Well.Done (c) Radek Hulán [EN]

Apple iPhone - the dumbest phone launched in 2007 sold for $500-600 does not offer basic functionality $19.95 phone users are used to.

According to Dow Jones Newswires only 146,000 new iPhone subscribers signed up in the first two days of its launch - wildly successful for any other consumer- electronic product but a disappointment when compared with Wall Street's sky- high expectations. The figure, as well as speculation over a slowdown in demand has Apple - trading near its all-time high - taking a major hit in its share price.

The iPhone seemed poised to disappoint, given the ramping sales expectations for the much ballyhooed device, which in some circles earned the moniker "God Machine." After the first weekend, Goldman Sachs projected sales of 700,000 phones over the first three days.

There are many iPhone users returning it back to AT&T / Apple. According to them, if you value your sense of self, returning the iPhone is far more satisfying than using it.

More info on iPhone: dumb and dumber?

Mozilla Firefox was primarily designed as a browser that should compete with Internet Explorer 6.0. That was not a very difficult task, as IE6 was launched in 2001, and it was really obsolete already in 2004. Firefox ambition thus was not a big one, simply copy IE6 user interface, add Netscape rendering engine, add Google Search box (already known from Google Toolbar), and add tabs (already known for years from Opera).

And Firefox succeeded, now about 10-20% people are using it. We could say Firefox is the most famous copycat. Some advanced users value Firefox for its extensions, but this is a minority, most users install it because it closely resembles IE6 they know, and has some missing features (ActiveX), which make it arguably more secure (but less functional).

Most people installing Firefox never even open a new tab, they use and view the browser as another IE6. You may have noticed that "New tab" button is missing in toolbar at default Firefox installation. They use it simply because it is "in", and see many others doing it as well.

Yes, there are some advanced users, that use Firefox for different purpose, and that is extensions. Extensions are brilliant concept, but they still have many flaws in Firefox. Pro user needs to add 20+ extension to Firefox to make it a bit more powerful then IE6 (not even speaking about superior and fast IE7), and here is where problems start.

Firefox extensions are not tested as a complete package, they come from various independent developers, and can completely break the browser or another extension. They are also huge (potential) security risk, you never know if some extension is not sending out your credit card info.

Mozilla Firefox 2.0

Microsoft Windows Mobile is (by far) the best operating system for mobile phones and PDAs. You have huge portfolio of commercial and freeware applications available, synchronization between Windows XP (using ActiveSync) or Windows Vista (Synchronization center) is easy, and new Windows Mobile devices by independent competing vendors are launched every day with latest innovations (3G, GPS, Wifi, HW keyboard).

For $35.95 your can add one more feature / advantage to Windows Mobile phones, and that is complete remote control from your PC, using mouse and keyboard, thanks to Pocket Controller Pro v6. Your Windows Mobile phone can be connected via USB, Bluetooth and/or Wifi.

Remote control your mobile phone from PC has many advantages. Installation and configuration of new software is much easier, and you can type SMS and MMS messages directly on PC keyboard.

This is what you see will see with Pocket Controller Pro and HTC Artemis connected:

Pocket Controller Pro - ovládání mobilu z PC

I am using Microsoft Windows Mobile phones for last two years, and will never go back to a non Windows  Mobile OS again. It does everything I need, and I mean everything. I have installed about 100 applications and games on it, and truly love it.

We have also Apple iPhone on the market, which some people believe is going to be awesome. Or, at least, that is what Apple says. They claim it is revolutionary. Liars. The truth is iPhone is obsolete.

Fortron Epsilon 600/700W GLN is one of the best power-supplies, reasonably priced, with well-designed internals, stable and quiet (considering it is able to deliver sustained power of 700W). Still, its noise level could be improved by using a third-party fan.

My home Intel quadcore PC is based on fantastic Stacker 830 case, using very quiet Noctua fans running at 800rpm for cooling, so I decided to install the same fan for Fortron Epsilon GLN power supply.

Fortron Epsilon GLN

This article comes with a full reference on how to compile from source latest Apache 2.0.53 server, including support for SSL, PHP 5.0.3 as a module, and MySQL 4.1.10 database on a Linux. It was fully tested under SUSE Linux 9.1, SUSE Linux 9.2 and Fedora Core 3, but shall work with any Linux distribution (only on Debian you will have to change RPMs for proper deb packages).

Today, when almost every Linux distribution comes with a binary form of Apache 2.0.x, PHP 4.3.x and MySQL 4.0.x, it may seem a bit unnecessary to compile these, but, if you want some special configuration, latest components, or simply tune performance of your Apache, PHP and MySQL, compilation from source is the only possibility.

Basic system description:

PHP 5.0.3 will be compiled with support for: bz2, cpdflib, ctype, curllib, dom, ftp, gd2, freetype2, gettext, libiconv, libxml, mbstring, mysql, openssl, pcre, posix, session, SimpleXML, SPL, SQLite, tokenizer, xml, and zlib.

Apache 2.0.53 will be compiled with support for mod_access, mod_auth, mod_auth_digest, mod_deflate, mod_env, mod_headers, mod_setenvif, mod_ssl, mod_mime, mod_imap, mod_alias and mod_rewrite.

I've created html2pdf PHP class, which allows one-click conversion of XHTML to PDF. It is an extension of FPDF class, found on http://www.fpdf.org.

Basic HTML2PDF features:

• support for bold text, italics, underlined text.
• support for headlines <h1>, <h2>, <h3> and <h4>.
• support for linked and embedded images.
• basic support for tables.
• full support for lists <li>.
• full support for <blockquote>.
• support for pseudo-tags <red>, <blue>.
• <pre> will be displayed using Courier font, other text with Times New Roman font.
• support for <br>, <br /> and <p>.
• support for <hr> and <hr />.
• exported PDF filename is created by ascii characters of article title.
• temporary files are deleted after 60 minutes.
• document header is created with article title, article URI, author, and publishing date.
• document footer is created with current and total page numbers.
• built-in support for iconv (character conversions).
• supplied fonts Times a Courier, in CP1250 encoding (can be used for text in iso-8859-1, iso-8859-2, cp1250, and cp1252, with iconv).