Jay Robinson delves into what makes up iTunes LP and comes out pleased and suprised: "The iTunes LP experience is accomplished with HTML 4.01, CSS and JS. The interface feels very Flash-like, but there is no trace of it. The CSS animations are elaborate and smooth."With iTunes 9 Apple have released a new music format designed to replicate the traditional LP experience but in the digital age
It turns out that an iTunes LP file (.itlp) is actually a zip file, containing the music files and an HTML file with accompanying CSS. Amazingly, the flashy interface is produced without the use of Flash (see what I did there?) but rather the cutting edge CSS animation features built into Webkit (the open source rendering engine that makes up Safari).
This is most surprising in that it’s a very modern, very open way to actually create the LPs. One would almost have expected a binary format laced in DRM, but no; this is a format that would be relatively easy to support in other media players by integrating the webkit rendering engine into the player. Progress has been made porting Webkit to GTK+ and QT4 which means that iTunes LP support on your favourite brand of Linux may not be as unlikely as first thought when Apple announced the feature on 9/9/09.
iTunes LPs are based around a 1280x720 frame, but will scale to window size. This seems a rather non-arbitrary size and I would even go as far as having a guess that if the rumoured Apple tablet does exist, the size of iTunes LPs was based on the resolution of that device so that iTunes LPs could be played full screen. Kind of makes you think, doesn’t it?
Also this week, code was landed in Webkit to add 3D canvas and WebGL. With Flash-killer features like this appearing in the web browser engine, it expands the capabilities that Apple could use in iTunes LP, and iTunes itself (the new iTunes store is now HTML/CSS, as compared to custom XML rendered by QT). What’s best about all of this is that it’s open source and anybody’s game to implement on any system.
I find it immensely exciting that web technologies are being used for purely non web-browser uses and multimedia experiences. It opens the possibilities of greater portability in the future as well as a greater chance for alternative software to compete on equal grounds with iTunes.
"The 'Llano' processor that AMD described today in an ISSCC session is not a CPU, and it's not a GPU - instead, it's a hybrid design that the chipmaker is calling an 'application processor unit', or APU. Whatever you call it, it could well give Intel a run for its money in the laptop market, by combining a full DX11-compatible GPU with four out-of-order CPU cores on a single, 32nm processor die."
"The scuttlebutt is that IBM seemed perfectly content to wait until May to launch the Power7-based Power Systems servers, but something changed and compelled the company to move up the announcement of its first machines using the eight-core processor to today. Big Blue is not in a habit of explaining its motives or its timing for product launches, but it seems clear that IBM wanted to get out in front of a whole lot of processor and systems launches that are expected between now and the summer."
Mozilla has announced that they are going to drop support for Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger definitively. "Mac OS X 10.4 was released in April of 2005 and a lot has changed since then," Josh Aas writes, "We would like to take advantage of more modern technologies on Mac OS X and 10.4 support has been a hindrance. Where we can work around supporting 10.4, doing so consumes valuable time and effort. Neither Chrome nor Safari has to deal with this."
"The ancient bug was discovered by Google security researcher Tavis Ormandy in January 2010 and involves a utility that allows newer versions of Windows to run very old programs. Mr Ormandy has found a way to exploit this utility in Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and 2008 as well as Windows Vista and Windows 7. The patch for this vulnerability will appear in the February security update. Five of the vulnerabilities being patched at the same time allow attackers to effectively hijack a Windows PC and run their own programs on it."
"Today, Clang completed its first complete self-host! We built all of LLVM and Clang with Clang (over 550k lines of C++ code). The resulting binaries passed all of Clang and LLVM's regression test suites, and the Clang-built Clang could then build all of LLVM and Clang again. The third-stage Clang was also fully-functional, completing the bootstrap."
With all the virtualization schemes running on top of Linux, how do they exploit the underlying kernel for I/O virtualization? The answer is virtio, which provides an efficient abstraction for hypervisors and a common set of I/O virtualization drivers. Discover virtio, and learn why Linux will soon be the hypervisor of choice.
"The Mono Project releases the first preview of Moonlight 3.0, giving application developers a first look at the open-source implementation of Microsoft's Silverlight 3 technology for the Linux platform." Sadly, it's still Firefox-only.
"In a definitive defeat for film studios - and in a first case of its kind worldwide - Australia's Federal Court has ruled that ISPs have no obligation to act on copyright infringement notices or to disconnect subscribers after receiving multiple letters. If copyright holders want justice for illegal file-sharing, they need to start by targeting the right people: those who committed the infringement."
Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz, an advocate of Web 2.0, used Twitter early Thursday to announce his resignation. He was named CEO in 2006 as Sun faced a switch in strategic direction away from proprietary systems and toward open source code, including its valued Solaris 10 operating system. "Today's my last day at Sun. I'll miss it", he said in a tweet to his followers, reported the New York Times on its Web site at 1:12 a.m. Thursday. He added a bit of haiku: "Financial crisis, Stalled too many customers, CEO no more."
"The venerable GNU Image Manipulation Program is undergoing a significant transformation. The next major release, version 2.8, will introduce an improved user interface with an optional single-window mode. Although this update is still under heavy development, users can get an early look by compiling the latest source code of the development version from the GIMP's version control repository."