The new version of iPhone firmware is out. Don’t upgrade if you are jailbroken and/or unlocked as this will probably lock you out until it’s cracked by the “iPhone Dev Team”. Use iTunes to get the latest update if you have a legit phone.

The Cosmos S is a big case. It’s a full size tower but is also propped above the ground for the power supply intake and has “handle bars” around it. It is more than enough to hold the 10.5″ length of the GTX 260 graphics cards.

Like the p180/p182 the power supply is at the bottom of the case. Internal hard drives get a dedicated cage that includes a large intake fan. The rest of the case is very spacious and the ample amount of stock fans ensurebit doesn’t get too hot.

My only complaint is it’s noise. The codmos lacks insulation I’m other units and three fans generate a lot of noise. The p182 would be quieter.

Originally this post was going to be a review of this video card, but instead, it’s a consumer warning. Having mostly been a lightweight gamer, I’ve never felt the need to buy a full tower case. I only need a few drives, a single video card and maybe a large CPU cooler, but a mini-tower case has filled my needs since I bought my first PC.

However, last week I upgraded my video card. My Nvidia-based BFG 7950GT can’t handle the new games out there and even the latest patch to World of Warcraft (3.0.2) dropped my FPS quite significantly. The new GTX 260’s will handle almost everything that games can dish out now, except for the fact that it’s huge! It weights in a 2x heavier than my laptop (albiet the lightweight e4200) and it’s 10.5″ long. That means that my poor Antec Solo case cannot fit it behind the internal drive bays.

Off to Canada Computers to look for a new case…

There is no arguing that the Xbox has been successful, very successful. But the designers at Microsoft didn’t really plan for the list of games to grow to such a huge extent - nor the explosive success of “casual” games. It’s becoming a pain to scroll through long lists of games on your Xbox to find the one you want to play, or buy the right one in the marketplace, they have redesigned the user experience.

Next Wednesday, the 19th, a new update will be pushed to the Xbox with a dramatically different user inteface. A preview is on the Xbox Live site. Along with the new update, there will be a Video Marketplace, Parties, Community Games and Avatars.

Before the weekend my new Dell e4200 arrived. The first thing I noticed was how light the packaging was - this laptop is really light! A 2.2lbs weight is fine, but the accessories including the external drive and power adaptor are also featherweights. The power adaptor was the biggest surprise as it’s the same size as an iPhone - no large bricks for this small laptop.

This notebook is packed with great features, LED backlight for increased power consumption and reduced size/weight; an external battery meter that lights up 5 LED’s to indicate how much life is left on the battery without turning the laptop on; solid-state drives for better performance, power consumption and the reliability of no-moving-parts; speedy DDR3 RAM; and, a thin 0.75-1.1″ profile and 2.2lbs weight.

Overall I’m pretty happy with the laptop. The fast memory and fast hard drive make Windows performance zippy even though the CPU speed is a slow 1.2ghz. It’s as thin as IBM’s X300 and has more features than the Macbook Air like an SD card slot, ethernet port and eSATA port.

Having a large monitor, it’s nice to choose a really good background to use as a wallpaper.  VistaKnowledge has a set of really great HD wallpapers to use with Vista (or other OS’s). They also feature Themes and Icons.

Microsoft has been playing around with experimental software lately and releasing them to the public, much like Google’s strategy for years. I just noticed a site called Photosynth that multiple images into a single composite “image” that is in 3D and allows you to “move” within the space and “see” places from different angles. Very cool!

For the longest time I’ve stopped using Google Maps. This is because Microsoft’s Live Search Maps has much better coverage of the GTA and is more accurate.

For instance, their Bird’s Eye view i find is much more useful than Google’s Street View and Street View is not available in Canada.

As well, the maps in Live are more up to date. At the corner of Bay and Yorkville, the old Mr. Sub building is still standing in Google Maps, while Live Maps shows the new Four Season’s Hotel/Condo Showroom. Live’s maps are in much higher resolution, as shown below:

Update: Twice this week I’ve looked up addresses on Google Maps only to find out that the location was WRONG. I find this really bad and worse is that there’s no easy way to tell them to make a correction on their site.

This Starbucks is at Yonge/Bloor, but Google Maps puts it way up in Rosedale, almost a full km away from it’s actual location.

When I went to Audi Mississauga, it placed the marker way in the middle of a neighborhood instead of on the side of Mavis where it is really located:

Over the past few years, digital photography has literally exploded in popularity. It’s by far supassed where film photography was in the previous decade which has ben languishing for years. However, a quick trip through Flickr, Facebook, and the blogsphere reveals many stylistic difference between online photos and print photos from film.

What I’ve noticed is that many pictures are adjusted so that contrast and saturation is set very high, almost to “unrealistic” levels. I’ve wondered why this is so prevelant as in film photography, the developers at your local photo lab always strived to give you the most “natural” colors. However, with so many do-it-yourself photography via digital imaging, images online skew towards very saturated and high contrast photos.

Equipment may play a large part in this. Most people are editting photos on laptop computers which are almost always equipped with 6-bit or low-contrast LCD screens. To make the pictures “look right” on those screens, they have skewed many of the adjustments so that they look less natural on a full, bright CRT or 8-bit desktop LCD monitor. Professionals adjust their monitors and calibrate their photo software so that what they see onscreen is replicated correctly in print media, but the DIY person probably doesn’t do that.

This is so prevelant now that I think that the online photo “style” is now widely seen online and almost expected. Even the photos I showcase on the nav bar of my blog are skewed to match the style of photography mostly found these days, even though I have a calibrated, 8-bit LCD.

After 100 years of getting “natural” colors through advanced development in the labs of Kodak and Fuji, the digital world has turned this upside down and sided more with unnatural tones and contrasty highlights in online media. Photography is art, there is no “right” way to do it. It’s good to see so many people enjoying the hobby of photography.

I like thin laptops. It seems that once the MacBook Air came out, all the major companies rushed out to make one with a very thin profile but still offer many of the features as a full size notebook. Dell launched their Latitude e4200 today which is only 0.79″ thick (MacBook Air is 0.76″, Lenovo X300 is 0.74″ HP VooDoo Envy 133 is 0.70″).