A while ago I was looking at my router’s log and noticed a funny thing related to DHCP entries, namely those of Nintendo Wii. Apparently Wii acts a little weird when it comes to DHCP, making constant queries to the server on short intervals.

My Wii has the WiiConnect24 on, so it should make Internet connections regularly, no problem there. There’s just no need to bombard the router with address queries every few minutes. Compared to other devices on my network, Wii sure makes itself heard.

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Opera Labs presents: Face Gestures. Forget those silly mouse gestures, now you can browse the internet with your face.

Hilarious announcement at Opera’s site accompanied by a brilliant video demonstrating these. Still, I’d never use another browser again if it only were true…

When compared to today’s console games, the 20 year old ones might look like crap, but they have a few aces up their sleeve (such as quality and playability). Still, I’m not here to start rambling about modern games with no soul or challenge. I’m here to ramble on modern games not working, introducing the modern players to such joys as freezing, requiring constant updates and bugs.

Granted, these have been issues PC-gamers – myself included – are used to, hardware incompabilities, crashes, flawed code and such. Consoles used to be carefree – never heard of anyone not completing, like, Super Mario Bros because the game kept exiting to title screen every time you picked up a mushroom. That just didn’t happen on consoles.

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One thing that always seems to rain on my iPod Touch’s parade is iTunes. Not only it backs up the software for ages every time I sync with my desktop computer, it also plays its mind games with me when it comes to applications. It sticks already uninstalled apps back, messes your updates, anything to make your life easier. Fortunately the upgrades can be installed from iPod as well.

Still, I can’t remember how many times I’ve actually managed to update apps succesfully with iTunes, but I bet it’s not a very large number.

Usually it pulls the good ‘ol 5 step jedi mind trick:

1. App Store on iPod informs that updates for few apps available
2. I need to sync anyway, so let’s update them on iTunes
3. There are no updates for you. You do not need to update anything.
4. Oh… If you say so, ok…
5. Open App Store on iPod after sync and what do you know: missing updates staring right back at you.

Besides this, there’s also the “gotcha”-game: let the user think everything is in order after he or she presses the “update everything”-button. Bonus points if the user finds out that nothing’s been done only much later. Scored big yesterday.

In all seriousness, my wishlist for year 2009 includes reliable app update and uninstall process on iTunes and I hope I don’t need to pay for another firmware upgrade just to see it…

I’m glad the App Store software on iPhone/iPod supports installing all updates on single click instead of the tedious separate click for each update-scheme it had going early on. Saves me from iTunes. Oh, and I’m also glad they added a setting for turning off the text prediction feature. Yay, no more me sounding like a Swedish chef (although I admit that writing sometimes in both english and finnish might be too much for it to handle reasonably)!

A while ago I praised the iPhone/iPod Touch Software 2.0. Despite of its share of problems, the software update unleashed the true potential of the iPhone/iPod Touch software platform.

Now it’s been a few months since the App Store was opened and since then Apple has managed to release a few software updates. The latest software version currently is 2.1 and the updates have fixed a few problems, but the package is still far from being ideal. Nonetheless, progress has been made. How is the mobile OSX doing now?

Read the state of the iPod