If you haven’t already seen this then I’m sure you’ll be amazed! Marco Weskamp’s algorithm behind it creates a constantly changing mosaic of what the word is talking about.

Addictive and defiantly worth checking out!

newsmap.

How secure is your website? Ben Charnock has put together a great article on Nettuts that focuses on security aspects of modern websites. His section on the % (like) operator in SQL and the limits of mysql_real_escape_string(); have made me re-think some of my coding practices.

Hit up the below link and start protecting your scripts!

NETTUTS – Can You Hack Your Own Site? A Look at Some Essential Security Considerations.

Learning a new technology can be a daunting task and working out where to begin can be a nitemare. I’ve been considering learning AJAX and using a Javascript library, such as Prototype, jQuery or Mootools.

At this stage I’ve decided to use jQuery for not many reasons apart from that fact that I know it’s used within Wordpress.

In my search for somewhere to start I found a great article on Nettues.

If your interested check the article out at Nettuens

I must admit that I do have a soft spot for OSX and Apple in general. I’m a designer after all. But what I can’t stand is the ignorant, narrow minded, soulless, bad jumper wearing, Steve Jobs loving, Mac Book Air F*&^ tools that believe that there over priced white box is the greatest thing since sliced bread and that just buy owning one they are above all others.

Well, an article on allheadlinenews defaintly made me chuckle;

Vancouver, British Columbia (AHN)– The Linux running on a Sony Vaio remained undefeated at the end of a three-way computer hacking challenge Friday at the CanSecWest conference.Sponsors had wagered three laptops to anyone who could hack into one of the systems and run their own software. A $20,000 cash prize sweetened the deal.

The MacBook Air went first; Independent Security Evaluators’ Charlie Miller took the Mac after about two minutes work on Thursday. Miller took home $10,000, courtesy of 3Com’s TippingPoint division, in addition to the new laptop.

After two days of work, Shane Macaulay finally cracked the tiny Fujitsu laptop running Vista on Friday, with a little help from his friends.

Two minutes I tells ya! Two MINUTES!Do you know why you believe that the MAC is more secure? Because why would anyone in their right mind try to attack something that has only 4.3% of the market! Even Vista has a bigger market share (7.6%) then OSX and it’s a dog of an OS.

Put that in your white, incredibly aesthetic pipe and smoke it! :)

Writing 642-436 or 70-293 should not be complicated for a 70-294 student who has done neither 70-536 nor 650-393.

The Format war is over – Blu-Ray is the winner

The press release from Toshiba

Toshiba Announces Discontinuation of HD DVD Businesses

19 February, 2008

Company Remains Focused on Championing Consumer Access to High Definition Content

TOKYO–Toshiba Corporation today announced that it has undertaken a thorough review of its overall strategy for HD DVD and has decided it will no longer develop, manufacture and market HD DVD players and recorders. This decision has been made following recent major changes in the market. Toshiba will continue, however, to provide full product support and after-sales service for all owners of Toshiba HD DVD products.

HD DVD was developed to offer consumers access at an affordable price to high-quality, high definition content and prepare them for the digital convergence of tomorrow where the fusion of consumer electronics and IT will continue to progress.

“We carefully assessed the long-term impact of continuing the so-called ‘next-generation format war’ and concluded that a swift decision will best help the market develop,” said Atsutoshi Nishida, President and CEO of Toshiba Corporation. “While we are disappointed for the company and more importantly, for the consumer, the real mass market opportunity for high definition content remains untapped and Toshiba is both able and determined to use our talent, technology and intellectual property to make digital convergence a reality.”

Toshiba will continue to lead innovation, in a wide range of technologies that will drive mass market access to high definition content. These include high capacity NAND flash memory, small form factor hard disk drives, next generation CPUs, visual processing, and wireless and encryption technologies. The company expects to make forthcoming announcements around strategic progress in these convergence technologies.

Toshiba will begin to reduce shipments of HD DVD players and recorders to retail channels, aiming for cessation of these businesses by the end of March 2008. Toshiba also plans to end volume production of HD DVD disk drives for such applications as PCs and games in the same timeframe, yet will continue to make efforts to meet customer requirements. The company will continue to assess the position of notebook PCs with integrated HD DVD drives within the overall PC business relative to future market demand.

This decision will not impact on Toshiba’s commitment to standard DVD, and the company will continue to market conventional DVD players and recorders. Toshiba intends to continue to contribute to the development of the DVD industry, as a member of the DVD Forum, an international organization with some 200 member companies, committed to the discussion and defining of optimum optical disc formats for the consumer and the related industries.

Toshiba also intends to maintain collaborative relations with the companies who joined with Toshiba in working to build up the HD DVD market, including Universal Studios, Paramount Pictures, and DreamWorks Animation and major Japanese and European content providers on the entertainment side, as well as leaders in the IT industry, including Microsoft, Intel, and HP. Toshiba will study possible collaboration with these companies for future business opportunities, utilizing the many assets generated through the development of HD DVD.

Sony’s been relatively mum on its Slingbox-like PlayTV add-on for the PlayStation 3 since it announced it last fall, but it’s now finally starting to show it off for all to see and, thanks to the BBC’s dot.life blog, we now have a pretty good idea of what European PS3 users can expect.

Check out the video over at Engadget

Sony CEO Jack Tretton on these new figures:

Coming off a great holiday sales season we see strong momentum behind PS3 in 2008, and feel confident about the year ahead. We have an exceptionally diverse lineup of exclusive games, from Gran Turismo 5 Prologue, Metal Gear Solid 4 and Resistance 2 to more mainstream games such as LittleBigPlanet and SingStar. Beyond that, we have Blu-ray emerging as the de facto high def standard, the developer community is hitting their stride, consumers are recognizing the tremendous value and innovative services such as PlayStation Home are all in the works, so this is definitely shaping up to be a breakthrough year for us.

274k – Wii
269k – PlayStation 3
251k – Nintendo DS
230k – PlayStation Portable
230k – Xbox 360

read more | digg story

A NEW undersea internet cable would break open Australia’s broadband market, bringing faster download times and lower prices, Federal Communications Minister Stephen Conroy said today.

The $200 million Pipe Networks PPC-1 cable will rival Telstra and Optus pipelines, linking Sydney to the Pacific island of Guam to provide a third international broadband link to Australia’s east coast.

It is due to open in June next year and Pipe Network executive director Lloyd Ernst today said PPC-1 was undercutting its competitors’ prices by 50 per cent.

“One of our potential customers has already made the comment that PPC-1 prices are 50 per cent lower,” Mr Ernst said..

At today’s launch in Melbourne, Senator Conroy said the new cable “fit very neatly” with government plans for a super fast fibre optic broadband network, by increasing the broadband carrying capacity from overseas.

He hoped to make announcements setting out the pathway for the fibre to the node competitive bid process in the “next couple of weeks”.

“This $200 million project has the potential to improve Australia’s international communications transmission capacity and increase competition in the Australian telecommunications marketplace,” Senator Conroy said.

“It’s a little bit like the discount airline model, the idea behind it is that by bringing competition in and really starting to get people to compete with other, we hope that our competitors will come through and start to be aggressive with their pricing,” Mr Ernst tosaid.

Internet service providers Primus, Internode, iiNet, Telikom PNG and VSNL are among those already signed up on PPC-1 contracts, making the project viable, despite any price wars which may ensue.

The 6900 kilometre pipe will run through government protected zones, sometimes up to nine kilometres under the sea surface and will connect to existing infrastructure in Guam, a US territory in the western Pacific Ocean which connects to the US and Asia.

Read the Full article here, and more info here

Lifehacker has compiled a fantastic list of free and Open Source programs that it has looked at over the last year. There are some fatastic tools i urge you to check out!

Visit here

Since the price drop and lead up to Christmas, Sony’s Playstation 3 is gaining some massive momentum.

The weekly sales snapshot has the PS3 leading the Xbox 360 by 3,375 (417,534 to 414,159 respectively). Some might say that is a tiny lead and they would be right, but remember that the PS3 has been out for roughly 1/2 the time the xBox has and still punches a $300 premium over the Xbox (Australian Price) – not a bad feat!

Figures also show that the PS3 now has the lead in sales based on release time with the Xbox selling 5,570,349 units in it’s first 52 weeks and the PS3 selling 5,617,494 units (47,145 more units for those playing at home) (Source)

Again, add the handy cap of the higher price tag – even after the price drop and it really shows the Ps3 is starting to move in the right direction.

The fight is defiantly between Sony and Microsoft for now as Nintendo is eclipsing both in terms of Sales in first year – 14,292,627.

But will the Wii bubble pop? That’s a question for another post.

Pleas feel free to comment.