My Congratulations to VLC Team

Congratulations VLC team that now is proud to announce that VLC media player 1.x is now available. This is the stable release of VLC media player after 8 years of development and beta testing.

Thanks to the continuous efforts made by the developers and the community, the new version of the award-winning VLC media player, numbered 1.0.0, is approaching the end of development.

Again… Congratulations to VLC Team

Pidgin 2.5.7 Has Released

Download

[If you plan to compile it yourself, please refer HERE]

Change log:

• Yahoo Protocol 16 support, including new HTTPS login method; this should fix a number of login problems that have recently cropped up. (Sulabh Mahajan, Mike “Maiku” Ruprecht)
• Only display the AIM “Unable to Retrieve Buddy List” message once per connection. (Rob Taft)
• Blocking MSN users not on your buddy list no longer disconnects you.
• When performing operations on MSN, assume users are on the MSN/Passport network if we don’t get network ID’s for them.

Fedora 11 (Reign) has Released

Release Note

Screenshot Tour

Download

P/S: WordPress 2.8 will be released soon as well. Stay tuned..

Windows Mobile 6.1 5.2.20764 (Build 20764.1.4.3)

Today I’ve updated my HTC to Windows Mobile 6.1 5.2.20764 (Build 20764.1.4.3) and reflash my radio ROM using HTC-Flasher, an open source ROM Update Utility by Pau Oliva Fora or well known as ‘pof’.

I’m so satisfied with:

1. Fix in memory leaking [thanks to Microsoft]
2. Fix in battery.dll [thanks to FInixNOver]
3. Fix in battery drying [thanks to HTC Taiwan]

My machine now is faster and last longer 😉

Q&A

Q: Why not Windows Mobile 6.5 (beta) stright away?
A: Memory leaking issues

Q: Why use unofficial/cooked/modified ROM?
A: You can custom it to what you want

Q: Why radio ROM can improve signal & battery performence?
A: Radio ROM is something like firmware/drivers for WiFi, bluetooth, GPS & GSM signal to your PocketPC

Q: I have HTC device. Where should I start to learn these?
A: Google & xda-developers

Q: What is the first thing should I do before I flash my ROM?
A: Make sure you have Hard-SPL installed/flashed.

Q: I don’t want to Google, I don’t want to read, I don’t want to learn new stuff. My battery is always dry & my device performence is sux. I want to flash to latest version of OS (Windows Mobile) and radio ROM. How?
A: Lamers just stay with WM6_WWE

The un-lame LAME

LAME originally stood for LAME Ain’t an Mp3 Encoder. LAME development started around mid 1998 by Mike Cheng. It started life as a GPL’d patch against the dist10 ISO demonstration source, and thus was incapable of producing an mp3 stream or even being compiled by itself. Therefore, Mike Cheng decided to start from scratch based on the dist10 sources. His goal was only to speed up the dist10 sources, and leave its quality untouched. That branch (a patch against the reference sources) became Lame 2.0, and only on Lame 3.81 did we replaced of all dist10 code, making LAME no more only a patch. Now LAME is the source code for a fully LGPL’d MP3 encoder, with speed and quality to rival and often surpass all commercial competitors.

Mike Cheng eventually left leadership and started working on tooLame, an MP2 encoder. Mark Taylor became leader and started pursuing increased quality in addition to better speed. He can be considered the initiator of the LAME project in its current form. He released version 3.0 featuring gpsycho, a new psychoacoustic model he developed. In early 2003 Mark left project leadership, and since then the project has been lead through the cooperation of the active developers (currently 4 individuals).

• Gabriel Bouvigne
• Robert Hegemann
• Alexander Leidinger
• Takehiro Tominaga

Today, LAME is considered the best MP3 encoder at mid-high bitrates and at VBR, mostly thanks to the dedicated work of its developers and the open source licensing model that allowed the project to tap into engineering resources from all around the world. Both quality and speed improvements are still happening, probably making LAME the only MP3 encoder still being actively developed.

LAME features:

• Many improvements in quality in speed over ISO reference software. See history.
• MPEG1,2 and 2.5 layer III encoding.
• CBR (constant bitrate) and two types of variable bitrate, VBR and ABR.
• Encoding engine can be compiled as a shared library (Linux/UNIX), DLL , Directshow filter or ACM codec (Windows).
• Free format encoding and decoding.
• GPSYCHO: a GPL’d psycho acoustic and noise shaping model.
• Powerful and easy to use presets.
• Quality better than all other encoders at most bitrates.
• Fast! Encodes faster than real time on a PII 266 at highest quality mode.
• MP3x: a GTK/X-Window MP3 frame analyzer for both .mp3 and unencoded audio files.

Q: What the hack is this? I did involve in MP3 encoding, but why I never heard about this before?
A: Because you are lame. 😛

Among the commercial tools that are using LAME are :

• WinAmp
• UltraISO
• SWiSH Max
• Blaze Media Pro
• … and many more…

Those names that I mentioned above (in bold) are the true hero in open source world especially in MP3 encoding. They are the truly un-lame LAMErs. For the lamers out there who have big dreams but totally have no effort like Mike Cheng, you are the king of lame!:)