Added a tutorial section for my tinkerings with Mikrotik’s offering. To be updated 
Mikrotik RouterBOARD
WWDC 2013 Announcements
Announcements to come…
- http://www.apple.com/apple-events/june-2013/
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Mavericks
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MacBook Air
The Rainbow Flash Wizard
The Rainbow Flash Wizard is an accessory for photography that allows you to change the color of the light that is produced by your flash. After all, why only use white light when colors are captured by your camera. Taking pictures with a regular flash can make for disappointing results, where colors get washed out and people look sick. With the Rainbow Flash Wizard, you chose exactly the color you want, in no time. You do that by sliding (to chose the Hue) or turning a button (to tune the saturation) as described below.
Because you probably also want to visualize the actual color of the light that will be produced beforehand, we’ve put some screens on the side that display 1) the actual color, 2) the hue (i.e. the color always fully-saturated) and 3) an indicator of the level of saturation.
And that’s it ! You fit the head of your flash into the cavity of the Rainbow Flash Wizard, you turn it on, chose the color, and take pictures. Of course you may want to try different colors. It’s so fast and easy, you will probably have done it before your flash is ready to take another picture.
How Sharp Plans to Make 4K Redundant
The secret is (shocker) proprietary Sharp technology called Quattron. The label designates TVs in Sharp’s line that have four subpixels instead of the usual three. With a yellow subpixel in addition to the typical red, green and blue ones, Quattron TVs are capable of producing “billions” more levels of color than competitors, Sharp claims. Quattron TVs are capable of producing “billions” more levels of color than competitors, Sharp claims.
They can also do a decent job of simulating 4K video, apparently. Sharp showed a closed-door demo of the technology at CES in January, putting a 1080p Quattron TV next to a 4K set playing native 4K content (which was down-rezzed to 1080p for the Quattron). By intelligently managing the subpixels in the Quattron screen, Sharp claims a picture that’s as good as if not better than 4K.
The FBI Raided Steubenville Anonymous Guy’s House
He is Deric Lostutter, a 26-year-old who lives in Winchester, Kentucky. On April 15, the FBI executed a search warrant on Lostutter’s home, taking computers, storage media, and his Xbox.
Lostutter confirmed to Gawker that he was KYAnonymous, the leader of KnightSec, the Anonymous offshoot that carried out “Operation Roll Red Roll,” which targeted Steubenville over the rape by two football players of a 16-year-old girl. In a few weeks in late 2012 he became a well-known figure in the Steubenville storyline, at one point giving an interview to CNN in a Guy Fawkes mask. (The two football players were found guilty of rape in March.)
OS X Mountain Lion Update v10.8.4
The 10.8.4 update is recommended for all OS X Mountain Lion users and has features and fixes that improve the stability, compatibility, and security of your Mac, including the following:
- Compatibility improvements when connecting to certain enterprise Wi-Fi networks
- Microsoft Exchange compatibility improvements in Calendar
A fix for an issue that prevented FaceTime calls to non-U.S. phone numbers - A fix for an issue that may prevent scheduled sleep after using Boot Camp
- Improved VoiceOver compatibility with text in PDF documents
Includes Safari 6.0.5
For detailed information about this update, please visit: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5730
For detailed information about the security content of this update, please visit: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1222
SHA1 = 9cf99aa1293cefdac0fb9a24ea133c80f8237b5e
Introducing PlexConnect, an AppleTV client which Thinks Different
There?s one little box in the living room which hasn?t been as fully compatible with Plex as we?ve liked, and that?s the Apple TV. There?s been a Plex client available for a few years now, but only for Jailbroken devices, which means the more powerful v3 device can?t be used (and let?s face it, Jailbreaking can be tricky). Oh, and we hired one of those guys too.
Enter PlexConnect. The brainchild of Baa, roidy and f00b4r, it?s a super clever little hack which allows a rich, fully-functional Plex client on un-jailbroken ATV2 and ATV3 (1080p!) devices. Essentially, you run a program on your computer which masquerades as the Trailer app. Next, change one setting on the ATV, and you?re up and running. It took me less than 2 minutes to install and get it running. It already uses the new transcoder (which means great support for subtitles), and I suspect it?ll support myPlex soon as well. In the PlexPass preview release of the media server, it also supports AC3 5.1 (remuxing and transcoding from DTS). Another cool thing: it supports iTunes DRM?ed video files.
U.S. agency: Apple infringes Samsung patent on older iPhones, iPads
A U.S. trade body found the Silicon Valley giant had infringed on a patent owned by the Korean company and slapped a ban on the sale of certain older iPhone and iPad models sold by AT&T Inc.
The U.S. International Trade Commission, an independent federal agency, issued a limited order stopping all imports and sales for AT&T models of the iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPad 3G and iPad 2 3G. The versions targeted are more than a year old but are still solid sellers.
All such exclusion orders are sent to President Barack Obama, who has 60 days to review them. If he does not veto the order, it goes into effect.
“We are disappointed that the commission has overturned an earlier ruling and we plan to appeal. Today’s decision has no impact on the availability of Apple products in the United States,” Apple spokeswoman Kristin Huguet said in a statement.
Apple Trying to Resolve THX Patent Case, Lawyers Say
Apple Inc. is in talks to resolve a lawsuit brought by THX Ltd., the sound-engineering company founded by ?Star Wars? producer George Lucas, alleging infringement of a patent for speaker technology used in iPhones, iPads and iMac products.
Lawyers for both companies filed a request with the federal court in San Francisco today to postpone a scheduled June 14 case-management conference to July 26.
?The parties are currently attempting to resolve this matter outside of this litigation,? according to the filing.
THX holds a 2008 patent for a speaker unit that can boost sound output and attach to computers or flat-screen televisions, according to a complaint filed in March.
Apple products that incorporate the speaker units infringe the patent, causing ?monetary damage and irreparable harm,? according to San Rafael, California-based THX. The company seeks a court order to stop the alleged infringement and a reasonable royalty, or damages to compensate for lost profit.
Intel Readies 4K-Friendly Thunderbolt 2
Thunderbolt 2 supports twice the bandwidth, a stunning 20Gbps. Beyond that, Thunderbolt 2 is no longer two independent 10Gbps channels but instead uses one 20Gbps bi-directional channel that supports data and/or display.
In other words, video editors can transfer 4K footage and playback that footage at the same time. That’s simply not available on any other interface.
Thunderbolt 2 will also add in support for DisplayPort 1.2, which offers 4K streaming.
Thunderbolt 2 is backwards compatible with old cables and connectors, so users who have already adopted Thunderbolt don’t need to worry about buying new cables for their gear.
Hands-on review of Nokia Here maps app
Nokia released HERE Maps for iOS this morning, and in baseball parlance I would call it a swing and a miss. People are eager for a viable alternative to the much maligned Apple Maps app, but HERE Maps is no holy grail.
Nokia is not new to the mapping business. They own NAVTEQ, which powers a lot of in car systems. The universal free app gives you a live traffic view, public transportation views and satellite imagery. It has the ability to save an area so you are not without maps when you lose your data connection. Destinations can be shared via email, text messaging or via social networks.
What’s the shelf life of a techie? Just 15 years
“The shelf life of a software engineer today is no more than that of a cricketer – about 15 years,” says V R Ferose, MD of German software major SAP’s India R&D Labs that has over 4,500 employees . “The 20-year-old guys provide me more value than the 35-year-olds do.”
The past few years have seen dramatic changes in technology. Computing is being increasingly done on mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. These devices have lower processing power and storage capacity than PCs. And they run on batteries that require recharging . Hence, applications built for them must have smaller footprints and be highly energy efficient.
Nintendo Wii U Teardown – Photos and Video
Last night after the midnight release of the new Nintendo Wii U gaming console, we did what any self respecting hardware fan would do: we tore it apart. That’s right, while live on our PC Perspective Live! page, we opened up a pair of Wii U consoles, played a couple of games on the Deluxe while we took a tri-wing screwdriver to the second. Inside we found some interesting hardware (and a lot more screws) and at the conclusion of the 5+ hour marathon, we had a reassembled system with only a handful of leftover screws!
If you missed the show last night we have archived the entire video on our YouTube channel (embedded below) as well as the photos we took during the event in their full resolution glory. There isn’t much to discuss about the teardown other than what we said in the video but I am going to leave a few comments after each set of four images.
Oprah uses her iPad to tell us how much she loves the Surface
Oprah recently revealed that Microsoft’s Surface tablet is one of her “Favorite Things” of 2012. Then, last night, she tweeted “Gotta say love that SURFACE! Have bought 12 already for Christmas gifts.” Interesting to note that the tweet was sent from an iPad. Below is a screenshot of the tweet from my Tweetbot iPhone app, which pulls in the source for each tweet.
Teardowns of iPad Mini and Kindle Fire HD reveal differing business models
Teardowns of the Apple iPad Mini and the Amazon Kindle Fire HD by IHS iSuppli have revealed that the two devices cost almost the same amount to manufacture, despite the retail prices being significantly different.
According to a preliminary estimate from the IHS iSuppli Teardown Analysis Service, the base model of Apple’s new iPad Mini with Wi-Fi only and 16 gigabytes of NAND flash memory, carries a bill of materials of $188. When the $10 manufacturing expense is added in, the total cost rises to $198.
Pixar Names Building After Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs is often associated with Apple, but many often forgot that the visionary played a large role in the creation of Pixar. He financed the work at the studio long before it became profitable, pouring millions of his own money into keeping Pixar afloat because he believed in the work of the employees. After his death last year, some wondered how the animation studio would honor him. In the end credits of Brave, there was a brief but touching tribute to Jobs. Now, the Jobs name has a more permanent home on Pixar’s campus – above the main entrance to the studio’s main building.
Cupertino ordered to pay $368m as FaceTime infringes VPN tech
Apple must pay software biz VirnetX $368m after a court ruled FaceTime video calls infringed VirnetX’s patents.
The fruity firm was on the hook for as much as $900m, but a jury awarded a lower payout during a Texas court hearing yesterday evening, according to VirnetX’s lawyers McKool Smith.
The jury, which had sat through the five-day trial, ruled that Apple infringed two patents: one for a method of creating a virtual private network (VPN) between computers, and another for solving DNS security issues. The focus of the trial was on FaceTime, which lets users of Mac computers, iPhones, iPods and iPads chat to each other in video calls.
It’s not the first time VirnetX has won a payout from a major tech firm: the company bagged $105.7m from Microsoft two years ago, and it may not be the last either. VirnetX has a separate case against Apple pending with the International Trade Commission and it has court cases against Cisco, Avaya and Siemens scheduled for trial next year.
No support? No problem! Installing Windows 8 on a Mac with Boot Camp
There is one exception: gaming. 3D performance is either much-reduced by virtualization or (in the case of VirtualBox) completely non-existent, and given that most Macs don’t have top-shelf graphics processors to begin with, there’s simply no substitute for running Windows on bare metal, as they say.
This means using Boot Camp to install Windows on your Mac as you would to any PC, and that means relying on Apple’s Windows drivers to get everything working properly. The issue is that Apple doesn’t exactly prioritize Windows driver updates, and this is doubly true when a new version of Windows is concerned: Boot Camp support for Windows 7 trailed general availability by about three months, and the song remains the same for Windows 8.
Microsoft explains low Surface storage in weak support note
Microsoft has confirmed in a non-apology in a service note on its website that only half of the claimed storage for its Surface tablet is available for your music, movies and photos.
Like any computer, tablet or in fact any gadget, the Surface needs some space to fill with important admin stuff like the operating system software and the built-in apps. The rest is for you to fill with music and movies, apps and snaps. But the 32GB model has just 16GB of free space set aside for your stuff, while the 64GB model has 46GB.
iPhone 5 out of stock in India within 24 hours
Just days after the iPhone 5 went on sale in India, most retailers are already out of stock.
“We were sold out within 24 hours of launch. It’s all gone,” said Himanshu Chakrawarti, chief executive of The MobileStore Ltd., a retailer that stocks iPhones and which has 900 outlets across India. Apple Inc.’s latest iPhone officially launched in India on Friday, more than a month after it hit major markets elsewhere.
About 10,000-15,000 units were shipped to India for the first round of sales after the launch, a person familiar with the matter told India Real Time. Overall, specialized distribution companies and mobile phone companies have together placed orders with the Cupertino, Calif. company to ship 100,000 iPhone 5 units to India to be sold in the first month, according to analysts.