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New Facebook Layout

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I've finally acquired the new Facebook. First off, it is very much like Twitter, hence the picture. I don't know why Facebook even had to even think of Twitter as being their rival right now. Then again, they blew by MySpace, so I guess Twitter is Facebook's biggest rival. To be honest, I don't know how Twitter can even catch up to Facebook right now, none of my friends are using it and I find it completely pointless. The only reason why I started a Twitter account is so that I can say, "Hah! I was here first!" if Twitter was to ever become ground-shattering popular. Now enough about Facebook vs Twitter, I'll talk solely about the new Facebook look. It's decent. So far, all of my friends dislike it, but I don't. I think everyone will get used to it eventually, but I do feel that Facebook could improve in a few areas on this new layout of theirs. The use of the 3 columns is good, I guess. But, they really need to fix up the Wall and the Home Page. It looks fine at the first glance, but the stupid thing is that it's so hard to determine the difference between a wall post and a status update on the Home Page. There's no "ashlee has changed their status to" crap anymore and what makes matters even worse is that Facebook decided to carry this so-called trend to the wall. "ashlee luis i better :P" Wtf does that mean Facebook? They removed the "ashlee wrote on your wall" part which is extremely stupid and confusing. All-in-all it could be something that all Facebook users could get used to eventually (just like the last Facebook makeover), but Facebook should make it easier for their users to adapt before making such a huge change to the layout. Facebook should consider changing some of these 'Twitter-like" changes because most of their users hate it. It's hard for us to set our eyes on, properly that is. Another thing that's kind of lame is the fact that I now have to scroll down in order to poke someone (ashlee) back. We have this poke war going on and I could really give up now, since I have to scroll down in order to poke her back. My hand is going to get tired. On a side note, they have cleaned up the pages nicely, so +1 there. On a side note, we should be able to customize what's on our Facebook Home Page, just a suggestion Facebook.

New Facebook picture: http://freelancefolder.com/facebook-vs-twitter/



Samsung Q2 PMP, Kogan Agora Netbook, Citroen's PSP-Themed Car, Blogger's New Features

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The Samsung Q2 PMP (not to be confused with the Samsung Q2 UMPC) has busted its way onto the scene. It was announced quietly and is pretty decent. The Q2 has 50 hours of audio playback, a 2.4 QVGA screen, a built-in microphone, FM radio, and has your choice of either 8GB or 16GB of storage. Unfortunately, it's lacking WiFi and Bluetooth, so the iPod Touch is clearly going to be the favourite here. Sorry Samsung, maybe next time.

Ruslan Kogan, maker of the Kogan Agora, has just shown a prototype of his new and functioning netbook. It clearly is running the gOS (Google OS) Android and is also called the Agora (same as the handset, confusing huh?). The 10-inch netbook sports the N270 Atom, 1GB of RAM, 160GB HDD and a 3-cell battery. The upgraded model, called the "Agora Pro" will have 2GB of RAM and will even throw in a 6-cell battery, which is much better. The Agora netbook will run Android, as well as Windows 7 when it is released. The netbook to me looks fairly plain, but the attractive point is definitely the price. The Agora and Agora Pro will be released for just $499 AUD ($320 USD) and $549 AUD ($355 USD), respectively. This is cheap. Both models are expected to be available next month, so this will be the first running netbook with the Google OS. Celebrate good times!

Citroen is teaming up with Sony to make an SUV-like vehicle that will be PSP-themed. "The Citroen C-Crosser Exclusive PSP will of course, come with a PSP - a Slim, as it turns out. It will also come with two games, a Pro Duo, and a 4GB memory card. It will also come with a hefty price tag of EUR 33,930 (US$ 43,340)." This is kind of stupid and will be obsolete soon, since there are already rumours of the next update to the PSP. Y'know, the one without the UMD. Too little, too late Citroen. Sorry.

On a side note, I have noticed that Blogger has 2 new features: e-mail and mobile posting. This won't be of use to me because what's the point of e-mail posting if I can just go directly to the Blogger website? I don't know the point, but I'm sure Blogger does. E-mail posting will be pointless to me, but I've decided to add it just in case. Luckily, I have the option to save the e-mail post as a draft, so that i can edit it later. Mobile posting, on the other hand, will be of no use to me, since it costs me $0.15 CAD to send a damn text.

Samsung Q2 PMP (and picture): http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/12/samsung-sneaks-q2-pmp-onto-the-scene-with-50-hours-of-battery-li/
Kogan Agora Netbook (and picture): http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/12/320-kogan-agora-netbook-gets-the-hands-on-treatment-aussie-sty/
Citroen's PSP-Themed Car (and picture): http://ps3.qj.net/Citroen-making-PSP-themed-car/pg/49/aid/129427
Blogger picture: http://www.vwnw.co.uk/

Warcraft III Player Gets A $500,000 Contract, Sackboy In Hot Shots Golf, Sony Canada Pulls Killzone 2 Ads, Firefox 3.1 Beta 3

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See! Gaming can get you places! The famous Korean gamer, Jae Ho "Moon" Jang, has just signed a 3-year 700,000,000 won ($473,037 USD) contract to play Warcraft III professionally. If you thought this was shocking, this is actually not the biggest signed deal for playing an e-sport professionally. In 2007, another Korean gamer, Yoon Yeol "NaDa" Lee, signed a contract that was worth 750,000,000 won for playing Starcraft professionally. Lee is the highest paid Korean gamer and both players signed contracts presented to them by WeMade FOX.

If you play Hot Shots Golf: Out of Bounds you should be considered lucky because I don't have it. Another reason to feel lucky is because Sackboy from LittleBigPlanet will be making his way to the game tomorrow. He will be playable and the catch is that you'll have to pay to unlock him which sucks. The price is still unknown, so i can tell you tomorrow, if you really want to know.

Canada sucks and here's another reason why. Killzone 2 ads were pulled from bus stops in Toronto because Davis Mirza, a teacher, complained about them. He said that his kids "come from a lot of different countries, who have to experience violence" and he continued to mention that the ads are "stuff they don't need to see." Apparently, the soldier's eyes are scary and the background of the advertisement showed a scenery similar to Iraq. Kind of lame, since these are bad-ass ads.

Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 is now available for download and is faster than IE8, so take that Microsoft. The next beta that comes out will be marked under the Firefox 3.5 Beta 4 name because of the many, significant changes. I haven't got a chance to try it out yet, so i'm not exactly sure how fast it is.

Warcraft III Player Gets A $500,000 Contract (and picture): http://www.sk-gaming.com/content/22880-FOX_officially_unveils_record_signing_Moon
Sackboy In Hot Shots Golf (and picture): http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2009/03/sackboy-comes-to-hot-shots-golf-a-dozen-people-are-excited.ars
Sony Canada Pulls Killzone 2 Ads (and picture): http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3173239
Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 (and picture): http://lifehacker.com/5169127/firefox-31-beta-3-available-for-download

Dell Studio One 19, Google Voice, IE8 Release Date, Windows 7 RC1 Leaked

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Dell's all-in-one PC attempts are on their way and what better way to reveal them by listing a maxed out spec sheet for all you? This is, i guess, a shot at the new Apple iMacs. Well the all-in-one PC from Dell, dubbed the Studio One 19 PC has a Core 2 Quad processor, a 750GB HDD, 4GB of RAM, 6 USB ports, a 1.3MP integrated webcam, a NVIDIA GeForce 9400 graphics card and a Blu-ray player when you tune up the PC to the max settings. The 18.5-inch all-in-one PC will have a 1,366 x 768 resolution and is even capable of having a touchscreen, but whether it is capacitive or resistive is unknown for now. If you want the max settings it will cost you around $1,500 USD - $1,600 USD. On the other hand, it starts out at a base price of $699 and will be available in the US this Spring.

Google Grandcentral was finally put to good use today. Google has announced a new service called Google Voice and is available "as a preview" to Grandcentral users and to a couple of others via invitation. "The service looks a lot like Gmail for voicemail, although you don't have to be a Gmail user to use it. It lets you retrieve transcripts of your voicemail, archive and search all your sent and received SMS messages, and you can make calls directly from Google Voice's interface. The calls are free in the US, and cost a small free internationally." If you want additional information regarding Google Voice you can click on this link, for Mashable's explanation. Update on July 17th: I just got an e-mail from Google inviting me to try out Google Voice, but since I'm living in Canada I was unable to accept it. A sad, sad day for me. I hope you guys are luckier than I am!

On a side note, Internet Explorer 8 may be available on March 19 or March 20 next week. If you want to see how fast IE8 is (according to Microsoft), then click here for their [Microsoft's] PDF file report. They claim that IE8 is basically faster than Firefox and, more importantly, Google Chrome. Their tests disprove just about every other speed test out there, so i don't really know how well these so-called tests were done... Judging on my experience, I can say that Chrome is much faster than IE, but maybe that's just me. I'll give Internet Explorer 8 a try though, then a quick uninstall afterwards (most likely).

Great news. The Windows 7 RC1 (Build 7057) has been leaked on torrent sites. This is great, since the "official" Windows 7 RC1 is scheduled to be released publicly on April 10, so it's just about a month early. This is also great because my girlfriend is going to the States this weekend, so at least i'm going to spend some of my day not being bored, reformatting both my computer and laptop and installing the [illegal] Windows 7 RC1 to try it out. At least I know how I am going to spend my Saturday, but I still don't know about Sunday or Monday though. Oh yes, I also have March Break next week, so it's a whole week away from Physics work, for the most part. I'm getting the Windows 7 RC1 from my friend tomorrow, if everything goes as planned. I can't wait!

Dell Studio One 19 (and picture): http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/12/dells-multi-touch-studio-one-19-pc/
Google Voice (and picture): http://mashable.com/2009/03/12/google-voice/
IE8 Release Date: http://techreport.com/discussions.x/16569
IE8 Is Fast?: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/03/12/ie_8_speed_test/
Windows 7 RC1 Leaked (and picture): http://lifehacker.com/5168796/new-windows-7-build-7057-hits-bittorrent

Palm Pre News, Apple News: iTunes 8.1, iPhone OS 3.0, Bill Gates

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Palm Pre fans, don't be scared because Sprint and Palm have confirmed that the Pre will still be available in the first half of this year, so that means that it is still on schedule. The plans and pricing was also confirmed by Sprint. I'll just copy and paste it, since there's no point of putting it into my own words, keep in mind that these are all in USD. "Individuals can choose from 450 minute ($69.99), 900 minute ($89.99) or unlimited plans ($99.99). Families can choose from 1500 minutes ($129.99), 3000 minutes ($169.99) or unlimited plans (189.99). Business customers will also be able to pool their minutes together using about 5 different plans." Unfortunately, the Touchstone wireless charger will be an additional cost and won't be included in the package.

Let's head over to Apple, Palm's favourite brand right now. So, with the release of the new iPod Shuffle yesterday, Apple has released a new version (8.1) of iTunes that supports it. It is reportedly faster than the old iTunes, but i don't really see a difference when running a Windows PC. I haven't had the ability to test it out too thoroughly, but i do know that i spotted a new feature called iTunes DJ. If you want the full list go to this link, Gizmodo will tell you all you need to know.

Apple is going to have a big announcement next week dedicated to the new iPhone OS (3.0). This will be happening on March 17, so i'll have more official news next week. On a side note, it's time to go to the old rumour mill. So, word is that Apple is planning to include MMS and will also have tethering. "The tethering function allegedly will work via Bluetooth pairing the phone with a USB device attached to a computer." Anyways, the official announcement will be next week so that's when i will have official news.

Since Bill Gates is somewhat related to Apple or well, at least, used to be. Bill Gates is once again the world's richest man, according to Forbes' Billionaire list. Last year there were 1,125 billionaires, but this year there are only 793 of them left, meaning 373 people have fallen off the list. I guess this is due to the recession, since the wealth of the remaining 793 people have also gone down an average of 23% which is huge. It's good to see that Bill Gates is back on top though, even though he did face 18 billion in losses.

Palm Pre News (and picture): http://i.gizmodo.com/5168926/pre-available-first-half-of-2009-pricing-plans-confirmed
Apple iTunes 8.1: http://i.gizmodo.com/5168529/itunes-81-now-available
Apple iPhone OS 3.0 (and picture): http://www.gsmarena.com/iphone_os_30_is_knocking_on_the_door_launch_set_for_17_march-news-830.php
Apple iPhone OS 3.0 Rumours: http://www.electronista.com/articles/09/03/12/iphone.os.rumors/
Bill Gates (and picture): http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2009/03/bill-gates-is-worlds-richest-man-again.ars