APPLETASTIC - Apple Mac App Store - South Africa?

I wasn't sure how this would be launched in South Africa, after all we are still waiting for the iPad and have no music or games in iTunes!

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So on the 6th I periodically looked to see what, if anything, was happening. Eventually I picked up the availability of Mac OS X 10.6.6 through Software Update and started trying to download it. With South Africa's poor broadband capacity, this was promising me downloads in eight hours. Downloads terminated frequently loosing whatever data had been downloaded, making the chance of downloading the complete programme slim. So I went to the Apple website and found the update there - this I was able to download and launch without problems in a few hours and I had it installed!

Since then I have bought iPhoto and downloaded several free programmes including Twitter. I have found the process really simple and think this is another Apple winner!

Thats not to say all is great! - my reviews and ratings don't seem to get published, a game I downloaded (on another country store) was really useless, iPhoto 11 has some inexplicable changes that take much getting used to after iPhoto 8 and it was not possible to register iPhoto, only iLife.

Today, I have effortlessly updated the Twitter app after seeing an update was available. This is surely one of the things that is going to make the app store popular. I have also noticed that some of the applications I bought before the App Store show up as installed, so I suppose I will be able to update them here!

Seems like Apple have done it again!

INACCURATE / INEPT - So Which of These Four Government Bodies Would You Follow

Seeing that this is where you end following the link on the Department of Transport's homepage,

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But each of the Government Bodies seem to have different information!

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So who should we believe? and WHY can't the SA Government simply get their information right!

ATTRACTING- Improving Digital Images With HDR & Tone Mapping

I was recently underwhelmed by the standard photographs I was able to produce on a hiking trip to Drakensberg Mountains in South Africa. The difficulty is the haze, the contrast and the need to take wide angle photos to capture the majesty and size of the mountains.

I find this process very interesting and take a lot of HDRs because I'm not yet sure what's possible.

Some might not like the effect in the last photograph as they could feel its not real like the second one is. In that case you should focus on the HDR and use only touches of tone mapping.

You might be interested to know a bit more about High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography and tone mapping - I would suggest you just google it or visit the www.stuckincommons.com site of Trey Ratcliff who is acknowledged by many pros as one of the more knowledgeable people on HDR.

ANTISOCIAL - Spam on Social Networks, The Storage of Worthless Data

Looking for some information about relaxation music from tweets I searched on #relaxation and was confronted by a pile of repeated tweets linking to an ebay seller, naturesoundcds.

clipped on 07/12/2010 by digivuza

This user has 9,371 tweets with nothing to suggest any are different to those I looked at, ie all are linked to the same URL that links to naturesoundcds on ebay which sells CDs.

Others twitterers including

soundsofocean with 7,772 tweets and http://tiny.ly/55Ql linking to naturalsoundscds

calmingnature with 384 tweets and http://tiny.ly/Xsgz linking to naturalsoundscds

naturecdstore with 10,718 tweets and http://tiny.ly/rj4k linking to naturalsoundscds

naturesoundscds with 24,580 tweets and http://tiny.ly/Rs0j, http://tiny.ly/o9Nt, http://tiny.ly/YqbO, http://tiny.ly/o9Nt all linking to naturalsoundscds

appear to be set up solely to promote sales of these CDs.


Searching the previous 10 hour's posts (up tp around 09:00 on 7/12/2010) for #relaxation, yielded 257 tweets linking to naturalsoundscds and only 52 other tweets.

To me this is completely unacceptable and reduces the value of twitter and is therefore an antisocial activity.

However, and more worrying is that it just adds to my conviction that the INTERNET is probably the most wasteful emitter of greenhouse gasses in the world. All this (and plenty more junk like it) useless and never to be looked at again data is stored with backup on server farms around the world emitting CO2 without benefitting anyone or anything!

AMAZING - Keeping This Up For Ten Years - Time Lapse of Child

ARTISTIC - Wikimedia Commons Photographs Available For Use By Everyone!

This beautiful photograph of a Sikh pilgrim at the Golden Temple (Harmandir Sahib) in Amritsar, is available online (click the image to link) for anyone to use

from: Wikimedia Commons
(click image for full story online)

photo by Paulrudd
(Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported)

ASTONISHING - Biotech Hackers?

This is really astonishing, if one draws a parallel between the Mainframe Computer Industry of the 70s and hackers Gates, Jobs and Wozniak, then these guys are about to bring biotech to the people!

from: NATURE
(click image for full story online)

I remember CAPEX meeting at our Biosciences unit, where Food Technologists and Engineers goggled at the vast costs of the complex machinery the Biotechnologists convinced us where non negotiable. While I dig into this a bit futher why not help me with your comments and inputs - email me here.