KDE 4.9 Beta 2

KDE team has just released KDE 4.9 Beta 2 to public. It's the last Beta release before they entered RC release on June 27 and July 11 and finally a final release on August 1. See their scheduled plan for KDE 4.9.

What's inside KDE 4.9 Beta 2? I'll just take it from KDE's official announcement page:

• Qt Quick in Plasma Workspaces -- Qt Quick is continuing to make its way into the Plasma Workspaces, the Qt Quick Plasma Components, which have been introduced with 4.8, mature further. Additional integration of various KDE APIs was added through new modules. More parts of Plasma Desktop have been ported to QML. While preserving their functionality, the Qt Quick replacements of common plasmoids are visually more attractive, easier to enhance and extend and behave better on touchscreens.
• The Dolphin file manager has improved its display and sorting and searching based on metadata. Files can now be renamed inline, giving a smoother user experience.
• Deeper integration of Activities for files, windows and other resources: Users can now more easily associate files and windows with an Activity, and enjoy a more properly organized workspace. Folderview can now show files related to an Activity, making it easier to organize files into meaningful contexts.
• Many performance improvements and bugfixes improve the overall user experience, making the KDE Applications and Workspaces more productive and fun to use than ever before.

WWDC 2012 Results

It seems that most of the speculations about what will be presented in WWDC were true. There are iOS 6 Beta releases for developers and sadly there's no iPad 1 support for this version, new Mac Book Pro with Retina display which is awesome, but comes with high prices as well, New 3D Maps, Facebook Integration, Much Improved Siri and it's coming on the new iPad, and the announcement of OS X Mountain Lion release schedule on July and pricing which is set to this Summer and it will be USD 19.99, 10 bucks lower than previous OS X Lion release last year.

But, it's not Apple if they don't bring new and exciting features that are not yet speculated by a lot of people, such as Passbook, FaceTime over cellular, New Calling Feature on iPhone, better Email interface, iCloud Tab on Safari, and iOS 6 Guided Access on Accessibility.

I really like the new specs for the new Mac Book Pro. They have integrated most of the bleeding edge components for their latest product and i believe that Apple can use this baseline for the next three years or probably more. It's now based on i5/i7 Intel Processors, 4/8 GB and up to 16 GB of memory for the Mac Book Pro with Retina Display, All Flash-based architecture for storage, starting from 512 GB up to 768 GB and optionally 1 TB of classic HD, Intel Graphics 4000 or NVidia GeForce GT 650 with Kepler Technology, MagSafe power port, USB 3 ports, HDMI, and many others. They even managed to compact the size of the casing. It's trully amazing.

No New Feature in Flash Player in Linux

Adobe has stated that they will not release any new features in Flash Player for Linux starting 11.3 and right now, they started to release 11.3 for Windows and Mac, leaving Linux users to 11.2.x releases which only started to receive security bug fixes only.

Meanwhile, the open source version of Flash Player, named lightspark is progressing nicely with their latest release with a bunch of new features:
The key features of Lightspark 0.6.0.1 include:

- Enable RTMP sup­port by default, requires librtmp
- Fixed sup­port for IEvent­Dis­patcher imple­men­ta­tion pat­tern
- Improved seri­al­iza­tion robust­ness
- Improved matrix han­dling
- Imple­ment string and name­space pool­ing to reduce mem­ory con­sump­tion
- Proper sup­port for pri­vate name­spaces
- Improved sup­port for fonts
- Sup­port LLVM 3.1
- Fix full vol­ume issue when PulseAu­dio flat vol­umes are enabled
- Ini­tial sup­port for AIR desk­top appli­ca­tions
- Sup­port for www.bbc.co.uk video player

No iPad 1 on iOS 6?

There has been a speculation about the future of iPad 1 on iOS 6. It's said that Apple will left iPad 1on current iOS and will not let iPad 1 upgradeable to iOS 6 according to the beta build leaks on Chinese forum. Even though it's not yet confirmed, it's a pity (if it's true) to leave iPad 1  because basically the big difference with other iPad products is not that much.

I think the hardware is the biggest difference and that's why Apple thinks that it might not be sufficient or comfortable enough for the users if they are pushed to iOS 6 which i guess will bring new features to the iOS and it may burden the devices.

WWDC 2012 Speculations

Just days before Apple is holding a WWDC 2012 which will be held in San Francisco’s Moscone West where all Apple fans and users will be invited to see what has Apple done so far and what kind of surprises will Apple give to their users.

Some speculations has arisen and some are true actually. The first one is the introduction of iOS 6. It's reported that iOS 6 will be the base for the next iPhone 5 if it's truly coming out. I don't know what new features will be introduced in this major update.

The second one is the update of Mac Servers which hasn't been updated for two years. Some people thought that Apple is not paying attention to the server products and are focusing only on desktop and mobile areas, but that could change in this WWDC. The hardware needs to be upgraded and i guess i7 is the perfect choice for the new Mac Server.

Apple is also preparing to cut it's dependency to Google Map service by developing it's own Map service and it's reported to be 3D Map, not just ordinary map. Apple has been acquiring companies that focused on 3D maps since few years ago and i think this is the perfect time to introduce what they have been working so far.

There might be Facebook integration into the iOS just like Twitter when they released iOS 5. This would make people become more social on their iDevices because it's fully integrated on iOS.

9to5 has a detailed article about WWDC 2012 roundup. Check it out for more detailed information about what will be introduced in WWDC 2012.

mintBox: Mint in a box

LinuxMint, a number one Linux Distribution based on DistroWatch has done a great job in providing a very nice operating system that appreciate their users by making Linux Mint a better distribution that it's parent: Ubuntu Linux.

Now, in conjuction with CompuLab, they are going even further by presenting a mintBox, Mint in a box. This device has everything you need for your daily activities.

Here’s an exhaustive list of its extremely rich I/O:

• Dual-head display HDMI + DisplayPort
• Digital 7.1 S/PDIF and analog 2.0 audio, both input and output
• Gigabit Ethernet
• WiFi 802.11 b/g/n + BT combo with dual antennas
• 2 USB3 ports + 2 USB2 ports
• 2 eSATA ports
• Bay for 2.5” SATA HDD
• 2 mini-PCIe sockets / 1 mSATA
• Serial RS232 port

The mintBox is available in two versions.
mintBox Basic ($476 + shipping, duty & VAT):

• 250GB HDD
• APU G-T40N (1.0 GHz dual core + Radeon HD 6290 – 9W)
• 4GB RAM
• Flat metal case
  

mintBox Pro ($549 + shipping, duty & VAT):

• 250GB HDD
• APU G-T56N (1.65 GHz dual core + Radeon HD 6320 – 18W)
• 8GB RAM
• Ribbed metal case

10% of each sale goes towards Linux Mint, so if you want to help Linux Mint, you can buy this product.

Last.FM Compromised

After LinkedIn get compromised and their user's password gets released on the wild, now Last.FM is having the same breach. The leaked information are unsalted MD5 hashes. At least one million of these hashes have already been cracked and the clear text passwords have also been posted on the internet.

If you are Last.FM users, i would suggest you to change your password ASAP.

Visiting Hamlets

This morning, me and some of my supervised students on international field school went to the hamlet that the students will live in for the next 30 days for our pre-initial observations. Some of the students went there using motorcycles and i decided to use my car because i have to make sure that car are able to get there because the luggage of the students will be brought by car anyway.

It took some time to get there because we got lost due to a variety of tracks available and the guide that we got from one of my students were different with what we got when we asked local people there. I guess not only there are so many ways to Rome, we only have a lot of ways to reach Slanden and the surroundings hamlets.

In our way back, we tried alternative route and it seems that it's quite far, but the road was smoother and less curvy. We ended up having lunch at Jejamuran, a local restaurant which is famous of it's mushroom menus.

I think it's a great trip even though we had to ask so many people to get to the destination :)

International Field School

This year, i had a chance to become a supervisor of the International Field School called YKFS. This is the fourth year and this year, we add another university and it's Hong Kong Polytechnic University besides ANU (Australian National University) which has joined this collaboration work since few years ago.

It's my first experience of being an international supervisor and i hope this could add another experience for me. I can practice my conversation as well with the international students.

The International students will arrive two weeks from now, but the local students will start their initial observations starting next week before they will start collaborating with the International students a week later.

SiriPort Blown Away

I upgraded my SiriPort to the latest version and it blown away my iPad since when i rebooted, it goes to infinite loop mode and i had to restore the whole system just now. I don't know why, but the main website has been changed to the default Lion Server at the time i had that problem.

For now, i have restored all the configuration and application back to my iPad and probably i will stay away for Siri.

Installing Installous 5

If you have been using a jailbroken iDevices, then you might have been familiar with Installous, a great tool which offer applications outside the Apple AppStore. The reason why people would install Installous is that they can find a third party repository in which some of the applications can't be found on AppStore due to strict policy of Apple.

Other reason for using Installous is to have a trial version of a software without buying it first, something that it's not possible in AppStore. When you wanted to download an application (even for trial), if it's a commercial app, you would have to pay for it. Installous can solve that problem by enabling you to download the same software but from third party repositories.

Right now, Installous has been upgraded to Installous 5 and it brings some new features such as:

• Added BitTorrent download support
• Support for iOS 5 notifications
• Better filehost compatibility
• Bug-fixes and optimization

As usual, if you wanted to get Installous 5, you must have your devices untethered jailbroken first using Absinthe or any other jailbreaker tool available on the Internet. Next, you add this repository into Cydia : http://cydia.hackulo.us/. Let it download the list of packages and reload the list and then, you can start searching for Installous 5.

Here's some disclaimer about the use of Installous:
Downloading and installing cracked apps are illegal. We don’t support or promote piracy in anyway. This article is purely for informational purposes only. The whole purpose behind cracked apps is if you would like to try an app before purchasing from the App Store. It is expected that you either delete the app after testing it or purchase it from the App Store. Please give credit to the author of the apps who have spent hours, days, months making and testing the apps to make sure the users gets the best experience when using their applications.

Pro Git

I have been using GitHub to manage my SlackHacks repository and so far, i don't have problems with it. Probably it was because there's only one person working on this repository.

I set up another repository to work on a project and this is where i learn that GIT is way superior than Subversion for doing branching and merging. Even though it's quite complicated in the beginning, but finally i'm able to learn some basic skills to handle multiple sub work at once.

One of the best resource that i can find to work with GIT is Pro Git which was released by Apress and it can be downloaded for free in form of PDF, Mobi, or ePub format. This book has been translated into several languages as well, including Indonesian.

Firefox 13 Final is Ready

Mozilla has finished working on Firefox 13 and marked it as Final, even though they haven't announced it officially and give some time to mirror site to fetch the latest version from their FTP server and also to Linux vendors to build a customized package for their own distribution.

If you can't wait that long, you can just go to their FTP Server and download the suited version according to your platform. Please note that you will have to download the whole package instead of downloading a delta. If you have used a binary version of Firefox previously, i would suggest to wait and use the Automatic Updates mechanism built in into Firefox. This way, you won't have to download the whole build, but only the delta, which is smaller in terms of size.

If you are curious about what's new on this release, check the Release Notes

Touch : The Gyre

Unlike the previous episodes, The Touch wasn't airing last week, so this week, they are releasing two episodes at once and for the first time, they will have the same title: The Gyre. This is the continuation of Martin Bohm's effort to seek more information regarding his son's ability to predict things with sequences of numbers and also to protect him from the same organization that did the same thing to another girl, Amelia and probably the one who killed Arthur Teller.

This is the only western TV Series i watched currently. Any other good western TV Series i should watch?

Welcome June

It's June already and time ticks so fast so that most of us didn't realize that we are already going through almost half of this year and we only have six months left before we will come to 2013.

When we are busy with our job, sometimes we didn't even realize how fast time goes by. It seems that 24 hours a day is never enough.