Aatnet's Weblog

All good things come to an end

aatnet — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 15:58:58 +0000

Sadly this is my last post. Blogging has been a most pleasant hobby. Thank you all and goodbye

Anastasios-Antonios Toulkeridis

Fennec Alpha to be released next week …kind of

aatnet — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 13:47:44 +0000

The long-awaited Mobile-Firefox browser is at last ready to roll although it will initially satisfy only the lucky ones that own an HTC Touch Pro.

For the rest of us the Mozilla Foundation has issued a consolation letter, a pack of nose tissues and an emulator. Ah an emulator.

Behold the European version of Volt

aatnet — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 15:25:19 +0000

Globalization has done its thing again. The Opel Ampera is an unsuccessfully disguised version of GM’s Volt. Set for a world debut at the 2009 Geneva Auto Show the Volt rip-off will feature the same Voltec engine and hence a comparable electric autonomy (60 kilometers or 40 miles). Volt, Ampera, what’s next?… Ohma ?

Facebook takes the lead worldwide

aatnet — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 12:44:07 +0000

According to marketing research company ComScore, Facebook surpassed rival MySpace in April 2008 and has continued to rise ever since.

According to the latest estimation last month Facebook had 222 million unique visitors compared to MySpace’s 125 million.

The situation is slightly different on the other side of the pond (US) where MySpace still remains on top.

New Google-wannabe on the block

aatnet — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 19:47:52 +0000

Anyone out there remember Cuil? The Google-killer engine that never was? Here’s a new one for you: Kosmix.

It is different from both Google and Cuil in that instead of a list of text results it returns rich content and facts from popular sites such as Flickr, Wikipedia, Twitter, YouTube, Amazon, the list goes on.

Here is for example what one gets for search-key “Thessaloniki”:

It’s kinda like an encyclopedia page complete in this case with a Google map.

But does it have what it takes? Apparently at least one major player thinks so as last month it received a 20 million dollar fund from Warner Bros.

Extreme porn becomes illegal in UK

aatnet — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 18:54:06 +0000

Under a new law that takes effect on the 26th of this month even simple possession of specific pornographic material in Britain can mean big trouble.

The UK government has specified what characteristics make a material “extreme” while making sure that there won’t be a massive wave of unfair prosecutions. For example one is allowed to possess material of this nature provided that he has not looked at it (How the court determines that is beyond me). Likewise, one will not be prosecuted if he accidentally stumbles upon it while surfing the net. “Really mom I was searching for football”.

Pirates rejoice. Your sins are forgiven

aatnet — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 15:13:11 +0000

Not from the Pope, and definitely not from Hollywood. But from torrentfreak.com

According to the site there is a positive side to piracy, at least when it comes to TV-shows. The argument is that “[piracy] has actually helped TV-shows to build a stronger, broader, and more involved fanbase.” Apparently the conclusion is drawn from the fact that the vast majority of TV-show downloads (~90%) is from outside the states, partly due to the fact that non-US channels air the shows many months later and also because legal online streaming services like Hulu are again only available state-side.

Good or bad, here are the top most pirated TV-shows of 2008 along with viewer average for TV in the US: ():

Source: torrentfreak.com

XP faster than 7. Nobody surprised.

aatnet — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 11:20:15 +0000

A performance comparison on InfoWorld between XP, Vista and 7 has revealed what everyone knew all along: XP outperforms both newer operating systems.Seven was found to be dramatically faster (60% or so) than Vista on dual and quad-core hardware but overall XP was the best performer. According to the site the slowdown in Vista and 7 is partly due to the extra code that manages multi-core processors and as as the number of cores increases the newer operating systems shall exhibit greater performance gains than XP.

MS Roadmap

aatnet — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 19:27:25 +0000

Windows blog UXEvangelist has kindly provided us with this MS roadmap:

Apparently 2009 is the year of Office14 and surprise surprise WM7 beta. And before you ask, CY stands for “Calendar Year”.

Live Mesh beta is simply magnificent

aatnet — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 18:47:32 +0000

When it comes to synchronizing data across devices Microsoft provides three solutions: Live Sync, Live Mesh beta and Live SkyDrive.

Personally I’ve been using Sync for some time but today I gave Mesh beta a try for one important reason: In Mesh the synchronized data are not stored locally but on the “cloud”. This is important in that the remote device/computer need not be switched on. Synchronization can take place later.

Another cool thing about Mesh is that it supports Windows Mobile 6/6.1 devices too! So get on board: www.mesh.com