Apple and gaming
Amidst rumors that Apple may buy E.A and that its building the next big console, one wonders what will happen to the gaming industry if the rumors come true. Traditionally, Apple has never been pro-gaming, as evident from its poor support for gaming hardware or software. But now that Apple has held itself together and posted a good profit during these hard times, and that its fanbois are crazy enough to catapult any minuscule product launch into a glitzy media event, getting into gaming might seem as the next logical step.
There are two basic problems with this:
1. Apple isn't known for gaming. Rather some may even say apple is anti-gaming
2. Anything and everything associated with apple is ridiculously priced
Both problems are hard to solve. You cannot just buy a game developer/publisher and change your image overnight. It will take months if not years for both the developers and the gaming community to start believing in Apple, and that will not be easily accomplished either. That will mean more advertisement campaigns, and counter campaigns by Microsoft, which means expenditure running into millions. And Apple's pricing will not help their cause either. With the popular "Laptop Hunter" campaign by Microsoft focusing on pricing, and support for gaming; and both being genuine reasons to chose a PC, it is going to be very difficult for Apple to post good sales numbers unless they retain the old pricing. Which is very unlikely to happen.
On the other hand, it will be a very smart move if Apple manages to do everything right. EA is well established, and with their popular titles grossing millions in sales, it already has a well established, faithful user base. By retaining the original team and pricing, Apple can get a head start into the billions worth gaming industry. It will also be a big plus that they can start developing quality titles for the Mac, something which is lacking for a long time now. It will be interesting to see how they handle the hardware support for the Macs though.
Whatever said, this is an interesting development that everyone in the gaming industry will watch. Hopefully, Apple will not screw this one up.
Firefox 3.5 beta 4 released – benchmarked
The next release of the immensely popular Firefox was initially versioned as FF 3.1, and now re badged as 3.5. After 3.1 beta 3, now comes 3.5 beta 4 and here is a glimpse of the performance numbers. Tests run on a macbook with 2.4ghz core2duo, 2gb ram and Mac OS X 10.5.6. All addons were disabled.
So long Geocities
For those who were fortunate enough to have Internet access in the 90's here is saddening news indeed - one of the earliest social networking site, geocities has finally shutdown. Yahoo has pulled the plug on the legendary site which allowed users to connect with others with the same taste on various topics, and create their own pages. It was the earliest free host if you will.
Yahoo bought the company near the peak of the dotcom bubble for more than $3 billion, which, along with the rise of alternative services, quickly spelled the end of GeoCities’ prominence. Today, it appears that the end of GeoCities is being made official, as Yahoo has closed the service to new accounts and posted an FAQ with some details as to how the shutdown will go.
Wikipedia page here
Adios.
Google open sources its updater: Omaha
The virtual owner of the web, Google has released its software update framework, codename "Omaha" under the open source license. What this means is that you can use the update framework in your own Windows apps. Since its being used in Chrome and Google Earth, you can be sure abot its robustness.
So if you have a windows application that needs updating, look no further than here. Detailed blog post here.
P.S: For Mac OS X, try Update-Engine
Custom php/apache file extension
Ever wondered how to have you own file extension instead of the boring .php? Just like arstechnica has .ars ? Well with just one line of code, you can make your webserver accept your custom extension!
1. Open the apache httpd.conf file
2. Add the line "AddType application/x-httpd-php .bot" without the quotes. What it does is instruct the server that .bot extension is a php file and that it should be treated as a normal php file
3. Rename your php file with extension bot
4. Open in web browser and see the magic!