Firefox 4 Beta 12 released to public, RC soon

Mozilla has released the final beta for Firefox 4 before an RC, and the final release. Firefox 4 Beta 12 features some of the following changes:

- Increased performance while viewing Flash content;
- Improved plugin compatibility with hardware acceleration enabled;
- Hovering over links now displays the URL at the bottom of the window rather than in the location bar; and
- General stability, performance, and compatibility improvements.

“Yesterday we killed the blocker list, and we’re down to 12 remaining bugs open, and only four remain without a patch.  We set a goal last week to be done with all of these blockers and to try to be RC ready by today.  Due to everyone’s hard work, we’re there.  We’ve accelerated beta 12 to ship today, and the next step is to squash these few remaining bugs.  After this, we’re in RC mode, constantly watching the nomination queues for incoming bugs from this last beta, ” said Damon Sicore, Sr. Director of Engineering at Mozilla Corporation, on Google Groups.

Mozilla had yesterday launched a ‘countdown‘ website for the final Firefox 4 release which highlight the number of hard blockers or show stoppers were left to be fixed before the browser could be shipped. The number has increased to 9 from 8 since posting last night.

Homeless man finds his daughter through Twitter, Facebook

On it’s day, social networking sites are a good thing. They have the power to bring people together, instantly and continuously, and have helped invaluably during natural disasters, quick news reporting and more recently, during the protest in Egypt that finally saw the ruling government overturned. Daniel Morales, a homeless man in New York, saw the reach and power such sites first hand when he reconnected with his daughter after 11 years.

Morales, a 58 year old man in New York City was one of the four homeless people that had been given a cellphone and a Twitter account as part of the ‘Underheard’ campaign in the city. The program asked the four people to tweet about what’s it like being homeless. Morales, who has more than 3000 followers, took the opportunity to broadcast about his daughter who lost contact with him in 2000 after the family moved to the USA from Puerto Rico. He posted a picture of her’s when she was 16 on Thursday. Overnight, an unknown woman scoured through Facebook pages to find his daughter, now a 27 yr old Sarah Rivera, and reunited them.

Rivera told CBS NYC that “”[Twitter] holds a purpose and that purpose is that you can instantly find anybody and it’s amazing.”

The below videos shows Morales receiving a call from his daughter. Morales says he will continue to tweet despite having reunited with his family.

Facebook changes privacy policy page

Facebook, considered the epitome of privacy breach, has decided to finally address one of its main concerns – changing the privacy policy page so that non-laywers among 500 million users can understand it better, and easily.

In a statement, Facebook writes:

Many websites’ privacy policies are challenging for people to understand because they are often written for regulators and privacy advocates, not the majority of people who actually use those websites.  Our own privacy policy has been criticized as being “5830 words of legalese” and “longer than the U.S. constitution – without the amendments.”  Okay, you’re right.  We agree that privacy policies can and should be more easily understood, and that inspired us to try something different.

We thought a lot about the things people really want from a privacy policy, and came up with a few basic principles:

1. First, it should be easy to understand, even when the concepts are complicated, or it is of no use to anyone.

2. Second, it should be visual and interactive, because that’s the way people use the web today.

3. And third, it should focus on the questions people who use Facebook are most likely to ask, because that makes it relevant.

Do note that the actual content of the policies have not changed, it’s only made easier to read for the layman. You can access the new policy page here.

iPhone App Review: Mobile Mouse

You dim the lights, you can crank up your painfully setup 5.1 surround system, you open your favorite, suspiciously acquired Blu-ray rip, you get cozy in your little sofa and…you lug out a large size wireless keyboard and mouse you paid inordinate amounts of money to get (or if you are cheap, you are rocking a wired setup, increasing the chances of dropping your popcorn bucket you made in the microwave – which may not be a bad thing, really). What if I told you that you can chuck out your clunky wireless setup and just simply swipe out your iPhone instead?

Mobile Mouse is what I am talking about – a simple, easy to setup, easy to use app that works as a mouse and brings full-featured keyboard right onto your palm.

Like most such software, you are required to have a wireless internet network at your home and a ‘server’ client to be installed on your PC. Thankfully, not only does the client support Mac and Windows operating systems, you can practically install and forget for an out-of-the-box pre-setup configuration.

Once your client is up and running, you simply fire up the app on your iPhone and let it connect. Connection is instant and the software remembers which PC you connected last so you won’t have to select it again if you have set it up on multiple PCs on the same network.

At first, Mobile Mouse can look intimidating but once you wrap your head around the multiple tabs, it’s pretty simple. The default view is of the keyboard – you have controls like Shift, Alt, Ctrl and Windows button on the left, and options to access the F1 keys, numerics and QWERTY keyboard on the right.

Pressing the little arrow on the rightmost will you give additional controls over your PC. The first tab presents controls for the media player where you can play, pause, reduce volume and eject the disc tray. The second tab has you access to features over your web browser – you can open a new window, a new tab, enter web address, refresh page, increase font, bookmark sites, etc. The third tab has a simple 3-button setup for your music player with rewind, forward and start. The last tab is a quick launcher of sorts to your most used applications. Although I wish it would mimic my Windows quick launcher setup, this works just fine as well.

If you find the tabs and icons a distraction to your scrolling, you can simply wiggle the device to hide them, giving you a large area to scroll.

The only little quirk I found was that the software did not reconnect after being woke up from a lock state. I would have to manually ask it to reconnect, which it did instantly. This means that if you want instant access all the time, you will have to configure it to prevent your iPhone from going into sleep mode – not an ideal setup considering battery is a premium.

But it’s too minor of an issue to disregard the app. RPA Tech has nailed the concept and works just so wonderfully well. If you have an iPhone and like to ‘home theater’ your movies, this $1.99 app is a no brainer instead of a keyboard + mouse combo that will cost you AED 100+ and may not even provide the range you require. Absolutely recommended.

iPhone 4 Game of the Week – Save Toshi DX

The new gaming generation hasn’t been kind on the Japanese gaming industry; the once leading giant had a steady run for two decades
1985-2005 its glory days of Megadrive SNES & PS2 are behind it. Frankly put the land of the rising fun’s gaming reign has ended, it sees a similar pattern being mimicked by its auto industry where it’s heavily driven by US sentiments or western ones to be precise.

There was a time when 8 of the 10 best games on leading platforms where Japanese brewed & the western entries were novel like EA’s annual sport tittles with an occasional sim or RTS by any other developer. The big dogs where Konami, Capcom, Sega, and Nintendo.

Whereas the show dogs were companies like Psygnosis, Crystal Dynamics, Core, Bullfrog, Akklaim, Shiny; all of which are now defunct and hardly made the transition to the Xbox or ps2. It’s a rarity to see a game solely coming out of japan taking wide acceptance in a western market as lately even sacrilege tittles like Final Fantasy XIII has seen heavy criticism.

It’s like sushi enthusiasts frowning upon a California roll or wasabi mayo calling it an unholy mix. That however is not the case with save Toshi it’s a delightful balance of eastern-western gameplay it is a refreshing take on popular 2d physics puzzlers like Angry Birds, Cut the Rope & the breakthrough storm charting tiny wings which I’ll review next week.

Nitako the developer behind Toshi is an indication that Japanese developers are now focusing on the IOS platform which for us gamers holds much promise in the coming months as more intuitive colorful games in the fashion of the Wii & DS will make their way to our palms. Frankly put I’ve seen games out of japan seeing favorable results on handhelds like monster hunter, Pokémon, kingdom hearts even final fantasy tittles have seen more sales than it’s big brother HD ones.

Save Toshi’s saving grace is the injection of colors that would put skittles, jellybeans, a kiddie paint workshop to shame that coupled with its J-pop sensation starlet Toshi-San who loves to bust a move on the dance floor clad in her colorful kitsch highstreet-high school fashionability.

She’s cheery, responds to your inputs like an elated high spirited anime character that has a crush on the smoldering senior in her school. You’ll hear her saying things like “save me handsome”, when You accidentally flick her off with a ball from an elevated platform which she often teeters precariously she’ll say “look you got Toshi all wet” in a cute affable tone expertly voiced by a Japanese voice actress.

The premise is very plausible if you sip jasmine ice tea with fried tempura for breakfast. Toshi loves to dance but has forgotten how to walk & will find herself standing on platforms supported by beams, suspended hinges, ice blocks etc. the idea is to use few balls to knock these beams & platforms to hurl Toshi onto the dance floor, fewer the balls used higher the scores & ratings. The controls are responsive and simple Tap at your intended targets which come in the form of structural support like wood, glass, ice, concrete, TNT crates & hinges,  swipe your finger around to get a rotational view of your environment to best tackle the puzzle. The level designs have a steady learning curve, some might have you scratching your head for minutes others an hour or so, until a friend takes over putting you out of your sweet torment.

Luckily like all popular games out there is a free version, if you choose to expand which you most certainly will want to then the full game which gives you 100 levels, new costumes, background music & levels to unlock all adding to your experience thus giving you lasting appeal and replay value.

The redeeming merit of the game is that all my friends seem to have taken Toshi to heart but to really put it to the test I coyly planted this in the hands of one such individual who to me is a balanced hybrid of eastern western schools of thought, his wall rack is adorned with countless  figurines by Japanese toy makers & American ones, on one end you’ll see Gundam Mechas alongside a street punk version of the hulk with a purple Mohawk, dog-tag collar & high rise chucks, he drives a grey-import racing pedigree albeit in its American form the stellar Acura NSX (Honda NSX), on certain weeks of the month he sports a Fu manchu the others a goatee, he cherishes the read of Ronin the graphic novel by Frank miller on gloomy days.

So when he took to this game like a kid on the other end of an ice lolly eating marathon I knew that the japs had sent their secret weapon a nano-ninja which stealthily used its bushido to cut itself above the competition and the scabbard that the blade rests in is shiny & well crafted.

Mozilla launches Firefox 4 release countdown

After a year long development, which saw Google Chrome jump from countless number of revisions (even to some extent, Opera), Mozilla has finally come around to releasing the new iteration of Firefox.

The company has launched a cheeky little website counting the number of ‘hard blockers’ or show stoppers left to be fixed before the browser can be shipped out. At the time of writing, there were 8 of them little buggers left to go.

Mozilla’s Asa Dotzler had previously said that a twelfth beta will be shipped out before the final release, though there was no mention of a release candidate which usually should be the case. The beta 12 is planned to release next week.

Apple outs new MacBook Pro line

After a series of speculations and rumors, Apple has finally decided to make its new MacBook Pro line up public. As usual, the laptop comes in three typical flavors – the 13″ $1199, 15″ for $1799 and 17″ for $2499.

As rumored, the new laptops feature Intel and Apple’s new Thunderbolt technology which allows streams of uncompressed data at “ultrafast” speeds. Apple advertises Thunderbolt as being more than 12 times faster than FireWire 800 and up to 20 times faster than USB 2.0.

On the general hardware side, the 13″ Macbook Pro features a 2.3GHz Intel Core i5 processor or a dual core 2.7GHz Intel Core i7. The 15-and-17″ models features a 2.3GHz quad core Intel Core i7 processor, with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.4GHz and up to 8MB of shared L3 cache.

All models of the MacBook Pro is fitted with Intel HD Graphics 3000 processor, with 15″ model featuring an AMD Radeon 6490 256MB or AMD Radeon HD 6750M 1GB. The 17″ model features an AMD Radeon HD 6750 1GB.

The laptops will be packaged with FaceTime HD camera, which allows 720p calls to other MacBook Pro users and iPhone 4 and iPod Touch users as well. Apple also promises better battery life, claiming that wireless web browsing can stretch up to 7 hours without a recharge.

Apple charges for FaceTime on Mac Appstore

Apple’s FaceTime application was one of the touted features of the iPhone 4 that claimed smooth phone-to-phone video calling over WiFi. And the best part about the application was it is free of charge. However, for Mac users that may want to avail the services of Apple’s video chat application, they will have to shell out some greens to do so.

A recent listing on Apple’s Appstore for Mac has FaceTime available for 0.99 cents. Although surprising, it does not mean that Apple wants to covert the video chat service into a paid one. It could be only for only hardware were Apple may want to charge for.

Even still, with other similar applications like Skype, Fring, and Yahoo Messenger, it makes little sense to add a premium to the app – especially considering it only works on Apple hardware.

Apple has yet to make announcement, though we expect something on the March 2 event.

Razer Anansi MMO Keyboard Review

The Anansi is Razer’s latest keyboard targeted specifically towards MMO players. A full keyboard layout with fully customizable LED backlights, the Anansi also comes with 5 additional macro keys on the left side. While the Anansi comes with on-the-fly macro recording, much like the Black Widow Ultimate keyboard, what makes it unique are the seven modifier keys located under the spacebar.

So let’s get started with the Anasi’s looks. At first glance the Anansi looks really plain; curved edges and a completely matt black finish don’t make this a stand-out keyboard. Then you start looking at some other things, like the thumb modifier T7 keys under the space bar, the 5 macro keys and (the first time it’s plugged in) the mesmerizing backlights that keep on changing hues.

The Razer Anansi is designed to go hand in hand (ignore the pun) with the Naga mice. You’ll notice that on either edge of the keyboard there are shiny, slightly bulging curves that are similar to the one found on the Razer Naga mice. Unlike the Naga mice however, which has that extra sculpture to rest your fingers on, the sides of the Anansi are just for aesthetic appeal.

iXBT Labs Review: Gainward GeForce GTX 570 1280MB ‘Phantom’ Graphics Card

“After a recent a review of Gainward GeForce GTX 570 1280MB “Golden Sample” Goes Like Hell we again return to the same brand and even the same GPU. It’s just that we’ve got another interesting product from the company: Gainward GeForce GTX 570 1280MB “Phantom” with a custom cooler. Let’s see how it performs.”

Article: http://ixbtlabs.com/articles3/video/gf110-4-p1.html

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