September, 2011

Owners of HTC Thunderbolt have been waiting on Verizon to finally roll out Gingerbread for their devices. Verizon has been procrastinating for over six months now and after that long agonizing wait just a couple of days ago Gingerbread was finally pushed out but all of a sudden Verizon has halted the roll out of Gingerbread for HTC Thunderbolt. They say that Gingerbread for HTC Thunderbold has been halted due to a voicemail bug.

Verizon Spokesperson Albert Aydin made the following statement:

It has come to the attention of Verizon Wireless and HTC that customers using the Thunderbolt by HTC have experienced a voicemail notification error with the recent software update. As a result, the update has been temporarily suspended while the companies work together to resolve the issue. Verizon Wireless and HTC anticipate the update being available soon; customers will be notified directly on their devices when it is ready for download.

Some HTC Thunderbolt owners have also reported about bugs that they have been facing with HTC Sense and GTalk video. Nevertheless, many HTC Thunderbolt owners had rooted their devices when they realized Verizon was delaying Gingerbread release. So if you’re one of those users who still hasn’t rooted their HTC Thunderbolt, maybe its time for you to root it, though we won’t recommend it if you don’t know at all how to do it and the various risks involved with rooting an Android device. If rooting is not your game, you simply have to wait it out until Verizon finally rolls out Gingerbread for HTC Thunderbold, sans all the bugs.

On September 28, after months of delay, Verizon finally released Gingerbread for HTC Thunderbolt and today they halted this software update. As soon as the update was rolled out, immediately users started reporting about bugs that they were facing with Gingerbread on their HTC Thunderbolt devices. Most users then resorted to installing leaked Gingerbread builds via the process of rooting that we talked about above. However the perfect thing to do at the moment if you have a HTC Thunderbolt is to wait for the official build of Gingerbread for your device, hopefully Verizon will release it in a couple of days.

We’re all very excited about the iPhone 5 release event slated for October 4. Everyone looks forward to hearing the announcements about fifth generation iPhone. The excitement can be judged by the fact that we have seen dozens of iPhone 5 rumours over the past few months. As excitement grows even more, AT&T has already begun stacking iPhone 5 cases in its stores.

When Apple launched the very first iPhone back in 2007, AT&T was given exclusive rights to sell it in the USA through its retail network. Things stayed that way for over three years after which Apple finally released the CDMA iPhone 4 on Verizon Wireless. So AT&T might not be the only exclusive network carrying the iPhone in USA any more, that doesn’t mean they will not try to cash in on the upcoming iPhone.

When a person buys a new, not to mention expensive, smartphone the first though in their mind is to buy a case. So when the iPhone 5 hits stores its customers would also want to buy cases to protect their latest iPhone. To cater to that demand, iPhone 5 cases are now arriving at AT&T retail stores in USA despite the fact that Apple hasn’t even made the official iPhone 5 announcement yet and we don’t know for sure when they’ll start shipping the iPhone 5.

The cases depict what has already been rumoured about the design of iPhone 5. A radically thinner profile than all of its predecessors with tapered edges. While one can not guess the hardware specs by looking at the cases, these iPhone 5 cases AT&T is stacking up surely confirm all of the rumours we have been hearing about iPhone 5. AT&T would not obviously start stacking iPhone 5 cases that were manufactured on the basis of rumours and speculation. So look closely at the picture attached above just to give yourself an idea of what the iPhone 5 may look like.

In less than four days, new Apple CEO Tim Cook will take the stage at Apple Town Hall Auditorium in Cupertino California to announce the company’s latest iPhone offering. We’re excited about it, and we know you’re excited about it as well. Let’s just hope that the iPhone 5 lives up to the expectations people have of it.

Apple has just seeded iTunes 10.5 beta 9 to developers. Registered developers who have Developer Accounts can now download iTunes 10.5 beta 9 for Mac from the Developers Portal. As of now, Apple has only released iTunes 10.5 beta 9 for Mac, a Windows version has not been released.

It was expected that today Apple would see developers software because iOS 5 public release is imminent. On October 4 Apple will publicly release iOS 5 for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch at the iPhone 5 release event to be held in Cupertino California. These developer beta seeds are going to be the last beta seeds.

iTunes 10.5 beta 9 Release Notes:

• iTunes 10.5 beta 9 includes several performance enhancements and bug fixes, and is a required update for all subscribers to iTunes Match beta.
• Your iCloud libraries will be deleted at the end of this beta.
• Backup regularly and do not delete the music you add to iCloud from your computer. Apple may periodically delete all iCloud libraries during the beta period. This will require you to scan, match, and upload songs again. Also note that some of the features and optimizations of iTunes Match may not be available during this beta.

Earlier this week Apple notified developers that it will be clearing all iCloud data on September 22nd. After that, Apple again sent an email to registered developers telling them during beta period Apple will wipe iCloud libraries so developers should be making backups of their data and libraries. As far as beta firmware and software is concerned, Apple only releases them for registered developers. The general public does not have access to beta iTunes software or beta iOS firmware officially from Apple. However many blogs do manually upload these files on sharing website, but then again, that is piracy.

Apple has only seeded iTunes 10.5 beta 9 with iTunes Match for Macs. It is possible that a Windows counterpart will be seeded as well if iOS 5 GM is seeded to developers today as well. With less than four days to go, we have a strong hunch that iOS 5 GM candidate will be seeded to Apple Developers later today. We’ll let you know when that happens.

Calipso is a Node.js Content Management System with an emphasis on scalability.

Callipso has an interconnected structure that allows you to pull content from anywhere, anytime.

The CMS is also design friendly, structured in the way that you can add unstyled content, and update it with time.

Overall, Callipso is just what you need for creating larger websites — and it’s also great if you have past NodeJS experience.

FerroSlider is a jQuery plugin that allows you to create websites with a cool navigation based on sliding effects.

With FerroSlider you can organize your contents and give them to users in an unusual and cool way. The final effect looks like multiple desktops in Mac or Linux systems.

You can position content as you want: by row, by column or using a custom displacement.

Some of its features are:

• displace contents by line by column or following a custom positioning map (also called “The Matrix”);
• navigate through contents with arrow keys (left, right, up and down);
• navigate through contents with a fast sliding animation, in horizontal, vertical, diagonal direction or combining them;
• set fullscreen background to your content, preserving images ratio;
• load contents using custom scripts via AJAX;
• encapsulate the sliding contents into a container;
• create a clickable map of the contents displacement (a sort of little navigation menu);
• create links to navigate through contents;
• customize sliding transition, using the jQuery Easing plugin;
• showing moving direction during animation;

JSlim is a Javascript optimizer that optimizes the code you use and not the code you develop.

In other words if you are using Javascript frameworks as jQuery, Mootools, Prototype, etc. probably you don’t use the whole library but you need only some tools of them. JSlim analyze your code and builds a new version of your library with only the methods you need.

JSlim was tested with the following libraries:

• Backbone.js
• JQuery
• JQuery UI
• Modernizr
• Mootools
• Prototype
• Raphaël
• Underscore.js

but it should work with any library.

JSlim is Google Closure based and it is available for Windows, Unix and Mac.