Beware...

Do you suffer from S.H.Y.N.E.S.S., F.O.M.S., G.R.I.P.E.S, or O.M.G.I.G.P.?

Sat, 27 Jun 2009 17:00:26 -0700

Supposedly, Internet Explorer 8 has the cure. While I absolutely loathe IE, I didn't want to keep these videos from you. Enjoy!

S.H.Y.N.E.S.S.

F.O.M.S.

G.R.I.P.E.S

O.M.G.I.G.P.

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Mobistar & de iPhone - de reservaties

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 03:26:00 -0700

Op een gegeven moment - na de langverwachte, officiële aankondiging van Mobistar - de iPhone reserveren bij één van de 7 Mobistar winkels in België. Na succesvolle registratie kon je je iPhone dan gaan afhalen op 26 juni tussen 7h30 en 8h 's morgens, vergezeld van een bescheiden ontbijt (croissant en drankje) op kosten van Mobistar.

De mail die diende als bewijs van de registratie, zit echter vol eigenaardigheden. Ofwel hebben de ontwikkelaars bij Mobistar een vreemd gevoel voor humor, ofwel hebben ze een heel aantal steken laten vallen.

Het begint al allemaal met een joekel van een schrijffout in de naam van de afzender: "Mobistar IPone launch".

Tweede eigenaardigheid: Gmail laadt standaard de foto's in mails niet. Hierdoor kreeg je het onderstaande te zien. Wat is in hemelsnaam "camping De Onbegrensde Zomer"? Edit: blijkbaar is dit een actie van Mobistar. Meer informatie vind je op http://www.onbegrensdezomer.be/nl/.

In bovenstaande screenshot zie je trouwens nog een aantal kemels:

iPhone is met een kleine "i", niet met hoofdletter
In Antwerpen is er voor zover ik weet geen straat die Keyzerlei heet, wel ééntje met de naam Keyserlei.

Klikken we bovenaan op de link webversie, dan komen we op onderstaande url terecht. Toch wel een beetje vreemd niet? Vooral als het userid gewoon deel uitmaakt van de url?

Misschien nog een privacy probleempje: de userid parameter kan je zelf manipuleren om zo te weten te komen wie er allemaal een iPhone gereserveerd heeft. Mooi staaltje van privacy inbreuk, niet? Gelukkig is enkel de naam te zien, geen andere gegevens.

Al bij al lijkt het erop of Mobistar allesbehalve klaar was voor de lancering van de iPhone in België: een persconferentie slechts 2 dagen voor de lancering, winkels die op eigen houtje pre-order lijsten begonnen aan te leggen om nadien teruggefloten te worden door het hoofdkantoor, flaters in de reservatie e-mails... Een echt succesvolle operatie kan je dat toch niet noemen. Misschien moet Apple toch nog maar eens met Proximus gaan praten?

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TW Classic 2009

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 15:14:00 -0700

I was at TW Classic this year, the 2009 edition. My first festival ever, and here's what I noticed:

Motor (apparently it's a band) sucked. I don't know what these guys were on, but all I could here were the sounds of various electronic devices going haywire. Please never do that again, ever! Get a regular job or something.
Why the hell is everyone running as soon as they open the doors? Oh, to get access to the Pit? I walked over there, while ridiculing all of you running lard-asses, and still made it in time to get a green wristband. Oh and that guy that lost all his food while doing something that resembles the act of running: thank you for making me laugh so hard.
Toilets at concerts are like real-estate - well, before the crisis hit at least. For some reason these toilets do not have an indication whether or not they're occupied, which had me trying each door to find a vacant toilet. This left me with the picture of a half-naked lady, squatting on the toilet, who obviously forget to lock the door. Splendid, just what I always wanted: a startled, half naked woman grasping for the door handle.
You really need earplugs at these things. I had a headache after Motor's so-called performance. There's really no need to play music *that* loud. And to the parents walking around with their children, who's ears were completely unprotected: don't be surprised if they ditch you in a home when you're old.
This might be a hard concept to grasp, but if I put a towel or two on the grass, it means that it's my spot. I claimed it and you are to walk around it. That's not so hard, is it?
If you're going to get beer, or any other liquid as far as I'm concerned, try not to spill all of it before you arrive back at your spot. Is it such a challenge to hold a plastic cup in your hand and walk several feet with it? Really?
Sbarro sucks. Pizza is supposed to be warm, you morons. Also, it's supposed to taste like something, other than utter crap.
What's with food- and beverage stamps? I can understand that it helps to speed things up, but why do you need to split them up?
Put more trash cans dammit. People are just loitering like they're in the middle ages. Finished a drink? Just throw it on the ground. Done with the French fries? Chuck it somewhere. Savages.

I don't get what people find so special about festivals, at least not from what I've seen. Performances were not jaw-dropping in any way: I always had the feeling that I could just as well have popped a cd in. Perhaps the Basement Jaxx were different, but by that time, I couldn't be bothered anymore and just went home. The only two that made an effort, were Moby and Tom Helsen.

I think we can conclude that I'm not festival material.

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Movies I've seen: Gran Torino (2008)

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 15:05:00 -0700

I expected this to be an all-action movie, with Clint Eastwood starring as a grumpy bastard who shoots on sight. Well, perhaps the latter isn't completely untrue, but this isn't another Dirty Harry. If you liked Million Dollar Baby, then you're in for a treat: this one is even better!

IMDB | Rotten Tomatoes

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Movies I've seen: Bangkok Dangerous (2008)

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 14:56:00 -0700

Again a movie with one of my all-time favorite actors: Nicolas Cage. The story of Bangkok Dangerous is more or less predictable (although I didn't expect the ending) and it is nowhere near a movie like Léon, it's still enjoyable to watch if you like action movies.

IMDB | Rotten Tomatoes

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It's not just copy and paste - What's new in OS 3.0

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 14:40:40 -0700

There's much ado about the iPhone / iPod Touch's latest firmware upgrade. I'm not even going to try and copy everything that's spread out over the net the last few days. Instead, I'll give you the most interesting links I've found in the meantime, so you can have a look for yourself.

100+ 3.0 Hidden Features (MacRumors): starts here and continues here.
PCWorld reports iPhone 3.0 Update: 10 Hidden Features
appletell has collected some Nice-to-Knows on OS 3.0
CNET has gathered a nice list of security bugs that have been plugged in OS 3.0.
Last but not least: 12 Bugs We've Found In iPhone OS 3.0 by Woot!

And although it's doesn't really belong in the list of articles above, the iPhone user manual for OS 3.0 is also available for download.

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Some people deserve to have the bejesus kicked out of them

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 02:24:08 -0700

I hope the owner got his comeuppance later when the cat peed on his/her pillow!

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Movies I've seen: The Pink Panter 2 (2009)

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 01:45:00 -0700

Perhaps not the most sophisticated movie, and although Steve Martin's humor is sometimes below par, this sequel was still quite enjoyable. Look out for one of my favorite actors: Jean Reno.

IMDB | Rotten Tomatoes

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Movies I've seen: The Interpreter (2005)

Sat, 06 Jun 2009 16:58:00 -0700

A less recent movie this time, starring both Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn. Although the story was a bit confusing at times - which might have been due to our DVD not being error-free, forcing us to skip several minutes several times - it has all the ingredients of a good thriller that will keep you wanting until the end. Highly recommended (but get an error free version)!

IMDB | Rotten Tomatoes

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Movies I've seen: The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button (2008)

Sat, 06 Jun 2009 16:37:00 -0700

Judging from the ratings this movie received, I was in for a treat. While the first half of the movie is bearable, the second half is just long-winded emotional dribble as far as I'm concerned.

This movie's runtime is 2 hours and 46 minutes! If you're going to make a movie that long, at least make it interesting. I think I stopped watching about 20 minutes before the end of it, as I feared my stomach nor bowels could take any more. In my (not so humble) opinion, this is just "Forrest Gump" - the long, boring version. Don't take my word for it though: if you got time to spare (or waste), have a look and see if you like it. After all, I couldn't bear "Titanic" either.

IMDB | Rotten Tomatoes

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It's a fucked up world after all

Sun, 31 May 2009 15:54:48 -0700

This is the story of how I became a prisoner in Qatar. Consider it my Twitter SOS.

Philippe Bogaert, previously active as Broadcast Manager at Dialogic, has been held captive in Qatar since October 2008. What happened? Both his company and his sponsor have betrayed him, making him a victim of Qatar's deeply rooted corruption.

The paragraphs below are taken from the press release :

“I am being held hostage in Qatar with a ransom of QAR16 million on my head,” says Bogaert. “I could never have imagined, when I signed on to help organize a marine festival, that I would find myself captive to a medieval system in which a corrupt young man could hold me prisoner on a whim. This is a cautionary tale for westerners who come to work in the Gulf. You have no rights.”

Left with no salary or accommodation, Bogaert has taken shelter at the Belgian Ambassador’s residence since early December.

The Belgian company, Dialogic SA, which ceased supporting Bogaert financially after he resigned, cut off all communication with him in March 2009 and no longer answers his calls.

The latest we've heard is that Philippe's court case has been delayed and the next hearing has been scheduled for November, 1st 2009.

Help out where you can: retweet Philippe's tweets, read up on Philippe's blog , join the Facebook group and make as much people aware of Philippe's situation as you can! You can find all the information you need using the links below:

Hostage in Qatar blog
Phillipe Liberation Front Facebook group
Phillipe's story on Twitter
Read the whole story: Philippe's Tweets in chronological order

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Movies I've seen: The Dark Hours (2005)

Wed, 27 May 2009 14:19:51 -0700

Again, a thriller/horror movie. Not a bad one, although it's kind of strange towards the ending which leaves you wondering if they didn't forget part of the movie whilst editing. Still if you like horror and have some time to spare, this one is worth checking out.

A psychiatrist finds her vacation time rudely interrupted by one of her patients in this creepy horror flick. Escaping from an asylum, the former sex offender is convinced that the doctor has experimented on him with less than honorable intentions, and goes searching for blood.

IMDB / Rotten Tomatoes

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Engrish fail

Wed, 27 May 2009 10:33:54 -0700

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Spelling fail

Wed, 27 May 2009 10:33:11 -0700

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Scorpions & Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra - Rock You Like a Hurricane

Tue, 26 May 2009 10:32:00 -0700

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Movies I've seen: Vacancy 2: The First Cut (2009)

Mon, 25 May 2009 16:05:01 -0700

Time for some horror, as I was home alone and had the TV all to myself. Hadn't seen the sequel to Vacancy - aptly named Vacancy 2 - which I thoroughly enjoyed. Alas I can't say the same for its sequel. While it isn't half bad, it isn't able to create the same atmosphere and suspense as the first one did.

IMDB / Rotten Tomatoes

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Movies I've seen: The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008)

Sun, 24 May 2009 12:47:00 -0700

Saw it this afternoon. A so - so movie, nothing to get excited about. Careful viewers will spot the plugs for Microsoft products: both Vista as well as Surface are clearly visible.

More information:

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Latest App Store purchase: Air Sharing Pro

Wed, 20 May 2009 17:26:00 -0700

History

Probably long after everyone else heard about it, I got wind that Air Sharing Pro had been released by the good people at Avatron. I've always preferred Air Sharing (the regular version), feeling that other file sharing applications just fell short.

Take for instance File Magnet: this is one of the first apps of this kind (correct me if I'm mistaken), but it made the error of forcing the end-user to install a desktop program to be able to send and retrieve documents to/from the iPhone. When the product was just released only a Mac client was available. In my opinion, Air Sharing felt the most robust of all.

What's new?

The only problem I had with the regular version is that it used the built-in iPhone PDF viewer, which is clearly not designed to open large, resource-intensive PDF files. Product manuals weighing several megabytes caused a few problems from time to time. Not so with the Pro version: Avatron has created an in-house developed PDF version, which can easily handle such documents (although there's only so much it can do with a limited amount of memory of course). But that's far from the only change between the regular and the Pro version. Here's a small list of things that are new or have been improved:

Email files (uploads to free drop.io server)
Print documents
Basic file operations (rename, delete, create folder, ...)
Access to remote volumes (MobileMe iDisk, FilesAnywhere, MyDisk.se, Generic WebDAV servers)
Zipping and unzipping of files
Supports password-protected and encrypted PDFs
Advanced auto-detection of character encoding in text files
Easy file sharing between Air Sharing users on the same WiFi network

Nobody's perfect

Everyone makes mistakes, and bugs are prone to happen. Such is the case with version 2.0, where I've been able to spot two bugs:

PDFs are rendered incorrectly if the first page of your PDF has different dimensions than the rest of your document (e.g. the book's cover as an image). This can be solved by removing the first page.
The "Sort by kind" setting in the File Browser is ignored.

The bugs have already been reported to the developers and a fix should be available in the next release.

Pro version? Why?

Some users are a bit upset that they have to pay twice to get the additional features that differentiate the Pro from the regular version. CEO Dave Howell has been kind enough to explain the reasoning behind it:

We love our early adopters, whether they got Air Sharing for free, as over 80% did, or bought it. You guys are awesome! And your suggestions and enhancement requests are extremely valuable, which is why we have this suggestions forum.

Soon after releasing Air Sharing, we planned to have two versions: Air Sharing and Air Sharing Pro. Air Sharing would feature a file server and a file viewer. Pro would add Printing, Emailing, access to remote file servers, a custom PDF viewer, zip & unzip, and a host of other features. And we planned to price them at $5 and $10.

But we also wanted to offer a $5 paid upgrade for Air Sharing users. Unfortunately, Apple has not yet added a mechanism for paid upgrades to the App Store. So we decided to simulate such a mechanism, by offering Air Sharing Pro for only $5 for a brief period. It's something of a blunt instrument, this method, because we have to offer everybody the $5 price, not just current Air Sharing users. But that's okay. If a universal discount is what it takes to reward our customers, that's what we're doing!

So in effect, if you bought Air Sharing for $5, you can get Air Sharing Pro for $10, which is its regular price. If you got the classic version for free, you get Pro for $5, a Right Bargain. If you bought Air Sharing for $7, you'll have paid a total of $12 for Pro.

I hope this clarifies things. One other point: we also fixed some bugs in Air Sharing Pro that we do plan to fix in Air Sharing. For example, we made enhancements to the UI, made the PDF viewer much more stable, added support for viewing iWork '09 documents (as long as they're saved With Preview), Our intent is NOT to make people pay for bug fixes. We absolutely plan to roll those bug fixes back into the classic version of Air Sharing as soon as possible. This would already have happened had we not gotten ensnared by the sudden requirement to support iPhone OS 3.0 before Apple will approve apps. But it will happen soon.

Best regards, and thanks for your support.

Dave Howell
Avatron Software, Inc.

Conclusion

It's great. 'Nuff said ;-)

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Google Labs updated the Gmail Multiple Inbox feature

Fri, 15 May 2009 02:54:25 -0700

I stopped using the Multiple Inbox feature in Gmail some time ago, as I felt that it wasn't quite there yet. Just now, I discovered some interesting changes have been rolled out that make this feature much more usable that it was.

You can now name your inboxes: the search query can be replaced by a custom panel title.

Empty inboxes appear completely "folded", they no longer take up unnecessary screen space.

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Latest App Store purchase: PCalc (on sale!)

Mon, 11 May 2009 11:36:00 -0700

Created by James Thomson, PCalc is a calculator on steroids. James describes it in a more professional way:

PCalc is ideal for scientists, engineers, students, programmers, or indeed anybody looking for a feature-rich calculator for the iPhone or iPod Touch.

It includes an extensive set of unit conversions, a paper tape, an RPN mode, engineering and scientific notation, as well as support for hexadecimal, octal and binary calculations.

If you're a cheapskate like me, you're in luck: PCalc is available now for half the regular price! And if that isn't enough to convince you, try PCalc Lite. It's completely free of charge (for now) and has many useful features. Great for a testdrive.

Why are you still reading this? Get over to the App Store and buy this gem!

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