Arnaldo M Pereira › Comments

"Christmas is a holiday that brings people together, so perhaps it should be no surprise that Facebook has become a part of millions of peoples' Christmas experiences. For the first time in its history, Facebook was the #1 most visited website in the United States on both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day this year, according to traffic analyst firm Hitwise today." - Arnaldo M Pereira from Bookmarklet

"SCVNGR offers a platform for businesses, universities and museums to build real-world, location-based games. Some are exactly what the name implies — a scavenger hunt with clues from your phone. Cities  use them in tourism campaigns to promote places, while museums use them to point out works of art. Still others, like jewelers, use them for promotions. One involved burying a $15,000 diamond ring in the ground and giving it away to the finder. It’s proving to be a rather profitable niche for the Boston-based startup. The company turned cash flow positive in the last half of 2009 and will bring in $1 million in revenues this year, all from being an idea that Priebatsch submitted to a business plan competition his freshman year" - Arnaldo M Pereira from Bookmarklet

"A year ago Apple launched iWork.com in beta, which allowed users of their office suite of applications to publish documents online. It’s a light feature set compared to Google Docs and Office 10 – just viewing and commenting. But a job posting suggests Apple may be creating a true collaborative cloud based version of the iWork apps." - Arnaldo M Pereira from Bookmarklet

"Last week, a source emailed us two screenshots of Facebook’s forthcoming redesign. While it’s still a work in progress, it shows some simple yet major enhancements that reveal where the world’s largest social network with over 350 million subscribers might be headed. For starters, Facebook seems to be returning to its roots, emphasizing fidelity instead of noise in its news feed." - Arnaldo M Pereira from Bookmarklet

"Amazon's Kindle hit an important and startling milestone yesterday: On Christmas, the company sold more Kindle books than physical books. Yes, this is obviously the result of everyone who got a Kindle for Christmas (lots of folks) firing it up and ordering a bunch of eBooks on a day in which most physical-book readers weren't shopping.  But it's still important and impressive." - Arnaldo M Pereira from Bookmarklet

YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH - Will Higgins™

It might represent a 'paradigm shift' you know. Whew! - TrafficBug

"Google is one of the biggest companies supporting OpenSource movement, they released more than 500 open source projects(most of them are samples showing how to use their API). In this article I will try to write about most interesting and free releases from Google, some of them might be abandoned." - Arnaldo M Pereira from Bookmarklet

"The tension between these two software giants got a bit thicker this year, and it’s certain that it will again in 2010. Here’s a look at who is winning on each front in 2009." - Arnaldo M Pereira from Bookmarklet

"Coming Soon: Free Video Conferencing From Google. This was the headline of a recent ZDNet story by Garrett Rogers. Garett based his prediction on an interview with Rishi Chandra, a Google Apps product manager, on SFGate. There, Mr. Chandra said that “launching a voice or video chat session should flow seamlessly within Gmail and mesh organically with the other Apps” and “should be embedded in the core experience across the application set”." - Arnaldo M Pereira from Bookmarklet

For "that" I mean: PBX like facilities, integration with other DIDs the user might have (his phone numbers) and basically e-mail. - Arnaldo M Pereira

""In one of the do-the-developers-actually-use-their-own-software decisions in the Linux Desktop World, back in 2004 Gnome switched to the 'Spatial' view by default with their Nautilus file manager opening a new window with each new folder viewed. Many derided the decision as poor design or as being different for the sake of being different. Well, after five long years the Gnome powers that be have decided to switch back to browser mode."" - Arnaldo M Pereira from Bookmarklet

i'm not a fan of gnome, so i rarely use nautilus, when i'm not using KDE, thunar, pcmanfm and mc are my choices, right now on my laptop using Debian and lxde i use those two. - ovigia

"I decided to check out the different Windows Switching options in KDE 4, and decided I’d give a little preview of the 5 different methods which are: No Effect Box Switch Present Windows Cover Switch Flip Switch I found my favorite to be “Cover Switch” for some unknown reason." - Arnaldo M Pereira from Bookmarklet

LOL @mohammadk. Loving this windows switch, but it seems the same of Compiz :D - Alessio ~ Bl@ster

"Thinking about picking up one of those newfangled multitouch displays for your netbook, but holding off because you’re worried that there won’t be support for multitouch gestures under Linux? It looks like there’s nothing to worry about. While most versions of Windows 7 (but not Windows 7 Starter) include built-in support for multitouch screens, most Linux distributions don’t yet include support these displays. But that doesn’t mean you can’[t configure them to support it. The folks at France’s ENAC Interactive Computing Lab have put together a video demonstrating multitouch support on a PC running Fedora 12 Linux with what appears to be a 10 inch touchscreen display. You can check out the video after the break." - Arnaldo M Pereira from Bookmarklet

"Wired's Gadget Lab points to this great Flickr gallery by raneko of Apple mice throughout the years, from the blocky one-button behemoths of years past up to the smooth and slick Mighty and Magic mice of today. Laid all in a row like that, it's interesting to see just how much care went into the look of these things, and how the different iterations, across years of work, built upon the basic idea. Wired says that Apple mice have never been its strong point, and they're pretty right about that -- even the current mouse, while beautiful and well-designed, doesn't have the functionality or ergonomic design that you'll find in most other brands of mice. But nevertheless, these still look great, and for the Apple fan, they'll probably bring back a flood of memories all the way back to the Macintosh. Great gallery." - Arnaldo M Pereira from Bookmarklet

"We know you're itching to get your hands on a Nexus One -- Google's managed to build buzz here the way only a couple companies in the world know how. Unfortunately, it sounds like you're going to need to cross your fingers (or pull out that eBay emergency stash) to get one out of the gate, because we've got some intel here suggesting that it'll be available only by "invitation" at first. Our tipster doesn't have information on how those invites are going to be determined, other than the fact that it's Google doing the inviting -- if we had to guess, current registered developers are a strong possibility -- but the good news, we suppose, is that T-Mobile will apparently sell the phone directly at some to-be-determined point in the future. Oh, but that's not all -- we've got specs, too. Lots of them. Here are the highlights, but follow the break for the whole shebang" - Arnaldo M Pereira from Bookmarklet

What's up with this invite only? Is it only for Android developers? Does anyone know how to get on that invite list?? :) - Patrik Johansson

I am ready to see how this phone really works. Sent from my iPod - Xavier Mathews from email

"Twitter just announced that it has acquired Mixer Labs, the company behind GeoAPI.com. GeoAPI is a service that allows developers to easily add geolocation data to their apps. Twitter just launched its own geotagging API a few weeks ago. Even though a number of mobile and desktop Twitter apps like Seesmic Web and Birdfeed support Twitter's geotagging API, only a very small number of users is currently making use of this feature." - Arnaldo M Pereira from Bookmarklet

"Ah 2009...turning five, finally shedding that beta label, and adding more than 40 new features. As we wind down after a busy year, here's a look back at a handful of our favorite additions to Gmail.  We hope you enjoy trying them out as much as we enjoyed building them." - Arnaldo M Pereira from Bookmarklet

"Jajah, an Internet-telephony company, has been acquired by Telefonica in a $207 million all-cash deal, the companies said this morning. The deal is subject to regulatory approval by CNC, the Spanish competition authority, according to a release by Telefonica. The company said the purchase of Jajah “significantly enriches Telefónica’s capabilities to offer cutting-edge communications services for customers online — whenever, wherever and however they want.”" - Arnaldo M Pereira from Bookmarklet

"It’s been well reported that Microsoft is prepping for the upteenth fight-to-the-finish of its career, this time for dominance of the cloud frontier against arch-rival Google. I consider Google to be the “Microsoft of the Clouds,” as the company will soon offer an OS, has a mobile OS, browser, productivity apps, a back-end app engine, email, storage, e-commerce, and social networking tools. Oh, and I almost forgot — a search engine. And, sure enough, Microsoft is fighting like mad to get ahead in the search business. While everyone has their eyes glued to this death match, eWeek’s Clint Boulton reminds us there is another rival that is slowly gathering steam in the clouds — IBM. As Clint put it: “Customers and industry watchers can expect IBM to accelerate its cloud computing efforts into 2010 and beyond, investing at a rate that is commensurate to a $120 billion cloud computing market.”" - Arnaldo M Pereira from Bookmarklet

"Take a tour through the images that defined 2009." - Arnaldo M Pereira from Bookmarklet

"Google is perhaps our decade’s Xerox PARC with a commercial edge, and the speed at which they released products in 2009 was quite immense. This shows they do two things well so far: scaling technology (across different countries and languages, across hundreds of thousands or however many computers), and scaling employee count (nearly twenty-thousand employees and still stuff gets done, from small to big apps). Google is also getting bolder in their attitude; while their older mission poster used to read that Google should “Think and act like an underdog”, a recent Google writing proclaimed a bit of a different angle:" - Arnaldo M Pereira from Bookmarklet

"Good news! We are marching closer to the official release of FreeSWITCH version 1.0.5. The latest and greatest release candidate is now available for download here. We ask that everyone update as soon as possible. This latest pre-release version is the most stable version yet and is much improved over 1.0.4. Those who are already running SVN trunk should do the usual make current operation. Of course, those running in production environments please update your sandboxes and test systems prior to updating your live systems." - Arnaldo M Pereira from Bookmarklet

"Rumors that Amazon might buy Netflix sparked brief but sharp spikes in shares of both companies yesterday. While the sources of the rumor aren't known, talk of an acquisition was allegedly sparked by Apple's supposed iTunes TV subscription plans and their potential impact on both companies. Amazon in particular would seek to bolster its Video On Demand service by acquiring one of its largest competitors, which thrives primarily on subscription-based movie and TV season rentals. For Netflix, the rumored deal would give it the advantage of a prime web portal. Neither Amazon nor Netflix has commented on the authenticity of the rumor." - Arnaldo M Pereira from Bookmarklet

Now that, is interesting. Bezos wouldn't try this unless he really thought Apple was going through with those subscription plans. - Roberto Bonini

"I’ve written a couple of times here on the blog about the fact that I have been using an evaluation Nokia N900 since October with my loan period expiring in January. I have been focusing on writing up a TON of posts as I created the Definitive Nokia N900 Guide to give my Nokia Experts readers all the details on this extremely powerful device. As a Christmas present to you kind readers here on my ZDNet blog I decided to also post a full review of the Nokia N900 for you all to unwrap and enjoy. You may want to start with my image gallery, move down to my video, and then read the details about my experiences with the device. At the very end of this review you will find out exactly what I think of the device after using it quite heavily these past two months." - Arnaldo M Pereira from Bookmarklet

"Status updates on Facebook help people understand their friends and the people around them--how they're feeling, what they're doing and what they're thinking. In the United States alone, people on Facebook are sharing hundreds of millions of words every day, thousands per second, in status updates. When taken as a whole, these words offer a unique barometer into the issues, world events and thoughts that are connecting people. In the tradition of year-end lists, we're introducing Facebook Memology. "Memology" refers to the study of how "memes," or new ideas and trends, are spreading on Facebook. For this year's list, the Facebook Data Team mapped the top trending words and phrases in U.S. status updates for 2009." - Arnaldo M Pereira from Bookmarklet

Nice one. Nice share, Arnaldo! - TrafficBug

"Today we are releasing Opera 10.5 pre-alpha for Labs. This pre-alpha is based on the Evenes branch and includes Windows and Mac builds, with an UNIX/Linux version coming later. As you may know, we don’t typically open to user-testing this early in the development cycle. However, we are really excited about what the Desktop team is cooking up and want your feedback." - Arnaldo M Pereira from Bookmarklet

Do you mean sides as in left and right side? - SuezanneC Baskerville

"There has already been written a lot on the C10K problem and it is known that the only viable option to handle LOTS of concurrent connections is to handle them asynchronously. This also shows that for massively concurrent problems, such as lots of parallel comet connections, the GIL in Python is a non-issue as we handle the concurrent connections in a single thread. In this post i am going to look at a selection of asynchronous servers implemented in Python." - Arnaldo M Pereira from Bookmarklet

"For my Msc thesis I have developed a system build in Python which does person recognition and have shown that it is possible to obtain a better recognition rate with this system than by using Google’s Picasa. I have put the source code online and will hereby announce that I will try my best to spend some time explaining how to do person and face recognition with Python.  I hope that a public announcements such as this will instantly create some public debt forcing me to actually complete this task. We shall see." - Arnaldo M Pereira from Bookmarklet

awesome. - Scott

"dygraphs is an open source JavaScript library that produces produces interactive, zoomable charts of time series. It is designed to display dense data sets and enable users to explore and interpret them." - Arnaldo M Pereira from Bookmarklet

"Someone needs to let the folks in Raleigh know we're in a down economy still. While much of the tech market lingers in the doldrums, Red Hat announced another strong earnings report for its fiscal third quarter 2010." - Arnaldo M Pereira from Bookmarklet

"Google is forking existing FOSS code bits for Chromium like a rabbit makes babies: frequently, and usually, without much thought. Rather than leverage the existing APIs from upstream projects like icu, libjingle, and sqlite (just to name a few), they simply fork a point in time of that code and hack their API to shreds for chromium to use. This is akin to much of the Java methodology, which I can sum up as "I'd like to use this third-party code, but my application is too special to use it as is, so I covered it with Bedazzler Jewels and Neon Underlighting, then bury my blinged out copy in my application.". A fair amount of the upstream Chromium devs seem to have Java backgrounds, which may explain this behavior, but it does not excuse it." - Arnaldo M Pereira from Bookmarklet

Holiday season is in full swing. And what a great time of year it is - the snow is flying, people are heading out on vacation to spend time with family and friends, and everyone’s got some last minute things to do. At Bing, our goal is to make your life a little easier no matter what the task or decision, and we recently launched some new richer, enhanced search results that can help you do just that. In fact, this was the subject of the ‘Mixed Media Search’ panel at Search Engine Strategies conference in Chicago a couple weeks ago. There I talked about how Bing is moving beyond the ’10 blue links’ with richer and more organized pages that are designed to help consumers complete tasks and make better decisions. We’re delivering more of these richer experiences to help make the tough decisions and complete tasks big and small. Here are a couple examples of a few recent features that demonstrate how we’re evolving search from just listing links to actually providing you rich... - Arnaldo M Pereira