Glen Scott - Keeping it simple, since 1977

I happened to notice that Netscape have released version 9 of it’s browser. Does anyone still use this? The fact that Netscape will end all support for their browsers on 1st March makes this release seem completely pointless.

(Oh, and since when did the browser re-gain the “Navigator” suffix?)

Netscape Navigator 9

• Yahoo! Launches World’s Largest Hadoop Production Application (Hadoop and Distributed Computing at Yahoo!)

  (tags: apache development linux opensource technology)

An interesting post on how different IM providers are embracing open standards:

Consider that everyone IMs. Websites come and go - but IM remains. What’s important about that is that your social network persists over many, many years. My friendster buddy list is essentially useless - since I no longer use that site. But my AIM buddy list, which I still use, has been around for over 10 years. And with XMPP, it’s now reusable. It could become the standard machine-readable way to represent a social network.

IM 2.0

I’ve been meaning to get hold of one for ages, but finally I’ve got my hands on an EyeTV.  I’ve chosen the Hybrid version as I’m planning on digitising some analog video at some point in the future.

Initial impressions are very good:

• The USB device itself is very small, as is the bundled aerial.
• The EyeTV software (version 2.5.2) is excellent; it includes a free 1 year subscription to the tvtv service which provides a comprehensive programme guide.
• Digital picture quality is excellent, even in full screen mode, although unfortunately I don’t get the full range of Freeview channels.

EyeTV Hybrid INT

• ies4osx
  Haven’t had a chance to check this yet, but could well be a nice alternative to VirtualPC or Parallels
  (tags: accessibility Browser development testing)

If you have a large music library on your computer, it won’t necessarily fit on your iPhone or iPod. Instead of syncing your whole library, it’s worthwhile being a little more selective with the tunes that you want to listen to on the move. To this end, I have two smart playlists set up that I sync with my iPhone:

1. Wheat, No Chaff

This chooses tunes that I have rated 3 stars or above

2. Recently Added

This playlist picks new music that I have added to my library in the last fortnight.

So a combination of these playlists results in a good mix of great tracks, and new stuff. You can choose to syncronise only selected playlists in the Music tab of your Device:

• R.E.M. Releases New Videos Under Open Source License - ReadWriteWeb
  (tags: downloads music opensource videos)

• What’s new in PHP 5.3? [PHP & MySQL Tutorials]
  (tags: php php5)

Okay, so Harrison Ford is old, and there’s no Sean Connery. But. I do wanna see this so much!

An interesting comparison of what content the two main search engines have chosen to display for my blog:

Google:

Yahoo!:

Google seems to have just picked up the footer of my site , whereas Yahoo has picked up the header, some post content and the footer.

At the moment, there is no meta description on the page which I’ll add soon to see how the listings change.