Bluekat Magazine

Software just seems to get more expensive every year and what with the initial cost of your Mac you may want to save some money by trying some of the Open Source alternatives out there.

Open Source is free software (I know, sounds too good to be true, right?) but it is, and its good… Really good! The quality of Open Source software never ceases to amaze me, and there is now so much software out there and available for OSX user I thought I’d do my bit and put together a list of the most import 10 applications.

I’ve posted the list on a new section of the site called “The mac Guide” which will feature usefull tips and and suggestions for Mac users. PC users may be interested in taking a look at this list as most of the software on it is available for Windows and Linux users too!

Check out the 10 Essential Free mac Applications here.

I started following Google on Twitter the other day, mainly out of curiosity to see what they would Twitter about. I checked there very first tweet which was in binary and reads:

“I’m 01100110 01100101 01100101 01101100 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01101100 01110101 01100011 01101011 01111001 00001010″

That’s “I’m feeling lucky” in plain old English, if you translate from binary, to decimal ascii, to ordinary letters.

Google have managed to attract over 27,000 followers in just 2 days!  Thats near one follower every five seconds. I’d put money on Google becoming the most popular Twitter account before the end of the year.

You can visit the Google Twitter  account here.

Hi All.

I’m working on updating the site, please excuse any glitches this should all be fixed shortly.

Thanks

Wil Saliu

Don’t know how I let this one get buy me but Konami are releasing a version of Metal Gear Solid for the iPhone and iPod Touch, along with iPhone versions of  Frogger, Dance Dance Revolution and Silent Hill.

Konami’s press release says they will start releasing the games this month, unfortunately, Metal Gear wont be out till Spring 2009.

I think a lot of iPhone and iPod Touch users have been waiting for a decent action game that really pushed this device to its limits and showed us what this device can really do, Metal Gear Solid could be it.

The potential of the iPhone/Touch has never been in doubt as it is technically a more powerful device than the PSP (at least on paper), what I think it has lacked is a “killer game”. Something that would make gamers take it seriously as a gaming paltform.
There are a few games out there at the moment that are good, but compared to the Nintendo DS and PSP, the iPhone has a lot of catching up to do.

so we should start to see some really good games on this platform that will rival the quality of the games on the PSP and Nintendo DS.

Any way you can find out more about Metal Gear Solid Touch here.

It’s a real shame it wont be out till next year.

Source: Konami press release

This week the mouse turned 40 and according to Wikipedia Douglas Engelbart at the Stanford Research Institute invented the mouse in 1968. Interestingly while the Douglas Engelbart’s invention is the first mouse as we would know it, the first trackball had been invented in 1952 Tom Cranston, Fred Longstaff and Kenyon Taylor workingfor the the Royal Canadian Navy.

Above: First mouse invented by Douglas Engelbart (1968)

Above: First trackball  invented by Tom Cranston, Fred Longstaff and Kenyon Taylor (1952)

The mouse has probably been one of the most ground-breaking inventions in helping to bring the computer to the masses. It’s simple and intuitive and makes computing much easier and more accessible.

I came across some archive footage of a demonstration of the first mouse that had posted on YouTube:

The BBC has footage of an interview with  in which he discusses how the mouse got its name. You cna view that at the BBC web site here.

Source: Wikipedia.org

Apple are now recommending Antivirus for the Mac according to a CNet report on November 21 Apple updated a technical note on its Support Web site that says: “Apple encourages the widespread use of multiple antivirus utilities so that virus programmers have more than one application to circumvent, thus making the whole virus writing process more difficult.”

In typical Apple fashion this technical note has disappeared from the Apple website. But before it vanished It did recommend Intego VirusBarrier X5, Mac Afee and Symantec Norton Anti-Virus 11 all of which come at a price from the Apple Store. I blogged about a free Mac Antivirus solution back in August if your interested click here.

Unlike a lot of people I speak to who use a Mac I am not complacent about viruses on the Mac and seeing the Mac become ever more popular knew that this was bound to happen more and more as the Mac market share began to increase.

While I am not a security expert I can offer some basic advice to the novice and intermediate Mac user:

1) Don’t install software from unknown/ untrusted sources. Especially not sites claiming that you need special plugins to view their content. ALWAYS download new applications from sites like apple or version tracker.

2) Don’t click on links from unsolicited emails from people or companies you’ve never heard of. Someties a link to a web page is all it takes to compromise your machine.

3) Re-install you OS on a regular basis. This is a pain but its a great way to stay safe. if there are any malicious applications lurking on your computer then this 0 tollerence solution is the only way tobe sure of getting rid of them. I cant say for sure how often you should do this but I would say at least once a year would be sensible.

From what I can tell from other tech blogs, podcasts and reports I’ve come across the problem isn’t that bad at the moment and most of the nasty apps out there are trojans which require you, the user to install them by clicking on something and granting them permissions by handing them your user password.

This is true of the Windows PC market, many experts have always pointed out that it is user apathy that has made the PC the prime target for virus and trojan programmers as much as security weakesses in the OS.

With Christmas 2008 fast approaching I thought I’d add a new category of articles, Gift ideas for Xmas. And what better way to get started than with a gizmo that lets you shop faster. I came across this nifty invention on  The Debut Effect.

Just in case your finding Christmas shopping to physically demanding this year:

This awesome cross between bike and a shopping cart was designed by Jaebeom Jeong in Korea, and so far I can’t actually confirm whether or not this is just a concept model or if they’re actually available to buy.

With all the new Apple Stores that seem to be popping up all over the country I found this clip from The Simpsons particularly relevant and funny.

Just finished work on version 2.0 of the bluugle.co.uk website.

Bluugle is a search engine which lets you search some of the more popular tech and gadget news blogs. It’s what I use to research stories for this blog. The first thing most people ask is why bother when you ca just use a Google? I put together this search engine because I needed to search specific sites and wanted to screen out SEO optimised sites which try to game search engines like google.

I have indexed 40 sites, which will increase as time goes on. The idea is to simplify the process of searching for news articles by the source I want to hear from simultaneously.

Give it a try at www.bluugle.co.uk, feed back is always welcome.

Twitter is one of those web sites that grows on you. I couldn’t see the point in it until I started my Blog and since then have found it can be a real useful tool in the blogging world as well as a great Social Networking site.

What appeals to me about Twitter is its simplicity, far more so than, say, Plurk which has so much more in the way of features yet just doesn’t have the same appeal to me.

Anyway, I’m trying to get boost the number of my followers on Twitter so if you are a member of Twitter look me up at www.twitter.com/bluekat.