Apr 30 2009

Why Obama’s Flickr Photos Aren’t in the Public Domain

Today the White House launched an official collection of photos depicting Obama’s first 100 days in office on Flickr. The Creative Commons Foundation asks why these photos are licensed as Creative Commons Attribution instead of being in the Public Domain free for use in any context, as data created by the Federal Government usually is.

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Apr 30 2009

In Major Shift, Apple Builds Its Own Team to Design Chips

Apple Inc. is building a significant capability to design its own computer chips, a strategy shift that the company hopes will create exclusive features for its gadgets and shield Apple’s work from rivals. The Silicon Valley trend-setter has been hiring people from many different segments of the semiconductor industry, including engineers to…

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Apr 30 2009

Apple iPhone "Mediapad" Could Be a Kindle Killer

Is Apple’s rumored “mediapad” entertainment device a threat to Amazon’s Kindle e-book reader? I think it is, but the only people who may care are current Kindle owners, some of whom may end up wishing they had waited on their purchase.

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Apr 30 2009

Bluetooth Versus Wireless Mice

Meneguzzi writes “Having stuck with wired mice for years, I have recently been impressed by a couple of cordless mice I’ve used on other people’s computers so much that I now want to buy one to use with my Mac Book Pro. However, while shopping around for the perfect cordless laptop mouse I was stuck with the question of whether to go for a bluetooth mouse or one of the many proprietary cordless mice with tiny USB receivers. To my surprise, there seems to be little literature systematically comparing these two options for attributes like precision, battery life (both for the mouse and the laptop), RF interference, and whatnot. As a Mac user, bluetooth has the advantage that it won’t take up a USB port, and (in theory), would consume less battery than a USB port, but I wonder if this is actually true in practice. On top of that, I noticed that there are far fewer (and less fancy) options for Bluetooth mice than there are for proprietary cordless ones. Logitech, for instance, has a very basic Bluetooth Mouse, while its proprietary options are much fancier. So I was wondering what are the experiences from Slashdotters on this particular type of hardware, and any recommendations.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.


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Apr 30 2009

Old-School Coding Techniques You May Not Miss

CWmike writes “Despite its complexity, the software development process has gotten better over the years. “Mature” programmers remember manual intervention and hand-tuning. Today’s dev tools automatically perform complex functions that once had to be written explicitly. And most developers are glad of it. Yet, young whippersnappers may not even be aware that we old fogies had to do these things manually. Esther Schindler asked several longtime developers for their top old-school programming headaches and added many of her own to boot. Working with punch cards? Hungarian notation?”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.


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Apr 29 2009

Promising collection of over 50 inspirations for designers

Resources & inspirations for designers. The list highlights some of the best on the web.

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Apr 29 2009

Introduction to the Art of Time Lapse Photography

Discover how to create amazing movies using a DSLR. The article contains some great examples of time lapse photography

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Apr 29 2009

iTunes 8.2 hints at support for Gracenote’s video platform

Apple on Tuesday equipped iPhone developers with a beta of iTunes 8.2 that appears to add full support for Gracenote’s video platform, which includes components for organizing, searching and managing both DVD and Blu-ray optical discs.

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Apr 29 2009

Startup launches events app; TimeOut scrabbles for free devs

It looks like the guys at Spoonfed have stolen a march on Time Out and other event guides with the release of their iPhone app, the Spoonfed Events Radar, available free from the App Store as of today. Using your location as a point of reference, the Event Radar scans the surrounding area for events happening that day.

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Apr 29 2009

RIAA’s Hostile Takeover of the Internet

Until recently, the recording industry were committing publicity suicide by routinely issuing legal threats to file sharers. Now, they seem to have changed the routine, going for fewer, but bigger targets. The goal is clear: if you own the Internet, you don’t have to worry about pirates — or anyone else.

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