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Google Hangout

24 December 2011 in Communicatie, Technologie

Lego en de boerderij …

15 December 2011 in Entertainment, Gadgets, Technologie

Video: Van conceptie naar geboorte

12 December 2011 in Technologie

Stoom

14 November 2011 in Technologie

Prototyping met Lego Mindstorm

24 October 2011 in Technologie

Damn you Lion auto-complete!

16 September 2011 in Technologie

Grrrrrr, made it through Newton and the funny handwriting recognition, kept my bloodpressure under control when mastering Palm’s Graffiti, got used to the iPhone way of ‘correcting’ me, but seem to have run into a brick wall with OS X Lion. I have been dabbling with it for four weeks now and things are not looking good. All my Apple stuff is registered and on all devices I’m logged on to iTunes, iDisk and you name it. Why on earth is Apple not being able to simply copy dictionaries and preferences from one ‘device’ to another so I don’t have to ‘teach’ a new device my habbits. We have this cloud thing now you know!?

Bye Apple OSX Lion, back to Snow Leopard

14 September 2011 in Technologie

Yes, really. I have had it with Apple’s latest and greatest thing. It sucks. Can’t save a regular document anymore, but have to unlock something first or make a duplicate. And half of the time that doesn’t work either. Then there is the mouse pointer which appears to have gotten a life of its own. It pops up at weird locations and acts funny. Don’t even get me started on the addressbook. Playing back video? Lion is King of stalls. And then there is the much hyped Mission Control. Apps disappear at random making Mission Control something like Human Rights in Libya: a great theoretical concept. And for the record: yes, I use a Lion approved piece of kit, yes I use a touchpad, yes I have installed all upgrades and patches and yes I tweaked whatever was advised on the support forums and whatever. Stevie baby, you let me down.

TOYota

18 July 2011 in Entertainment, Technologie

Goodbye Palm

12 July 2011 in Technologie

Palm is now officially dead as HP reorganizes its Palm business units into a WebOS Global Business Unit. HP’s Stephen DeWitt will replace former WebOS CEO Jon Rubinstein. The latter will move to become Senior Vice President in the Personal Systems Group. Whatever.

A sad moment, although WebOS didn’t live up to my expectations and I basically haven’t been using a ‘real Palm’ device after replacing my Handspring Treo 650 by – in the end – an iPhone. However, for me Palm was the first company that got the PDA thingy right. It greatly helped to improve my productivity and without Palm, I wouldn’t be where I am today.

It’s not that the (now) bulky Pilot was the first organizer I tried. Hell no. I went from several ‘smart calculators’ to Atari Portfolio (remember that one?) to Apple Newton and lots of stuff in between. Every device/OS had some good points, but none where as usable as that first Pilot. The OS was good, the hardware okay, but what made the difference was the mass of applications that were created for it. Built in calendar not good enough? There was an App or extension for that. You wanted offline browsing? No problem, there was an App for that. PalmOS partnered nicely with your desktop to become a real extension … a replacement even. When hooking up to Yahoo mail, it was possible to sync lots of stuff to ‘the cloud’ that you could access through any browser. I’m talking 2000 folks. Remarkable if you think about it: Palm and Yahoo had it all. They let it catch dust, until Apple picked it up and improved the concept to what it is today. For me the Palm experience peaked in the V series: a metal organizer (Apple even borrowed that), with a great leather pouch that doubled as a wallet. That little machine really changed the way I worked and ruled my life for the better part of 4 years.

But now Palm is officially dead. Inevitable as the vibe left the company years ago. Hope for glory resurfaced after the first demo of WebOS in january 2009, but was trashed with those first dreamy commercials. Palm could have stand a chance if they had focussed on productivity and real life. Kingdoms they so mighty ruled before. They choose dreams instead. Noble, but fruitless.

Sweet dreams my friend. I’ll always cherish our moments.

The future of retail?

7 July 2011 in Retail, Technologie

Kind of a new thought … really?

11 May 2011 in Communicatie, Technologie

Even tijd voor het lelijkste OS ter wereld: juist Chrome. Feitelijk niet meer dan een browser die het van internet moet hebben voor de functionaliteit … ‘kind of a new thought’, aldus Google. Tuurlijk, alsof Apple iOS 1 en 2 nooit bestaan hebben, of echte apps mogelijk zijn op WebOS van Palm HP. Enfin, filmpje!

Wardriving met Google’s Android

26 April 2011 in Bizar, Technologie, Wordt u al geholpen?

Door diverse overheden is Google inmiddels op de vingers getikt over het ongevraagd in kaart brengen van WiFi netwerken (gesloten en openbaar). Ze gebruikte hiervoor de auto’s die het wegennet vastleggen ten behoeve van Google maps. Dat mag niet meer en dat vindt Google niet zo’n ramp: tegenwoordig gebruikt ze hiervoor Android telefoons. Ook de jouwe.

Iedere Android telefoon registreert iedere paar seconde zijn positie, gesignaleerde WiFi netwerken en signaalsterkte. Deze worden samen met een unieke identificatie van de telefoon en GPS coördinaten enkele keren per uur naar Google verzonden. Android doet dit zelfs wanneer de gebruiker expliciet aan heeft gegeven dat de telefoon of Google geen gebruik mag maken van locatiegegevens. De informatie die Google op die manier verzamelt, geeft haar een heel gedetailleerd beeld van de gemiddelde Android gebruiker: met al die informatie van duizenden Android gebruikers, is het niet zo moeilijk voor Google om uit te rekenen waar jij woont en werkt.

Als bonus: als je telefoon op dat netwerk inlogt, dan stuurt Android ook je IP adres mee, hetgeen in veel gevallen hetzelfde adres is dat je gebruikt wanneer je inlogt op Gmail en al die andere handige gratis Google Apps. Lovely.

Net als Apple op de iPhone (hier kom ik later nog op terug) bewaart Google die locatieinformatie ook lokaal op de telefoon. Waar hier bij Apple geen limiet op lijkt te zitten, blijft het bij Google beperkt tot de laatste 50 GSM en 200 Wifi locaties. Voor nerds: check files cache.cell en cache.wifi.

Weten of Google jouw WiFi netwerk in kaart heeft gebracht? Vul hier het MAC-adres in van je router.

Meer hierover:

• Washington Journal
• El Reg

Over die iPad2

6 March 2011 in Entertainment, Technologie

Google automotive: zonder handen

4 March 2011 in Entertainment, Technologie

Who’s your daddy?

2 March 2011 in Technologie

Sceptisch over de strijd tussen Apple en Flash? Zie de grafiek van Business Insider over de toename van HTML5 en H.264 video ten koste van het gebruik van Flash. Wat was dat ook alweer over Apple die dat niet zou gaan winnen?