A quick how to on setting up your own portable sandbox to text your web projects, or text your site on a test zone, either you are on the move, or safe at home. This post is about setting up a WAMP scenario on a USB pen, or an external storage device more in general.

Let's say you are frequently travelling, or maybe you are a freelance web developer and have a lot of meeting with clients and want your work with you without the need to bring your laptop together. Or you want a simple test zone to play with your blog, or web site, but you are running on Windows and your web pages need a MySQL database and an Apache server to run. Whatever the case, this quick step-by-step guide will help you to run you own WAMP scenario on a portable device like a USB pen.

What you need to build a WAMP scenario on a USB pen

In this post we are presuming you'll have a USB storage device to work with, nevertheless it should be quite easy to replicate the process no matter the device you would use. The main goal of this guide is to have a portable WAMP system, if you prefer this same scenario could be set up on your pc hard disk quite easily.

Rumors are a new Apple überchic gadget is on its way: the iTablet. Basically looks like a tablet communicator device that will connect to your Mac.

Nobel Prize in Physics goes to the fathers of hard disks

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2007 jointly to Albert Fert and Peter Grünberg for their discovery of Giant Magnetoresistance or GMR, a physical effect that gave the impulse to the development of technologies for read-out heads used in hard disks for computers.

This year's physics prize is awarded for the technology that is used to read data on hard disks. It is thanks to this technology that it has been possible to miniaturize hard disks so radically in recent years. Sensitive read-out heads are needed to be able to read data from the compact hard disks used in laptops and some music players, for instance.

Volume 384, Number 8546 (newstand edition for the week 15th - 21st of September) of The Economist has a cover photo portraying three US soldiers in, presumably, Iraq. They stand two outside, and one inside, of what looks like a severely damaged house. The thing that stands out is the three GIs barely stand out.

The following is a photo of the cover my own copy of the above mentioned issue of The Economist (I'm using this silly way to display the picture so I won't copy the image, and all the copyright thing). You can see the original image on The Economist web site: Why they should stay.

Steve Jobs commencement address at Stanford University video is available on iTunesU here: Steve Jobs' 2005 Commencement Address

Stay hungry, stay foolish

If you really want a video to pass around, forget miss South Carolina, go for this one.

Let's have a look at what are the categories Google suggestions belong to.

Categories & sub categories

The following are the categories I distributed the suggestions to, those are further

Online Shopping

The following are all the suggestions belonging to an online shop web site, that is a web that offers the chance to buy online whatever their business is.

• amazon
• apple
• argos
• amazon.com
• best buy
• bed bath and beyond
• ...

There's a nice Ajax-powered feature Google gives their search engine users, it's called search suggestion and it's available (correct me if I'm wrong here) either using the Google Toolbar for either Internet Explorer or Firefox. or visiting the relevant Google Suggest page on Google Labs.

Search smarter with instant suggestions
as you type in the search box

What it does is suggesting a term after you type a character in the search text input area, just one character is enough to activate this feature.

And the Google Suggestions are...

What exactly are the suggestions Google push you? Let's have a look in alphabetical order.

Google Suggestions for A

If you enter the a letter Google returns the following suggestions:

• amazon (489,000,000)
• argos (10.700,000)
• aol (136,000,000)
• autotrader (3,850,000)
• aol.com (41,600,000)
• apple (231,000,000)
• american airlines (32,900,000)
• amazon.com (210,000,000)
• auto trader (2,900,000)
• addicting games (1,800,000)

Interesting post by Annalee Newitzou, about the future of printed media journalism, and the future of printed media journalists: The future of paper. Post-print media, paper will survive. But will print journalists?.

Back in the days Edutainment was the big hype everybody was talking about. Edutainment as a form of entertainment designed to educate as well as to amuse was already something of a false hype starting from it's definition: every game is an educating experience, it does not have to be an Educational Game, or whatever you want to call it. The fact is, playing Zelda, or WipEout Pure is already a matter of learning, and education. This works on different levels, you learn the game's mechanics and in-world physics, the rules of the game, how to interact with non human players or other players.

It's not educational

I can hear your mumblings, learning how to play Zelda, or how to fly a WipEout ship is not Education it's just like learning how to kick a ball, or what are the rules of soccer, or baseball. Doh! So what exactly is an Educational Game? While if we agree (more or less) on the meaning of game, what exactly is education when we talk about video games?

Crosscut Seattle posted a indiscretions on the Seattle Post-Intelligencer to issue an e-paper version of their newspaper, Delivered on electronic paper, the Seattle P-I won't be your father's Web site. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer responded, Move to 'e-paper' not a P-I plan, they have no plans in an immediate future in releasing the e-paper version of the newspaper.

How core is the computer business to Apple

A statement from Apple Inc. (the company formerly known as Apple Computers Inc.) announces the shipment delay for their Leopard OS. This looks a matter of shifting resources to the star of the moment, the iPhone.

(...) we had to borrow some key software engineering and QA resources from our Mac OS X team, and as a result we will not be able to release Leopard at our Worldwide Developers Conference in early June as planned.

Shipment of Leopard is announced for Oct. 2007.