The GNOME community has just announced the latest version of it’s popular desktop environment, Gnome 2.20. Released right on schedule, 2.20 is the culmination of six months effort by Gnome contributors around the world. Check out the release notes, for a full list of improvements and some pretty pictures of 2.20 in action.
From the release notes:
“The improvements in GNOME 2.20 include: Improved support for right-to-left languages; desktop search integrated into the file chooser dialog; convenient new features in the Evolution email and calendar client; enhanced browsing of image collections; simplified system preferences; efficient power management and incredibly accurate laptop battery monitoring. Developers receive more help with application development thanks to a new version of the GTK+ toolkit, improved tools, and a great new documentation web site.”
And just when you thought the world couldn’t get any stranger. Its September the 19th again so that means the Internet’s a buzz with pirates sayings such as Ahoy!, Shiver me timbers! and Arrr!. Since today is officially known by internet users as ‘International talk like a pirate day’ (ITLAPD), it all started back in 1995 as an inside joke between friends, John Baur & Mark Summers but it wasn’t until they submitted the idea about their invented holiday to humour columnist Dave Barry in 2002. that it spiralled out of control and became the global phenomenon it is today.
If your having a little trouble talking like a pirate, check out the official talk like a pirate day website over at talklikeapirate.com. Just remember not to go over board at work today, or they might just fire you like they did the office pirate, enjoy
I don’t really login to Google’s Webmaster Tools as often as I used to after discovering Google Analytics but I did happen to login today to find that they have recently updated it with a few improvements. I am still not sure whether I like the new navigation system yet, but they did introduce a cool new feature called ‘Subscriber Stats’, which displays the number of users who have subscribed to your feeds using google services such as Google Reader, Orkut and iGoogle. If you are interested, there is more information on the update over on the google webmaster blog.
Heroes is back for its second season this month, set to air on the 24th on NBC over in America that’s only 16 days from now, still no word on when season 2 will be airing over here in the UK. But it’s probably not going to be until next year now. since the BBC have managed to outbid the Sci-Fi channel & won the first run rights for Season 2, even though they haven’t finished showing the first season yet. which is annoying since I’ve already watched the entire first season on the Sci-Fi channel
Anyway the first episode is set four months after the events that took place at the end of season one, & from the trailer that I’ve posted below it looks like both Nathan Petrelli (Adrian Pasdar) & PeterPetrelli (Milo Ventimiglia) survived the explosion, in the trailer you see Nathan’s reflection in a broken mirror for a split second, & towards the end you see a glimpse of Peter. you also see Matt Parkman (Greg Grunberg) & Sylar (Zachary Quinto) but we all knew Sylar would be back for season 2, after all you can’t keep a good villain down. The only character not seen in the trailer that had been fatally wounded or presumed dead at the end of season one, was D.L. Hawkins (Leonard Roberts) looks like the rumors floating around the Internet about this characters demise could be true.
The new iPod Touch features an iPhone-like touch screen with Wi-Fi capabilities, also included is the Safari Internet browser and, like the iPhone it will play YouTube videos. it comes in two capacity’s 8GB or 16GB which is an improvement over the iPhone which only has 8GB for storage at the moment. The size of the iPod Touch is slightly smaller and weighs a little less than the iPhone but the screen size is exactly the same on both models, except the iPod Touch beats the iPhone by 3 dpi.
Specs:
iPhone
iPod Touch
Height: 4.5 inches (115 mm)
Height: 4.3 inches (110 mm)
Width: 2.4 inches (61 mm)
Width: 2.4 inches (61.8 mm)
Depth: 0.46 inch (11.6 mm)
Depth: 0.31 inch (8 mm)
Weight: 4.8 ounces (135 grams)
Weight: 4.2 ounces (120 grams
Display: 480 by 320 pixel at 160 dpi
Display: 480 by 320 pixel at 163 dpi
Maximum capacity: 8GB
Maximum capacity: 16GB
Along with announcing the iPod Touch, apple also announce a number of updates to the current iPod line. Both the Nano and the current 80GB iPod models have been upgraded with new metal casing. And the Nano, now has a larger & brighter screen with the ability to play videos. while the current 80GB iPod has been re-branded as the iPod classic, and has had its capacity doubled form 80GB to 160GB. The only member of the iPod family that didn’t get upgraded was the iPod shuffle. I was actually hoping for the shuffle to be upgraded to something slightly bigger say 4GB. Anyway Apple should begin shipping the New iPod Touch this month, so it looks like it’s just in time for Christmas.
