BitTorrent Giant Mininova is Dead!

Well, Mininova is not really dead but all its interesting stuff was taken off of the server on Nov 26th, 2009.  This has been a long battle for mininova and finally as expected had to comply with copyright laws. However, If you are a content developer or have your own content, then you can use Mininova for free and use bandwidth to distribute across the world! Adieu Mininova…

Here is the official Blog Update!

“Hi all,

Today is an important day in the history of Mininova. From now on, we are limiting Mininova.org to our Content Distribution service. By doing so, we comply with the ruling of the Court of Utrecht of last August.

Unfortunately the court ruling leaves us no other option than to take our platform offline, except for the Content Distribution service. According to the verdict (Dutch link) we have to prevent uploads of torrents to Mininova that refer to certain titles or to similar-looking titles. We’ve been testing some filtering systems the last couple of months, but we found that it’s neither technically nor operationally possible to implement a 100% working filter system. Therefore, we decided that the only option is to limit Mininova to Content Distribution torrents from now on. We are still considering an appeal at this moment.

We launched our Content Distribution service in 2007. This service allows producers and artists to easily publish and distribute their content for free through Mininova. The launch of Content Distribution has proven to be a success. Countless content owners have used Content Distribution to distribute their content (e.g. albums and documentaries) for free to millions of users. For example, the Dutch band Silence is Sexy released their complete album on Mininova and received the Interactive Award 2009 for doing so. The Dutch television broadcaster VPRO decided to start using Content Distribution in 2009 in order to distribute documentaries.

We would like to thank you for your support. Especially everyone that contributed to Mininova receives a big “thank you!” for the effort! We hope to keep welcoming you on Mininova and our other projects (e.g. Snotr, Dispostable).

Thanks! The Mininova staff”

Alternatives to Beyond Compare – File Comparison Tool

Beyond Compare is quite good at comparing files and folders. It can show the differences in different colors and that makes us compare different source code files or even the entire directory easily. You can even compare binary files and do a CRC checksum to see if they match.

However, Beyond Compare is not free. Well, There are so many such free File Comparing Tools out there. One such editor is Cream. An enhanced Vi Editor and lots of User Interface enhancements. It will also let you compare files for instance.

The other ones like WinMerge, FreeFileSync etc are also good. So bottom line is, lots of free ones are there for you to compare the content of files or folders.

Read here for more.

Screenshot of Meld

Nokia N900 – Will it survive with its Maemo 5.0 OS against Android?

Nokia N900 looks neat and I feel Nokia Phones like N97 are not that good when compared to Apple’s iPhone, HTC’s Tocuh series phones etc. Traditionally, Nokia phones have been based on Symbian OS. But, the new N900 is based on Maemo 5.0 which is a Debian based Linux variant and that is going to power their next generation smart phones with focus on finger friendly  mobile phones. Damn, I must thank Apple for teaching all these companies about user friendliness. I have been using touch screen  devices for quite some time and post the launch of iPhone, people realized the need for finger friendly touch screens rather than the lousy stylus based touch screens.

Maemo comes with lots of apps like;

• Web : Maemo Browser (Mozilla based web browser with Adobe Flash 9.4), RSS reader
• Phone application
• VoIP : Skype
• Conversations (IM chat and SMS, no MMS)
• Media : Camera, Photos, Media player
• Production : Email, Calendar, PDF reader, Contacts
• Ovi Maps (Find position on a map using the GPS, Search an address or location, Plan routes)
• Utilities : Clock, Notes, Calculator, Sketch
• System Tools : File manager, Application manager for downloads, Widgets
• Games : Bounce, Chess and Mahjong

Third party Apps like Pidgin for multiprotocol IM, AbiWord for Word processor, GNumetric for spreadsheet support and more are out there. This I believe is Nokia’s attempt to handle the threat of more advanced OS like Android from Google, LiMo from LiMo foundation and Windows Mobile 7 (which is going to be released in 2010) etc.

N900 with Maemo 5.0:

Looks great, Has all the features like GPS, WiFi, Widgets, Multimedia support, TI OMAP 600MHz CPU, 32GB internal memory, up to 1GB App Memory (RAM), and more. Let us see how it succeeds in the market.

Source Nokia N900

The First USB 3.0 Motherboard Is Here!

The Asus P7P55D-E is apparently the very first USB 3.0 motherboard. It's an Intel P55-based mother board that uses a third-party USB 3.0 controller for a pair of ports. It has 10 USB 2.0 ports as well. In essence, It is not a complete USB 3.0 mother board and in the coming days there will be Mother Boards with all USB 3.0 ports so we will have to just wait for a while! Nevertheless Asus is pretty fast! 

Via [Gizmodo]