iChat occasionally seems to have trouble connecting when I’m traveling. My simple fix is to enter the IP address of the AIM servers directly into the settings.
Here are the IP addresses that you can plug in to make iChat work as of 04.06.09:
SSL
—————
Name: slogin.gslogin.oscar.aol.com
Address: 64.12.161.184
Non-SSL
—————
Name: login.messaging.aol.com
Address: 64.12.161.153
Apparently Microsoft throwing in the hat on Encarta. Back in 1993, MS had high hopes for the upstart. It made its way from CD-ROM to the web and now has lost mindshare due to free services like Wikipedia.
The category of traditional encyclopedias and reference material has changed- people today seek and consume information in considerably different ways.
The final discontinuation date for Encarta will be October 31, 2009. There’s more info over on Wikipedia, but certainly not much on Encarta itself.
[TechCrunch via Ars Technica]
Well-known industry trender, Netcraft, has recently observed a spike in popularity of the Lynx web browser- particularly since the recent Pwn2Own competition.
Apparently growing concern over vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari are driving users to the hardcore Lynx browser.
“Lynx has not once suffered a buffer overflow in its image processing, and indeed has suffered no security vulnerabilities at all in the last 2 years.”
More details (and laughs) on my favorite April fools story of the day over at Netcraft in “Deluge of Browser Security Issues Drives Mass Migration.”
Skype, Inc. has just released the official Skype app for the iPhone. Available for free today on the Apple App Store, you can now make free skype to skype calls, paid Skype-out calls & instant message.
Wi-Fi is required to make calls, but this is to be expected as it is an Apple-imposed restriction.
DSL Reports posted an interesting article “Broadband May Kill The Game Console Wars” which talks about the possibility of gaming in the cloud. An fascinating item that I haven’t seen mentioned elsewhere.
Props to the folks over at Hootsuite. Their 404 page was great, but the “fail whale” page is better! Nice to see someone acknowledge a tech issue.
Thanks to David Steinberger for the grab.
Earlier today, Microsoft launched Internet Explorer 8. This is their first major browser release since 2006. Among the features are better standards support, increased speed and an attempt at feature parity with other modern browsers.
Oddly enough, Safari 4, Google Chrome and the Firefox 3.5 have all posted performance statistics showing that they are faster than IE 8. It’ll be interesting times as we all likely move to a third IE style sheet for modern standards-based layouts.
After searching numerous times on this topic “We’re sorry, this video is no longer available,” I finally came across the answer. ArcSource posts this simple solution:
Reinstall Flash 10.
Yes, there is a fix for those who don’t have Google Accelerator and it’s so simple that I’m going to type it again- Reinstall Flash 10.
That is all.
Apparently this little Playschool guy is the lynchpin for this entire taxicab.
Doug Adams has released the second major version of the must-have Dupin. This app is the iTunes duplicates manager.
If you’ve ever wanted to rid your library of dupes, do yourself a favor and spend the $15 on this amazing piece of software. The new “Consolidate History” tool in this version consolidates play, skip & ratings info from all dupe tracks into a single “Keeper” track. Awesome!
While you’re there, take a look around the the huge library of iTunes scripts. Chances are if you’ve ever wished iTunes could do something that it can’t, Doug has created a script that does it for you.