Weekly Tech News - Facebook + FriendFeed = FaceFeed

If you are in the know, you may be aware of the take-over, be it not a hostile one by Facebook of the 'online aggregator' FriendFeed earlier in the week. I have used FriendFeed to keep up with friends for quite some time, however it is a more passive system of interaction when compared to Facebook. In FriendFeed, when you follow somebody, all his tweets, blogpost, Facebook updates, pics uploaded into flickr etc will be alerted to you (fed to you) on a single convenient web page. It certainly have potential, but compared to the active interaction that you can have in Facebook, you will realise it needs an acquisition similar to this.

In another news, everyone on twitter would have realised how slow the system was, and on a few occasion, it did not even function. Apparently it was due to an attack on the servers by botnet, causing flooding and capacity issues.

Palm Pre launch imminent - Walt Mossberg

In the new era of hand-held computers — super-smart touch-screen phones that run sleek, compelling software — Apple’s iPhone has been king. A new, improved iPhone is expected to be announced on June 8.

But on June 6, Apple will get a powerful competitor in this category. It’s a beautiful, innovative and versatile hand-held computer that’s fully in the iPhone’s class. It’s called the Pre, and it comes from Palm, the company that pioneered the hand-held computer in the 1990s.

Click on the reference to read more!

One Small Tweet for a Man, One Giant Leap for Twitter!

NASA astronaut Mike Massimino made twitter history yesterday by beaming the first tweet from space. It was a simple message reading;

From orbit: Launch was awesome!! I am feeling great, working hard, & enjoying the magnificent views, the adventure of a lifetime has begun!

You can actually follow him via tweeter on @astro_mike if you're keen. He will have his hands tied up in the next few days however as he is suppose to be doing some fixing on the Hubble telescope.

Webby Award Winners Announced

I know that Malaysians are not quite there yet to win the thing judging from the competitions on offer. The Webby is essentially the Oscars for the Internet content providers. Most of the winners were expected, including flickr, digg.com. There are also ones that I was surprised with, guardian.co.uk for example. The full listing is on this link.

By the way, United just thumped The Arse 3-1 just now!

Tech Dose #3.3.1 - Blackberry Facebook Client v1.5 Is Out - Gizmodo

I used to be jealous of those Blackberry poser until I discovered that my E71 can do push emailing and more. Regardless the Bold form factor still left me wowed! Just in case these elites want to join us mere mortals on the plane of facebook, the latest client is out throught this link. 

Tech Dose #3.2.1 - More WiMAX Story

Many thanks to @snjehan for the link through tweeter. She tweeted me this podcast from BFM 89.9. It was a nice listen. It contains the interview with Wong Kian Lon, founder of 2 of the 4 WiMAX vendor in Malaysia.

The first is concerning Broadband in Malaysia - 8m 58s (4.12 Mb)

The second concerns why broadband in Malaysia is slow - 9m 55s (4.55 Mb)

The full page can be found on this link.

Tech Dose #2.4.2 - Even Nokia Experiencing A Downturn

Nokia, the world's largest mobile phone maker, has reported a 90% fall in profits for the first quarter of 2009.

The company said net profits sank to 122m euros ($160m; £108m) in the quarter, down from 1.2bn euros in the same period a year ago.

Sales were down by 27% to 9,28bn euros in the quarter from 12.7bn euros a year ago, Nokia said.

Well, nobody seems immune in this climate. Wonder if they do a cut price at Sungai Wang on all Nokia.

Tech Dose #2.4.1 - Macs Can Be a Target As Well

When news like the rampaging Conficker virus hits, Mac users often feel a certain sense of comfort — if not smug superiority — knowing it doesn’t affect them.

But just how relaxed (or smug) should Mac users be? It’s true that very few viruses have been written for Macs — and none are spreading actively right now. Similarly, hacker programs distributed by malicious Web sites typically run only on PCs.

Yet Macs’ relative safety is primarily due to their still-slim market share. They’re simply a waste of time for today’s attackers, who are trying to accomplish crime on a large scale by infiltrating millions of computers. And there’s nothing inherently more secure about a Mac. Researchers found 26 vulnerabilities in OS X in 2008, about the same as in Windows Vista (27), according to the security software maker Symantec. If its market share rises enough, the Mac will become a target and attacks will succeed.

Sound advice as I am sure as Macs becomes popular, hackers will make them target as well. It is just a matter of time.