Universities hand out free iPhones to students

Mark O’Neill
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

In a move which will do no harm to the Apple share price, some US universities are starting to hand out free iPhones and free iPod Touches to new students.   The benefits are obvious – be seen as a cool cutting-edge university, and at the same time, encourage your students to use the devices in their education.   But not everyone is on board with the idea.

The opponents are obvious – the professors – who are concerned that their students will spend more time fiddling around with their new toys than listen to the lectures.    But they seem to be outnumbered by the supporters of the scheme.

The first supporter is obviously Apple who are keen to snag students as early adopters of Apple technology.  Get them now while they are young and hopefully they will continue to buy Apple products for the rest of their life.

The second supporter are the universities themselves (minus the grumpy professors) who want to attract more students to their campuses.   They are also exploring the possibility of making useful learning applications which students can download to their iPhones, making their devices useful learning tools.   As far as the universities are concerned, this is the way of the future so what’s the point of fighting it?   Better that they get on board and go with the flow.

The lucky students who receive a free iPhone have to pay for the contracts.   They only get the phone free, and once they have paid for the contracts, they can then connect with the campus wireless network.

So is this the way of the future?   Should universities be handing out free iPhones to incoming students?   Or are professors right to call them a distraction?

[Via Washington Post]



Firefox 3.1 to dramatically speed up JavaScript

AJAX developers, get your game on.  Firefox version 3.1 will deliver massive speed improvements for JavaScript, the language behind many of the cool interactive effects on today’s web pages.

Andreas Gal and Michael Franz of the University of California, Irvine invented a novel approach to Just-In-Time compilation called “tracing”.  Put simply:  rather than compiling complete, individual methods at runtime, they record trace paths through the code that represent loops, then compile those based on how often they’re called.  That means that the code that gets executed repeatedly is the code that gets compiled — and the compiler doesn’t need to waste time on compiling anything else.

While the theory behind this is pretty advanced, the speed improvement is certainly more than academic.  Mozilla has already built tracing optimization into SpiderMonkey (Firefox’s JavaScript interpreter), re-christening it “TraceMonkey” — with the following results:

As you can see in the graph above, a global loop is almost 40 times faster with TraceMonkey than in Firefox 3.0, and an empty loop is 20 times faster.  With a 22x performance boost on function calls, maybe we’ll see more thorough functional style in JavaScript scripts down the road (yeah, sure).

Don’t use much JavaScript, you say?  Don’t be so sure.  If you use GMail or any number of other online services, you probably run JavaScript.  Most widgets (including ad services) and plugins for WordPress and other blogging platforms use JavaScript.  If you’re curious, do a “View Page Source” in your browser and search for “javascript”.  Much of the implementation of Firefox itself is in JavaScript, as well as its extensions.  So if you’re a Firefox user, this improvement could noticeably speed up your browsing.

And just how many people use Firefox?  According to this graph, almost 19% of web surfers use either Firefox 2.0 or 3.0, up from under 14% last September.  While Internet Explorer 7 still holds a comfortable lead at 47%, we all know that those are the non-geeks who don’t count.  Maybe faster browsing in Firefox will win them over, too.

[Chart Source: Brendan’s Roadmap Updates]

New Star Wars MP3 player lets you groove to the Dark Side

Offered by online retailer Forbidden Planet international, the Star Wars MP3 player features a slick, black design, 512MB of internal memory and an integrated FM radio. Unfortunately, at $80, this piece of the Dark Side comes with a very hefty price tag. My guess is that only hardcore Star Wars geeks will be interested in the device, since similar MP3 players usually cost around $20 now.

[Via PopGadget]



Compare your salary and rate your boss at Glassdoor

By Mark O’Neill
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

Do you want to compare your salary and give the honest truth about your employers to a worldwide audience?   Well now you can at Glassdoor – and some employers are getting the shakes just thinking about it.

More than 50,000 employees from more than 11,000 companies in 80 countries have already contributed to the site, including workers from some of the world’s leading brand names.   Now the site is about to add British salaries if anyone from Britain feels like revealing what they earn.

There’s even an “advice to senior management” section if anyone feels like anonymously giving advice to their boss (“you can take your lousy pay increase and shove it up your….”)

So why not check out your company, see how much your colleagues are earning and what they are saying about the boss.   Then get your own review in!

Later on, if your boss is stomping around in a bad temper, you’ll know why.

Honesty: What if auto mechanics were always thinking out loud

Ever wondered what auto mechanics were truly thinking when explaining to you the work they did on your car? Hit the play button for the whole truth.

Virtual World gets tough on law & order

By Mark O’Neill
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

Normally a virtual world such as Second Life or Lively is seen by some as a bit of a lawless land, where you can say or do whatever you want without punishment.    I mean, who’s going to stop you, right?  But a virtual world for mobile phones called Cellufun has decided to change the rulebook by starting a “virtual justice system” for anyone who steps out of line.   Yes boys and girls, the new sheriff is coming to town!

Here’s a sampling of a few crimes that can land you in the proverbial Dog House :

  • Saying bad words such as the F Word (“gasp!”)
  • Repeated attempts to make friends with an uninterested character (such as male characters harassing female characters, or maybe the other way around?)
  • Starting a “flame war”
  • An exchange of hostile messages (probably containing more naughty words)

Defendants go before the “courthouse” and are tried by a jury of other community members.   If convicted, sentences range from being mute for 20 minutes to being banished.

I applaud the effort to rein in troublemakers and make the virtual world more trouble-free.   But you have to look at it realistically and ask yourself “how much trouble is it for banished members to start up a new account and avatar, then start again?”.  Not much trouble I’d imagine.

As this Washington Post article points out, most virtual worlds have their own self-appointed sheriffs / keepers of the peace….call them what you will, and places like Second Life have their own forms of “time out” for troublemakers (“The Corn Field”).

So do we need the management of virtual worlds creating their own official justice systems or is the present unofficial system fine the way it is?  What do you think?

Vantec’s NexStar HD Dock is Amazing

Vantec NexStar Hard Drive Dock

I’ve used various external HD enclosures in the past, but nothing quite as nice as this one. The Vantec NexStar HD Dock is a sexy-looking piece of hardware that not only supports USB 2.0, but also SATA II, so you can now enjoy the full speed offered by the SATA technology, even if your drive is plugged externally. Video Review after the jump.

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7 Random Acts of Office Violence

Some of them are staged, others are not, but one thing is for sure, everyone loves to watch these videos. Sometimes, watching others do things that we once dreamt about doing is the best way to let some steam blow out. Videos after the jump.

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Wii Music: The most boring and uber-simplistic music game of all time

If you think Guitar Hero is good, wait till you try Wii Music. Chances are, you’ll want to smash your Wii with a sledge hammer after playing for just a few minutes. Creds to the guys at Sarcastic Gamers for this awesome parody.

Microsoft AdCenter offers cheap “hairy women” keywords

By Mark O’Neill
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

The Register reported earlier today that Microsoft AdCenter was making available Excel files containing search keywords that no-one was bidding on.   So this was your chance to peruse the list, find some keywords that you liked and grab them for a bargain.

The files were here on the front page for quite a while – but no longer.   The files have now been pulled, presumably by Microsoft, for reasons unknown.    But they were there long enough for me to download one of the files to have a good laugh at some of the keywords on offer.

For example, you could be at the top of the search results for “hairy women” (if that happens to be your niche).   Or how about some of the following :

  • ‘big cracks’ (I hope they are referring to bypassing software serial numbers and not the alternative)
  • ‘fresh girls’ (have they been put in the fridge for a few days?)
  • ‘hitman pro’ (Edward Fox, you can now advertise your services on MSN Search!)
  • ‘hide my ass’ (hide it?  Is that physically possible?  Plus why would you make a website about this?)
  • ‘slap cheek virus’ (interesting name for a virus!   I can just see Wolf Blitzer in the CNN Situation Room trying to keep a straight face as he announces “The FBI has announced that a new computer virus called the ‘Slap Cheek Virus’ is running riot through peoples computers….”
  • ‘jailbreak’ (hopefully this is about jailbreaking an iPhone and not about breaking out of jail.   “Hey boys!   Want a way out of this place?  MSN Search has the blueprints!”

From looking at the list I was able to download before they were all pulled by Microsoft, it’s pretty obvious why no-one is bidding on these keywords – because they are all low quality crap! Still it was good for a laugh, so the list isn’t a total write-off.

But any webmaster with a grain of sense won’t be putting their money anywhere near these keywords – not unless they like throwing it away.