10.08.08 - 09:16pm
A month or two ago this stupid little icon showed up on my menu bar. I found it kind of amusing (in a sad kind of way) because it appeared out of the blue, without my having approved anything, and the dropdown menu had a bunch of redundant items that were all variations of “you are not using MobileMe”.
I noticed today that now it’s complaining about sync conflicts. Which is also kind of sad, because I *still* have never used it, and have no idea what those conflicts could be for (turns out they’re for iCal conflicts… but I don’t use iCal any more). It even *says* that I’ve never used it, and that syncing is disabled!
WTF, Apple?!
Category: PlanetMozilla, Technology | | 5 Comments »
09.23.08 - 10:22pm
Wow. Somehow I missed this funky little beat back from the FF3 release.
Who knew people were making music about Firefox?
And then I learned about:robots, about about:robots
About:robots (the one with the colon in between)
About:robots, about about:robots
About:robots
Category: Firefox, PlanetMozilla | | 1 Comment »
08.04.08 - 12:57pm
From the Washington Post:
The “small world theory,” embodied in the old saw that there are just “six degrees of separation” between any two strangers on Earth, has been largely corroborated by a massive study of electronic communication.
With records of 30 billion electronic conversations among 180 million people from around the world, researchers have concluded that any two people on average are distanced by just 6.6 degrees of separation, meaning that they could be linked by a string of seven or fewer acquaintances.
The database covered all of the Microsoft Messenger instant-messaging network in June 2006 [...]
Gosh, that’s kinda neat. We’re all just… Hey, wait. 30 billion records from 180 million people? Retained for over 2 years? I wonder how many users of Messenger (and other IM services?) are aware of how much data is being logged.
Category: PlanetMozilla, Technology | | 2 Comments »
07.24.08 - 05:47pm
I set up a Maemo build environment not too long ago, so that I could follow along with the Fennec work. I was curious to see what other Mozilla stuff I could get working for my N810…
That’s the current trunk version of Thunderbird (aka Shredder). I had to jump through a few hoops to build it, but it wasn’t too bad. Setting up Scratchbox and upgrading the compiler is a chore, but once that generic work has been done it builds about the same way as any other platform. Checking out the source was the hardest part — Thunderbird and Seamonkey are in mercurial now, but the client.py checkout script requires the “subprocess” python module, which doesn’t seem to be included in the Maemo packages. Grr! So “python client.py checkout” failed, and I had to stumble my way through checking out the new repo by hand. Thanks to the folks on #maildev for helping out!
How’s it run? Fairly well, from my brief testing. The UI isn’t optimized for small-screen mobile usage, but it seemed responsive enough that I’ll try using it in coming days. The other mail client I’ve tried on the N810 are sucky, quirky, or some combination thereof — so even something barely usable will be nice!
Presumably a SeaMonkey build should work too, since they share a lot of common code, but I didn’t try it.
Category: Firefox, PlanetMozilla | | 10 Comments »
06.05.08 - 04:39pm
Category: PlanetMozilla | | 7 Comments »
05.26.08 - 01:43pm
NASA’s Mars Phoenix spacecraft has landed, without disaster, and the first pics are in. Huzzah!
But what I found most stunning was this picture:
That’s a shot of Phoenix dangling under it’s parachute (mid-air, during landing), taken by another spacecraft (Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter) from orbit. Wow.
Trivia: Something similar was done in 2005, when MGS took pictures of Odyssey and Mars Express. Apparently this is an old spy satellite trick, taking a look at foreign hardware (or your own)… Although one can get nice views from the ground, too.
Category: PlanetMozilla, Technology | | 1 Comment »
05.21.08 - 08:51pm
Short and sweet: Firebug 1.2 Beta 1 is now available. Go get it! (Yes, now! Go go go!)
There have been a ton of changes under the hood, and it would be very helpful if folks could give it a spin with Firefox 3 RC1. Feedback to the Firebug discussion group and bug tracker would be much appreciated.
Category: Firefox, PlanetMozilla | | Be the First to Comment »
05.19.08 - 08:03am
This is a nice and simple twist on the usual tagcloud: show people a popular brand/logo, and let them tag it. I bet there are market research companies that sell such data for $lots, now it’s something anyone can build (if you’re clever enough to think of it).
Here’s one of the results for Firefox:
awesome
Heh. Am I a geek for noticing how nicely the giant fonts are rendered, before actually reading the tags? (350px tall, in case that broke your feed reader or was stripped.)
Based on font size, Firefox is 43 times more awesome than Microsoft (sorry, IE, no “awesome” tags for you yet), and equally as awesome as Apple. Actually, it looks like there’s a ceiling on awesomeness. Who knew?
(Link, via Neatorama)
Category: Firefox, PlanetMozilla | | 1 Comment »
05.16.08 - 11:17pm
Today we launched the first Release Candidate of Firefox 3 (yay!). 7 days from now, NASA will be landing a spacecraft on Mars. I thought it might be interesting to compare the two…
|
The browser |
The spacecraft |
| Original name: |
Phoenix |
Mars Surveyor 2001 Lander |
| Current name: |
Firefox |
Phoenix |
| Mission: |
Make kick-ass software, promote the open web |
Study water, soil, weather at northern polar region of Mars |
| Cost: |
Free! |
$420 million |
| Performance: |
Fast! |
Twelve 293-Newton thrusters |
| Powered by: |
Mozilla |
Solar panels |
| Takes flames: |
Alex Faaborg |
Ablative heat shield |
| Management: |
Mike |
Mike |
| Special powers: |
Robot and laser |
Robotic arm and laser |
| News updates: |
Twitter |
Twitter |
| Disaster plan: |
RC2 |
:-( |
Category: Firefox, PlanetMozilla, Technology | | 4 Comments »
05.13.08 - 02:50pm
Dear Sprint…
I hear you’ve had a rough time of it lately. Losing 1.1 million customers and $505 million last quarter? Ouch. I’d really love to help you out. Drop me a line when you have a billing system that will actually take my money! (I believe you already have my number.)
Category: PlanetMozilla, Technology | | 1 Comment »
