Recently Google launched a new service called Buzz. It’s like a twitter thingy and integrates seamlessly with gmail. When you start a buzz you can select if this is a public Buzz or a restricted –only visible to people you grant access– Buzz. People can leave comments on your Buzz and start a conversation or discussion. The nice thing is that all your Buzzes and comments are stored in your gmail box. When people comment on your Buzz the mail in your mailbox is updated. I use an external email client to read my gmail (iMail on a Mac) and even there I can see the mail that corresponds to the Buzz is updated… IMAP rules

Besides these twitter-like buzzes you can also integrate picasa photo albums, blogs (rss feeds in general), twitter and other stuff. Really nice. Try it out.

I will hang on to my twitter account since I can post to it using simple SMS messages and publish them on my blog automatically… but when I can buzz using my mobile phone I might switch.

Oh my goodness, take a look at this. You like to play the old fashioned boardgames like Settlers of Catan? Yet you don’t want to appear as the oldtimer that you actually are? Maybe you should go OLED like some researchers of the Queens University did. Digital game pieces rock the world. Check the article on cnet and watch this great video. They use projection in the video but you’ll get the idea

This will make a lot of games more exciting… well except for solving a puzzle since you can just throw the pieces on the table and let the oleds display the image correctly.

Please help to stop software patents in Europe by signing the petition against software patents. Background information (and the petition) can be found on the website against European software patents.

The patent system is misused to restrain competition for the economical benefit of a few but fails to promote innovation. A software market environment is better off with no patents on software at all. Healthy competition forces market players to innovate.

The patent system should not be misused -which is happening- to control competition for the economical benefit of a few, but should promote innovation. In the case of software, more innovation and a healthy independent SME economy means no patents on software at all. European court decisions still accept in many cases the validity of the software patents granted by national patent offices and the European Patent Office (EPO) that is beyond democratic control. They not only continue to grant them, but also to lobby in favor of them. Despite the current deep crisis of the patent system, they are unable to reform and put at risk too many European businesses with their soft granting policy.

If you care about freedom & innovation please consider signing the petition:

Example of impact of software patents

Oh sorry, I know I’ve covered this topic before but now more and more evidence is surfacing that the alleged global warming is a scam. I’m not just referring to the intercepted emails of CRU where scientist admit to (at least) manipulate their measurements. I’ve written about the greatest scam in history around two years ago. Early 2008 I’ve linked to a skeptic russian article that predicts a cold-spell. In 2009 there was a report that the antarctic ice is growing instead of melting. For those who are unaware: the northpole is just ice floating in water. When the northpole melts the water-level will not rise. Antarctica, however, is land with ice on top of it. When the ice on Antarctica melts it will influence the water-level.

It was hard to find good alternative research by scientist who don’t support the global warming theory. But now “Popular Technology” has compiled a list of 450 peer-reviewed scientific papers that criticize the global warming lobby (click on the PDF links). I’ve only read a few so far but some of these are really good. The first one (“A 2000-year global temperature reconstruction based on non-treering proxies“) shows that the way in which the global temperature is often reconstructed (using treerings) appears to be invalid for longer periods in history. This is done by using alternative ways to determine the global temperature. There are two periods in history called the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) and the Little Ice Age (LIA) that show up from many ways to determine the temperature in history except for the treering method… a very good read for those long hot winternights…

Whahahaa… nice. The EFF (electronic frontier foundation) has filed a request at the DMCA to allow jailbreaking of Apple’s iPhone. Users must be able to install any software they wish.. not just the software apple approves of.
Just this week apple removed any voice-based application from the App Store to protect their exclusive deal with AT&T because it “duplicates features that come with the iPhone”. This just proves the necessity of people having the right to install any software they want.
Soooo Apple had to respond to the DMCA why jailbreaking would be bad…. well.. hold on tight.. according to Apple the iPhone is not just a phone… it’s a weapon of mass-disruption. I call “FUD“

Mayday… Mayday… the vehicle that tried to spread FUD (fear, uncertainty & doubt) in the open unix community is going down… The demise of SCO is neigh… Many times investors have tried to keep the warship afloat but this time it’s going down for good.
Groklaw has a nice article on it… Chapter 7 may be the last chapter of SCO.

SCO will not be missed…

Oh this is very nice. I just came across this geek hack that plays the Super Mario tune using the stepper motor of a laser cutter. Now they actually use both axis. One for the tune the other for the bass parts. A truly amazing hack found through hackday.com. Even the ruby source code is available through the link.

Mijn goede collega Harry stuurde onderstaande foto van het display van zijn onboard navigatie systeem voorzien van een logisch analyse.

Dat is nog een eens Pech op de Weg !

Omtrek van de aarde is +/- 42000 KM
Dus….
Ik moet nog ongeveer 100 keer een rondje rond de aarde en dan kom ik tussen Laren en de Vechtbrug in een file van 8 KM en….
er is geen alternatieve route.

Schat ik kom wat later !

Today I talked about how cool it would be if you could have all your books on an ebook reader with my friends Karel and Bas. It’s definitely something that we would love to have. Amazon just released the Kindle 2 ebook reader. However that would require you to carry around another device. But if you are the lucky owner of an Apple iPhone you can get the Kindle reader for free on your iPhone. Matthew Miller wrote a nice article on this and has some beautiful screenshots. This seems pretty useable but unfortunately the iPhone will drain its power while on a Kindle only a page change requires power. Here’s a nice video of the Kindle 2 and the Kindle software on the iPhone…

It seems the ‘home computer’ of the old days is making a comeback. Asus is pushing its EEE line of small embedded computers. After the EEE netbook they also released an EEE desktop computer. The new product in line is an EEE media player, presented at CES 2009. A computer integrated into a keyboard (like the homecomputers of way back when) but this model also features a small display.

Here’s a nice preview of the product.

Har har har… you might think the IT industry at large may have learned a small lesson from the millennium bug (Y2K bug). Well most professionals probably did but Microsoft still manages to screw up bigtime. In this case the Zune 30GB version has a leap-year bug. It will not start up properly due to the bug. Fortunately there is a fix at hand… Just let it run out of battery capacity. Recharge the battery and start it after noon GMT and your Zune will be fine. You got to love those Microsoft products.

With the Zune you get the full Microsoft experience. Think of continues thrill and exitement the Zune is offering you… is it going to work or will it blow up in my face? It’s like rebooting after a blue screen of death… you’ll never know whether your system will successfully restart or not. Microsoft gives just that little more excitement…

Do you still feel comfortable with Microsoft products being used in nuclear submarines?… Happy New Year, enjoy it as long as it lasts.

Being an IT guy I’ve lived many years with the assumption that computer users are idiots. However I always put the blame on myself and put some extra effort in making some programs fool-proof (which is hard: no matter how smart you are… there is always a fool who does the unimaginable). Now I finally can stop the charade of improving programs beyond the level of reason. An experiment with pop-ups has clearly proven that computer users are idiots. Even a pop-up with the message “You are about to install Malware. Malware is bad. By reading this warning through the end and still clicking ‘Yes’ you’re failing the Windows Darwin Test..” did not prevent the user to click on the yes button. Mind you: the test subjects are college students… Here’s the full article.

Elvis leeft! Er zijn veel mensen die altijd al dachten dat de dood van Elvis Presley in scene was gezet en dat blijkt nu waar te zijn. Elvis leeft en heeft een Nederlands paspoort. Althans dat heeft de onderzoeker Jeroen van Beek aangetoond. De chip die gebruikt wordt in de Europese paspoorten is gekraakt (zie OV-chipkaart).

Hier het hele verhaal op nu.nl

Now here’s a nice video in which some German hackers explain how they analyzed and hacked the Mifare chip that is about to be used in the chipcard for Dutch public transportation. Although each chip has a unique ID the Germans show how they can alter the key so it card behaves as another card with another unique ID. So the ID can’t be changed but using the key a card can be cloned. They will publish full details somewhere next year. As they say it: “start migrating now”. Video is about one hour.

Today I came across a small article that mentioned that the Data Loss Database is taken over and will be maintained by the Open Security Foundation. Ignorant as I am I didn’t even knew there was such a database. It holds all known cases of data loss world wide. Take a look at that and see how many cases are reported. Once again the only question that comes to mind is: when will we ever learn?