Computing

Tuesday - August 21, 2007

Skype didn't deliver on their promise of an explanation of the outage

On Saturday, Skype promised to give (on Monday) "a more detailed explanation of what happened" that caused a worldwide loss of Skype service that lasted nearly 2 days. They failed to give a convincing explanation.

Posted at 12:47 AM Read More

Friday - August 17, 2007

Skype has been broken for a day and a half (and continues to be flakey)

For the past 35 hours or so, Skype has not been available to many people and the people running Skype have been vague about what the problem is. The only explanation that has appeared on their "Heartbeat" blog is: "This problem occurred because of a deficiency in an algorithm within Skype networking software. This controls the interaction between the user's own Skype client and the rest of the Skype network."

Posted at 10:09 AM Read More

Saturday - July 21, 2007

iPhone was not to blame for Duke University's network problems this week

When Duke University started having network problems early this week, Duke's Office of Information Technology rushed to blame the new iPhones on campus. It has now been confirmed that the problem was caused by a faulty Cisco wireless access point.

Posted at 02:11 AM Read More

Saturday - January 20, 2007

Distributed Computing: Folding@home

When my computer is idle its available cycles help researchers at Stanford University understand how protein folding is related to diseases such as Alzheimer's, Huntington's, Parkinson's and many cancers. You can help by running Folding@Home on your personal computer.

Posted at 01:29 PM Read More

Tuesday - December 19, 2006

Cool Mac OS X Software: VirtueDesktops

Apple is still months away from releasing a version of Mac OS X with virtual desktops (Spaces), but you can have them now with the free VirtueDesktops app.

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Thursday - December 14, 2006

Cool Mac OS X Software: Keyword Assistant

Keyword Assistant is a free plugin for iPhoto that simplifies, and actually makes practical, the addition of keywords to photos.

Posted at 11:50 AM Read More

Monday - November 20, 2006

Space shuttle's 30-year-old computer accelerates launch

New Scientist reported that the shuttle Discovery's 30-year-old computer may not recognize the change from 2006 to 2007; as a result, the next launch is being scheduled to avoid having the shuttle in orbit on New Year's day.

Posted at 02:12 AM Read More

Thursday - November 16, 2006

Cool Mac OS X App: Skype (beta) with SMS for Mac

Skype 2.5 Beta for the Mac is available with SMS messaging and 10-way conference calling, according to the Skype web site.

Posted at 01:42 AM Read More

Tuesday - November 14, 2006

Zune's larger than iPod LCD is not necessarily a good thing

Microsoft's new Zune device is touted as having a bigger LCD display than Apple's iPod; but they have the same number of pixels.

Posted at 03:43 AM Read More

Monday - November 06, 2006

IE losing market share while Firefox and Safari gain

Market Share reported that Firefox had a 12.96% share of the browser market in October, an increase of 0.5% over its September share.

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Tuesday - October 17, 2006

Cool Web Software: LibraryThing

LibraryThing.com lets you conveniently create a catalog of your book collection. It's free for a collection of no more than 200 books.

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Monday - October 16, 2006

Cool Firefox Software: Amazon Pittsburgh Libraries Linky

The Amazon Pittsburgh Libraries Linky is a Greasemonkey script that inserts status information from the Allegheny County Library catalog into book listings from Amazon.com.

Posted at 11:12 AM Read More

Thursday - September 07, 2006

Facebook.com sparks huge backlash from users

There is a growing campaign among the users of facebook.com to get the site owners to reverse the changes made to the site a few days ago, in particular, to remove the "News Feed" and "Mini Feed" features that were added. These features are widely seen as an invasion of privacy.

Posted at 02:42 AM Read More

Thursday - September 07, 2006

How the Apple iMac has improved in 16 months

In May of 2005 I bought a 17" iMac with a 2GHz G5 CPU, 2GB RAM, 250GB HD, SuperDrive, Airport Extreme, Bluetooth and an AppleCare extended warranty. It cost me about $1925, not including tax. Today, I could get a similar 17" iMac for $1444 and it would have a 2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo CPU and a built-in iSight camera.

Posted at 02:07 AM Read More

Monday - September 04, 2006

Cool Mac OS X Software: ClamXav

ClamXav is a free Mac OS X interface to the open source virus scanning sofware ClamAV. It includes a Sentry app that runs in the background and scans new files in the folders you specify. You can set it up to scan all incoming mail.

Posted at 02:14 PM Read More

Friday - May 19, 2006

Cool Mac OS X Software: iCal Weather Forecasts

You can subscribe to weather forecasts from Weather Underground in iCal.

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Sunday - April 16, 2006

Carnegie Mellon admissions site nominated for webby award

Carnegie Mellon's Undergraduate Admission site was nominated for a Webby Award in the School category.

Posted at 11:11 AM Read More

Saturday - April 15, 2006

BOINC exceeds 400 TeraFLOPS

The BOINC (Berkeley Open Intrastructure for Network Computing) distributed computing project reports that it is currently achieving a sustained processing rate of over 400 TeraFLOPS. The world's fastest supercomputer on the TOP500 list for November 2005 has a theoretical peak performance of 367 TeraFLOPS.

Posted at 02:49 PM Read More