Echo Binary

I thought hell is already freezing when I read this news. Internet Explorer 8 reached a very unexpected milestone — IE8 passed the Acid2 test!

In order to pass this test, the browser has to be compliant on standards of HTML and CSS rendering. Safari, Opera and beta version of Firefox 3.0 pass the Acid2 test. IE8 somehow surprised me because Microsoft used to be too arrogant in creating their own “standards”. I thought they didn’t care but now they are trying to be standard compliant… for real? I still can’t believe I’m blogging about this.

For related information here are some good articles:

IE8 goes on an Acid2 trip; beta due in first half of 2008

Internet Explorer 8 and Acid2: A Milestone

Mozilla Labs released a prototype extension for Firefox that lets you use different background on top of your currently existing theme. At the moment, this prototype is compatible with the default theme of Firefox. I have tested other themes and they looked ugly at some parts so I want to see more customization option in the next release of this prototype extension to change more than just the background in Firefox.

“The Persona selector is dynamically loaded and populated from a JSON feed and all designs are loaded via URLs to remote resources”.

I don’t know the security model for these theme resources so anyone paranoid enough may worry that some theme authors can put arbitrary code in their themes if there’s no special verification, digital signature or seal of approval from Mozilla. Even though it is really convenient for designers, I don’t like the idea that it downloads the graphics on demand just like that from the internet. I don’t even know if the graphics are coming from Mozilla Labs or any secure location. Maybe not?

There is an API currently being developed so there should be more changes on the way for this extension. It looks great on the default theme but someone will immediately notice that it simply adds background picture on Firefox toolbar with some transparency on tabs. Sometimes, I find it hard to read the tab texts when the background is too dark. There’s no transparency option so you cannot customize it anyhow. You can only choose from the existing lists of background designs at the moment. I really hope they add more option in this extension because Persona looks like a bland IE toolbar background changer. Some users may find this useful because it make their plain themes colorful; however, some advanced users maybe annoyed with this. To a certain extent, I find Persona too simple to fit my taste. I’ll uninstall it for now but I’ll try Persona one again when a new version arrives. For now, I’ll stick with the default theme of Firefox no matter how boring it is.

Link: Mozilla Labs: Persona for Firefox

So I finally got the latest firmware update in Nokia Software Updater (NSU) after painstakingly waiting months for the official update to appear. I tried to update NSU several times but it seemed to be not working at all. But tonight, after I rebooted my PC and reinstalled NSU, I managed to make NSU work!

Anyway, the update process was quite scary because if you accidentally pulled out the cable or disconnected the bluetooth, your phone might be damaged and be rendered unusable. I’m so careful while updating my phone that I really got mad when someone tried to go near my PC. When my N73 firmware update was completed, my phone rebooted and every file in my phone was wiped out. That’s true. Thank God there is a backup tool that comes with Nokia PC Suite, restoring backed-up files was a breeze. So, don’t forget to backup your phone when updating firmware so that you can keep everything in your phone intact.

I know that there are still bugs in the latest firmware version but hopefully they are less troublesome than what I used to experience. These bugs are somewhat tolerable but I hope that firmware v4.x for N73 will come out very soon to fix whatever was left out in the bug-fixes. After updating the firmware of my phone, I could feel that the applications run faster and the transition is smoother while switching between apps. I’m sure that other S60 phones in Symbian OS 9.1 had some issues in the pass, too, but firmware updates like this made those phones more stable.

Here’s a screenshot of my phone with the latest firmware.

To get NSU, just go to Nokia Phone Software Updater website.

Technorati Tags: Nokia, N73, firmware, Symbian OS 9.1

If you are a blogger, you probably want to read your friends’ entries and put some comments in their entries, or perhaps spy on their entries and see if they have some interesting topic. I tried to hop from one blog to another, but it is just very inconvenient. Visiting 10 - 15 blogs each day is quite troublesome. I try my best to blog-hop once in a while but I really can’t visit all of my friends’ blogs. Worse, I forget their blog address or I do not remember to use my bookmarks, especially when I have so many things occupying my mind. The only practical way to “visit” all of my friends’ blog everyday is via RSS (Really Simple Syndication). I get an overview of what they have added in their blogs every time I open my favorite RSS reader or AJAX desktop / homepage.

Below is a screenshot of Netvibes. It’s my prefered AJAX desktop / homepage because it is very easy to use and it has growing numbers of developers creating and updating modules each week. I have added my friends’ blogs here so that anywhere I go as long as I have internet access, I can check their entries in one location. It’s very convenient and gives me more presence in their blogs.

The idea is simple. You treat their blogs as “news” source. Using RSS, you can easily syndicate their entries and digest them like any other RSS entries.

Now it’s more fun to read other people’s blog.

P.S.
If you are my friend and would like to update me with your latest blog address, please contact me immediately. Thanks!

Links:
Netvibes
Technorati Tags: netvibes, blogs, rss, ajax, friends

Last Saturday, µTorrent 1.6 was released and the best thing since sliced bread… just got even better.

The new version features improved download and upload speeds. It also handles BitComet peers better than the previous versions. This tiny bit torrent client now features revamped intelligent configurable disk caching system which actually protects your hard drive. This new feature may increase resource utility when enabled but the increase is minimal. With disk caching feature on, I normally get around 13MB memory usage but when the downloads are finished and when the caching is not needed, µTorrent maintains a very low footprint of 7MB which is comparable to early versions of µTorrent.

µTorrent 1.6 also has an auto shutdown feature. This is useful to leechers but not really useful to bit torrent seeders. After all you won’t need to turn off your computer after downloading because you want to upload, upload and upload to increase your share ratio.

Over all I’m glad that µTorrent 1.6 lives up to the µTorrent’s trademark: it’s still very small and resource friendly. Even with the disk caching system on it didn’t have a significant degration on performance. Actually, I didn’t notice the difference on performance when the disk cache is on and off. All I know is that it saves my hard drive so I just enable it.

Two thumbs up to Ludde and company.

Links:
µTorrent official website: http://www.utorrent.com
Technorati Tags: BitTorrent, µTorrent, utorrent, torrent