As announced yesterday on the YouTube blog, support for videos by tag <video> entered in tests.

What does this mean?

Means: Bye Flash and bye lag.

First, the <video> tag is already a standard of HTML5, without having to install additional plugins to view the videos (see below). Indeed, the flash only works right on Windows, who use Linux/Mac has to live with the flash consuming half the CPU to see a simple video. Who uses *BSD have to live with the emulation of flash for Linux.

But exists a problem. There is a discussion around <video> tag: "What codec to use?"

We currently have 2 codecs, in one side the free Ogg Theora supported by Firefox, Opera, Chrome and Chromium, on the other hand the proprietary H.264 supported by Chrome and Safari.

Google has chosen H.264, so now the videos can only be viewed in Chrome and Safari.

The new player is still in testing and very incomplete, with no possibility to use full-screen mode, can not display notes, advertisements and videos are converted to low quality. In videos that show advertisements the flash is used (for financial matters :P). Are also a few videos that are converted to the new format, you will have more luck if you try to watch new videos.

How to activate?

Just go to the activation page, enable and ready. Now you can go see the videos :)

See for example the trailer of Besouro(Brazilian Movie).

Well, being direct, Quassel is an excellent IRC client for KDE and I'm a user :)

It do all that others IRC clients do, like:

• Connect to multiple channels and servers.
• Colorations of nicks, your messages and messages to you.
• Fallback nicks when the master fail.

He also has something that I love in certain programs: separation of core and client.

What does that mean?

Basically, the program is divided into two, in the case of Quassel, the Core is who connects and does everything in the statement of the IRC. The Client only connects to the core and shows things to the User.

What is the advantage?

You can go online even staying offline :). When I get disconnected from the Core, it just put my nickname away, but stays connected to IRC, after all, who was disconnected is the Client(I), not the Core (which is on an external server). When I connect again it shows me everything like I never left. I can see everything that happened without needs a bot to log.

How to Install?

He is also the repository of most distributions.

• Arch Linux: pacman -S quassel
• Ubuntu or Kubuntu:
  • StandAlone(without separation of Core/Client): apt-get install quassel
  • Core: apt-get install quassel-core
  • Client: apt-get install quassel-client
• Gentoo: emerge net-irc/quassel

You can also run it on Mac OS X and Windows.

More details on Download Page.

Results of namebench

Today in  ##ruby-br channel,  @diegorv send me an excellent tip, a program called  namebench do several tests on some DNS to find the faster. I've had an improvement of 69%.

If you want to try "by hand" in Linux, then install the package dnsutils, after you should have dig(/usr/bin/dig) command.  Usage is simply, dig any-site @ip-of-dns. Here my test, comparing my new default DNS and the DNS of Google.

┌─⎛renan@azureuz⎠─⎛~(renan[rwx]::users[r-x]::O[r-x])⎠─⎛2009-12-15 11:22:11⎠
└─⎡$⎦ dig blog.renanfernandes.com.br @8.8.8.8                                          

; <<>> DiG 9.6.1 <<>> blog.renanfernandes.com.br @8.8.8.8
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 8105
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;blog.renanfernandes.com.br.    IN      A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
blog.renanfernandes.com.br. 3107 IN     A       200.234.200.182

;; Query time: 101 msec
;; SERVER: 8.8.8.8#53(8.8.8.8)
;; WHEN: Tue Dec 15 11:22:13 2009
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 60

┌─⎛renan@azureuz⎠─⎛~(renan[rwx]::users[r-x]::O[r-x])⎠─⎛2009-12-15 11:22:14⎠
└─⎡$⎦ dig blog.renanfernandes.com.br @201.10.128.3

; <<>> DiG 9.6.1 <<>> blog.renanfernandes.com.br @201.10.128.3
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 19054
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;blog.renanfernandes.com.br.    IN      A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
blog.renanfernandes.com.br. 732 IN      A       200.234.200.182

;; Query time: 75 msec
;; SERVER: 201.10.128.3#53(201.10.128.3)
;; WHEN: Tue Dec 15 11:23:20 2009
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 60

Attention  to Query time, here the second DNS of Brasil Telecom(my ISP) is 25% faster than the Google, but you must remember the geographical distance.

See  here too.

Namebench is available in AUR(for Arch Linux users) and in getdeb.net(Caution: Outdated by today's date) for Ubuntu/Kubuntu users.