Category: Tech

Thunderbird Lives

I’m a pretty big fan of Mozilla Thunderbird. The project has adopted the multi-channel development model of Firefox (which was adapted from Chrome’s) which is a good thing as far as I’m concerned. Instead of the nightly, Aurora and beta channels, though, Thunderbird’s channels are named Shredder (ha), Earlybird and Miramar. With the new names comes new logos, courtesy of Sean Martell, Lead Visual Designer for Mozilla.

I’m almost tempted to use the Earlybird builds just for the logo.

Can’t buy taste with money

For only €800, you, too, can put a fine piece of gauche consumerism into your pocket! Features: a sapphire crystal home button and 18-carat gold trimmings backed by Scottish leather from the “finest Caledonian herds”! Oh, it also has some trifling nonsense like 3.5-inch AMOLED touchscreen and an 8-megapixel camera with 720p HD recording.

Introducing the Nokia ORO. Oro being Italian for gold in case you have the observation power of a mollusc and fail to see the sheer blingyness.

While the technical specs aren’t poor by any means, it is “powered” by Symbian. Which was a fine mobile OS in its day back in the mid 00s. So, something for the more money than sense crowd.

Photo source: CNET UK

Deny, Deny, Deny

Classy, really classy Apple. But then this is simply business as usual for the Cult of Steve, so anyone who is familiar with Apple for the last ten years shouldn’t be in the slightest bit surprised. As for the general security implication, that old saying by Rich Cook never fails. The PC might be an idiot savant, but the wetware is just plain idiot.

Grapevines are completely overrated these days

So, any of you “old birds” remember a wee little site going by the name of Tom’s Hardware Guide? No? Then gather around the fire, all ye young ‘injuns, for we are about to speak of The Years Not Beginning With Two. A certain Doktor Tom Pabst started what was possibly the first of its kind to hit the enthusiast mainstream. Back then, it WAS something relatively new, a forefather of sorts for the IT hardware review sites that are common today. Which is not to say it was an exemplar of tech journalism, but it was at least somewhat respectable. Then the bubble burst, and the site subsequently entered the Void of Dubious Quality and hasn’t looked back since as it plunged gleefully into the stygian depths. So why bring up all this tl:dr stuff, you might ask?

Why….

This. Taken on its own, the hilarity is already pretty obvious, but this shooting of the foot makes it far more delicious. That’s not even taking in account the irony that it jumped the gun on Firefox 4’s release by pointing to non-final builds of the browser, which is emblematic of the sorry levels of tech journalism these days.