David Cameron’s Government and the dead…
First this, and then this. All in all, now is not a great time to be dead in the United Kingdom.
‘Twenty Twelve’ is back on BBC Two for a second season
I can’t believe that I missed this!
Apple announce new iPad with Retina display and 4G LTE
As expected Apple have today announced a refreshed version on the iPad calling it the iPad 3.
Display
The new device features a new retina display with improved colour saturation. The device is powered by Apple’s new A5X processor and a quad core graphics processor.
Camera
The new iPad features the same camera found in the iPhone 4S.
Video
Apple have worked to improve video capture on the iPad and have some new stabilisation technology to make your videos actually usable.
Voice Dictation
Powered by Siri you can use your voice for text entry.
4G LTE
In addition to supporting 3G around the world the new iPad will offer download speeds of up to 72mbs in North America using the 4G LTE networks.
The device boasts a battery life of 10 hours, 9 if using the 4G network and will sell for the same prices as the current lineup. Apple will ship the iPad 3 on March 16th and will begin taking pre-orders today.
Apple announce new Apple TV
Apple have announced a small update to the Apple TV today. The device has an improved user interface, works better with iCloud and 1080p playback. All for $99. Ships next week and you can order today.
Apple iPad event – Pre-show predictions
Good morning all, we’re just a few minutes away from getting started with our coverage from the Yerba Buena center this morning. Before we do however, let’s take a moment to reflect on some of the rumours.
Here is what has been doing the rounds:
iPad
- Will be called iPad3 or iPadHD
- Will have a retina display doubling the current resolution.
- Will support 4G/LTE in some markets
- Might forge the home button in favour of a haptic button
- Might be smaller
- Might have new cases
- Might ship by March 16th (I’d say sooner, today or March 13th)
- Probably retail at the same price points
- Probably still assembled by Foxconn
Apple TV
- New Apple TV might launch today
iPhone
- New iPhone might get an early launch today (unlikely)
Software
- iOS 5.1 available today
- Update to iTunes within the week
- Maybe a major update to iTunes too
Apple Store is Down
The Apple Store is down. No other online store in the world needs to take their website down to update a few pages and something tells me that, technically, neither does Apple. It all adds to the drama.
Live blog: March 7th Apple iPad event
Join me here tomorrow when I will be live-blogging the Apple keynote event. It is widely rumoured that this event will see the launch of the next generation iPad by the name of iPad 3 or iPad HD. Also floating around the rumour circuit is an updated or entirely new replacement for the Apple TV.
As always I will be tweeting on the AppleLive Twitter account.
When to check back?
The Apple keynote is timed for 10am Pacific Time on Wednesday March 7th 2012.
East Coast: 1 pm
United Kingdom: 6 pm
Western Europe: 7pm
Live Blog
McGillLeaks publish cache of secret DAR files [Updated]
A group going by the name McGillLeaks have today published a cache of secret documents created by McGill University’s ‘Development and Alumni Relations‘ department.
On their website, McGillLeaks state that their aims in this disclosure are:
- to give a ‘clear account’ of the universities inner workings
- to expose the University’s relationship with the private sector
- and to create transparency within the University
The first release, of allegedly many, appears to be a number of lists of past and potential donors. A number of detailed donor profiles containing personal information, commercially sensitive information estimates of wealth have been released.
While the release of these documents is unfortunate for the University creating detailed profiles of key prospects is nothing but a standard operating procedure in the philanthropy ‘industry’.
As one commentator on Twitter wrote:
Certainly, the most controversial think in #McGillLeaks is that the document "Active Alumni in England" also includes Wales. Tsk, tsk, tsk.
@t_and_sympathy
Tea & Sympathy
The bottom line is that the actions from McGillLeaks are, to date, entirely incompatible with McGill’s policy of Safe Disclosure. In fact I would be hard-pressed to say the disclosure is anything other than malicious in intent.
McGill are yet to issue a statement on McGillLeaks.
Update 1: In addition to today’s release the McGillLeaks website has also posted an ‘insurance’ file. Insurance files are typical an encrypted copy of *everything* the leaking organisation has. By distributing this file from the onset, McGillLeaks have some protection from the suspension of their web-hosting.
If their site is forced offline, McGillLeaks can use other channels to release decryption keys and publish the remainder of their information.
An interesting point to note is that the insurance file is only 3 MB larger than the release that was made today. Either McGillLeaks have only 3 MB of additional documents or a total of 120 MB of documents. In all McGillLeaks could end up being a one hit wonder.
Update 2 at 01:00hrs, Tue 6 Mar: The McGill Daily and others have been contacted by lawyers representing McGill asking that the sites remove links to the McGillLeaks website.
Update 3 at 17:00hrs, Tue 6 Mar: Tuesday morning, the files linked to from the McGillLeaks website have been removed by their respective file-hosts.
Looks the the storm in a teacup that was #McGillLeaks is over for now as McGill lawyers act to remove files.
@rosscbrown
Ross C Brown
How to show ‘hidden’ files in Mac OS Lion
Today I needed to change a configuration file for a game I wanted to play on my new Mac OS Lion install.
Doing so is really simple:
-
Open up Terminal
-
Paste in defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -bool true and press return
You’ll need to restart finder before the changes come into effect:
-
Open terminal
-
Paste in killall Finder and press return
Finder will then restart and you’ll see all the hidden files on your system.
To stop showing the hidden files and folders repete the steps above using the command defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles -bool false.
Montreal weather warnings by SMS message
What?
Environment Canada weather warnings sent as SMS messages to my iPhone
How?
I took the RSS feed from Environment Canada and set it up to post each update to Twitter. I then used Twitter’s SMS functionality to forward the updates to my phone.
Follow ‘WeatherWarnMTL’ on Twitter now!
- Follow WeatherWarnMTL on Twitter
- Turn on ‘mobile notifications’ from WeatherWarnMTL
- Sit back, relax and wait for the next winter storm!
Why bother?
When I started telling friends and family that I was considering moving to Montreal just before the winter, one item of advice that kept coming up was to keep an eye on the weather. They told me I was about to experience the worst winter of my life and only by the end of the season would I have learned how best to dress for the cold.
Taking heed of this advice, the first thing I did when I arrived in October was to source out a reliable weather forecast. The Weather Channel and Yahoo! Weather on my iPhone proved pretty useful in the early days but neither of these two services I found to be particularly useful in grabbing my attention when the forecast was turning nasty.
What I wanted was Environment Canada weather warnings pushed to my phone and my computer.
The weather warnings from Environment Canada are posted to a webpage that also includes an RSS feed so I could easily get almost-instant updates on my Mac. Getting updates to my iPhone was another challenge.
I first tried a number of RSS client apps for the iPhone but didn’t find any effective at ‘pushing’ updates to my phone. I then decided to use Twitter to import the RSS feed from Environment Canada, strip out irrelevant updates and post the warnings only to the Twitter timeline. Once this was done I want set up my cellphone for use with Twitter and subscribed to ‘mobile notifications’ from the account.
Now I receive an almost-instant notification when nasty weather is heading towards the city as well as an ‘all clear’ message. Overall I’d say they system works pretty well. That said I have noticed that Environment Canada can be a little overzealous with the warnings at times.