Truphone is available for a few different devices, the iPod Touch, the iPhone, Nokia and Blackberry. Other devices like LG, Sumsung and so on are on the list for future availability. You can register your interest in having the Truphone on your mobile device on their website - http://truphone.com/devices .

ipod touch, voip, wireless, mobile, wireless

I’ve had a little issue installing it on Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron but it seems more like that I made the system unatable before I attempted to install.

For download and instructions please visit http://www.draisberghof.de/usb_modeswitch/

Spashtop is an instant-on Linux OS that manufacturers can implement into their motherboards giving the user an option to instantly use internet and skype without having to boot up a full OS.

Up to now only top-end Asus motherboards had this feature but after good feedback from costumers it’s reported that Asus will go mainstream with Splashtop, this new fature is called by Asus the Express Gate. You can read more about it on Asus Global Sfficial Statement (Exclusive feature 4) or on Splashtop’s official blog.

“My name is Daniel Kawakami and I’m Brazilian,” he writes. “I’m NOT a cracker, a hacker, just an enthusiast modder with basic assembly knowledge and very persistent.”

Kawakami’s expertise allowed him to enable advanced features in sound cards that Creative advertised as Vista-compatible, but which did not perform as well under that operating system as they do under Windows XP. After tolerating the distribution of his unofficial drivers for a time, Creative’s vice president of corporate communications, Phil O’Shaughnessy, ultimately asked him to stop, and accused him of “stealing their goods.” O’Shaughnessy also wrote that whether or not it cripples its Vista drivers is a “business decision that only we have the right to make.”

Extracted from Gadget Labs (read in full)

With ReFeed and the ReBlog plugin for wordpress it can be easily done. Refeed works as a feed reader/collector and once you’ve subscribed your favourite feeds into it you have the option to publish the desired posts to a compiled RSS feed which you can post into your wordpress with the ReBlog plugin. Being able to tag your feeds you can actually feed different blogs based on the different RSS generated by the different tags.

To get this working just install ReFeed in your hosting and subscribe to your favourite feeds, then download the ReBlog plugin for Wordpress. After installing and enabling the plugin you have to edit the plugin’s main file and add the address of the RSS feed from the ReFeed you want to use. You can find this address by clicking on the option “Published Feed” in your ReFeed admin area. The line you need to look for in the file is like this:

// Complete URL to RSS 2.0 output from reBlog, typically ends with “out/rss.php?v=2″.
define(‘REBLOG_URL’, ‘http://yourhosting.com/refeed/out/rss.php?user=1‘);

The part in bold is to be replaced the address of your ReFeed RSS.

After all this you will see a button called “Fetch Feeds” on the top Right hand corner of your screen. This is actually really annoying as it sits right on top of the logout link, but this can be moved by editing the plugin adding a few more pixels to the styling. To do this, navigate to the Plugin page and click on “Edit” next to the ReBlog plugin, there you will need to edit the following line.

<style type=”text/css”>
#reblog-form
{
position: absolute;
top: 50px; #this is the line you need to add so the button seats right under the logout link. In Wordpress2.5 it looks very nice.
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
right: 3em;
font-size: 20px;
color: #666;
}
</style>

So there you go, happy ReBlogging.

Technorati Tags: ReBlog, ReFeed

BitDefender AV
Fujitsu Shock Sensor
Jiangmin KV Antivirus 10
Jiangmin KV Antivirus 2008
Trend Micro Internet Security
Zone Alarm Security Suite
Iron Speed Designer
Xheo Licensing
Free Allegiance
NYT Reader
Rising Personal Firewall
Novell ZCM Agent

Also some drivers could affect and hinder the installation of this update, specially some older Realtek AC and Intel drivers. Detailed information can be found on Vista’s official blog on how to bypass/fix these problems.

The automatic update wont be available until mid April but it can be downloaded from Microsoft and installed manually. The update is only available for download in 5 languages with 31 others to follow by the time the automatic update starts in April.

Technorati Tags: vista update, sp1, microsoft

Two major ISPs in the UK (BT & Virgin) have already signed up to use (or be used by) Phorm to track user’s browsing history in order to do targeted advertising. I didn’t really like the idea but have become even more concerned after reading a bit more about it on the site badphorm.co.uk and reading an interview with Sir Tim Berners-Lee in the BBC technology site. He makes some interesting points so you should read it in full, but the one small comment that caught my thinking was this:

“I want to know if I look up a whole lot of books about some form of cancer that that’s not going to get to my insurance company and I’m going to find my insurance premium is going to go up by 5% because they’ve figured I’m looking at those books,” he said.

Sir Tim said his data and web history belonged to him. – extracted from the BBC Technology site

Ilegal
The BBC technology site also exposed the thoughts of the UK’s Foundation for Information Policy Research (Fipr) which was made public in an open letter. They said:

“Fipr believes Phorm contravenes the UK Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (Ripa), which protects users from unlawful interception of information.” – extracted from the BBC Technology site (read full article)

Phorm and BT read this law differently as they have argued they are not breaking the law… similar to anyone you talk in a prison cell (I haven’t done anything wrong!).

This comes at a time when we are increasingly needing quick access to important files at anytime and anywhere. Dropbox has the potential to become a big hit once it is released, mainly for it’s intuitive interface, cross-platform capability, file sharing and version tracking.

Dropbox Beta is due to be released soon and you can signup to receive updates on the progress. Just visit getdropbox.com to signup and/or watch a well documented video about its functionalities. From the video you can see that it’s easy and intuitive to use.
I’ll definitely be trying it out as soon as it’s out, and will post my findings here.

Check also what others are Digging about it

Technorati Tags: dropbox, file sharing, team colaboration, online storage

PicLens suports a number of sites: Flickr, Photobucket, Picasa Web Albums, Fotki, FotoTime, deviantART, Smugmug, Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Hi5, Friendster, Google Images, Yahoo Images, Ask Images, Live Images, AOL Images Freewebs, Adobe Lightroom

It is available as an Add on for Firefox, Safari and IE, as usual the Linux desktop users have been left behind as the Firefox Add on is just for Win adn Mac. Installation and usage ins very easy but there’s a good tutorial, including a video available on their website.

To Download visit www.piclens.com or read/watch the tutorial here.

Technorati Tags:browser ad on, firefox, safari, ie, slideshow, picasa, flickr, piclens

The main features on the X300 are the presence of DVD drive, WiFi and Ethernet, removable battery and 3 USB ports compared to the MACBook Air with no DVD drive, Wifi only, 1 USB and non-removable battery. By the way it also fits in an interoffice envelope.

I’ll not attempt to rewrite the article so please read it in full here, also watch and intro video here.