Apple looses the NDA for IPhone
After months of protest, Apple has announced that they decided to drop the non-disclosure agreement (NDA) for released iPhone software.
Whatever that means exactly, Apple is working on the new terms and will send it to the developers within the next few days and we’ll see.
According to Apple, the NDA is in place to protect there inventions and innovations for the IPhone technology. Now, they think the NDA was too much burden for the developers, authors and others interested in helping further the iPhone’s success, so they are dropping it for released software.
Brisinger out now
But lucky me, I stumbled into a book shop (I always stumble itno book shops, since I have to find an excuse for going that often :D) and what a wonder, there was the english version of Eragon part 3 called Brisinger. Somehow the english release date on 22nd of September has passed me, without I recognized it. So, finally I found something to read.
Alpin hiking tour
On saturday, we went to Bettemeralp in Kanton Wallis. There is a really good connection to go there. From Winterthur to Brig is a direct train and the we had to change to the local railway “Matterhorn Bahn to Betten TalStation. Afterwards we took the Rotair (Big cable car) up to Bettmeralp.
It is very nice up there. We could see the valley of the Rhone, Eiger, Mönch and Junfrau and even the significant peak of Matterhorn. The Bettmeralp is a big holiday resort in this small village. We could find everything we needed up there,so we went to Coop buying our lunch. Afterwards we took the cable car up to the peak of the Bettmerhorn and visited the Aletsch glacier.
So far so good, but a good hiker should know the hiking signs. Full of enthusiasm, ignoring the alpin signs, we followed the hiking trail for the Expert Hiker (UNESCO HIKING TRAIL)to the top of the mountain. It was very tough at the start, my girlfriend and her collegue had to stop every 5 minutes, because they were not used to get that less oxygen, but we were already in the middle, when we realized that this was the climbing trail, haha …. So we continued and climed up to the peak, but on top, we decided not to follow the ridge to the next mountain, so we climbed down again, what an adventure!
Down again, we took the normal hiking way from Bettmerhorn to Fieschalp for 1 hour then cable car down to Fiesch. From Fiesch we catched the Matterhorn Bahn back home..
So never follow the sign “Blue-White-Blue” if you are not the hiking expert !!!
The photos of this trip you can see here.
2G Iphone works with basic Swisscom subscription.
In March I bought a 2G IPhone in Bangkok. The seller was very friendly and even hacked it for me. Now, almost a year later, Swisscom provides the IPhone in Switzerland.
First I installed the IPhone software 2.0 with the pwnage tool, it was very easy to hack it again. But Apple keeps updating the software (Actual 2.1) and I got tired to hack it each time again and I read that T-Mobile from Germany is going to sell the IPhone with prepaid card, so I just tried if my old 2G IPhone works with the unhacked software and my old Swisscom sim card and it really works without any problem.
Of course I don’t have any alternative installer like Installer or Cydia anymore, but I have less problems now.
So you guys who have an old hacked IPhone and a sim card of an official mobile provider, just update it, it works! 
A cappuccino please
Amazing which ideas some people have, there has been released a JavaScript browser application engine named Cappuccino, copying the Cocoa framework from Apple.
The frameworks language is Objective-J, the JavaScript equivalent to Objective-C and is built up on the GNUStep/Cocoa framework. It is designed to build applications and not webpages and the nice thing is, it’s open source and can be downloaded for free!
Objective-J is very similar to both JavaScript and Objective-C. Any valid JavaScript is also valid Objective-J but the language adds dynamic message passing, traditional inheritance and other features we know from Objective-C. Even the code looks very familiar!
Classes:
@implementation Person : CPObject
{
CPString name;
}
@end
Methods:
- (void)setName:(CPString)aName
{
name = aName;
}
- (CPString)name
{
return name;
}
Using objects and classes:
var myPerson = [[Person alloc] init]; [myPerson setName: "John"];
I like this new framework, cause it opens the world of Cocoa with it’s Objective-C to a wider world the just Apple and perhaps it will get more popular.
JStringLocalizer 1.0.b1 released
I’m glad to announce the release of the JStringLocalizer library version 1.0.b1. The beta version contains only the basics of the planned features, and is hardly tested. But so fare it should work, if you find some bugs, please let me know, I’ll fix them as soon as possible.
Release notes 1.0.b1:
- Localized XML files based on number tags (id).
- Debug mode (Sets an ‘!’ in front of each string to mark the already localized strings)
- Tag information (Sets the string tag after the string to see the localization tag information on the running system.)
Planned for version 1.0.b2
- Swing localizer (Should localize every component on a frame)
- JAR / ZIP resource file loading
License:
This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, o any later version. This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but without any warranty; without even the implied warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
Download:
JStringLocalizer project started
I started a small java project for the localization of java applications. The localized strings are stored in a XML file where every string has its unique identifier, called language tag. For every addition language you can add a translated XML file.
The localizer will have at least followeing features:
- Debug mode (It will be possible to switch in a debug mode to see which strings are localized.)
- Tag information (You can switch on the identifiers for viewing these tags directly within the application.)
- SWING Localizer (Localizes directly the swing elements of the application.)
- Resource files directory vs. resource jar loading.
In one or two days I will release a first version, testers are very welcome.
Interfaces with explicit methods
Have you already been in a situation, where you are forced to extend a class and can not inherit from another class anymore, but you would like to make a proper structure? Usually interfaces are used in this situations, but its quite boring to implement it twice or three times exactly in the same way. Since .NET 3.5 there is a solution for this problem - Extension Methods.
Lets have a look on this solution. First you make the interface:
pubic interface IFoo
{
...
}
Then you create the extension method:
pubic static class IFooExtension
{
public static void DoSomething(this IFoo foo)
{
...
}
}
Next you create an implementation of the interface:
pubic class Foo : IFoo
{
...
}
And finally, you can use it:
Foo foo = new Foo(); foo.DoSomething();
A dance with dragons
We are waiting…. Four books of the very popular novel A song of ice and fire are finished and George RR Martin is currently writing the fifth book A dance with dragons ISBN 978-0553801477.
The story is about Westeros, a land in which seven kingdoms where conquered and joined to one kingdom by the dragon king. Generations later, Robert Baratheon freed westeros from the maniac dragon king and climbed on the dragon throne. After his death, the war of the seven kings is desolating the continent.
Meanwhile something cold is rising behind the wall in the north of westeros…
This spring the release date was set to the fourth quarter of 2008 and I could preorder it. But he did it again, George postponed it to April 2009. And we are still waiting…
Evoting in Winterthur
There were free political villages, which tried the pilot project for evoting in Switzerland. Seems to work very good than in fall 2008 more villages are connected to the evoting system. Winterthur also belongs to these new citys.