Pidgin is an instant messaging program for Windows, Linux, BSD, and other Unixes. You can talk to your friends using AIM, ICQ, Jabber/XMPP, MSN Messenger, Yahoo!, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, IRC, Novell GroupWise Messenger, QQ, Lotus Sametime, SILC, SIMPLE, MySpaceIM, and Zephyr.

2.2.1 is out. It fixes a crash that can be triggered remotely on MSN in 2.2.0. If you are using 2.2.0, you should upgrade immediately.

Download: Pidgin 2.2.1 (Windows)
View: Changes
Link: Pidgin Home Page

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One of the most talked about products, heading into the start of Digital Life, was Palm’s new compact smartphone, the Centro. While it is much thicker than devices such as the Motorola Q9 and Samsung Blackjack, the Centro does keep the other dimensions well within respectability, though it’s still unclear why Palm thinks it’s anything worth mentioning. In reality, the smaller device size creates a larger problem.

As an owner of the Samsung Blackjack, I already thought that keyboards on PDA styled devices shouldn’t get any smaller if they wished to remain useable. Apparently, Palm never realized this. The keyboard on the Centro is entirely too small to effectively type on. In order to hit only one button, I had to use the edge of my finger nail and, even then, it was tough. I can’t imagine how anyone can be expected to type out an email or use the included instant messaging application with any kind of efficiency. The buttons are too small and too close to each other. The only good thing about the keyboard is the responsiveness that one expects from the keys (when you can actually press one) on a Palm device.

Moving past the frustrating keyboard, one’s attention should be drawn to the screen and the Palm OS interface. Palm has finally increased their resolution to a slightly above standard 320*320. Unfortunately, the Palm OS UI does nothing to show off the beauty of the higher resolution display. The menus are nothing but a plain white background with basic icons consisting of few colors. I know, many of you may say that the UI shouldn’t matter as long as it’s useable and functional. That’s fine and dandy, but with every other device on the market showing off vibrant colors and crystal clear displays, it would have been nice to see a little “flash” from the functional operating system.

I only had a few minutes to test out a display model, but the device was responsive, more so than other smartphones on the market. The browser opened very quickly and the device never seemed to drag its feet while switching between menus. In this case, the lack of eye candy probably helps, so I have to eat my words a little.

All in all, the Centro has a great price point and has some giddy up behind it. However, the overly thick size and frustratingly tiny keyboard make it more of a chore to use than a pleasure. Palm is on the right track, but there’s work to be done. If they can manage to give the keyboard some space, one could easily look past the lack luster UI and find themselves with a very nice device at an even better price. Until they accomplish that, though, I simply cannot recommend the Centro to anyone looking to buy a smartphone.

View: Palm Centro

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Jasper Bryant-Greene writes “Although a tzdata release that includes New Zealand’s recent DST changes (2007f) has been out for some time, Debian are refusing to push the update from testing into the current stable distribution, codenamed Etch, on the basis that ‘it’s not a security bug.’ This means that unless New Zealand sysadmins install the package manually, pull the package from testing, or alter the timezone to ‘GMT-13′ manually, all systems running Debian Etch in New Zealand currently have the incorrect time, as DST went into effect this morning. As one of the last comments in the bug report says, ‘even Microsoft are not this silly.’ The final comment (at this writing), from madcoder, says ‘The package sits in volatile for months. Please take your troll elsewhere.’”

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KingK writes “Reuters reports that Google is considering a Canadian launch of its Street View map feature, which offers street-level close-ups of city centers. But the company said it would probably blur people’s faces and vehicle license plates to respect tougher Canadian privacy laws.”

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Colin Smith writes in with an object lesson in backup methodology — once you have backed everything up, take it somewhere else. “Film director Francis Ford Coppola has appealed for the return of his computer backup device following a robbery at his house in Argentina on Wednesday. He told Argentine broadcaster Todo Noticias he had lost 15 years’ worth of data, including writing and photographs of his family.”

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Ali writes “As discussed here recently, amazon.com has launched a public beta of Amazon MP3, a digital music store that provides DRM-free downloads of over 2 million songs from 180,000 artists and 20,000 labels. In comparison, Apple says the iTunes Store now contains over 6 million songs. Here is a head-to-head comparison.”

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theodp writes “In its College Issue, the NYT Magazine profiles tuition-free Olin College, which is building a different breed of engineer, stressing creativity, teamwork, and entrepreneurship — and, in no small part, courage. But questions remain as to whether the industry is ready for the freethinking products of Olin, and vice versa. Few of the class of 2006 are going on to grad study in engineering or jobs in the field.”

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biscuitfever11 writes “ZDNet has up a great interview with Michael Meeks, the distinguished Novell engineer, who’s currently deeply involved in open document format and OpenOffice.org. In the interview, Meeks takes Microsoft to task on its alternative format OOXML and argues that Microsoft should adopt ODF — but says that realistically they never will. He also mentions his favorite example to explain the benefits of open source software to a nontechnical person: the flexibility of open source would have allowed us to free ourselves from Clippy, the world’s most despised paperclip, by changing a single line of code.”

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I am a new graduate student in Computer Engineering. I would like to get my MS and possibly my Ph.D. I have learned that 90% of my department is from India and many others are from China. All the students come here to study and there are only 7 US citizens in the engineering program this year. Why is that? I have heard that many of the smarter Americans go into medicine or the law and that is why there are so few Americans in engineering. Is this true?

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DJ notes that TechARP has up a look at Intel’s plans to rebrand their processors, including what must be a leaked internal chart of the old and new landscape of product names. This story doesn’t seem to have been picked up anywhere else yet. Quoting: “We just heard from an anonymous source that Intel will be rebranding their processors in 2008… These new brand names will come into effect on the first day of 2008. Intel hopes that these new brands will not only leverage the strong Core 2 brand but also make it less confusing for the consumer. At the moment, the Intel Centrino mobile platform has five different logos with brands like Centrino, Centrino Duo and Centrino Pro. Starting from January 1, 2008, Intel will consolidate the Centrino Duo and Centrino brands under the Intel Centrino brand, and rename the Centrino Pro as Intel Centrino with vPro Technology.”

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