The next test, essentially a "release candidate" version will come in the first quarter of 2009. That means the final release won't hit Microsoft's initial goal of finishing the browser this year.

"Our next public release of IE (typically called a "release candidate") indicates the end of the beta period," general manager Dean Hachamovitch said in a blog posting. "We want the technical community of people and organizations interested in Web browsers to take this update as a strong signal that IE8 is effectively complete and done."

Microsoft first demonstrated the browser at the Mix conference in March. Among its improvements are malware protection, better standards support, and the ability to carve off a piece of a Web page, known as a Web slice. It also supports having private sessions that don't get logged in a browser's history.

The first beta version was released in March, with a second beta arriving over the summer.

Hachamovitch said that Web site developers should test their sites and report "any critical issues" to Microsoft.

"We will be very selective about what changes we make between the next update and final release," he wrote. "We will act on the most critical issues. We will be super clear about product changes we make between the update and the final release."

Hachamovitch also called on technical users to download the current beta 2 version and let Microsoft know how that goes.

MobLogic launched in March as a sequel of sorts to Wallstrip, a cheeky show about stocks that CBS bought for about $4 million last year.

AllThingsD scribe Peter Kafka says the team will keep putting up MobLogic episodes "on their own from time to time." CBS will assign Campbell to something else within the company -- she's on contract -- and producers Adam Elend and Jeff Marks are now working on 'Novel Adventures,' a "soap opera/book club hybrid," according to Kafka.

See Also:
That Was Quick: Wacky CBS Web Video Show Now Promoting Sober CBS TV Show
CBS Interactive's Wallstrip Sequel Moblogic Launching
Wallstrip Host Lindsay Campbell Leaving Show, Staying With CBS

Disclosure: Wallstrip creator Howard Lindzon is an investor in our parent company.

(I know we’ve covered Ocarina here before, but I’m a latecomer to it and I’m so blown away, I had to have a rant about it. Forgive the indulgence.)

It took me a few days to grok what’s so wonderful about Ocarina, the $0.99 app that’s been taking the App Store by storm in recent days.

It’s not just about playing music. It’s about sharing it. Globally.

I suspect I was like most newcomers to Ocarina, in that once I’d got it installed, I started trying to play it. The trickiest thing is making sure that you blow correctly into the microphone - blow gently, don’t whistle a tune, and make sure you hit the microphone square on. If your blowing misses, the music stops.

It took me longer to explore the other options Ocarina offers, but once I got into world view, I found myself grinning like an idiot.

For those of you who haven’t seen it yet, the world view shows Ocarina players all over the world as little glowing lights on a digital globe’s surface. The app takes you from player to player, their musical doodlings appearing as a stream of animated blue streaks and flying green circles, like something out of a 50s sci-fi movie. You hear what they’re playing.

So you can open up world view and leave it playing; have a thousand Ocarina players serenading you as you work, sleep, play, cook, chat. This is simply stunning work, and I challenge you to find anyone whose jaw doesn’t hit the floor in amazement when they first see it.

As you tour the globe’s Ocarina players, you can flag up the ones you like (some of them are very talented). Most webapps ask you to “fave” or “friend” the people you like, but inside Ocarina you get to tap a little heart-shaped icon. You don’t fave these people, you love them. Isn’t that fantastic?

The Ocarina forum is a treasure trove of great stuff. Want to learn how to play the Still Alive, the closing credits song from Portal? How about Breakfast in America? Or the Imperial March? My six-year-old is so going to go crazy about this.

I apologise if I sound a little carried away with excitement here - it’s because I’m very excited.

What makes me gush even more is that we’re still in the early days of the iPhone platform here. Yes, there is a lot of rubbish on the App Store and people everywhere (myself included) have had a good old moan about that. But buried amid the rubbish are some fabulous gems like this, things that inspire creativity and connectivity and a global perspective. And they’re available for just pennies.

The App Store has been with us for just over four months. What on earth will the collective genius of the iPhone developer community cook up for us in the next four months? The next four years?

Let’s say the iPhone platform is a theme park. Despite all we’ve seen in the last four months, we’ve not even arrived there yet. We’re still at home, looking at the brochure.

]]> Wed, 19 Nov 2008 17:02:35 +0000 thousand ocarina players ocarina players ocarina globes ocarina players inside ocarina options ocarina offers app app store world view Opinion: The Astonishing Accomplishment Of Ocarina http://www.softratty.com/article/1c69580212315330f5284fafa93b4409 http://www.softratty.com/article/1c69580212315330f5284fafa93b4409 Starting next year, Internet matchmaker eHarmony.com will start accepting personal ads from gays and lesbians for the first time as part of a new site called "Compatible Partners." But eHarmony hasn't discovered a newfound social liberalism, and they're not looking for revenue. A New Jersey court is forcing them to open their doors to gays.

The legal machinery kicked into gear after site-user Eric McKinley filed suit when the site refused to accept his "man seeking man" ad. Philadelphia Inquirer:

McKinley's suit triggered a N.J. state investigation of eHarmony Inc. in 2007. It is illegal to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation in New Jersey.

eHarmony contested the charges for three years before the Attorney General's office issued a finding that determined the company had violated state discrimination laws.

McKinley, who remains single, will receive $5,000 and free membership for a year to the new dating service. eHarmony will also pay $50,000 to the state Attorney General's office to cover administrative expenses..

As part of the settlement, eHarmony agreed to get its "Compatible Partners" site online by March 31 and provide 10,000 free subscriptions for gays looking to use the site.

See Also:
Melissa Etheridge: No Gay Marriage, No Taxes
The Gay Marriage Windfall: Same-Sex Couples to Pump $700 Million Into CA Wedding Industry

"Edinburgh's own The Medical Phone is just about set to unleash the mobile for the true argonaut in the iCEphone. The Windows Mobile-powered "Swiss Army knife of mobiles" is dubbed a micro-notebook by its manufacturer, and while we're hesitant to go along with that, we can't deny the utility here. Sporting a Jacob's Ladder-style hinge and a full QWERTY keyboard, the unit features three independent panels, a 3-inch 400 x 240 resolution touchscreen, a mouse / tracker pad, dual SIM card slots, HSDPA support, quad-band GSM connectivity, GPS, a 3.1-megapixel camera, WiFi and a 532MHz Freescale iMX31 CPU. We're told that the phone is just weeks / months away from a release in Thailand, and it should be hitting the UK sometime in the March - April time frame for around $1,000."

You can't say this isn't an original form factor, I rarely see something this big and somewhat intimidating with Windows Mobile on it (Well, perhaps the Rugged devices are intimidating somewhat). Anyone think they want to sport one of these next year?

Mosso

If you are new to CDN services, the simple concept is that servers are placed around the world and depending on where you are located, you get served via the closest or most appropriate server. CDNs cut down on the hops back and forth to handle a request.

Mosso's pricing for Cloud Files with CDN starts at 15 cents per gigabyte of storage and 22 cents per gigabyte of bandwidth from any edge location around the globe. Stored files can be up to 5gb in size. Apparently you can activate the CDN service on any file by accessing it via the Mosso admin control panel. It makes sense for large video and audio files along with large volume sites.

As many of you know, we are hosted on Mosso. Mosso has continued to improve reliability and customer service since we joined back in March. However, when I see deals like this I get excited for the possibilities but wish that they would spend more time making Mosso work like a normal webhost. There are several items including IP addresses referrals (every user looks the same) that just don't work right and cause big issues when trying to process users appropriately.

Last month Mosso/Rackspace announced their cloud computing strategy.

This morning I had the privilege to sit in on a panel for the Washington, D.C. Economic Partnership, in which everybody in the room was excited about two things: the new administration’s full embrace of technology, and how social technology is transforming the political realm. It is no longer required for a group of people to get together in a room and make change happen.

Instead individuals can now create groups on social networks (especially Facebook) and the ideas of those groups spread virally. In a globally interconnected world, we all learn from each other and in the case of Oscar Morales, who created the group which led to the protest against the FARC, we have no doubt learned some valuable lessons.

Inspired by this change, “Facebook, Access 360 Media, Columbia Law School, Google, Howcast, MTV, YouTube, and the U.S. Department of State are bringing leaders of 17 pioneering organizations from 15 countries together with technology experts next month for the first-ever conclave to empower youth against violence and oppression through the use of the latest online tools. ” The event is called the Alliance of Youth Movements Summit.

We are in the midst of a tectonic shift as the barriers between government and citizens are eliminated, and this new administration will be part of leading the charge. Check out the video below to learn more about the FARC protest via Facebook, or go learn more about the Alliance of Youth Movements Summit.

Image of FARC Protest taken by AP and provided by the BBC

This morning I had the privilege to sit in on a panel for the Washington, D.C. Economic Partnership, in which everybody in the room was excited about two things: the new administration’s full embrace of technology, and how social technology is transforming the political realm. It is no longer required for a group of people to get together in a room and make change happen.

Instead individuals can now create groups on social networks (especially Facebook) and the ideas of those groups spread virally. In a globally interconnected world, we all learn from each other and in the case of Oscar Morales, who created the group which led to the protest against the FARC, we have no doubt learned some valuable lessons.

Inspired by this change, “Facebook, Access 360 Media, Columbia Law School, Google, Howcast, MTV, YouTube, and the U.S. Department of State are bringing leaders of 17 pioneering organizations from 15 countries together with technology experts next month for the first-ever conclave to empower youth against violence and oppression through the use of the latest online tools. ” The event is called the Alliance of Youth Movements Summit.

We are in the midst of a tectonic shift as the barriers between government and citizens are eliminated, and this new administration will be part of leading the charge. Check out the video below to learn more about the FARC protest via Facebook, or go learn more about the Alliance of Youth Movements Summit.

Image of FARC Protest taken by AP and provided by the BBC

Not only does the eclipse finder allow you to find solar and lunar eclipses on Earth, but you can seek eclipses on other planets as well.  I found out something really cool when checking out eclipses on Jupiter - because Jupiter is very large and has many moons, solar eclipses are very common.

There are even days when multiple solar eclipses take place on the same day on Jupiter.  I found an article about a triple lunar eclipse on Jupiter that Hubble captured back in 2004.  I used the eclipse finder to find the day it happened (March 28, 2004) and was able to simulate it.

WIth Celestia you can view celestial events that have taken place in the past or will take place in the future. Events can be viewed as they would have occurred in real-time, or time can be sped up. You can also run slower than real-time, but I don’t find that feature all that useful since most celestial events take place over several hours or years.

There are numerous add-ons and textures available at the Celestia Motherlode.  The add-ons provide additional celestial bodies and spacecraft not included by default.  The textures provide more detail for planet surfaces, stars, and star systems as well.

If you are viewing the earth, you can enter specific coordinates you want to visit and use the surface view (CTRL-G in windows) to see the night sky as you would from your backyard.

This is a great way to learn where the constellations are and which ones you can see during what time of the year. Celestia is like having a planeterium right on your desktop!

Which apps do you use for astronomy and space simulation?

Jorge Sierra is a geek that enjoys working with Linux and other free software and operating systems. He also enjoys programming as a hobby and has developed several iGoogle Gadgets. By day, he works as a Six Sigma black belt and by night he occasionally blogs as GeekLad.

Enjoyed the article? Please leave a comment and tell us what you think about it

New here? Get your cheat sheets and freebies at MakeUseOf Downloads. Enjoy!

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Not only does the eclipse finder allow you to find solar and lunar eclipses on Earth, but you can seek eclipses on other planets as well.  I found out something really cool when checking out eclipses on Jupiter - because Jupiter is very large and has many moons, solar eclipses are very common.

There are even days when multiple solar eclipses take place on the same day on Jupiter.  I found an article about a triple lunar eclipse on Jupiter that Hubble captured back in 2004.  I used the eclipse finder to find the day it happened (March 28, 2004) and was able to simulate it.

WIth Celestia you can view celestial events that have taken place in the past or will take place in the future. Events can be viewed as they would have occurred in real-time, or time can be sped up. You can also run slower than real-time, but I don’t find that feature all that useful since most celestial events take place over several hours or years.

There are numerous add-ons and textures available at the Celestia Motherlode.  The add-ons provide additional celestial bodies and spacecraft not included by default.  The textures provide more detail for planet surfaces, stars, and star systems as well.

If you are viewing the earth, you can enter specific coordinates you want to visit and use the surface view (CTRL-G in windows) to see the night sky as you would from your backyard.

This is a great way to learn where the constellations are and which ones you can see during what time of the year. Celestia is like having a planeterium right on your desktop!

Which apps do you use for astronomy and space simulation?

Jorge Sierra is a geek that enjoys working with Linux and other free software and operating systems. He also enjoys programming as a hobby and has developed several iGoogle Gadgets. By day, he works as a Six Sigma black belt and by night he occasionally blogs as GeekLad.

Enjoyed the article? Please leave a comment and tell us what you think about it

New here? Get your cheat sheets and freebies at MakeUseOf Downloads. Enjoy!

Related posts

• xVideoServiceThief - Ultimate Download Manager for Online Videos (20)
• WordPress vs. Drupal - Content Management Systems (30)
• Utilizing Windows Search 4.0 (Part 1) (4)
• Ultimate Open Source Always Free Applications (3)
• Two Directories To Find Cool Adobe AIR Applications (4)