Computer Science Stuff

I have used alot of restaurant applications for the iphone and android but they always have the same typical settings. You have your review and ratings for how the food taste and you can even make reservations for resturants through your phone. But have you ever wondered how sanitary the restaurant really is? Ever wondered if they are serving your food with their hands or if they work under mildew in their work environment? Well I present to you Clean Eats.

Clean Eats uncovers the dirty secrets of your favorite restaurants. These reports are compiled by state and local governments and Clean Eats aggregates this data to make it more convenient for you. Based on your location, Clean Eats delivers this information directly to your iPhone or iTouch. You will be empowered with a letter grade {A,B,C,D,F}, list of violations, and any comments the inspector may have noted. Some locations may even include more establishments such as grocery stores, schools (elementary, middle, and high school), and many more! Here is a video on the unique application.

Clean Eats 2.0 iPhone app demo from patrick jackson on Vimeo.

Click here to download from iTunes

Supported areas:

Los Angeles County, CA
New York City, NY
Virginia (All cities)
Plus More!

Popularity: 1% [?]

After much debate and researching you probably won’t guess what phone I got! The Droid! You will probably see from my previous article, I was leaning a little towards the iphone but I guess I have to give my reasoning for getting the Droid. First let me pull out a comparison chart.

Specifications	Motorola Droid	Iphone
Picture
Memory (GB)	16	8
Display (pixels)	480×854	480×320
Camera (megapixels)	5	3.2
Weight (ounces)	7	6
Sound Quality	Good	Good
Talk Time (hours)	6.4	5
Multi-tasking	Yes	No
Multi-touch	Capable but not enabled	Yes

Now after looking at this chart you it will appear that the droid has out class the iphone but apple also has the iphone 3GS. Which has 16GB and faster processor. Also even though droid has better megapixels than the iphone the picture on the iphone looks better.When looking smartphones it really is a hard pick to choose which one you want because they possess so many capabilities and can be manipulated to cater to almost anybody. For example the iphone may not be able to multi-task but when jail broken it can multi-task. Jail breaking iphones is the act of hacking the operating system into an open operating system allowing you multi-task, download free apps, third-party apps and manipulate according to your liking.

So when it comes to me choosing a phone I look at the things I can’t change myself for example hardware and network speed. Reason why I choose the Droid is because it has a fast processor and Verizon as it’s network provider in which I greatly love their internet speed. And I have tested the AT&T connection it is good in a certain spots but not stable as Verizon. I will also say with usability the Droid is straight forward and simple as with the Iphone but I consider the usability on the Iphone more enjoyable. Probably because of the multi-touch, I wish they had that enabled for the droid already. But Google didn’t want to violate the patent by Apple and keep a good relationship between them. But I think Google still made the Droid to still be able to use multi-touch so someone could enable it themselves or release an update for it after things get settled with that.

When it comes down to picking a phone make sure you pick the one that relates to your personality and the way you are. I recognize that is always the best pick when selecting anytype of technology. So you must ask yourself are you a droid or an iphone?

Popularity: 5% [?]

Lately, I have been going back and forth trying to decide should I get the iphone on the google phone and it has been killing me. Currently I have Verizon and as we all know is that Verizon has higher customer satisfaction and more towers which give less drop calls than any other service. With AT&T they have the iphone but do not have as many towers causing dropped calls. So let’s take a look at some of things going into my decision.

Question: Who has the better phone plan between Verizon and AT&T?
Answer: In terms of plan it will probably range from $80 to $100 with the data plans I want with either phone but AT&T has roll over minutes which I really like and Verizon has not taken a liking towards that yet.

Question: Which phone is better?
Answer: I look at this from a customer standpoint and developer standpoint. As a consumer iphone has very organized app store and strong brand with customer satisfaction with the iphone than the Android. The Android operating system will be placed on more phones but I haven’t seen it operate on any attractive phone and their app store is nothing to get excited about. Also from a developer standpoint the iphone owns alot of the smart phone market share and you could generate alot of money from developing an app for the iphone. Also since Apple develops the operating system and hardware for the phone the iphone has a higher compatibility rating than any phone out there. The Android has to be made to be a adaptable operating system since it is a open-source operating system which will be on phones and eventually netbooks. So if the vendor does not study it in and out it will not fully utilize the capabilities contained within it.

The Droid phone is coming to Verizon phone from what I have heard in November (don’t quote me, lol). So I will love to see who wins when it drops into stores than I will test it out so I can switch from my unattractive phone.

One thing I know for certain is that if Verizon had the iphone I wouldn’t have this problem! Let me know what you think?

Popularity: 1% [?]

I love Apple products and really love their branding but one thing I hate is to see the truth and completely over look it when just because you love it. Lately I have been coming across information detailing that Mac OS X is not secure it is just not attacked as much as Windows. I don’t know if you ever came across a competition called PWN2OWN. It is a competition is which people are competing against each other to hack computers with different operating systems and different browsers. The first browser to come to submission was safari on the mac.

The only browser that wasn’t cracked was Google Chrome on the windows operating system. This came at a surprise to me but after researching the Google Chrome sandboxing feature along with Windows randomization feature it is more secure than windows but it is attacked way more. For mac users I wouldn’t draw any concern over it now but when apple reaches a higher market share I think they will be in trouble.

Popularity: 1% [?]

In a span of 3 years I have gone through 3 laptops and have seen the pros and cons of each one, but my recent laptop the Macbook Pro has really kept my attention. The Macbook is elegant, efficient, sleek, foxy, sighty and stable is so many different ways. So to really give you overview of why it is a superior laptop I will compare it to my previous laptops.

Specifications	Macbook Pro	Sony Vaio FZ series	Asus N50 series
Picture
Operating System	Mac OS X 10.5	Windows Vista	Windows Vista
Hard Drive / Hard Drive Speed	320 GB 7200 rpm	250 GB 5400 rpm	320 GB 7200 rpm
RAM / RAM Speed	4 GB / 1066 Mhz	4 GB / 667 Mhz	4 GB / 800 Mhz
Weight (lbs)	5.5	6.5	6.5
Optical Drives	CD/DVD	CD/DVD/Blu-Ray Disc	CD/DVD
Battery Life	7 hours	2 hours	2.5  – 3 hours
Screen quality	High	High	Medium
Resistance to scratches	High	Low	Medium
Temperature	High	Low	Low
CPU Speeds (Intel Core 2 Duo)	2.53 GHZ	2.0 GHZ	2.4 GHZ

A more indepth analysis

Macbook Pro

From the chart displayed up to you see that the Macbook Pro is superior to my other laptops in every way except for the heat it generates. Well there is a simple solution for this. Macbook Pro fan speed for processors in 2000 rpm with the temperature ranging around 130 – 200 Fahrenheit. Now thats pretty hot for a laptop to be sitting on your lap. There is one thing they don’t tell when you get the laptop and that your fan can go up to 6000 rpms! So I downloaded a program to increase macbook pro fan speed called smcfancontrol. This program is fairly easy to control and I suggest not to put the speed over 4000 rpms because it will shorten the lifespan of the fans.

One thing I also recognize that programs run better on mac than windows. In windows I had programs that would crash at very annoying times when working on sensitive data. Also with the Mac Operating System I haven’t had program crash yet within the month that I have had it. Also they are less prone to getting viruses.

Asus N50 series

I will probably say Asus has the most innovative laptop that I have ever had. I wrote an article on it before right here. With this laptop they pretty much accounted for everything a user would possibly need. I just wish they did better with the design and screen display.

Sony Vaio FZ series

The sony vaio was the first laptop I ever owned and was definitely immaculate. Nice screen and beautiful display you could definitely recognize they put time into it. Came with a Blu-ray disc player and nice graphics card. I end up getting new laptop because I thought I broke it when switching out the processor for a new one.

Conclusion

I believe that when picking a laptop on any other product it is all base on your personality or philosophy when it comes to picking one. If you are person really in to looks get a laptop that has spectular design to it. You a person about substance get something that has great performance. Thats how you usually get the best laptop for you. In this case the best laptop for me was the Macbook Pro.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Apple once again raised iPhone sales but this time it has risen sevenfold! But you have to ask yourself what if Apple wasn’t locked into a contract with At&t? What if Apple had a contract with Verizon, Sprint, T-mobile and other providers? There would be such an increase in profit it would be ridiculous. Especially when consumers are still not satisfied with the service at At&t. At&t has dropped calls, not as many towers as verizon and when you don’t have as many towers it creates a greater strain on the phone draining its power.

One solution realizing this Apple has done is create the iPod touch which can be distributed to anybody. But it does not have a provider so it does not have access to a 3G network. The only access it has to the internet is a wireless router, or through usb cable. Ipod Touch looks just like iPhone but without the service provider becomes nothing more then a ipod with wireless capabilities.

I really wish the iPhone would partner up with Verizon, but apparently Verizon CEO is not too fond of Apple. But congratulations to Apple increasing sales, it looks as though a recession is looked upon in laughter to great companies.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Of all the years I have been on this planet have never seen Microsoft get so desperate or feel the need to compete at a great level. Now that it is becoming more and more prevalent that they are no longer the big kid on the block anymore they are going on all out attacks now against Google and Apple. This is all because of their steadily declining market share.

Market Share lossage and to who

1. Internet browser(Internet Explorer) – lossage to Mozilla Firefox and Apple Safari
2. Operating system (Windows) – lossage to Apple Mac OS X and Linux
3. Search Engine (live.com) – lossage to Google and Yahoo

Not even mentioning other competitors such as Adobe (Multimedia) Flash vs Microsoft Silverlight and Sony (Game Consoles) Ps3 vs Microsoft XBOX 360 vs Nintendo Wii, Microsoft is really feeling the effects of spreading themselves thinner and thinner and producing products of lesser and lesser quality. Even some of the competitors who they are going against have a focus and produce so very nice products. Now they are spending more money creating attack ads against Apple and Google. People see it as strategy but I see it as a act of desperation before the giant falls. If you want a good website for identifying market share go here to see the information for yourself.

What can Microsoft do?

Being that they still have the upper hand in most of their markets they need to create reliable products that cannot be compromised so easily. Firstly with windows it is known for viruses and its price. There are other products out there that are free and becoming easier to use for example linux. Or have little to no viruses and good quality, people go to apple mac os x. So if they can increase the quality of their product, include a higher level of security and speed and present it well I think we can see a nice increase in their market share. To even further back it up ask people who played around with Windows 7. They are impressed with the usability and speed which has increased alot of people’s curiosity and confidence. Now if they can launch a full-spectrum campaign on increasing quality of their products and decrease prices on licenses I guarantee we will see change in market share but only going up.

Popularity: 17% [?]

Safari 4 Beta, is officially the fastest browser to this date. On benchmarks it has blown internet explorer (of course) and firefox out the water with it’s speed. Now that we are stepping deeper and deeper into the age of web applications,  JavaScript is becoming more and more essential. Apple has something called, The Nitro Engine. This Nitro Engine is especially for JavaScript which also beat Google Chrome V8 engine for the JavaScript. The Nitro engine in Safari 4 runs JavaScript 4.2 times faster than Safari 3.

“Apple created Safari to bring innovation, speed and open standards back into web browsers, and today it takes another big step forward,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “Safari 4 is the fastest and most efficient browser for Mac and Windows, with great integration of HTML 5 and CSS 3 web standards that enables the next generation of interactive web applications.”

i-Bench HTML (in seconds)
Mac and Windows
Safari 4 Beta  - 1.06 s
Chrome   1.0  - 1.38 s
Firefox 3.0 - 3.11 s
Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 - 3.16 s
IE 7  - 3.25 s
IE 8 Beta - 4.71 s

i-Bench JavaScript (in seconds)
Mac and Windows
Safari 4 Beta – 0.14 s
Chrome 1.0 – 0.20 s
Firefox 3.0 – 0.76 s
Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 – 1.04 s
IE 7 – 1.81 s
IE 8 Beta – 0.73 s

SunSpider JavaScript (in milliseconds)
Mac and Windows
Safari 4 Beta – 657.07 ms
Chrome 1.0 – 853.13 ms
Firefox 3.0 – 2399.20 ms
Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 – 1034.47 ms
IE 7  – 19902.20 ms
IE 8 Beta  – 4137.80 ms

Now the next question is how secure it is? I mean Safari 4 can be fast but if it isn’t secure enough that means you can get robbed faster. Well this is what Apple has to say, “Safari also provides secure encryption technologies to prevent eavesdropping, forgery, and digital tampering while you browse the Internet. It offers standards-based authentication for logging into secure websites, and it supports the most popular proxy protocols.”

So we will see how that will draw out it is still in it’s beta version. I still believe Firefox 3 is the most secure browser, but Safari 4 has the title for the fastest browser for 2009.

Popularity: 45% [?]