Perm url with updates: http://xahlee.org/comp/blog.html
Discovered Google computer programing style guide. It has style guide for lang including: C++, JavaScript, Objective-C, Python, XML. At http://code.google.com/p/google-styleguide/.
The ones am interested are:
I spent 30 min to read the js one. Haven't finished yet. Very good reading. If you are not a expert of the lang, you learn something about the lang too.
I'll be reading them all.
Perm url with updates: http://xahlee.org/emacs/emacs_zap_gremlins.html
Xah Lee, 2011-03-07
This page shows a little function that changes unicode string into ASCII. For example “passé” becomes “passe”, “voilà” becomes “voila”.
When refactoring my elisp code last week, i split out this little function. It turns unicode chars into roughly equivalent ASCII ones. I needed this because the open source dictionary will choke on words with unicode chars. (See: Emacs Dictionary Lookup ◇ Problems of Open Source Dictionaries.)
I remember, in the popular Mac editor BBEdit i used 10 years ago before emacs, there's such a command in the menu called “zap gremlins”. Though, i'm not aware there's one in emacs, but might be. Anyway, here's the code:
(defun asciify-string (inputstr) "Make unicode string into equivalent ASCII ones. Todo: this command is not exhaustive." (let () (setq inputstr (replace-regexp-in-string "á\\|à\\|â\\|ä" "a" inputstr)) (setq inputstr (replace-regexp-in-string "é\\|è\\|ê\\|ë" "e" inputstr)) (setq inputstr (replace-regexp-in-string "í\\|ì\\|î\\|ï" "i" inputstr)) (setq inputstr (replace-regexp-in-string "ó\\|ò\\|ô\\|ö" "o" inputstr)) (setq inputstr (replace-regexp-in-string "ú\\|ù\\|û\\|ü" "u" inputstr)) inputstr ))
You might improve this code, as right now it's puny. It doesn't consider many other unicode chars. Here's the common non-english letters: ÀÁÂÃÄÅÆ Ç ÈÉÊË ÌÍÎÏ ÐÑ ÒÓÔÕÖ ØÙÚÛÜÝÞß àáâãäåæç èéêë ìíîï ðñòóôõö øùúûüýþÿ. You might also consider changing unicode bullet “•” to “*”, and others such as “→” to “->”, “≥” to “>=”, etc.
Depending on how you want the function to go, you can think of its primary
purpose as removing all non-ascii chars. So, at the end, you simply delete any
non-ascii char that hasn't been transcoded. (use the
emacs regex
[:nonascii:]) Or, you can consider its primary purpose as transcoding. This means, leave untranslated unicode chars as is.
Also, right now it's a function that takes in a string. You might also create a version that works on region, or better yet, works on text selection if there's one, else on current word (or line, or paragraph, or buffer, your design call). (For how, see: Emacs Lisp: Using thing-at-point.)
Or, perhaps you know someone has written this somewhere?
When looking at my code, another thing that piqued my interest is that, notice how the algorithm is of sequential nature? The paradigm is similar to what's called “accumulator” or “iteration”. Recently, i watched Guy Steele's talk on parallel programing (See: Guy Steele on Parallel Programing.) and learned that the iteration style is very difficult for compiler to automatically generate parallel code.
A better way to write it for parallel programing, is to “map” a char-transform function to the string. (in elisp, a string datatype is a type of array datatype. Array and List are both “sequence”. The “mapcar”'s second argument can be any “sequence” datatype.) It will probably become slower, but it'll be good when someday emacs lisp becomes Scheme Lisp or something.
Perm url with updates: http://xahlee.org/funny/motorolla_vs_apple_1984.html
Xah Lee, 2011-03-06
“Welcome to the new decade: Java is a restricted platform, Google is evil, Apple is a monopoly and Microsoft are the underdogs” — Phil Nash 2010-08-14
This is just too good a commercial. Motorola pokes fun at Apple.
“Motorola - Empower the People”
Notice that ubiquitous white iPad earphone? That's Apple.
Here's Apple's TV ad in 1984.
Apple's 1984 commercial.
In the 1980s, the Big Brother in computing industry alludes to IBM.
Nineteen Eighty-Four is dystopian novel by a George Orwell. It brought us the term Big Brother — a government that practices total surveillance. For a short essay by Orwell, see: Politics and the English Language.
A fantastic scifi movie that depicts Big Brother in a similar way is Brazil (film) (1985), directed by Terry Gilliam. amazon
Student Who Found GPS Device On His Car Due To Reddit Comment Sues The FBI (2011-03-04) By Mike Masnick. @ Source www.techdirt.com
Here's a comment by the well know computer security expert Bruce Schneier.
The FBI is Tracking Whom? (2010-10-13) By Bruce Schneier @ Source www.schneier.com
Time mag has a article about a related issue:
The Government Can Use GPS to Track Your Moves (2010-08-25) By Adam Cohen. @ Source www.time.com
Perm url with updates: http://xahlee.org/js/Google_shut_your_account.html
Xah Lee, 2011-03-05
Yesterday, Google shut down my account for suspecting “unusual activity” for about 4 hours. On 2011-03-03 from ~4 pm to ~8 pm.
I have no idea why. I went to bed at 3pm to take a few hours sleep. I woke around 8pm. When i went to my gmail tab, it requires me to login. (usually i don't have to, because i didn't logout.) After i type my gmail and password, then it says my account has been suspended for “unusual activity”. It provides me a option to type my phone number, so google will send me a message and i can verify that. I was reluctant in giving my phone number. After about 10 min reading about Google help, i did, and things went normal again.
I am quite unhappy about this. When i checked my Google blogger stats, i realized that Google had shut down my blogger as well, because the stat were flat in the duration. And, i think this also means that Google had shut down all Google services that are associated with my account. e.g. AdSense, Analytics, ... etc. I couldn't verify this in Analytics because i'm not sure there's a way to show stat by hours.
If i wasn't able to resolve this shut down problem, it's gonna be a huge headache. If my Google account were gone, that means i have to change my email address from some 10 other services (e.g. banks, paypal, etc.) that i have to spend hours to figure out. I have to notify friends or any business associates about email change. This also means, during the time when my account is shut, my AdSense is dead, Google Analytics is dead. I don't know if during the time email send to my gmail account (xahlee @ gmail.com) were bounced.
Most importantly, but luckily, i have a backup copy of my emails on my PC, because i've set up IMAP so i get a copy of my emails on my PC. (if you haven't done so, you should. Go to your account preferences, set up POP3 or IMAP to download your emails. If you don't have a email app, download the free Mozilla Thunderbird. I use that.)
This is really not cool. Also, Google now knows my mobile phone too. There doesn't seem any option other than entering your phone number. I usually don't even have a phone number. My mobile phone happened to working. (I don't use phone much. It's pay-as-you-go phone. It expires in about 2 days.)
Here's one of the Google's help page about locked account i found now: Source mail.google.com. (i don't think it's the same page i saw linked from the from the Account Disabled notification page.) Here's a quote:
Unusual account activity includes, but is not limited to:
- 1. Receiving, deleting, or downloading large amounts of mail via POP or IMAP in a short period of time. If you're getting the error message, 'Lockdown in Sector 4,' you should be able to access Gmail again after waiting 24 hours.
- 2. Sending a large number of undeliverable messages (messages that bounce back).
- 3. Using file-sharing or file-storage software, browser extensions, or third party software that automatically logs in to your account.
- 4. Leaving multiple instances of Gmail open.
- 5. Browser-related issues. Please note that if you find your browser continually reloading while attempting to access your Inbox, it's probably a browser issue, and it may be necessary to clear your browser's cache and cookies.
If you go to http://mail.google.com/support/ and search for “account disabled” or “account locked”, you get many results. Apparently, many people have experienced this. (it shoud be noted that some of them could be actually from spammers).
I don't know what might be the “unusual activity” that Google detected. Possibly someone else broke my account and did bad things. Though i don't have reason to think that was true. The only thing i can think of, is that yesterday i posted a message to comp.lang.python, which contained 5 links to my website xahlee.org about keyboard and unicode issues. I suspect perhaps more than 1 person may have flagged my post as spam. The post is here: Source groups.google.com. Though, my post isn't flame or in bad netiquette, so i'm not sure it's the cause.
Gmail has a feature that lets you view the IP address and location of your past access. It's at the bottom, that says “Last account activity: 0 minutes ago at this IP (76.126.112.84). Details”. Click on the “Details”. Though, it seems only to track 4 hours back (or just last 10 access). By now, it's about 8 hours from the time my account is re-opened, so it's too late to use it to check if anyone is accessing my account from another IP address. I wished i've done this earlier.
Here's a post from Google on this: Why is Google asking for my phone number? (2010-10-17) By Mike CH. @ Source www.google.com. Some quote:
Why does Google ask for this?
It is an anti-spam system. Here's how it works.
Each phone number can be used to re-activate accounts a small number of times before it won't be accepted anymore, and each Gmail account can send to a limited number of recipients every day.
Because most people don't buy things from spammers, they need to work with lots of accounts in order to send enough email to make money. If we think an account might be being used by a spammer, we lock it until the owner provides a phone number. So, spammers need to have access to a large quantity of phone numbers to unlock all their accounts. This is very expensive for them but pretty easy for most regular people. In most cases it is expensive enough for the spammer that it becomes unprofitable for them to spam, so they give up.
I don't want to provide my phone number, that's personal.
You can provide any phone number that has not been "used up". It does not have to be your own. Even payphones can work.
I don't want to provide any phone number at all.
You can follow the instructions on the verification page to contact support. However it may take us some time to get to your ticket, as these cases are lower priority than people who have been genuinely locked out without any way back in. We strongly encourage you to go through the phone verification process - many people have already done it, and we keep the numbers used private.
(Note: If you got a EMAIL telling you your account is GOING TO BE locked and asking you for password, that is SCAM, not from Google.)
I just changed my password. I hope this doesn't happen again.
Perm url with updates: http://xahlee.org/kbd/creating_apl_keyboard_layout.html
Xah Lee, 2011-03-04
This page shows you how to create a APL (programming language) keyboard layout, on Windows or Mac OS X. Or, creating a math symbols layout for computer languages such as Fortress, Scheme Lisp, Haskell. (See also: Unicode Support in Ruby, Perl, Python, javascript, Java, Emacs Lisp, Mathematica.)
APL keyboard layout. Source en.wikipedia.org
Unicode has the complete set of APL chars.
' ( ) + , - . / : ; < = > ? [ ]
\ _ ¨ ¯ × ÷ ← ↑ → ↓ ∆ ∇ ∘ ∣ ∧ ∨
∩ ∪ ∼ ≠ ≤ ≥ ≬ ⊂ ⊃ ⌈ ⌊ ⊤ ⊥ ⋆ ⌶ ⌷
⌸ ⌹ ⌺ ⌻ ⌼ ⌽ ⌾ ⌿ ⍀ ⍁ ⍂ ⍃ ⍄ ⍅ ⍆ ⍇
⍈ ⍉ ⍊ ⍋ ⍌ ⍍ ⍎ ⍏ ⍐ ⍑ ⍒ ⍓ ⍔ ⍕ ⍖ ⍗
⍘ ⍙ ⍚ ⍛ ⍜ ⍝ ⍞ ⍟ ⍠ ⍡ ⍢ ⍣ ⍤ ⍥ ⍦ ⍧
⍨ ⍩ ⍪ ⍫ ⍬ ⍭ ⍮ ⍯ ⍰ ⍱ ⍲ ⍳ ⍴ ⍵ ⍶ ⍷
⍸ ⍹ ⍺ ⎕ ○
APL2 keyboard layout. Source en.wikipedia.org
For other chars, such as λ ∑ ⊕ ƒ ⇒ ↦ used by APL derivatives, or Fortress, or other languages, see: Math Symbols in Unicode ◇ Arrows in Unicode ◇ Computing Symbols in Unicode.
First you need to have unicode fonts. See: Best Fonts for Unicode.
if you are a emacs user, you might use Math Symbols Input Mode (xmsi-mode).
Or, you can create your own rather easily. There are few ways depending on how you want the input to work.
You can insert unicode by abbrev, such as typing “alpha” auto expands to “α” or “rarrow” auto becomes “→”. Sample code at: Using Emacs's Abbrev Mode for Abbreviation. (one flaw with this solution is that emacs abbrev only allow sequence of english letters to be used as input. So, you cannot create “->” as abbrev for “→”.)
Or, you can setup systematic keys in emacs. e.g. hold down Win key and any letter becomes the ones in APL keyboard. See: Emacs: Remapping Keys Using key-translation-map and Emacs Custom Keybinding to Enhance Productivity.
If you are on OS X, you can also setup system-wide config to enter complete custom designed unicode layout. Super easy too (though there are a few problem with certain key combo, because they are low level that Apple don't want changed). See: Creating Keyboard Layout in Mac OS X and Technical Note TN2056: Installable Keyboard Layouts @ Source developer.apple.com.
Here are some linux solutions for APL language. I haven't tried them.
Here's a project that has the APL layout made for Mac and Windows, i haven't tried it: http://code.google.com/p/apl-keyboard-layouts/.
On Windows, you might use The Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator. See: Keyboard Layout ＆ Key Macro tools for Windows. However, i never tried it.
Discovered “artist-mode”. It's a mode that let you draw ascii pictures with the mouse.
See: http://xahlee.org/emacs/emacs_string-rectangle_ascii-art.html
Perm url with updates: http://xahlee.org/Periodic_dosage_dir/sanga_pemci/Jay_Chou_twilight_chapter_7.html
Xah Lee, 2011-03-03
Fantastic song. Jay Chou's Twilight's Chapter 7 (周杰倫 — 夜的第七章) (Jay Chou).
Title: 夜的第七章 (Twilight's Chapter 7) Date: 2006 Album: Still Fantasy Singer: 周杰倫 (Jay Chou) Lyrics: 黃俊郎 Music: 周杰倫 (Jay Chou) Arrangement: 鍾興民/林邁可 (Michael Lin)
1983年小巷 12月晴朗 夜的第七章 打字機繼續推向 接近事實的那下一行 石楠煙斗的霧 飄向枯萎的樹 沉默的對我哭訴 貝克街旁的圓形廣場 盔甲騎士臂上 鳶尾花的徵章 微亮 無人馬車聲響 深夜的拜訪 邪惡在維多利亞的月光下 血色的開場 消失的手槍 焦黑的手仗 融化的蠟像 誰不在場 珠寶箱上 符號的假象 矛盾通往 他堆砌的死巷 證據被完美埋葬 那嘲弄蘇格蘭警場的嘴角上揚 如果邪惡 是華麗殘酷的樂章 (那麼正義 是深沉無奈的惆悵) 它的終場 我會 親手寫上 (那我就點亮 在灰燼中的微光) 晨曦的光 風乾最後一行憂傷 (那麼雨滴 會洗淨黑暗的高牆) 黑色的墨 染上安詳 (散場燈關上 紅色的布幕下降) 事實只能穿向 沒有腳印的土壤 突兀的細微花香 刻意顯眼的服裝 每個人為不同的理由 戴著面具說謊 動機也只有一種名字那叫做欲望 fafafafadefafa dedefafadefafa 越過人性的沼澤 誰真的可以不被弄髒 我們可以 遺忘 原諒 但必須知道真相 被移動過的鐵床 那最後一塊圖終於拼上 我聽見腳步聲 預料的軟皮鞋跟 他推開門晚風晃了煤油燈 一陣 打字機停在兇手的名稱我轉身 西敏寺的夜空 開始沸騰 在胸口綻放 豔麗的死亡 我品嚐這最後一口甜美的真相 微笑回想正義只是安靜的伸張 提琴在泰晤士 如果邪惡 是華麗殘酷的樂章 (腳步聲預料的軟皮鞋跟 他推開門晚風晃了煤油燈 一陣) 它的終場 我會 親手寫上 (打字機停在兇手的名稱我轉身 西敏寺的夜空 開始沸騰) 黑色的墨 染上安詳 如果邪惡 是華麗殘酷的樂章 它的終場 我會 親手寫上 晨曦的光 風乾最後一行憂傷 黑色的墨 染上安詳
Here's a quick lousy translation
In a alley, December morning, 1983 twilight's chapter 7, the typewriter pushes forward near the truth in the next line the pipe smoke wisps over that shriveled tree tells me in tears Baker Street Portman Square, armored knights Irise on badges, shines noises of empty carriage, moves at night darkness lurks under the moonlit Victoria, redness sets in the gun that's gone, the black cane the melted wax model, the empty witness the jewelry box, the fake symbolism the paradoxical passage, the constructed deadend evidence buried in perfection the smug at Scotland officer if evil, is the grandeur of cruelty (then justice, is the helpless melancholy) i would personally write its finale (then let me kindle, the dying light) morning light, dried the last line of anguish (then raindrops, would wash the wall of darkness) black ink dyes tranquility (lights out at the end, red curtain drops) facts passed that soil without a trace the sudden faint fragrance, that eye-catching costume everyone lies, for different reasons the motives are all the same, called desire fafafafadefafa dedefafadefafa who can keep clean, when passing the human mire we can, forget, forgive but must know the truth; that iron bed has been moved that last piece finally came i heard footsteps, from that leather shoe i expected he pushed open the the door, breeze disturbed the kerosene lamp typewriter stopped at the murderer's name, i turn around the night of Westminster, begin to seeth blooming on my chest, the sublime death i savor the last taste of sweet truth with a smile, i recall that justice is the extension of quietness violin at Thames [repeat refrain]
“Jay Chou — Twilight's Chapter 7”
Note, “Twilight's Chapter 7” isn't a movie. It's just the music video.
The female voice is from Penny (潘儿), of music group Room19.
This song is themed on Sherlock Holmes's detective story. Note that Sherlock is a fictionl character created by the author Arthur Conan Doyle (1859‒1930). (for some reason, i always hated the name Sherlock Holmes, and never find any attraction towards detective stories. I find the whole thing repulsive. I detest the icon of a detective with a magnifying glass. Can't really explain why.) Sherlock lives in a specific fictional address at a real place Baker Street. Also interesting to note is Blue rose. There's no natural blue colored rose, but people dye it blue, and recently some genetic engineering have been tried. The song also seems to hint on Jack the Ripper, which is a name given to multiple murder cases. The murderer seems to like to cut his victum's chest open.
The 貝克街旁的圓形廣場 might be Trafalgar Square not Portman Square.
I like this song, for its music, and the dark theme. In particular, this refrain sung by the female:
if evil, is the grandeur of cruelty i would personally write its finale morning light, dried the last line of anguish black ink dyes tranquility
Some source: Source baike.baidu.com
“Jay Chou — Twilight's Chapter 7” amazon
FSF made a declaration on Facebook. See: Mark Zuckerberg is TIME Magazine's Person of the Year? Where's the “dislike” button? (2011-02-03) by Matt Lee et al. @ fsf.org.
See also: Facebook's Ethics.
this page's content is removed due to possible incompatibilities with Google's AdSense. For the content, goto http://xahlee.org/sex/masturbation.html
Much improved my code for “get-selection-or-unit”. Also, a “unit-at-cursor” function is created. This is separated out because sometimes you want to get the thing at point, without caring whether there's a text selection. For the code, see: Emacs Lisp: Using thing-at-point.
Discovered a new ergonomic layout, for French, called bvofrak. See: Dvorak, Maltron, Colemak, NEO, Bépo, Turkish-F, Keyboard Layouts Fight!. (thanks to Hugues Dumez.)
It's interesting that on their site bvofrak.blogspot.com they mentioned this (translated by Google):
Spent the past 5 hours refactoring elisp code in my .emacs. Not exactly thrilled. it's the kinda work that has no immediate benefit, but potentially disruptive. The software proverb goes: “if it ain't broken, don't fix it.”.
I'd say it's only half complete. But am tired of it at this (point). Actually, about every 4 months in past 4 years i spend several hours refactoring stuff there. (not counting the time adding stuff there) As the functions pile up, more time went into it. As my elisp kungfu increases, more is there to be refactored.
well, today, most work done is to replace “thing-at-point” by get-selection-or-unit. But alone the way, saw old code, and can't help to clean it.
Though, my strategy towards “.emacs” is still basically “don't bother unless you absolutely have to”. Organize Your “dot emacs” Init File in 5 Minutes.
“2009 ABC Television Interview with Paisley Beebe in Real Life”
In case you don't know, Paisley BeeBe (sl name) runs a TV show in sl. Usually interviewing people. I've attended a couple. First in around 2008.
Very cool html5 demo for web developers: http://slides.html5rocks.com/. (advanced. Best viewed with Google Chrome)
Perm url with updates: http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/sgi_logo.html
Xah Lee, 2011-03-01
Silicon Graphics's logo.
This logo is designed by Scott Kim. Scott Kim website.
Silicon Graphics's famous logo is a corner perspective of a tubed cube. The key behind this successful logo lies in the illusion it imparts. A cube appears hexagon when viewed from a corner.
sgi logo etched microscopically on cpu.
Computer rendered sgi logos, by Paul Bourke.
A spinning sgi cube. The SGI cube is sgi's hallmark and trademark. Its perspective illusion and rendering symbolizes the company's craft. In early 1990s, SGI is regarded as the king of computer graphics.
Idiotic sgi new logo.
Around 1998 SGI is bleeding to death, with graphic CAD systems happily running on cheaper but not slower Windows/Intel and Mac's PowerPC chips. They changed their logo to a stylized SGI and dropped the iconic cube. Later years, due to complaints, they re-adopted the old cube logo.
Real sculpture of the SGI logo, at its headquarter in Mountain View, California, USA. The plate at the bottom (not shown) reads: “In Celebration of 20 Years of innovation. Dedicated by Dr. James Clark Founder, Silicon Graphics, Inc. on August 12, 2002. Sculpture previously installed at SG Manufacturing S.A., Switzerland”.
Perm url with updates: http://xahlee.org/js/google_chrome.html
Xah Lee, 2010-12, 2011-03-01
holy cow! Google Chrome is really changing the landscape of what web browser is.
In Google Chrome, If you click on a mailto link (e.g. mailto:xah@xahlee.org), it'll popup a window that looks just like a normal email app's compose mail window. The mailto uri scheme has pretty much been dead since mid 2000s, but with this Chrome feature, it might revive.
Google is quite powerful today. Not only having own browser, OS (Google Chrome OS), mobile OS (Android), and gazillion web services, but invents its own protocols.
This is old news, but see SPDY. SPDY is a protocol intended to replace HTTP. The interesting part is that it's not just a proposed protocol, but actually used daily when you use Google Chrome to access Google's websites and services. What this means is that, probably sooner or later, others will adopt. Quote:
SPDY is a research project in TCP-based application-level protocol for transporting web content. It is proposed by Google as a replacement for HTTP.
The goal of SPDY is to reduce web page load time. This is achieved by prioritizing and multiplexing the transfer of several files so that only one connection per client is required. All transmissions are SSL encrypted and gzip compressed by design (in contrast to HTTP, the headers are compressed too). Moreover, servers may hint or even push content instead of awaiting individual requests for each resource of a web page.
Google Chrome utilizes SPDY when communicating with Google services, such as Google Search, Gmail, Chrome sync and when serving Google's ads. Google acknowledges that the use of SPDY is enabled in the communication between Chrome and Google's SSL-enabled servers. SPDY sessions can be inspected in Chrome at the special URL 〔chrome://net-internals/#events&q=type:SPDY_SESSION%20is:active〕.
Check out that special url in Chrome.
It's not a wonder, that Google Chrome is faster in general. (among quite a few other reasons.)
Been working with unicode a lot in the past 5 years. (For 30+ articles, see: Xah's Unicode Tutorial.)
Here's what i think of browser quality with respect to unicode support: From best to worst: Google Chrome and Opera. Then, Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer 8. (All are current public versions of browsers on Windows, as of 2010-12.)
Note that unicode support in browsers have improved very much in the past 5 years.
Google made a fractal application, based on Google Maps, at juliamap.googlelabs.com.
It's written using Javascript using Web Workers.
Though, am rather disappointed. When you zoom in just a few steps, the resolution does not automatically increase enough to get crispy edges.
Much better are some dedicated fractal apps. See: Great Fractal Software.
For a basic explanation of the mandelbrot set, see: Mandelbrot Set Explained (no complex number needed).
Google recently launched Chrome Web Store, at: https://chrome.google.com/webstore.
The idea is similar to Apple's hugely successful iPhone iPad App Store. Apple's App Store more or less started a revolution in selling software.
Anyone can write a app and sell it there. This is a new channel for money making. A number of programers has become rich over-night, selling millions of copies of their apps. A lot programers have quit their day-jobs to dedicate their time to their own software. See for example:
One major problem Apple solved is software piracy, by a combination of hardware and centralized distribution channel. If you are a programer, unless you are a big company with lots money to invest in a distribution and encryption scheme, your software will be piraceted freely. (and even those from big corps are almost always in piracy networks)
Apple solved the piracy problem also psychologically. The iPhone and iPad you paid for. When you see some app you want, somehow you don't feel it's like traditional software and ask “where do i get a copy”? You simply just buy it right on your iPhone. See: Theodore Gray: Future of Text Book, iPad, Education.
If you look at some of the apps, they are quite amazing. They use html5 tech. They usually just work in Chrome at the moment. Even though the tech is always open source, but other very competitive browsers Firefox, Opera, Safari, usually doesn't do it well yet.
For example, see this WebGL demo from Google. http://bodybrowser.googlelabs.com/body.html (use Chrome to view.)
Here's all the other WebGL apps: http://www.chromeexperiments.com/webgl.
Here's site from Google demo html5 tech, for developers. HTML5 truely has lots nice features geared for web apps. http://slides.html5rocks.com/.
20thingsilearned.com. A fancily designed website, that is a kinda educational article for the general public that teaches them what is the web and web technologies, together with some opinions mixed in. A sorta propaganda, from Google. However, it demonstrates what html5 can do.
I think that Google Chrome will be the most popular browser before the end of 2012.
I use 5 browsers DAILY. I'll have to say, Google Chrome today is already the best, all things considered. (i rate Firefox second, Opera 3rd, Safari 4th, IE8 last. (all rating based on my experience on Windows versions))
IE9 Beta is making some noises recently. (to be released probably in a few months) But even if IE9 is fully out today, i think it still have at least a year dev time to catchup with other browsers.
Posts
All Comments
