The iPhone after next?

I'm breaking my silence here for a technology forecast about the next generation in personal portable (wearable?) devices. I have a feeling that it might be a QD Laser projector enabled thing that enables a Sixth Sense User Interface, thus making screens, keyboards and other such gadgets redundant. I'm looking forward to it!

Another trip, another gadget

Coming home from my latest London trip on Thursday night, I found a nice surprise: Following my rather favourable comments and suggestions about their mobile charger, Lifetrons sent me their Xmini capsule speaker�- thank you very much! Now, although you're apparently not supposed to look a gift horse in the mouth, that's exactly what I'm going to do:

The Xmini is a tiny technical miracle the size of a golf ball that's been chewed on by Laika - when closed. When opened, it folds out like an accordion to provide the resonating cavity required for a mighty big audio effect. Hearing is believing! It comes with a double mini-USB cable that plugs into the device and a powered USB port (for charging only) or a 3.5 mm audio out port suitable for most devices. An amazing little thing!

But again, under-marketed. Those Lifetrons guys need to do something, and quick, the competition isn't sleeping. Compare the Powerstick - it doesn't even pack a sixth of the performance of the Lifetrons product (which is still not available on their own web store!)�with a similar form factor, but it is much more visible and will therefore sell a lot better. Wake up, guys!

Hidden gem for iPhone

If you think, like I do, that iPhone's only real hardware shortcoming (software ones such as missing video recording will hopefully be dealt with soon) is that there is actually too little of it, i.e. that its battery doesn't survive a day of heavy usage, then I have found a must-have little gadget for you: the portable charger LT025 from tiny Swiss firm Lifetrons. The charger takes a charge of 4800 mAh (probably about 3 iPhone charges), which it delivers actively to iPhone, i.e. it is not an external battery pack that needs to remain connected to be effective, it actually charges iPhone, and it does it very quickly. The gadget's power input is USB and it charges lots of other mobile devices via a plethora of adapters for its USB cable. The device's footprint is smaller than iPhone's, but it is about 2 2.5 times thicker. The device is well designed and nicely executed.

But as the title of this post holds, it is a hidden gem. So much so, in fact, that I only stumbled across it in a duty free catalogue. Strangely, Lifetrons only distributes via airlines and duty free shops, and they don't market their wares actively - it is not even available in their own online store. At least not for the moment, I'm told by their CEO. Another instance of under-marketed Swiss engineering ingenuity? You bet! I hope they get their marketing act together really soon, because they deserve it!

Here's the anecdote of the purchase: I saw the description on my way to Brussels and decided to hold off on buying until I could do a little online research, which I did in Brussels. But it yielded very little, there's virtually no online reviews available nor, as mentioned, alternative distribution. So, I decided to buy on the way back, even though Swiss has all three colours as long as it's white/silver. But I created a bit of a stumbling block for the friendly flight attendants - the catalogue advertises that you can pay with M&M Miles rather than cash, which I wanted to. But their payment appliance didn't work, so we had to use a regular credit card slip. Now, I'm a little nervous that I am going to be charged CHF 22'000 for the device rather than 22'000 miles ... keep your fingers crossed!�

The Switch

I just switched. But don't worry, I am still a Mac fan. Although the switch is PC-related, because I switched the vehicle of my virtual PC. Hitherto I used to be a Parallels customer, but now, I've taken advantage of VMware's CyberMondayDeal which is only valid today. You get their Fusion 2 product for 50% off, which is just about as much as the upgrade to Parallels' version 4 would cost. Since reviews give a slight advantage to VMware over Parallels, there's not much point in staying with Parallels because they seem to be milking their customer base all along the upgrade path, which VMware doesn't.�

Hurry, the offer is up just a few more hours ...

New "pet"

Obviously, it's not, it's just a robotic vacuum cleaner. Yet it's weird to find oneself giving it a nickname and, worse, talk to it! Cold rationality is apparently only skin deep when faced with something small that moves about on its own, makes little noises and eats dust. It does that exceptionally well, btw. But the design and user interface could do with a shot of Apple ...

Snap, the fish got you!

I've always been interested in concepts like mosquito marketing, so when I was offered the opportunity to participate, I took it. The guys over at dot-friends offered a free snapfish collage poster if I would blog (fairly & honestly) about it, and so, here goes ...

It's about photocollage posters, a new snapfish offering. Naturally, I've tried it out, and it worked fine for me. The resulting poster is printed beautifully on high quality photo paper. Snapfish did, however, underperform in terms of delivery times: The promise was for the poster to be produced within 1-2 days; effectively it took them three. Mail was delivered in time.

As for the creation process online, I'll say that my enthusiasm is limited. Like I said, it all worked, but it worked in a PC (as opposed to Mac) kind of way: the process allows for very little in design creativity (photos can only be arranged in 90 degree angles, there is a fairly limited set of frame colours and frame strengths - that's it!). On top of that, the website design was not rendered well on Safari, as some of the buttons (important ones like OK) were missing - I had to guess!�

So, in conclusion, I don't think this is a product I will use again, as it isn't much fun to create, and you don't have many degrees of freedom in creating it. Nor is it a steal at CHF 25. Yet, I will keep snapfish bookmarked because they offer a range of less complex, but nice & useful products, such as picture cups, jugs and caps.�

Hmm, this is probably not the kind of review that my dot-friends were hoping for, but since I'm expected to give a review, the free poster I got is not a gift horse that you're not supposed to look in the mouth ...

Safe

Wow - I want one! Not that I have anything to put in it, nor would my living room floor probably be sufficiently strong to support it, but I want one.�

Size matters!

This is a technology forecast of sorts. It is the result of using iPhone for the last few months, confirming my suspicion that iPhone indeed is the game changing device that it is heralded to be. Those who say that there's nothing new about it in technology terms are right, of course. But they suffer a very common geek mistake: it's not the feature set that counts, it is the mainstream ease of use of those features. Recently, I've had quite a enlightening insight into how that works when I showed my iPhone to a Lady in her seventies who had never even used a PC. Within minutes or less, she was happily zapping through photos, zooming & rotating, and she looked up stuff on the Maps app. I am pretty sure she is going to have one of her own soon, if they are available at all. I'm expecting my black 16 GB iPhone 3G with an Orange plan on Monday.

But that was no forecast, that's reality. iPhone shines because of its ingenious user interface with multitouch. As with every innovation, multitouch is now being tried on other devices such as laptops or computer screens. And here's my forecast: Those are going to fail utterly. Why? iPhone works because you hold it in your hand, so you can easily wipe its screen on your sleeve to get rid of those fingerprints. I'm doing that Monk-like almost whenever I use it. But try that with a laptop or - worse - a computer screen ... QED.

Interesting numbers

Accumulated time spent on building Wikipedia ... 100'000'000 hours
Total time spent watching TV in the USA ... 200'000'000'000 hours per annum
TV time of global web-connected population ... 1'000'000'000'000 hours p.a.

That's what Clay Shirky calls Cognitive Surplus. An interesting thought indeed.

Rule Britannica!

Coolness! Being the web publisher and blogger that I am, I have been accepted into Britannica's Webshare programme by virtue of this blog (among others). This programme gives its participants free access to Encyclopedia Britannica online and lets them (me!) share whatever article they fancy with readers - yes, you! So, here goes, and most appropriately to start with, hell! This looks like a great way to compete with Wikipdia - you better get used to the thought of not getting any more Wikipedia references from this source.

Voyager

Ever wondered what the golden disk aboard spacecrafts Voyager 1 & 2 contained? Unsurprisingly, you can find out online here.

Xentonality

Wow - this article in NZZ Folio reports the Xentonality work of William Sethares - with plenty of free music samples. It's experimental music of the best kind: strangely harmonic even though it defies all conventional rules of harmony. Fascinating!

Screw Yoga

This is excellent stuff!

A Swiss iPhone

Please sign this petition, asking Apple and Swiss mobile phone companies Orange, Sunrise and Swisscom for a release date of the iPhone in the Swiss market!�

Sounds like fun!

"Our business model is one of very high risk: We dig a very big hole in the ground, spend three billion dollars to build a factory in it, which takes three years, to produce technology we haven't invented yet, to run products we haven't designed yet, for markets which don't exist.

"We do that two or three times a year."

Intel CEO Otellini

Playing around

Who the heck needs Photoshop when they can have Gimp�(the free GNU Image Manipulation Program)?�

Granted, it takes a bit of getting used to when you use X11 for the first time, especially since it needed a bit of tweaking to run under Leopard, but everything seems to run just fine now.�

My phone

To my considerable regret and shame, I have to notify the world (or at least those parts that care), that I have resolved to change my mobile phone. From the introduction, you can safely deduct that my new phone is not an iPhone, at least not yet. I have reverted from the broken Nokia to an ancient Sony Ericsson T610. Amazingly, the difference in features& usability �between the T610 and the rather current 6280 is not as big as the T610's age would suggest. But you don't care about that, do you.

The reason why I didn't get an iPhone to hack was that I couldn't get my mitts on a $ priced item. The ? priced ones are just not attractive enough, given the fact that firmware 1.1.2 is still tough to deal with. Then the French unlocked version is just priced to kill, especially considering hoping that there will be an updated version available for the Swiss market early next year. Yes, I know, hope springs eternal ...

I ..... .. phone

Seriously! I didn't do it on purpose, but I broke my phone! Well, it's not entirely broken, yet. It just has a huge crack across the display, which gets bigger all the time. Nevertheless, I definitely need that iPhone now, although it's not even known when it comes to this peripheral market that is Switzerland. Probably I'll just get one during my next trip to the UK on 13 December, unless one of my resourceful readers happens to travel from the US to Switzerland before then, as the US version is considerably cheaper than the European edition ...

Panthera pardus

This is the first post written on my new iMac, running on Mac OS X 10.5, a.k.a. Leopard! I can happily report that it's a great experience - the new machine is extremely racy, and I certainly won't go back to the previous cat, either. Although the fact that I am already using Leopard is not exactly Apple's merit, as the Mac came with Tiger preinstalled. Ordering Leopard via the Up to date programme resulted in an ETA of 3 (three!) weeks! But luckily I have extremely understanding and helpful alternative sources to bridge over the transitory gap between felines ...

As we may think

Vannevar Bush's July 1945 essay As we may think is a breathtaking piece of futurology. Have a look!

Parallel worlds

Check out the rest of these excellent commercials for Parallel's virtualisation software, which I can highly recommend. The Coherence mode is kind of eerie, though!

Windows is for grandmas ...

Nice piece, but what else is new?

7064

That is the number of mail messages that Mail Scripts has identified as duplicates in my busiest mailboxes over the last 24 hours of hard work. They're all gone now. But there's still 23'309 left - the earliest message dating from 13 November 1997. I am guessing those duplicates were a direct result of diverse migrations of legacy mailboxes to new email clients, restored backups and other such sources of confusion. But I definitely prefer it that way round ...

Turkish delights

It's already a few days that I've returned from my second trip to Istanbul within a couple of weeks, but I've been kept from blogging about it. While in the Istanbul Hilton, I had an inexplicable (or so it seemed) corruption of all my system preferences on the laptop. Thanks to the trusted backup, that could later be restored without difficulties. But then I remembered that the same thing had happened earlier in Athens where I also stayed at a Hilton. The common factor most likely is the fact that I left the machine running overnight while connected to the web via Swisscom Eurospot, a disgustingly expensive hotel ISP which apparently somehow messes with my machine's preferences. Rest assured that I am not going to take that risk again.

Speaking of risk taking - I have a funny little story to tell about my close encounter with the Istanbul underworld. I spent the Sunday evening walking the town before meeting up with friends later. So, this regular looking guy asks me something in Turkish, to which I respond in English. Turns out he wanted to know the time, and he's a stranger, but frequent visitor to Istanbul by the name of Ali. We strike up a conversation during which he shows me around. A bit later, we decide to have a drink at a place he knows. Hmm, funny, I think, but ok, let's go.

Not long after sitting down at a table at this place "friend" Ali knows, we were being joined by two very blond, very curvy Russian ladies who developed a healthy appetite for the local bubbly. At that point, all my remaining warning lights went off and I asked for the bill. Not really surprisingly, the tab already stood at 2'340 Lira (EUR 1'270). What came next really took me by surprise though, and that was my reaction: I remained rather cool and asked for the police because there was no way I was going to pay. Naturally, our friendly ladies quickly cleared away, and the room's atmosphere turned distinctly unfriendly. Equally naturally, the manager was disinclined to call the police, nor did I have the local emergency number. Thus, the negotiations commenced.

I offered to pay 400 for the wine and firmly stuck to that offer, knowing full well that I didn't have more than 70 with me. That wasn't satisfactory of course, especially since "my friend" Ali offered to take half the bill. When I still wouldn't budge, he finally switched sides and started boasting his boxing prowess and mafia relations, to which I responded in kind (karate & bankers!). After about half an hour of this back and forth haggling, the manager became increasingly nervous and finally took me up on my offer. When I disclosed that I only had 50 in cash, he suggested to escort me to the next ATM as he wouldn't take credit cards for the remainder (why's that, I wonder ...). But once we were outside (he all by himself), I decided that I'd had enough and bade him farewell, not without shaking hands, and swiftly made it to the next cab.

In the end, that little adventure only cost me 50 Lira, and I learned a lesson or two along the way. On the one hand, I am rather pleased with the brazen way I negotiated myself out of that mess, on the other, I am not very happy about having gotten myself into it in the first place - it could have ended much less satisfactorily. I'll be more careful next time. There will be a next time for sure, as this could have happened everywhere, and Istanbul really is a fascinating place, you can take my word for it!

An iPhone for Smaran!

The buzz is on again! Probably recycling contact information from the WSJ article, the Times has its own article featuring Smaran, this time placing him as an opinion leader on all things Apple. If he plays his cards right, he might just be one of the first people to get a (free) iPhone on the subcontinent!

Macs are cheaper!

Stuff like that makes the economist's heart rate go faster - great work! Apple Matters has an interesting piece about Mac resale values which shows the actual fair value depreciation on Mac laptops, based on ebay prices. For a three years old laptop, you still get to recoup some 40% of its purchase price. This is exceptional, seeing how our tax depreciation allows for up to 80% in the first year!

This should be proof enough that the old stereotype that Macs are expensive couldn't be further from the truth. And I am not talking total cost of ownership (which, if done right, would actually include resale value unlike in this example), although that would be the proper metric, but only cash out/in when you buy and sell your machine. Given that Macs cost about the same as your garden variety PC for comparable configurations nowadays, it's safe to say that Macs are cheaper.

Buzz wizzards

The Wall Street Journal offers an interesting insight into how social bookmarking sites work. The article came to my attention thanks to Smaran, an online friend and frequent commentator on this blog who is justly proud to be featured as an influencer in that article. Congratulations - way to go!!

Allowwwwhhhhhhh

Of all the Get a Mac ads, the Vista security one is the best one yet! It pokes fun at what is allegedly the most annoying "feature" of Vista, namely its hallowed security. Perhaps, Mac fanboys and -girls will start saying allow now rather than ok. At any rate, I am sure Mr Gates will be livid.

The wait is over ...

Wait, no, it's only just begun! Apple has just presented The Phone 2.0, or rather the iPhone (roll over, Cisco!). This is the phone to end all phones - Apple has truly re�nvented this ancient device. It may be a bit on the large side, but it's all screen, no keys / buttons. Everything touchscreen, and it runs OS X! Oh wow - stop me gushing. The thing has 5 hours talk time, is a widescreen iPod with 8GB (music, video, photos), sports GSM Quadband, EDGE, WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0 and it kills every Blackberry within shooting range. Did I mention that it runs OS X, a multitasking desktop UNIX OS? And it costs next to nothing, especially seeing how I stocked up on AAPL options last week ... the only bad thing? It's going to be available in Europe in Q4. So, the wait has only just begun.