More than 10 years ago it was somehow addictive to watch ESPN’s SportCenter program on TV highlighting and scoring live almost every game that was going on in North America. Lately the program turned into more into enhancing the image of ESPN’s glory introducing endless talking between sport reporters who argued every image of the game displayed without being convincing at all!

iPhones being offered a free application of ESPN ScoreCenter which it is thought of marking in a sense the former glory days of SportCenter. OK, the highlights are not present in the application but the app provides you with scores and information over the news regarding your favorite teams. Last year when scoreboard apps for iPhone and iPod touch were released, two of them seemed to be more interesting: the Citizen Sports’ Sportacular and SportsTap applications. In this regard a closer look was taken in order to adequately assess the ESPN ScoreCenter in the line of the other applications presented for iPhones.

For a start you have to launch ScoreCenter by disabling the Wi-Fi and perform the process through a 3G connection since the AT&T network didn’t seem to be that robust in some areas. While getting load, that takes some time, ESPN offers you a “Did You Know” feature displaying on the screen some images connected to the sport events. That is meant to help you to pass your time while your app is getting loaded. And then you are put through a lot of recent sport news that you can scroll between headlines featured at the bottom of the app features. If among the headlines there is one to catch your eye, you can tap on it and ESPN MobileWeb displays the information.

The application offers a vast range of customization options, such as built-in settings that determine which sports you are following and the order in which these sports appear allowing you at the same time to select from 10 sport options. You can also choose your favorite teams with a good presentation of the feature and games’ displaying across the iPhone’s screen. The scores appear framed in 2 columns of a blue background with white letters and the “Final” box of scores where an arrow indicates the winning team.

Specific games are presented in ScoreCenter app with lists of balls, outs, strikes, displaying who is batting, pitching, all these being possible with a feature addition of in-app browser that allows you to have close-ups of the images you have just seen. Comparing the Sportacular, Sportstap and Scorecenter one can remark the differences, with the first two have notably gained meanwhile some new additions, that are not necessary the highlights of the applications, but apparently the score is even if we consider which one is more favored among the sport applications in iPhones. The place of ESPN ScoreCenter in the scheme of iPhone’s scoreboard applications is somehow ahead of the other two in that the Sportacular’s developer should take notices over the features offered by SportCenter as result of its learned lessons.

It is impossible for someone not to have noticed how the colors differ while being transferred from a document you just created on your monitor to the paper resulted through the act of printing. Started with the 90s, Mac’s ColorSync has been introduced in regard to this problem, being conceived as a color manager for the framework whereas Colorton emerged as a hardware and software system to provide color calibration a professional perspective. The fact is that the way a monitor is emitting the color differs actually from the way a printing is “seeing” the same color. This happens because of the running processes in regard to the color management of each device.

But you figure that there are so many combinations of input elements (graphic software, scanners, digital cameras etc) with output possibilities (various printers , digital video, films, the variety of displays, projectors) that is almost impossible not to find the right way of rendering exactly the ‘correct’ color. In this regard one needs hardware and software of the same ‘caliber’ to keep color under control in order to determine what kind of colors the input and output devices are able to create, this process being called profiling or calibration. In this way you can find your position regarding the color-space of your workflow needing further the necessary tool to measure the accuracy, to create palette and explore the capabilities. For this you might need the X-Rite’s ColorMunki 1.1 suite of tools.

This new entry is created for professional market that comprises photographers, designers and not only, being also of a great help for the amateurs who need a better rendition of the colors. ColorMunki 1.1 suite is divided in three products: Create (a colorimeter), Design and Photo (a spectrophotometer).

The Create product of ColorMunki 1.1 is issued with a USB bus-powered colorimeter used to calibrate the monitor with its software. Its feature enables you to compose palettes of colors with the purpose of being sent to other desktop software such as Illustrator and Photoshop, allowing you to keep the consistency while using the applications. The options offered by this feature reveal a nice manner in harmonizing the colors in the way that designers might find it useful in their work. With Create options you are automatically instructed how to profile your monitor with a perfect tailoring touch.

The Design product of ColorMunki 1.1 is the feature that aim the designers and includes the same functionality of the Create’s software and the AppSet for various desktop publishing apps. It comes with an USB bus-powered spectrophotometer which reads colors from their emissive sources and reflective material to enable you to convert colors from fabric, objects or printed material. So next to the possibility to profile the monitor’s color reproduction, you are able now to profile the printer.

The Photo product is the world of tools, containing the same hardware as Design does, plus that it can grab colors from the real world, with the ability to create the same palettes and to explore the possibilities of colors rendition. It includes also an app called DigitalPouch that enables the user to ‘pack’ the images and have them sent as calibration information to other users.

ColorMunki 1.1 proves to be a useful color management tool for professional photographers and designers as well as for the users that are interested in advance design hardware and software.

Released in May this year Bento application came as an easy-to-use management for database (to be synchronized wireless via WiFi) from FileMaker, with 25 built-in templates for personal use or business, added to these a blank template that enabled you to create templates customized at your own will. Bento for iPhone and iPod touch is similar to Mac app in that it is incorporated with Safari, Contacts, Mail, and Google Maps. Recently most users see this application more like a program rather than an application. Without being as sturdy as FileMaker, it still offers enough functionality in that you organize more and prepare less. But being next to a computer, one user can access more rapidly his information, thinking it is much at handy in this way.

But Bento application for iPhones seems to change this approach, since you have everything on you so long as you have your iPhone with you. All your information is there stored under one application. Well, there are other apps available on your iPhone, apps that came included in your unit or that can be downloaded at a cheaper price, so why would you choose Bento? The point is that this app can include your shopping lists, your DVD library, your book that you haven’t finished reading yet as well, all in one things that are part of your everyday program.

Another thing is that you can set up databases directly on the iPhone with your Bento app, considering that you have included those 25 pre-designed templates and in order to create one you can simply tap the “new Library” option and select the template from the “cover flow” mode display. The blank form of a template enables you to conceive a database from zero bases but it looks like a troublesome feature in the process. The capability to customize the templates is satisfying enough in that you manage the feature easier and do not waste too much time. The things look more useful in case you have Bento 2 for the Macintosh, in this way you can switch your editing Bento template in your iPhone to your Mac, trying to synchronize the changes with iPhone.  This switching can be done thanks to the WiFi, not through a dock connector, unfortunately. If you consider that in the future FileMaker will include a Bluetooth option or dock synchronizing, than you’ll be luckier. But you should keep in mind that not everything
from Bento 2 for Mac can be synched with the Bento belonging to your iPhone. The thing is that iPhone keeps those templates that you previously deleted on your Mac, but if you are a tidy person you will work twice to have the things neat.

In time, hopefully, Bento application will turn into a must for the iPhone users, since it can incorporate as much information as you would want to add in your iPhone or iPod, and even it has some flaws they still don’t make the application be less powerful and loaded with abilities.

Ken Thompson, a programmer at AT&T Bell Laboratories, in 1969 has started to write the first version of UNIX, an operating system for interactive use, and from that year on he continued to work at its developing for several years with the aid of his colleagues, trying to obtain then an OS that was working on the “less is more” principle. Thompson and his colleagues wanted to develop a system having characteristics of cheap to get, simple, elegant and ease to use. So, what was there more to be desired, since the system reached its apex of utilization in every area that required the use of computers? Not ot mention the fact that the new model of Unix determined many software designers to redefine their perspective in regard to programming.

In years, the system suffered many changing, such as rewriting the system in C language which lead to increasing the OS’s portability across computing areas and along these years it gained the name Unics (Uniplexed Information and Computing Service) that later became Unix. The uniqueness of this system consisted of the fact that whenever new ideas were discovered or even suggested by others they could be easily introduced in the system and its software in a way that could develop better versions of the system.

When AT&T took control of the Unix license once the Unix Version 7 was released, they prohibited its use in the Universities, thus determining professor Andrew Tanenbaum from Amsterdam Vrije University to write a clone of Unix for his classes, the OS being named Minix to run it on the Intel 80286 microprocessor. This system will later become the starting point for the creation of Linux. Before this modifications were also brought by the UC Berkeley programmer Bill Joy to obtain a branch of the Unix OS, called BSD – Berkeley Software Distribution.

Today Unix has two major versions: one coming directly from AT&T and the other one coming from Berkeley California, with the system’s strongest branches AIX belonging to IBM, HP-UX from Hewlett-Packard and Solaris that belongs to Sun Microsystems. Due to the constant new demands on computing market the portability designed many years ago of the Unix is lacking completeness, this fact prompting IT organizations to move away from Unix and incline more towards Linux which is seen as being more strategic in choice.

But as a Computerworld survey noticed, this will not happen too soon, considering that 88% of the respondents are still relying on Unix as their essential platform, whereas only 12% declared that they will move away from Unix, saying that the main reason would be cost savings. Another reason would be the trends offered by the x86 processor commodity – virtualization on x86, cloud computing, clustering – all these combined lead to other choices of operating systems, such as Linux and Windows.

No matter what will turn out to be the fate of Unix, this operating system is still considered to be the parent of a long list of popular software, influencing systems, enabling several of start-ups to be successful by offering low-cost platform to build on. Unix was a core building part for the existing Internet being at the same time responsible for the telecommunication systems of today and no one can ever contest its importance in the development of the operating systems.

Originally issued in October last year, the Flixster’s Movies application for iPhone and iPod touch is useful for the ones who are into seeing movies theatrically. The app reveals a list of movies which shows what movies are playing in the neighborhood’s theaters at the moment or it can simply display the list of the favored theatres you have previously saved. This month’s novelty of this application is one of the features that takes you by surprise while trying to have a look at the Flixster’s Movies; it is showing the “user reviews” allowing you to access viewers’ opinions on a set of present movies. But let’s not hurry up the paces.

For the users of this application, the latest version displays the Flixster’s developers intentions to bring a number of improvements to the old version of Movies. It looks like this new version offered as an optimization for iPhone OS 3.0 update is more stable, displaying a geo-location that works better compared to the one from last year; this happens due to a ZIP code you have to enter or using the GPS helping you to locate the theaters that are in your area. The user reviews is that surprise feature mentioned at the beginning which enables you to browse films according to Rotten Tomatoes ranking, but this one can vary from the Flixster ratings, but it is a variation (to be read as ‘others’ point of view’) one way or another.

Another feature which might be somehow appealing is that the application offers photo galleries to go with the movies and from there you are free to select one in case you like to save it as your wallpaper. OK, up to now these features look like lollipops for the kids, now let’s go to the refined chocolate bonbons for the grown-ups. Flixster Movies app for iPhone allows you to entertain a strong social network with your friends by introducing the Facebook Connect where you can log in with your Facebook account and rate movies, check the ones you want to see at the same time share the ratings with your mates. Next to this, there is a possibility for you to download pretty fast thousands of movie trailers and watch the videos, but this happens only if you own a 3G, EDGE or a functional Wi-Fi connection.

Now with the Movies application being improved it is the other feature that deserves being mentioned: buying tickets online. The earlier ability possible was to access the Movietickets.com which had the worst interface ever seen, whereas the new version delivers easiness in reading and navigating. Yes, I agree there are some other Movies applications out there in the world of iPhones, such as “Now Playing”, “Fandango” or “Movies & Theaters” but still they lack some of the features present in the Flixster application. So, movies fans are better off opting for Flixster’s Movies app in case they want to have a useful tool to explore the land of the latest blockbusters.