Alligator Belly           Gadgets and Technology

AT&T has announced the release date for the Apple iPhone to be June 29. The 4GB will cost approx. 499$ and the 8GB will cost approx. $599 with a 2 year contract. There are also rumors that the iPhone SDK will be released at the WWDC which commences on June 11th. Time to break your piggy bank and get an iPhone.

Aliens and not just humans were also amazed by the Google Street View car. The aliens liked it so much that they followed it for a good 2 miles all the way from Flamingo & Swenson to Flamingo & McLeod in Las Vegas, NV. But on further analysis it looks like one of the cameras or a part of camera went bad and produced the pinkish overlay. Now it’s for you to decide whether it’s a pink hurricane, aliens or a just a minor malfunction of the camera. Or is it another clue to prove that Area 51 does indeed exist.

GMail allows the use of + in the email address and ignores everything after it. So for example if your email address is someone@gmail.com then you could use someone+mailing@gmail.com and that email would still reach you. Then in GMail you could search for someone+mailing and all the emails sent to someone+mailing@gmail.com will be shown. You could essentially create unlimited sub email addresses. Whats even better is that you can create multiple sub emails and give everyone a separate email address. Then you can keep track of who sells/distributes your email address to others and you can just filter that sub email out. Sweet!

CakePHP is a rapid development framework to speed up PHP development. But for the rapid development to be really rapid you need to follow some rules. The most important rule being the naming conventions. Although it’s pretty straight forward, I had some hiccups here and there. So hopefully this will help someone from losing their hair.

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You might have noticed you screen black out or flicker before the User Access Control (UAC) prompt pops up. This is not a bug but it is a security feature to grab your attention. Of course like the many other things in Vista that you don’t think, you could disable this blacking out or flickering too.

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User Access Control has turned out to be a nuisance rather than a security enhancement for many people. UAC requires all users to run in the standard mode rather than in Administrator mode. This minimizes the risk of a user/program accidentally making system wide changes that could corrupt the OS. So UAC blocks and prompts for the Administrator approval for any system wide changes. Therefore with UAC silent installations won’t be silent anymore as the user will first be prompted by UAC to allow or disallow the installation.

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Q: How many versions does Windows Vista come in?

A: Windows Vista has many more versions than Windows XP.

* Home Basic: $199 full, $99 upgrade
* Home Premium: $239 full, $159 upgrade
* Business: $299 full, $199 upgrade
* Ultimate: $399 full, $259 upgrade

* The Home Basic is a basic version which does not include the Aero Glass effect.
* The Home Premium includes everything in the Home Basic and adds the Aero Glass effect, Movie Maker, Tablet PC functionality, Windows Media Center and scheduled backups among others.
* The Business Edition drops some features from the Home Premium like Movie Maker and Media Center but adds features like Remote Desktop and complete PC Backup.
* The Ultimate edition as the name implies includes all the goodies from Home Premium and the Business version.

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Having upgraded my phone from firmware 1 to firmware version 2 and finding many improvements, I decided to upgrade to firmware version 3. Although the new version does seem to be much more responsive but I have lost a lot of functionality.

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The Canon SD700 IS can proudly claim that it is the first Canon point and shoot camera with Image Stabilization. Image Stabilization proves to be a very useful feature, especially for amateurs like myself the Alligator. Image Stabilization results cannot be seen clearly in a brightly lit environment since the shutter speed is quick but in night shots the image stabilizer is a life saver. The SD700 IS is capable of 6 mega pixels and has a generous 4x optical zoom. The camera also features a ISO 800 mode for low light shooting but the results are usually noisy in very low light.
The Powershot SD700 IS has a very solid feel and is compact enough to slip in the trouser pocket. The controls are very well laid out but the power button could be refined a little more. Other features include a widescreen mode and the ability to shoot a high quality video at 60 fps. Overall the Alligator gives this little Digital ELPH a thumbs up!

Gamespot has updated the screenshots of Flight Simlulator X. There are a couple of comparison pictures between Flight Simulator 2004 and Flight Simulator X which just show how much detail has been added. All this eye candy will only be available throught DirectX 10 although you could still use DirectX 9 with fewer graphical details. Flight Simulator X is expected to release this holiday season.