Daily Friction #221
Get all your email from different providers in Gmail, watch the ultimate gaming machine, get background for your iPod, read about the new features in Firefox 3, take an addictive challenge in a flash game, and more in today’s edition of the Daily Friction.
Software and Services
- Gmail introduces mail fetcher - Mail Fetcher allows users to access non-Gmail email accounts from within the Gmail interface. If you have a Yahoo email account, and a work email account, etc., you can simply access that email from within Gmail, using POP settings.
Hardware
- The ultimate gaming machine - Typically it takes one to three weeks (five to fifteen working days) to build each machine, depending on configuration and customization requests. Once the machine has been delivered to you, you’ll still have a personal contact inside the company.
- Its finally happened, a background on the nano - Discovered how to add a background to your iPod using the Apple Firmware.
Information
- The slow death of DRM - Steve Jobs was the first industry figure to convince the labels to offer downloads without many restrictions on copying and burning. However, the parties agreed to deploy Apple’s FairPlay DRM, which prevents songs purchased at the iTunes store from playing in any other player than the iPod because of Apple’s refusal to license FairPlay to other music services, or in turn, license competitors’ DRM technology.
- More details on Firefox 3 planned features - Regarding Gecko more tweaks for better standards support have been confirmed. Most notably, the option to save documents as PDFs is still present and even more, it is targeted for Firefox 3 Alpha 3 (expected for March 19). According to the meeting notes this functionality is already available in Macs, though I am not clear if it refers to Mac OS X PDF virtual printer or true Firefox provided PDF export. Windows Vista (Business Edition at least) already includes an XPS (Microsoft’s alternative to PDF) virtual printer, but PDF should remain the main document exchange format for years to come, so I am eagerly looking forward for the progress of this particular feature.
- Windows Vista destroys photo metadata - Bad news for photographer using about Vista. Apparently if you tag a photo’s metadata in Vista, it destroys other important metadata used by image editing apps such as Photoshop.
Bargains
- Remember: Many of these bargains may be discontinued hours or less after they are announced, check the specified price to see if you arrived on time.
- 19″ 8ms 800:1 SXGA 1280×1024 DVI-VGA LCD Monitor ($149.99).
- Sharp 720p 8ms 800:1 Contrast Ratio LCD HDTV w/DVD ($539.99), free shipping.
Fun
- Addictive challenge flash game - Move your mouse (the blue ball) to touch the blue square. The blue square will move each time it is touched. An additional small-red-ball appears with each touch of the blue square.
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