The best friends in life are those that you dont have to see every day. You know how it goes; you keep meaning to catch up, but things get in the way. You've missed a few dinner dates because you were out with other friends. But it doesn't matter, because you know that with your best friend you will just pick up right where you left off, even after such a long time apart.

We like to think of Desktop TweetDeck as your best friend. You have always been there for each other, but just recently you have been busy with your cool new friends on Android. Well, now its time to show a bit of love for your BFF and have that catch-up.

So pull up a chair, grab a coffee and sit down with Desktop TweetDeck v0.35.

In this release we have, of course, fixed a few bugs, but there are also some small, but important, new features. Oh, and we are talking about the normal version of TweetDeck here, not the super-swanky User Streams Preview version. That will be updated soon.

Trending Topics

When you install v0.35, you will have a new Trending Topics column, which pulls topics from Twitter and a description from WhatTheTrend.com. So finally you can keep up with the gossip around the hottest Twitter topics from within your Deck.

You can even click the column header to choose a country from the available list, for closer monitoring of local trends near you.

Smart cross-posting for longer tweets

Sometimes 140 characters just isn't enough to express your love of Justin Beiber. We understand that, and so have made it easier for you to send messages that are longer than 140 characters, without having to faff about with copying and pasting or external websites. Just cross-post to your Twitter and Buzz accounts and TweetDeck will post the start of your message to Twitter along with a link to the full post on Buzz. Clever eh?

Support for t.co shortend URLs

If you hover your mouse over a link shortened with Twitter's t.co URL shortener you will now see the final destination URL in a small popup window. As Twitter now use this service more and more, this should give you a better idea about the link you are about to visit without actually having to click first.

Easy sign-in

One of the great features of our Android app is the sign-in procedure when using a TweetDeck account. This smooth operation, which automatically imports all the social networking accounts that have been added to your TweetDeck account, has now been added to the desktop app too. So if you ever have to reinstall your TweetDeck, just log in with your TweetDeck account and your other accounts will be automatically added for you.

Posterous Photo Uploading

We have added Posterous as a photo uploading serivce so you can now send photos to your default Posterous blog direct from TweetDeck. A small, but much-requested feature, now baked right into the app.

The full changelog for this release can be found on our support site.

It's been good to catch up, lets do it again soon eh?

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Update2: Well at least if you actually got 3.2 running then you're free and clear and don't have to worry

Update: This isn't good news!! We're looking at some minor bugs that a very small number (two) EVO users have encountered and have taken the tool down for a short while until we're satisfied that they have been resolved. unrevoked team

Android tweakers rejoice, the unrevoked team has just released unrEVOked 3.2. Here's the change log for the latest version:

• Added support for Froyo builds on all supported devices
• Added support for the CDMA Desire
• Optionally disables security on supported CDMA devices

So those are the newest features, but what about supported devices? That list has grown to include the following list of Android phones:

• Sprint EVO 4G (HTC Supersonic)
• Droid Incredible (HTC Incredible)
• HTC Desire GSM
• HTC Desire CDMA (HTC BravoC)
• HTC Aria
• Droid Eris (HTC DesireC)
• HTC Wildfire (HTC Buzz)

If that wasn't enough, unrevoked3 now will permanently unlock NAND write protection by default on the EVO 4G, Droid Incredible and HTC Desire CDMA.

Pretty sweet eh? Among other news with the release of 3.2, the unrevoked team has noticed that the basic workings behind unrevoked3 may apply to other rooted HTC phones running Froyo. So if you're current phone isn't on the cool list above, then be sure to contact the unrevoked team.

Thanks Chuck for the heads up!

Unrevoked 3.2 available now, plays nice with Android 2.2

With with the latest release of iTunes, Apple has forayed into social networking. iTunes 10 includes Ping, a built-in social network for music.

With Apple's recent launch of iAds, a platform that taps into iTunes' existing user data to let advertisers target users through existing iPhone apps, Ping is an important move to grow iTunes' social graph. Basically, Ping can end up making iTunes a lot stickier, giving both Apple and iAds advertisers more insight into how to sell to iTunes users.

All that being said, Ping can also fall flat on its face. Let's take a look at 5 reasons why Ping can both succeed and fail.

1. Ping Launches with a Strong User Base

Will Work: With over 160 million iTunes users, Ping has a considerable head start. Indeed, a lot of social networking start-ups hit the Deadpool before they hit 1 millions (trust me, I know: I've worked for one).

Won't Work: Offering an existing user-base something cool doesn't always mean it's going to work. Consider the number of Google users. Now, consider the number of Google's failures and then add Google Wave to the list. Res ipsa loquitur

2. Ping is a Value Added Component

Will Work: While most social networks are just that, Ping is a social network that plugs into an existing ecommerce suite. Users already find value in iTunes, and Ping will help them get more value out of it. In other words, while most social networks are just useless fun, Ping takes useless features and makes them useful by plugging them into an already useful tool iTunes.

Won't Work: Now just because you give it to them, doesn't mean that they're going to use it. Consider this: iTunes is like a giant online mall. But with the exception of teenagers, people don't go to the mall to socialize, they go to the mall to shop. Basically, most users might turn out to be decidedly uninterested in socializing via iTunes.

Take Zune Social, for instance. Zune has had social features since its launch in 2006, and it still remains irrelevant. Granted, iTunes Ping boasts a user-base from the get-go, but it still goes to show that just because you offer social features beyond your core functionality, there's no guarantee users will pick it up.

3. User Choice / Control

Will Work: Ping gives users just the kind of control that Facebook has always struggled with, and if Facebook can get it wrong and be such a success, things are looking up for Ping. As TechCrunch reports, Ping lets:

[...] you decide if you want to use the friend model, the follow model, or the lurk model.

To be more clear, Apple asks you to decide between two things: do you want to allow people to follow you, or do you want no one to be able to follow you? The latter is a nice option because you can still use Ping, you simply use it as a lurker. You can see what other people with public profiles are doing, but they can't see what you are doing. The other option is to let people follow you but there's a sub option to this. You can either let anyone follow you (think: Twitter) or you can get notifications to approve everyone who wants to follow you (think: Facebook).

The kind of choice of choice and flexibility can be exactly what iTunes users need to share their social graph with Apple.

Won't Work: Too much choice can also be a bad thing. With 3 different levels of functionality, there's considerable room for users to misunderstand the service. Just imagine if the majority of users decided to lurk. Basically, a bunch of users will set-up their Ping profiles, surf around, and not find enough to make it worth their time, and Ping can end up going stagnant.

4. Ping Has Revenue Models on Toast

Will Work: Ping has one thing that many social networking start-ups lack: a revenue model. First, through Ping, Apple will be able to cross-sell and upsell iTunes users based on their social graph i.e. your friends like this, so you might, too.

Second, the Ping social graph can expand on the data already available to iAds advertisers (such as purchasing habits and history). This will make iAds that much more appealing to advertisers and, potentially, that much more profitable.

Won't Work: Okay, I can't see any way a revenue model can work against Ping. In essence, the value added component it offers users pertains to iTunes sales, and iAds advertisers. From a revenue model stand point, Ping just makes sense.

5. The Ping Model Works

Will Work: Just like Facebook usurped LBS social networks, Ping capitalizes on a set of features that have already succeeded. Social music networks such as Last.fm and Pandora have already proven popular with users. But where Last.fm and Pandora have had to refer their users to third-party music stores, Ping is part and parcel of a music store that's already popular. In fact, if I were Last.fm and Pandora, I'd be worried.

Won't Work: The fact that other music social networks have been so successful also poses a bit of a barrier to iTunes' Ping. Consider how Twitter has continued to grow and flourish despite Facebook patenting and integrating the news feed.

For instance, Last.fm and/or Pandora users have invested years in their favorites, friend lists, and preferences. Although this won't prevent them from trying out Ping, it does make it less likely that they abandon their other accounts altogether. That means they'll be less likely to move their music socializing away from their existing services over to Ping.

Anyone's Guess

The fact of the matter is that we can look at Ping any which way. And in the end, it can be a huge success, a mild success, or a complete flop. I guess the best we can do is look at all the variables, place our bets, and hope for the best.

But if you were going to give Ping 1 point for a will work point above and -1 point for a won't work point, how would you score Ping's potential?

Josh Twist asked me this via Twitter:

is it possible to invoke a member before a ctor is finished (eg maybe using threaded IL trickery) or is this forbidden somehow? :D

Now I don't know why everyone seems to think I enjoy writing code which could have bizarre effects on either you, the compiler, the resulting execution or your co-workers... but it's an interesting topic to look at, anyway.

The perils of partially constructed objects

Hopefully it's reasonably obvious why it's dangerous to access a member before it's been properly constructed - but it may be worse than you've considered.

In particular, immutable types are only immutable after they're fully constructed. It's entirely reasonable for an immutable type to change read-only fields several times during the course of initialization. The fields can only be set in the constructor itself (or a variable initializer for the field) but this can occur several times. If the constructor for the immutable type exposes the instance it's constructing to other code, all the immutability guarantees go out of the window.

Even in mostly-mutable types, code may well assume that it's dealing with some fixed aspects. For example, you may have some database entity type which is either freshly created with a random GUID, or created from an existing record with an ID from the database. In either case, code consuming this type wouldn't expect to see an ID of Guid.Empty, or for the ID to change after it's been observed... even if other properties of the object can be changed later.

What C# does to protect you

C# as a language (plus conforming compiler, of course) protects you from some of this.

When you chain to another constructor, you can't use this to calculate any arguments you want to pass to the other constructor. The code is clearly dealing with a partially constructed object at this point - it knows none of your constructor body has been executed - so it's protecting you from harm. Unfortunately this means you can't even call this.GetType(), which can make it tricky to write objects which populate themselves using reflection.

During the constructor body, you have complete access to this of course - you have to, in order to set any state within the object. This is where things can get nasty.

Virtual methods

One way in which Java, C# and C++ diverge in their constructor behaviour is with regard to virtual methods:

• In C++, the object only really "becomes" an instance of the subclass when the subclass constructor has been executed, so calling a virtual method will only execute the override in the "current" type hierarchy.
• In Java, the object is of the final type from the start, so the most deeply overridden implementation of the virtual method is called - but this will occur without any initialization having taken place. All fields will still have their default values (null, 0 etc).
• C# is like Java, except that variable initializers will have been executed (as they're executed before the base class constructor is called). In other words, initialization within the constructor body won't have taken place, but any fields which are initialized as part of the declaration will have their appropriate values.

This is really dangerous if you're not aware of it. In particular, any time you override a virtual method in Java or C#, you need to know whether it might be called in a partially-initialized state.

Wherever possible, try not to call virtual methods from the constructor for precisely this reason. I would advise that if you absolutely have to do it (I failed to remove this behaviour when porting Joda Time to Noda Time, for example) you document that fact very heavily and make sure that you don't call the method in any other place. Make it protected, too. Basically it should only be part of initialization. If you need similar behaviour at other times, create another method. This allows derived classes to tailor their implementation to the expected state at the time of invocation.

Callbacks

You may be thinking that this is all easy: just avoid virtual methods, don't do anything stupid like setting a static variable to this during a constructor (making it visible from other threads before initialization is completed) and you'll be fine.

Well, I suspect that almost every Windows Forms app in existence publishes this during the constructor. Any time you have an event handler, that's effectively providing a callback... and if that's an instance method, it's tied to the relevant instance, usually this.

How sure are you - really, really sure - that none of those event handlers will fire as part of the rest of the initialization? For example, if you use Visual Studio to hook up the ControlAdded event for a WinForms form, and also add a bunch of controls to the form... when is that event going to fire? Will the autogenerated code add the event handler after it adds the controls, or before? If it adds the handler at the start, then clearly the method handling the event will be called before your constructor finishes... so you need to be ready for that.

How much of a problem is this really?

Like many matters of purity, I suspect this is usually more of a theoretical issue than a practical one. In complicated situations like the Windows Forms one above, most event handlers are likely to be fired after initialization... and there's typically not as strong a sense of invariants being set up as there would be in an immutable data type, for example.

Immutable data types, in turn, are less likely to accidentally let this escape during construction... but the consequences of them doing so are much more severe, of course.

Conclusion

To answer Josh's question: Yes. At least on the simplest reading of the question: members can certainly end up being invoked on an object during its construction. They can potentially end up being invoked on multiple threads during construction. This is basically under the control of the constructors in the type hierarchy though.

In particular, I believe that the .NET memory model is stricter than the ECMA specification in terms of threading: I believe a constructor will have completed (and all its writes retired) before the reference returned by the constructor can be published to another variable, which was a concern in double-checked locking. It's a valid concern to consider though.

Alternative conclusion: almost nothing is really as simple as it appears to be.

Later this year, a variety of OEMs are going to release Android tablets. These tablets have a lot of fantastic development potential thanks to their large, high-resolution screens, plentiful amounts of RAM, and fast CPUs. A lot of them even have cellular radios inside for getting wireless data on the go.

Yesterday we sent out a tweet asking if XDA should be home to Android tablet development. The results were pretty clear, with most people supporting the action.

Today we're happy to announce the first Android tablet addition to the XDA forums for the Samsung Galaxy Tab. The Tab is a 7 Android 2.2 slate that has dual cameras, A-GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth 3.0, HSUPA, plus a nice-sized 4000mAh battery. It's quite slim at around 12mm. The Tab goes on sale in Europe later this month, and will hit the USA by the end of the year. Ready to discuss it? Jump to the Galaxy Tab General forum!

P.S. For those of you wondering if adding tablets to XDA will make the site slower, the answer is nowe have enough server capacity to add additional forums. Rest assured that if the organization or speed of XDA is in any way compromised by adding tablets, we'll make the proper adjustments.

Gallery: Samsung Galaxy Tab first hands-on

Gallery: Samsung Galaxy Tab press images

Continue reading Samsung Galaxy Tab preview

Samsung Galaxy Tab preview originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 02 Sep 2010 05:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

I have been meaning to write about Likes and users interests for quite some time. But the matter is complicated. So rather than wait to write the perfect post, I'm going to lay down some cornerstones, sketch a few concepts and maybe develop some key arguments.

I'll begin with a bit of the raison d'etre. Likes are not just the core social gesture on Facebook. They are a one-click sign of interest used on many kinds of social services. Likes are like social bookmarks a simple expression of interest in a bit of social data. That is, a selection of one thing among many things, an expression simplified in order to communicate to an audience.

Let's break this down somewhat. For the Like isn't a clear and direct expression of the user's interest, or like. The reasons for this are several-fold. (I have written on this in the past, but a brief summary can't hurt.)

One gesture is not capable of capturing differences in degree. Clearly, when we like something, our like varies by degree

A one-word gesture is not a linguistic statement. This limits the expression of interest. There will be ambiguity in the selection itself, owing to:

• The reason for liking is not provided;
• The kind of like is not provided;
• The purpose of sharing the like is not stated;
• The audience intended in sharing the like has some ambiguity (due to the medium);
• Any interest in soliciting conversation or commentary is ambivalent.

For example, liking a song is not the same as liking the band that performs the song. Liking a band is not the same as liking a genre, a time period, or a category of music. Liking a song online in order to save it for later, to share it with friends, to add it to one's history, folders, or other collections, or even to solicit the interest of others these are all differences.

We should be able to agree that the Like, as an online gesture of interest, reduces differences to a single degree. And there are yet more problems with the Like.

Liking online is a social act. Even when it's an individual act of social bookmarking, it's a act committed in front of an audience. Whether that audience pays attention doesn't matter. Fact is, there are many individual Likes that are committed with the knowledge that others may see them.

If social action is intrinsic to the gesture of Liking, then we can agree that it is impossible to determine what's intended by liking. The individual interest is compromised by the social action of sharing that interest.

This gets interesting if we think about the importance of social gestures to capturing and creating value in online social media. We have opted for the simplicity of user experience over the clarity of more differentiated symbolic system. That's fine. But we need to now be aware of the consequences.

We have noted that the Like introduces ambiguities of intent, of degree, of relation (type), and of communication. The Like also introduce ambiguities into the quantity and quality of value created.

Consider that for many social systems, business models rest on capturing a user's evaluation and selection of an object, or bit of content, such that user participation adds value to that content. That's more or less the gist of most commercial social media. (It's not the key value proposition of communication tools their interest is in building habits of use, such that their activity can be paired to content experiences elsewhere or later.)

The value added, then, matters. Content is objective, has objective attributes that we can store and by means of which we can organize content (a store; taxonomies and categories, for search and findability). Social engagement with that content adds social evaluations.

These subjective selections and choices create taste. Taste is captured in trends and can correspond to social groups and identities. Furthermore, popular tastes can be used to drive exposure to content. For better or worse, popularity alone is a reliable means of organizing and navigating content (and people).

I have seen as have you a number of systems built around interest pivoting. These use the interests captured from user participation to create navigation to users (e.g. members of a dating site); and to create contexts of interest for the purpose of advertising.

The notion of using interests (same as Likes) for social navigation would seem to make perfect sense. But there is the matter of: for what? If an interest captured says something about my taste, the next question must be: in what contexts do I wish my social interactions to be an extension of my interests or tastes?

In dating, for example, I may (not) want to find somebody like me. I may (not) want to find somebody who likes what I like. I may (not) want to find somebody who likes exactly this (book, song, band, movie, actor, tv show). Where interests are used as pivots and views of a system's membership, differences of degree and type matter quite a bit.

The dating site is but one example. I suspect that many companies in the social space are betting on the value add of user interests captured within a social context. The promises of reviews, recommendations, social and realtime filtering, social search, and more invest heavily in the assumption that social commerce trumps conventional commerce. Social commerce extracts the distinctions of tastes; non-social commerce relies on uitility, functionality, price, and other objective measure of value.

What's more, any decent brand knows that it has no choice but to go social. For it's in social commerce that branding communicates (socially); becomes socially relevant, and accrues the narrative and imagistic benefits of socialized taste-making.

I can return us now briefly to the gesture of the Like. We now have a more differentiated understanding of what the Like represents and means. We can see that it is a unique type of sign that signifies value and interest in ways mission critical to social media. We know, too, that the Like alone does not capture, convey, or communicate all of its distinctions.

We can see that some of these may be supplied by means of interactions and practices in short contexts in which gestures of interest are captured or presented, used to organize results, to filter among content sources, or used to frame views of people and content.

We can see, in other words, that the gesture and expression alone are inadequate to either capture or represent a user's interests. And we can see what we will need to explore next: the ways in which social interactions and practices may clarify the value of the value added.

Related posts:

1. The Reality of Social Media The internet changes over time. That the technology has...
2. The Attention Economy of Social Media I started wondering last evening what twitter would be...
3. 11 Tips on How To Apply Social Interaction Design Thinking Adrian's insights and approaches...

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Check out a demo of the new keyframe animation.

Custom attributes is also a new feature that makes it easier to do things like animating a portion of an attribute segment (demo).

Full release notes:

• fixed IE8 issue with the HTML element named Raphael
• fixed precision for arcs in IE
• added caching to getPointAtSegmentLength function
• added ability to do more than one animation of an element at the same time
• added "cubic-bezier()" as an easing method
• added new syntax for animation (keyframes)
• hsl2rgb now accept h as degree (0..360), s and b as % (0..100)
• show="new" instead of target="blank" for SVG
• added angle method
• added snapTo method
• cached popup || activeX for IE
• fixed insertAfter
• fixed timeouts for animation
• added customAttributes

BTW I just noticed that Dmitry is now at Sencha; they're assembling quite the team! Congrats Dmitry!

Many bicyclists obey traffic laws, but punishments need to be handed out for those that don't. I suggest we take away their spandex wearing privileges. Let's see how they like riding around in unpadded loose fitting cotton shorts! HA!

There's lots of motion in the ocean in the early-stage investing world. TechCrunch has a write-up on the companies that presented at Y Combinator's demo day yesterday. I had several of my own thoughts.

Quality

• The average company quality is up. A much greater fraction of these companies will be singles or doubles compared to years prior. I'm not sure if there will be a higher percentage of home runs or not.
• There are also more companies. Xobni's class of 2006 had 15 companies; yesterday's graduating class had 36!
• There's more early-stage investing opportunity at YC than before.

The Index Fund Strategy

• Ron Conway and Keith Rabois invested in a number of these new YC startups.
• Some folks call this strategy the index fund approach. Let's define it as investing in more than five out of the 36 companies.
• The index fund approach might produce better returns (and/or risk-adjusted returns [1]) than cherry picking the best one or two companies from each Y Combinator batch. I'm not sure.
• The index funds have three main advantages: First, if you assume everyone's throwing darts, then they're more likely to invest in the home runs. Second, they can collect returns from the longer tail of singles and doubles without breaking a sweat. Third, they can make investment decisions faster.
• Interestingly, VCs still try to cherry pick.
• So do some of the new super angels.
• Anyone in the comments want to take a hack at the index fund versus cherry picking strategies, e.g. in environments with different levels of froth?

The World is Flat

• VentureHack's Angel List and YC's Demo Day have made the fundraising landscape more flat. It's easier to see a wide variety of deals as an angel without doing heavy networking.
• This creates more competition.
• In particular, it removes a competitive advantage for heavily networked angels like Ron Conway.
• Networks and experience still matter a s***ton for providing value to portfolio companies, though.
• For example, a new investor from Hollywood could come in and start making lots of investments very quickly.
• But when shit hits the fan, or you need backchannels to an acquiring company, the movie star won't be able to help (unless the acquirer is Roc-A-Wear and your investor is Jay-Z, in which case I'm pretty jealous).

Investor Credentials

• Looking at a VC's investment list is very useful. Did they get into the hot deals? Were their companies successful? What do their founders say when you call for a reference check?
• Angels advertise their investment histories as well, but the informational value of those lists will go down as the world gets more and more flat, AND as the index fund strategy becomes more popular.
• Being an angel investor in Google back in the day meant you were connected. It meant you were friends with the founders. It meant you know some of the behind-the-scenes details of the company.
• But angels are investing in more companies, and companies are raising money from more investors. So again, the informational value goes down.
• What's the new credential?
• Probably references. Founders of an angel's companies can tell you the real stories behind how an angel hurt, noop'ed, or helped their company.
• Do we need a TheFunded for angel investors?

Multiple Valuations: Early Bird Gets The Worm

• Another factor: different valuations for different angels. As Paul Graham recently pointed out, a startup can issue convertible notes at different caps to different investors.
• This degree of freedom could be used in a number of ways.
• Some companies are trying to use this to give different valuations to different investors as a function of the order that they invest.
• The idea is that the first investor to commit is taking the most risk, so they should be rewarded for that.
• This can only go so far.
• If a company needs a minimum of $X to get to the next step, once a company has raised $X a valuation premium doesn't make sense.
• $X for a YC startup is probably around $200k.
• I'll stop there on this topic. There are lots of dynamics at play, and it will vary company by company, but in summary I don't think early bird valuation discounts will become super prevalent.

Multiple Valuations: Value Add

• But as the angel investing world gets more flat, the average investor will become more vanilla, and investors like Ron Conway will become more differentiated by their savvy, connections, and in some cases the time they can devote to helping the company.
• I predict that it will become more common to reward value-added investors with valuation discounts.
• ESPECIALLY if these value add investors commit earlier.
• Often the big value add investors will commit earlier because they understand the space and get really excited about it.
• For example, one YC company yesterday had already raised money from a big time executive in their industry who can help them with intros/advising/etc. Those situations can call for valuation boosts.
• Valuation boosts, while rare, were previously done by issuing extra common stock (sometimes specifically called advisor shares) to the value-add investor. But that approach was a little too heavyweight if the angel wasn't going to be heavily involved.
• So I think valuation cap differences will become more common for compensating value added investors, especially when they are the first money in.
• Secondary effect 1: non-value-add investors will be paying more for their equity, at least in theory, since entrepreneurs can now price discriminate.
• Secondary effect 2: more angel investors will try to be value add. (?) Especially super angels who have more resources and more companies to amortize fixed cost value adds across.

good times. : )

[1] thanks to Will Stockwell for reminding me that, of course, maximizing return/risk ratio is more important than maximizing returns. More on this topic in the context of VC over at Fred Wilson's MBA Mondays.

Adam Smith co-founded Xobni as part of the Y Combinator program in 2006. He ran Xobni as CEO for two years, was its CTO and member of technical staff for an additional two years and change, and is now a free radical in search of the next great idea. This post originally appeared on his blog and was republished here with his permission.

I'm now primarily a Mac user, but back when I was on Windows, my multi-protocol IM client of choice was Miranda IM. It's a lightweight, highly extensible and unobtrusive open-source tool that supports AIM, Facebook, Gadu-Gadu, Jabber, ICQ, IRC, MSN, Yahoo and more. The Miranda IM team this week released version 0.9, which in addition to bugfixes has some useful new features:

• New improved protocols engine with full Unicode support
• New high quality icon theme
• Windows 7 taskbar icon support
• Added full Unicode file transfers
• Added ability to transfer files longer than 4 GB
• Added the first official 64-bit core version
• And many improvements to protocol support

You can see the full list of updates here. Miranda IM is available for Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000, 2003, XP, Vista and 7. You can download the latest stable version (0.9.1 as of this writing) for free here.

As a side note, I find it strange that Miranda IM is only up to version 0.9, as it's been around for years; when will it make it to 1.0?

Which Windows IM client do you use?

(Via Download Squad)

Related GigaOM Pro content (sub. req.): Are You Empowering Your Mobile Workforce?

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, OpenOffice.org

Miranda IM is pretty much the most versatile, customizable, powerful, minimalistic and down-right sexy IM client on the planet.

I know that sounds like a lot, but I've been using it for years, and I've tried pretty much everything else Windows and Linux have to offer. I never tried Adium, so maybe Adium's better - but for Windows, nothing beats Miranda. As you can tell, this application is a prime candidate for one of my What the Zuk columns, so I will save the rest of my admiration for later and get to the news already:

Miranda 0.9.0 is now out! Miranda is very actively developed, but the release cycle isn't exactly lightning-fast. So 0.9.0 means something, and here's a few features off the list:

• New improved protocols engine with full Unicode support
• New high quality icon theme
• First official x64 version
• Added Windows 7 taskbar icon support

The weirdest feature added to this release was support for file transfers of over 4GB in size. I mean, who the heck transfers over 4GB of files over IM? This release also brings strong Unicode support across the board, so if you happen to be a non-English user this may come in handy. I just installed it myself, and the myriad of add-ons I use seem to work just fine.

And of course, Miranda keeps all of its existing goodness, including support for an insane number of protocols. I currently use it for IRC, ICQ, MSN, GChat, and Olark. One client to rule them all! If you've never used Miranda, now would be a great time to give it a spin!

Miranda IM 0.9 is now out -- new icons, better Win7 support, and lots more! originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 25 Aug 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

If you own an iPhone, you've undoubtedly used an app that has the Pull to Refresh functionality. You know, where you pull a screen down to refresh the contents on the page. That was originally the work of Loren Brichter, now a Twitter employee who built it for his Tweetie 2 iPhone app (now called Twitter for iPhone). Another group of developers, Enormego, rebuilt the functionality and open-sourced it (apparently with Brichter's blessing) a while back. Which brings us to yesterday, when it landed in Facebook's new iPhone app.

The fact that Facebook is using it isn't an issue at all. The problem is that they then wrapped it into their Three20 iOS library (which they also open-source), but did so without proper attribution. The Enormego guys looked at the code and quickly realized it was nearly an exact copy of theirs. They immediately put up a post entitled What ever happened to common courtesy? And rightly so.

But not to fear. It appears that this wasn't a case of Facebook attempting to steal something as their own. Instead, a few Facebook developers have responded to Enormego apologizing for the mistake which they're calling an oversight.

Specifically, here's what Facbeook's Jeff Verkoeyen (who maintains Three20) had to say in a comment:

This is definitely an oversight on my part. I merged the code in from a Three20 fork by another developer in the community. I contacted the developer of that fork and requested permission to use the code, but going forward I need to be more careful about the code we merge into the library. You are completely in the right to be surprised by this situation and I fully intend to rectify it.

Seeing as this code is clearly based on, and likely replicated from, your source, I will be doing a couple of things.

First, I'm going to speak with the developer in question about this. Both of us contributed to this issue, myself specifically by merging code without fully researching the original source. But I also need to be able to trust code from Three20s forks, and this means I need to be able to trust that attribution is correctly maintained.

Second, I'd love to speak with you about correctly attributing this source to you. Feel free to contact me anytime at XXXXXXX

I sincerely apologize for the attribution fail. Looking forward to chatting with you and discussing what we should do going forward.

Shaun from Enormego responded favorably to that. And then Facebook's head of open source programs, Dave Recordon, added another comment just for good measure:

Hey Shaun, I'm David Recordon and head up our open source programs at Facebook.

As Jeff said, we clearly didn't realize that this was actually your open source code when it was submitted via a GitHub pull request back in February. I'm sorry that we messed this one up.

As for fixing this, the code clearly came from EGOTableViewPullRefresh and we're updating the four file's within Three20 to directly reflect that and link back to your project. This patch will be pushed to GitHub shortly.

Verkoeyen followed up one more time to let them know he added the attribution to GitHub.

The situation looked like it may spiral out of control there for a second as even Brichter himself started tweeting about it. Just so there's no confusion, Facebook should have credited Enormego for their open source pull to refresh implementation, not me, he tweeted earlier tonight.

Looks like crisis averted.

TUAW"Compare Macs" option added to Apple Store originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 19 Aug 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Over on their blog, Evernote has practically admitted to not putting as much effort into the Android arm of their phone apps. The good news is that's changing.

Evernote must have seen the rising demand of Android phones because they've doubled the size of their Android development team. Not only that, but in their first update in a long while, they've added these features that are Android-only:

Evernote widget

The Evernote widget is a great springboard into the app itself, giving you quick access to pictures, notes, and audio notes. The widget also gives you a quick search bar for all of your Evernote data.

Quick Share

Similarly to how you can send a particular item as a text message or an email, Evernote is giving you the option of sending it directly to your Evernote account. This is going to be great for quickly cataloging websites, pictures, etc. that you may come across in your online browsing. I see this really coming in handy around the holidays when you're looking for the perfect gift online.

Beyond these Android specific additions, Evernote has also added pinch to zoom support, as well as several bug fixes and general updates. It's great to see developers such as Evernote finally capitalizing on what Google's operating system has to offer.

Evernote Brings Even More to Android

I could care less if Google deletes Buzz tomorrow Why?

#1 Google is NOT going to dump Buzz. Enough said. However..

Because my followers will follow me on Google Me. Or what ever platform. This is what makes Google's social network valuable.

Because my followers and those I follow are in my Gmail contacts. They have little to do with Buzz, or Wave. Because when you follow someone they are added to your Gmail contacts for you by Google.

I have mentioned this to you before many times. Many seem to think that Google social apps are built on your address book. True.

Gmail contacts are not a static address book though. Google will build your address book for you.

We started building our following when we broke the news in 2008 that Google was building a social network, as that was how it worked in Google Reader sharing. Then we added more followers to my Google Contacts with Google Friend Connect. Then more with Google Wave. Then more with Google Buzz. Started at zero, now at over 2000. Google added them, not me.

So I don't care if Buzz gets canned tomorrow for Google Me, I will be instantly following you there tomorrow and you well be following me. Because it's not about Buzz, it's about Gmail and real email addresses and phone numbers of real people.

Like Thomas Morffew that I spoke with on the phone yesterday. I never knew of Thomas until we chatted on Google Buzz. I did not add his email address to my Google Contacts. But we followed each other on Buzz so Google added Thomas to my Google Contacts and me to his. I asked Thomas for his phone number after that. When I got his number I searched my contacts and there he was so I added his number to the existing listing. I didn't add him, Google did.

Dump Buzz and open Google Me? Fine. There will be Thomas following me and me following him because we have a relationship built and saved by Google.

That is how social networking is done and how real relationships are developed. Google just helps this along. It's time to stop thinking about the application from Google and start thinking relationships that you will continue to strengthen no matter what the Google platform.

How can this Google Social Network benefit you even more? Click here..

Google Android phones must be popular - they've just been targeted with their first Trojan. An SMS Trojan called Trojan-SMS.AndroidOS.FakePlayer.a has already infected a number of mobile devices, according to security firm Kaspersky Lab. Purporting to be a harmless media player application, the Trojan, once installed, actually sends out SMS text messages without the users' knowledge or consent.

Sponsor

The Trojan penetrates Android-based smartphones disguised as an ordinary application, says Kaspersky. Users are prompted to install a small file of around 13 KB that has the standard Android extension .APK. But once the "app" is installed on the device, the Trojan bundled with it begins texting premium rate phone numbers (those that charge). The criminals are actually the ones operating these numbers, so they end up collecting the money via charges to the victims' accounts.

From Russia, With Love

According to Denis Maslennikov, Senior Malware Researcher at Kaspersky Lab, there's not an exact number of infected devices available at present, but the outbreak is currently regional. For now, only Russian Android users can actually lose money after installing the Trojan, but anyone can be infected.

The Trojan-SMS category of malware is relatively common in the mobile ecosystem, but this is the first to specifically target Android-based devices. However, FakePlayer is not the first malware designed for Android, says the firm, as there have been isolated incidents of Android devices infected with spyware, the earliest occurring in 2009.

The choice of targeting Android devices in particular should come as no surprise to those following mobile industry trends. Given Android's meteoric rise in market share, it's no surprise to Kaspersky, either:

"The IT market research and analysis organization IDC has noted that those selling devices running Android are experiencing the highest growth in sales among smartphone manufacturers," says Maslennikov. "As a result, we can expect to see a corresponding rise in the amount of malware targeting that platform."

Does Android Need AV?

According to a statement from Google, the application installation process is designed to protect users from attacks like these since it details what information and system resources the app has permission to access - such as sending an SMS. "Users must explicitly approve this access in order to continue with the installation," the statement reads. "We consistently advise users to only install apps they trust. In particular, users should exercise caution when installing applications outside of Android Market."

However, the release of a Trojan disguised as an app is an inventive way to get malware onto mobile devices. In this case, the Trojan takes advantage of users' lack of attention to the installation process as well as Google Android's openness - this operating system isn't tied to a closely managed and "curated" marketplace of approved applications like the iPhone is with iTunes. Although Google does step in to remove apps from its Market when security concerns are present, nothing prevents developers - especially nefarious ones like these - from forgoing official channels and publishing their own apps elsewhere, then tricking users into installing them.

But even if the Trojan came through backdoor channels, it's at least a small blow for an OS with security at the forefront of its design.

The security firm says it plans to release a version of Kaspersky Mobile Security for the Android operating system in 2011.

We can already picture the Apple vs. Android TV ads now: "iPhones aren't susceptible to the viruses plaguing Android phones..." Justin Long will smugly state. Now, who will play "Android guy?"

The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) has released a new report, conducted by Economists Incorporated, called Video Games in the 21st Century, which found that the computer and video game industry contributed $5 billion to the U.S. economy last year.

At a time when the U.S. has been struggling with one of the worst economic recessions in history, it's clear that games have been providing a nice lift (even though they, too, are not immune to recession).

The ESA also found that the entertainment software industry's real annual growth rate from 2005 to 2009 exceeded 10 percent, which is actually more than seven times the growth rate of the U.S. economy as a whole.

"Despite a challenging economic environment, the entertainment software industry continues to grow and create new jobs at a rapid pace," said Michael D. Gallagher, president and CEO of the ESA. "Computer and video game companies have made an important contribution to our nation's economy while stimulating technological innovations and expanding the impact of games on our daily lives.

As the findings of this report suggest, the entertainment software industry is well positioned to sustain these economic and social contributions well into the future."

Other important findings from the study included:

• The computer and video game industry directly employs more than 32,000 individuals, a number that has increased by nearly nine percent annually since 2005;
• Industry employees earn an average annual compensation of $89,781;
• Total compensation for all workers directly employed in the computer and video game industry was $2.9 billion in 2009; and
• The industry directly and indirectly employs more than 120,000 people in the United States.
• California remains the largest employer of computer and video game personnel in the nation, providing more than $2.6 billion in direct and indirect compensation to Californians last year.
• Entertainment software companies in the Golden State added approximately $2.1 billion to the state's economy and grew by a real annual rate of 11.4 percent from 2005 to 2009, compared to a period of negative growth for California's overall economy.
• Texas ranked second nationally in computer and video game personnel in 2009, with 13,613 direct and indirect employees;
• Washington's entertainment software companies directly and indirectly employ 11,225 individuals;
• Virginia's computer and video game industry continues to experience tremendous growth, expanding by 77 percent from 2005 to 2009; and
• The six states with the greatest number of entertainment software industry employees were, in order, California, Texas, Washington, New York, Massachusetts and Illinois.

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See Also:

• New Gaming Trend! iPhone Games You Can Play With Your Eyes Closed
• Google Steps Up Its Investment In Social Games With $70 Million Acquisition Of Jambool
• Nintendo 3DS Will "Sell Like Hotcakes," Says EA Exec