And the Plot Thickens: Windows Applications on MacOS X86

By adapting the Wine compatibility layer for Windows, a method to run windows programs under OS X for Intel has been developed. Could this be Apple's plot behind releasing a not-so-secure developers’ kit? Porting Wine to OSx86 requires serious tweaking, which still results in very unstable programs, work such as this opens a range of possibilities in the future. Since future versions of OS X will be built around the same Intel Processors that power Windows. Will we be able to run Windows apps as if they were native to OS X? Or perhaps the other way around? Will be able to double, or triple boot? It would be Apple’s dream come true if they’re able to actually have all Windows Applications available run under Mac OS X NATIVELY! I wonder what Bill Gates have to say about this, buy Apple Stock? More Here

The Palestinian Lyrical Front: A Step in the right direction

It’s times like these that I wish I poses a journalist’s writing skills and reach to describe the revolution taking place on the Palestinian end, for decades Palestinians have been outgunned and never outspoken, but not anymore. Armed with powerful words, singing in Arabic, English and Hebrew with topics ranging from history and politics to love; The Palestinian Lyrical Front, comprising of 10 rap artists/bands aims to break the silence with Slingshot, a Hip Hop documentary focusing on the struggle and daily life of Palestinians living in Gaza, the west bank and Israel. Their willingness to experiment with a new medium, the absence of religious scrapping, and the ability to differentiate between Zionism and Judaism is awe inspiring. These kids know their & peace’s enemy. Here’s a sample of their lyrics حرام يا شعبي حرام, عشان جدادنا اذا بشفونا بتألبوا بالقبور كيف هم اخترعوا الصفر واحفادهم صاروا صفور For the benefit of non-arab readers this means (it’s a pity how things have turned, if our grandfathers saw us they’d roll in their graves, they invented the zero and that’s what we’ve become) Although their music may lack the immediacy of other rap songs, it’s still a veritable storm of apt samples, grumbling percussion, memorable riffs, and powerful lyrics. Songs like “olive trees” describe the uprooting of the Palestinians from their land, much in the same way Israeli settlers are uprooting olive trees today. Ironically, olive trees are an international symbol of peace. Here's a list of some of their songs. Right click and select Save as to download. By the way (DAM stands for Da Arab Mc’s not Blood as I initially thought) 1- Slingshot A Hip Hop Documentary (Trailer) (Windows Media Quicktime) 2- MBS + DAM – Boomerang 3- DAM - Meen Erhabe? (Who’s the terrorist) 4- DAM - ANA EW INTI 5- DAM - BORN HERE (ARABIC VERSION) 6- DAM – BORN HERE VIDEO (A MUST SEE) 7 - IRON SHEIK -OLIVE TREES 8 - IRON SHEIK - THE TALE OF THREE MUHAMMEDS (A MUST) For More Visit: Iron Sheik, DAM, Slingshot Please feel free to copy this into your website if you don't feel like rewriting.

How To: Google Talk Tips & Tricks

Yet Another Google Post! How To: Setup Google on Mac OSX iChat Several people have been complaining about not being able to get Talk to run on their iChat despite following Google's setup guide step by step. Well apparently iChat doesn't translate the IP for talk.google.com properly and connects to the website IP instead of the Jabber service. By using 216.239.37.125 as the server I was able to connect to Talk (Screenshot below) How To: Run multiple instances of Google Talk This might not be useful for all of you, but for those who keep two addresses; or like messing with their friends by claiming to be a hottie, starting multiple instances of Talk is quite easy. If you have a desktop shortcut for Google Talk, right-click on the icon, go to ‘Properties’, and find the ‘Target’ field. Add /nomutex to the end of the target string. See the screenshot below. Now simply double click on the icon, and another Google Talk instance will fire up. How To: Replace Google Talk's Logo? By using Resource Hacker, I was able to replace Google's Logo with a different logo, or remove the logo all together (Not exactly legal). How To: Find Chat History Location Chat logs are stored here: C:\Documents and settings\[username]\local settings\application data\Google\GTalk\chatlogs

Let's talk about Google Talk!

Alright, privacy issues aside; Google Talk's GUI design is very intuitive and nothing short of brilliant! The application allows you to circulate between your contacts using a keyboard shortcut (Ctrl+tab); you no longer have to go through the million browser windows open to get to another contact's window using the keyboard! Other than that the ability to stick chat windows to each other and to the primary window is amazing. You can pretty much arrange windows whichever way you like, check out the screenshots below. By double clicking on a contact's window, it would either open/close the chat window! If contact windows are minimized and stuck together, clicking on the person's name in the main window, will enlarge their window, clicking on another perosn's name will minimize the open one and enlarge the person you've clicked!

On a Further Note: Google Talk

I never thought I'd actually say this, but what about a Mac OSX Client?! Let me stress the fact that Google Talk is a JABBER based IM Client which means it would work with any JABBER client that already exists. You'd be able to login and chat, but you won't benefit from other features of the client. I was able to log on to the Google Jabber server using my existing Google username and password few hours before its launch. When checking my offline contacts using Google’s Jabber server, it lists email addresses I’ve emailed within the last few hours. How to setup Google IM on Jabber based clients?

1. Add an account, select "Jabber" as the protocol
2. Your screen name is everything before the "@gmail.com"
3. Server is "Gmail.com"
4. Click "Show more options" and make sure "use TLS if available" is checked.
5. Leave "Force old SSL" and "allow plaintext.." unchecked for now
6. Connection port should be 5222, connection server should be "talk.google.com"
7. Ta-Da! You're good to go

For a list of clients for other OS(s) go to: http://www.google.com/talk/otherclients.html

Google Introduces Google Talk [Instant Messenger]

Let's face it, Google wouldn’t have been “complete” without one right? I mean, Yahoo, MSN, and AOL have it. Why not Google? Let’s face the truth. Hello, Google’s photo sharing application, can’t really be considered a chat application. It’s not like anyone says “hey I’ll be on Hello when I get home, send me a message.”

I really can’t imagine what it’s like to work for Google right now. They’re churning out services like Oompa Loompas candy at Charlie’s Chocolate Factory. I’m still amazed by the recent Google Desktop Search application with an interegrated sidebar complete with developer extensibility.

I’ve spent the last hour or so playing around with the new Google IM client and have a few thoughts. First of all, although not as "pretty" or "feature full" (look below) as other chat clients I've used; I’d like to commend Google for creating a clean, ad-free, Gmail integrated chat client. Gmail contacts are indexed and easily accessible through the chat client. Multiple chat windows make use of a slick sliding “tabbed” interface navigated using the Tab and Ctrl + Tab combo. The client also serves as a Gmail notification utility.

As of today, you’re only able to text chat / audio chat with other Google users. According to this Google Talk help page future support for mutli-protocol chat is being worked on. I’ve also discovered that inviting non-Google users to Google Talk will send them a Gmail invite. That means unlimited Gmail invites. Who doesn’t have a Gmail account that is still looking?

I’m sure Google will slowly integrate all of its online services into the Google Talk client within the next few months. Download your copy here!

--- Edit (12:00 PM / 24th August 2005) Talk's interface is very simple and doesn't have rich features such as emotion icons, winks etc. Simple is good of course! A very intuitive feature that I liked was; if you place two Talk windows underneath each other they would glue, and you'd be able to drag them both around.What's missing? Multiple party chats and file transfers! It also could use a video conferencing feature. VOIP quality is fair; although a trial with a friend of mine, Karim, resulted in static and irreversible damage to my ear.

--- Edit (1:03 PM / 24th August 2005) Privacy Anyone? I'm not exactly sure if this is true, so please feel free to correct me; Google Talk has the "save chat history" enabled by default; no where do they state where the files will be saved. I checked the registry and my hard drive and was unable to find saved history files; which leads me to believe these are actually stored on google's server!!!!! If true, I wouldn't be surprised if they get slammed with a privacy lawsuit.

Google Knows!

Back in 2004 searching for "Paris Hilton isn't a whore" would trigger google's suggestion as seen below! The bewildering amount of people that have blogged about it eliminated the need for the suggestion; that or her publicist

On the other hand.. has anyone tried to google "failure" recently? Try it and check out the first result.