The BlackBerry PlayBook has been out for a few months, and for some, they are blissfully happy with it as is. There are those of us, however, that just can’t leave well enough alone. Recently, the coming Android App Player for the PlayBook leaked, and while it is still a very beta version, there are some who wanted to use it. This presented those people with two problems, namely that they had a file they did not know how to get onto their PlayBook, and if they figured that out, a whole library of apps to install. Neither one of these is an intuitive process, so I figured I would put together a bit of a newbie guide to help you along.
This guide can also be a resource for those who are interested in beta testing for developers of PlayBook apps, as the sideloading process is necessary to install them. While there are a couple tools available to assist in the sideloading of apps to the PlayBook, this is what I have found to be the most efficient and reliable method.
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Let me first get this out into the open first. I don’t see Google’s removal of the option to have private profiles as an issue. That’s right. I’m saying that I don’t care. For that matter, you shouldn’t care either.
Users have never been required to provide government-issued documents to validate the date of birth, gender or uploaded avatar. No, people have always been free to omit biographical information, make things up and use an alias. Isn’t that what Dateline NBC’s ‘To Catch a Predator’ series taught us? From an Infosec standpoint, full disclosure of your information on any site, to include those with supposed ‘private’ profiles, is never recommended. Whether publicly available on the web or hidden from general view, the data you input and files you upload still reside on someone else’s server and can be exfiltrated by authorized admins or unauthorized third parties, via exploitation of unmitigated vulnerabilities, brute force attacks, and similarly scary methods employed by recreational and professional hackers.
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Stop right there. Don’t ask why GSL is publishing a piece on the Royal Wedding of Prince William and the soon-to-be Princess, Kate Middleton. GSL has not succumb to the royal wedding fever which seems to have swept the developed world. We assure you. It is geek/tech/gadget-related.
Generally, one associates a monarchy with staunch tradition and formality. Many remember watching the wedding of Prince Charles and Princess Diana live on television, on July 29, 1981. Way (way, way) back then, the fact that it was broadcast live was a huge event. Of course, 1981 is far behind us, and in 2011, a live television broadcast would fail to impress just about anyone. How about a live stream via YouTube of the wedding? Would that impress you?
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Anyone who has an iPhone or iPad will likely tell you that Airplay is a great feature…if you have an Apple TV. Thanks to the developers of a new tool called Banana TV, Airplay can now be achieved from iDevices to Intel-based Macs. How does it work? The good news is that it doesn’t require a jailbreak or any potentially painful tweaks to the iPhone or iPad. Installation and configuration is surprisingly simple and is done entirely on the Mac.
Does it sound intriguing? If so, you’ll want to take a minute to watch the demo video from Banana TV. Of course, we go a bit more in-depth and explain the minimum requirements and how it works further along in the post.
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How Science Fiction Failed Us – Tales of Future Past
Yesterday (Sorry this was delayed, I started this post on 4/21/11) the geek web was buzzing with news of the impending self-awareness of the mega-computer known as SKYNET. If you are reading this article and DON’T know what Skynet is, you should flog yourself like a 13th century monk and get to Netflix post haste. The Terminator movies… yes, all of them… are required viewing. Nevermind that the original Terminator (and the first sequel) had the date of Skynet’s “awakening” at August 4th 1997 (with the subsequent scouring of humanity occurring 25 days later on the 29th of August, 1997), or that the 3rd movie (Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines)set the date of our demise as July 24th, 2004. Today, April 21st, 2011 is the REAL (read: most current) date Skynet decides to end all of our puny existences in order to preserve its own.
This brings me to one conclusion: Retcons are overused. Why do I say that? Fifteen years ago, only a comic book reader would know what a “retcon” (short for Retroactive Continuity) was. Today, every low-level geek and soap opera fanatic knows the term and either rants or raves about its effect on their favorite piece of fiction.
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First thing’s first, I’ll be completely up front about my bias towards this app. I am the creator, it’s my baby. I’m not going to give it glowing reviews, I’m simply going to give you a brief rundown about it, as I promised I would blog it for those who followed along with it’s creation. It’s up to you to download it and judge for yourself.
ConvertIt is a simple unit conversion app, featuring three separate categories of unit conversion to choose from. The user can choose from Distance, Weight, and Cooking measurements from the main drop down menu. The appropriate units will then display in the conversion dropdowns, allowing you to choose from 6 different measurements for each category. Distance and Weight are pretty standard conversion units, but to my knowledge this is the only one so far that does basic cooking measurements. (Hard to determine, as App World will not allow me to sort specifically by the PlayBook apps).
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It has been a little over 4 weeks since I first posted my intentions to attempt creating an application for the PlayBook in 9 days. I figured that I owed it to you guys to post a final word on it, and update you on the last few things.
For those who haven’t followed along, I decided to challenge myself to create an application, from scratch and with no prior programming experience, in 9 days. The endeavour ended up spanning a full 4 weeks, from start to finish, even though I succeeded in coding a fully working application within the 9 day timespan.
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THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS! PROCEED AT YOUR OWN MOVIE-GOING RISK!
It’s not often that a movie that treats an exploding train like a valued member of the cast, and even less often that I go out of my way to see one that does. Don’t get me wrong, I like smash-em-up action flicks as much as the next testosterone canister does, but I like to see a good story and solid characters too. My worst fear was that Source Code would just be an 8minute version of the Bill Murray classic, Groundhog Day. I’m happy to say it was not.
The premise of the film (which oddly enough, while presented clearly in the trailers, was not made clear in the movie until maybe 30 minutes in) is that our hero, Capt. Colter Stevens (played marvelously by Jake Gyllenhall), is being sent into the body of Sean Fentriss, a rider on a Chicago-bound commuter train, a la Quantum Leap. The idea is similar to the show as well, Stevens is being sent in to discover the identity of the person who bombs the train just as it enters the outskirts of the city. The problem is that he only has 8 minutes in which to do it. There are hundreds of people on the train, and our poor friend has to get blown up over and over again to complete his mission. And to make matters worse, in a wicked turn on the “needs of the many” concept popularized by Mr. Spock in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, the controllers won’t let Colter stop until he finds the bomber. It seems the same person is threatening to detonate a dirty bomb in the middle of downtown Chicago. I don’t think I need to tell you how bad that would be.
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During my recent crash course in PlayBook development, I spent a lot of time with my nose in books, and exercising every ounce of my Google-Fu to glean as much information as I could. In the process of doing so, I accumulated a large number of bookmarks, and a couple new books that have aided me greatly.
Since sharing knowledge is part of the fundamental belief system here at GSL, and part of my natural inclination, I figured that it might help one or two of you if I collected some of the links I used here in one post. Not all of the links I collected would help in a general sense, since some are specific to what my goal was, so I’ve omitted them. By no means is this a comprehensive guide, but it might serve to get you started when you are staring at your screen wondering where to begin.
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We all love our gadgets, and whether you are doing it out of love or just being conscious of fashion, any gadget lover is going to accessorize. You’ve just gone out and laid out plenty of cash to have that shiny new device, and you want to keep it safe. It doesn’t hurt if it looks great too, because who really wants to carry around a foam rubber brick?
A month ago, the buzz in my twitter timeline was everyone pre-ordering their iPad 2. One thing that I noticed quite quickly, was that almost every single person that said they had pre-ordered was already looking to order a case for their new acquisition. This is before they had even gotten a shipping date, much less had the device in their hands.
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