The Beijing Games will aim to show the world what the Olympic Games really are… and with 3 weeks before the kick off, you better believe they are ready!

Boston.com has some great photos of Beijing and the final preparations!

China is definitely a very conflicted country. They’re paying every price there is for progress.

Unfortunately the oppression of people and the unequal distribution of wealth will likely lead to yet another revolution.

As for me, I won’t hold my breath - though hopefully I will be holding on to that beautiful cheerleader wishing I had a Press Pass ah!.

Imagine how this photographer must have felt when he shot this photo of the Trinity Atomic Test…

“It was 63 years ago today that the United States detonated the very first atomic bomb.

Three weeks later, the only two A-bombs dropped in warfare destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. Many nuclear — and thermonuclear — bombs have been tested since. Here are some images.”

Trinity represented the culmination of the Manhattan Project, the U.S. effort to build and detonate an atomic device. Within 24 days of this test, the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were laid waste by atomic bombs.

The World has never been the same since, changed forever by this abomination…

A very cool 13 minutes interview of Phil Clevenger, the man behind the Lightroom User Interface (GUI), detailing the development of Adobe Lightroom, code named Shadowland.

It’s not something Adobe started after Apple announced Aperture. The Shadowland project has been going on for years.

The early development of Shadowland was a bit rocky-to say the least.
Adobe just didn’t know how or where to position Shadowland in the ecosphere that is known as Photoshop.

I personally really like Lightroom and the direction it’s headed. I still like Photoshop but Photoshop is an killer application requiring many masters to be used to its fullest.

It’s a huge application, not only from the code base but from the complexity of use.

That’s why I’m really glad that the professional photographic community is finally getting the attention of not one, but two big players in the computer software industry.

Who wouldn’t be thrilled to have Apple and Adobe paying us so much attention!

Some stunning aerial photos from Russia, courtesy of English Russia.

Enjoy!

Apple is holding strong as the third largest personal computer vendor in the US and with a 38.1% growth rate, you’d think AAPL would be skyrocketing now…

Well, not really… Wall Streets is filled wih speculators and analysts playing a deceiving game trying to make as much money as possible instead of rewarding the companies posting AMAZING results!

“Apple defied a weakening economy to record a 38.1 percent growth rate in U.S. PC shipments, according to Gartner. Overall PC shipments in the U.S. grew just 4.2 percent to 16.5 million units during the quarter.

The company shipped 1.4 million units compared to Acer’s 1.33 million, according to Gartner’s survey. Dell held the top spot, shipping 5.25 million units and growing 11.9 percent year-over-year, followed by HP. “

Instead, the stock closed at $166.49 before plunging to $147.60 during the extended hours loosing close to $850 million of capitalization value… Un-fuc£*ng-belivable!!!!

“Cupertino, Calif.-based Apple earned $1.07 billion, or $1.19 per share, 11 cents ahead of Wall Street’s expectations, according to a Thomson Financial survey of analysts.
Revenue jumped 38 percent to $7.46 billion, ahead of analysts’ average view for $7.37 billion in sales.”

Seriously… what is wrong with these people??!!

Some people say, the Nikon D3X will be coming in July 2009, some people say, it may be announced as early as September 3rd, some people say Nikon has already shipped over 40 prototypes for early testing in the field…

It’s all rumors!

What I know is that the D2X was released in 2005 and 3 years is a looooooong time in Digital years! So clearly, the Nikon D3X is overdue!

But I also know it took Nikon 2 years to upgrade the D2H to the D2X. Since the D3 (there won’t be a D3H obviously) was released earlier this year, it would make sense that Nikon will take at least another 12 to 18 months to launch a D3X.

So, as far as my own predictions are concerned, I’d bet on a May 2009 release. Now let’s wait and see who will get this one right ah!

There are zillion commercial services offering proprietary (non-Open Source) device location tracking systems out there to help you get your stolen/lost laptop back.

Most offer little to no privacy guarantees, and the rest force a user to entrust privacy to the company involved.

But Adeona is the first Open Source system for tracking the location of your lost or stolen laptop that does not rely on a proprietary, central service.

This means that you can install Adeona on your laptop and go — there’s no need to rely on a single third party. What’s more, Adeona addresses a critical privacy goal different from existing commercial offerings. It is privacy-preserving.

This means that no one besides the owner (or an agent of the owner’s choosing) can use Adeona to track a laptop. Unlike other systems, users of Adeona can rest assured that no one can abuse the system in order to track where they use their laptop.

You can download the OS X version here.