post.

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Finally the Trillian Astra Beta is available. Trying it out now since I’m a very long time Trillian supporter. It has been an extremely long wait for the GTalk, Facebook and Twitter integration which I’m trying out now. Up to this point I’ve been running 3 separate programs:

1. Trillian old version for ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, IRC.
2. Pidgin for GTalk.
3. Tweetdeck for Twitter.

But Astra Beta has all of these integrated which is what I’ve been waiting for.

So far I’m liking it but time will tell whether it works for everything and is efficient etc.

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