Google mail seemed to have gotten a facelift a few weeks ago. But it also got more functionalities. Of the nice kind: I was working on an email exchange with a couple of people just now. While typing along there was all of a sudden a yellow message in the lower right corner. It informed me that somebody had added a message to the thread I was writing in. It’s this kind of helpful idea and feature that makes gmail the best mail app around these days. Very impressive.
Sony supports Divx on their PS3
When DVD came out there was a format war as well. Between what we know as DVD and something also called Divx. Not related to the format that Sony now supports. Or maybe just related in that they represent the opposite corners of the media/business spectrum: The old Divx was a system that would only play discs after they had been enabled via the phone (it’s that old). You would buy cheaper movies (around 5-8 US) and could watch them for 48 hours after the purchase. After that you would need to pay if you like to watch them again. Studois like Dreamworks held out of for years betting on this format. It folded. But it was a reality. Hard to believe these days.
According to Sony’s CEO the format war between HD-DVD and Bluray got into a stalemate. Great thing for a format to go with this concept into the shopping season. Some big shopping mall sold HD-DVD players for 100 US$. If there would be HD-DVD and Bluray players for a 100$ each then the format war would be over. Peaceful coexistense. Not the margins that the hardware vendors had hoped for. But the luckier ones of them, if not most, make flat screen panels anyway. Those run well above one thousand dollars. And each HD-DVD and bluray playe would be an argument for a 1920×1080 panel. If those companies would be able to explain this to their clients.
Having two players may sound annoying, but most people have heaps of devices around their TVs anyway: Game consoles, Set Top Boxes, Tivo & Co, DVD players, VHS deck, another two devices might not matter. Of course all this crap looks pretty hideous once piled up. And then there is the remote control debacle. And connecting the stuff is an interesting challenge.
Americans spend more than a billion hours a day in front of their entertainment centers. And -boy- do they spend money on hard- and software. Yet, the average ‘media temple’ they pay service to each day is not much more than pile of crap.
So what about PS3 and the new-Divx? Hm. I have no idea. All I know is that the PS2 will outsell the PS3 this Christmas again, and I doubt that will change next year.
According to this article China holds 1.4336 trln US$.
Big number. Each Chinese seems to make 1500 dollars a year. There are 1,321,851,888 Chinese. Which would mean that all Chinese would not need to work for 8.6 months if they would just spend the Dollars that the chinese reserve holds.
Or they could finance a seven year Iraq war. Out of the cash they have sitting around. And with the kind of spending the US military got used to. Something tells me that the red army has a different pricelist then the military in the US.
So, it seems that having stuff made over there for years somehow gave them allot of money. And therefor power.
It seems as if the some of the internet is run by amateurs. Of course an article in ‘pcworld’ is not really -ever- a testament of the truth. But, I could imagine that some hosting companies are, let’s say, scary. Problem in general is that you interface with the sales efforts not with the part that does the actual product. So it might have been that “NaviSite” had a brilliant sales team, which brought it and kept it in business. But in the end, it’s always engineering that makes or breaks things. Engineering without any marketing does not work, but also does not cause any harm. No so if there is good marketing and bad engineering. That is a common and painful combo.
iPhone: check
Apple MacBook pro: check
Over time I ended up with lots and lots of addresses.
Apple’s AddressBook is the Application that all the other iWhatever applications want to use.
Well. Now they are all gone.
The upside is that I have them in my phone. So I connected it,
and, of course, this stupid piece of shit device ‘syncs’ and now the address book of the iPhone
is empty as well.
Apple made their own framework / format for the address book. All in their fucking stupid
fancy Objective C. I hope that ALL of those morons at Apple pushing this crap technology
will loose their address books as well. Completely and without chance to get it back.
Stupid Apple. I hate them.
If hardware dies: fine. But a stupid software glitch that can wipe out 2(!) addresssbooks
is just horrible. It’s really bad.
What makes me furious is that the software just decided to delete data that was ok.
If the number of your contacts goes from 500 to 0 it should have the wits to ask:
“Is this what you want”.
But, no, the software just goes ahead and smug as all the Apple junk is takes away
all my data. Next time some Apploid tells me all cheery how great all those Appleisk
things are I will curse him so that the same will happen to him.
Fuckers.
Life is hard enough. So is coding. No need for Apple to add problems with their
Objective C arrogance and their inability to write software that gives the user
some feedback about what is going on. Look it’s shiny on the outside. But rotten
on the side.
Since a while I am using Callwave. And I must say that I am very very happy with it. It’s really great to get your voicemails transcribed as an email. I am amazed how far voice to text technology has gotten so far. It’s sometimes humorous. But more importantly, it’s usually possible to ‘get’ the general direction of the voice mail. I know who called, what it was about, and the phone numbers people leave have been without any errors so far. Which is really really helpful.
I also like to have one list of incoming messages. It makes staying on top of things much easier and less stressful. Which is allowing me to spend time with actually doing things instead of reacting to it and managing my message stack and todo lists.
I should start writing invoices in &Euro;
Seriously. From 0.90 US cents to 1.448 in five years. Thanks Mr Bush. Asshole!
Garry Willis writes about Abortion in the LA Times.
He says:
Evangelicals may argue that most people in Germany thought it was all right to kill Jews. But the parallel is not valid. Killing Jews was killing persons.
There has been allot of hollow talk like “we didn’t know anything about it” after WW2 in Germany. And that is wrong. It also is wrong to try to escape the responsibility of the Holocaust. It is a part of German history. But this sentence suggests that Germans in general agreed to kill Jews. Which is bullshit. Some did. And some built an industry around killing people. Yes, as horrible as that. But to suggest that there was a poll and that just happen to go against one part of the people is simply senseless.
It is pretty strange to open such a piece by invoking Godwin’s Law
Abortition is a tricky issue. Such is Holocaust. Mixing them up in one piece is not really what makes a good start. The article itself rambles around some valid points, and then falls into total pointlessness.
Yes, the T people think they own Magenta
They actually picked when they started the T-stuff so that they could have color in News Paper ads but only pay for one. Since Magenta is part of CMYK they saved millions in the production of newspaper ads.
“Newswhat?” you might ask. Well, it’s that stuff from the last century
Somebody should sponsor 1 z-year. It’s probably less than car makers spend on crafts services of their commercial shoots in any given week.
No joke.