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30 November 07 - 17:04

iPhone news

Some iPhone news this week:

- successful iPhone launch in France, it's a nice mix of Apple(s) and Orange(s) in the country of pain, vin et Boursin :). There is also an unlocked, carrier independent iPhone!

- the dutch Crown Prince Willem Alexander (Wim-Lex for friends :)) bought an iPhone, as did his wife princess Maxima. The iPhone is not yet released in NL, so they will face some roaming costs (or hack it ;))

- AT&T confirms the 3G iPhone to be released somewhere in 2008...heyhey! THAT was the sole reason for me to hold of to an iPhone when I had the opportunity to buy one mid November!



3 Comments / trackback - §

29 November 07 - 23:14

Site update: last Twitter updates

Small site update:

Just added a Twitter-script showing the 10 tweets preceding my current Twitter status. It's nicely put under the Twitter badge in the sidebar, handy for everyone who's not reading my blog every day! :)



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28 November 07 - 09:32

Facebook in close harmony

The Facebook hype reached close harmony already end 2006, can you imagine what it is like at the end of 2007? ;)



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27 November 07 - 22:04

Devicescape

Am running Devicescape on my Nokia E65, a pretty neat application that makes the usual complicated WiFi connection process on mobile devices a lot easier...it does it for me, so give it a try too!

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26 November 07 - 18:38

Google as spell checker?

An alternate use of Google's search engine; use it as spell checker!

Think about it...have the spelling of (obscure) words verified by Google's 'democracy'!

How?

Easy as a, b, c...whenever you're not sure about the spelling of a word, just feed your best guess into a Google search box and see what it comes back with.

You might see a 'Did you mean:'...with your suggestion, but then spelled correctly! If not, chances are pretty high that the initial suggestion was spelled correctly in the first place, especially when there are a lot of search results.

And, if you can't choose between the initial suggestion and the 'Did you mean:' alternative, just pick the one returning the most search results! ;)

(in the top right: 'Results 1 - 50 of about 122,540 for ....')

Pure democracy...or? :)



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25 November 07 - 23:25

Geek time in NL

Visited iFactors, the Apple reseller in Zoetermeer, yesterday...ultimate geek time: played with the 24" iMac, 17"Macbook Pro and the iPod Touch! :)

Then saw a 102" plasma tv at the MediaMarkt across the street, on sale for only EUR 79.999,-...ouch!!

As I said...geek time in NL!



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24 November 07 - 18:45

QOTD November 24 2007

A. J. Kitt: "You have no control over what the other guy does. You only have control over what you do."



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23 November 07 - 13:53

Back to NL!

Since I'll have a business meeting in The Netherlands coming week, I decided to fly back to NL already tonight!

Looking forward to spend some time 'home' again (will actually be working a lot in our house, to prepare it for renting it out from January!).



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22 November 07 - 10:49

Bosnian cheesecake

Our norwegian teacher Maja surprised us with a homemade cheesecake this week!

Actually her mother made it and since they originate from Bosnia, there was a Bosnian twist to the cake...she put pomegranate on top:

It was delicious, thanks Maja and mother!



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21 November 07 - 11:30

CEO 2.0

Jason Calacanis: "The case for the community CEO... ...someone who polls their user base openly, asks for feedback constantly, and engages their audience... ...CEO 1.0 was defined as the all-powerful God-like CEO. That's been over for a long time--with the exception of Steve Jobs who is, in fact, God."


Excellent blogpost Jason, thanks for bringing this to the table.

This so much follows my ideas on leadership, CEO's, managers, it's a must read for people with CEO 1.0 / 1.5 mindsets...just imagine what can happen if they're able to open up after reading it!! Society and organizations have clearly changed these days and being a teamplayer / people manager is key in moving an organization where you want it to go...it all comes down to;


Lead with passion and be INSPIRATION!



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20 November 07 - 12:10

Spam - emo approach?!?

Yesterday I received the email below...hmm, what should I make out of this?

Obviously this is spam / spam related, then again...it's very original and almost tempting.

A sad story, still somewhat entertaining to read...pity I don't have any wood burning stove ;)


********************

Hello,

My name is Elena, I have 30 years and I live in province of Russia.

I have a 6-years daughter, her father abandoned us and we live with my mother. Recently my mother lost job due to old age and our situation became very difficult.

The prices for gas and electricity became very high in the last months and we cannot use it to heat our home anymore.

The winter is coming and temperature is very cold here already. The radio say it will be up to minus 30 degr. Celsius in the near weeks. We do not know what to do and we very afraid.

The only way for us to heat our home is to use portable wood burning stove which gives heat with burning wood or coal. We have a lot of wood in our region, therefore this way is very good for us
and it will heat our home the whole winter with minimal charges.

I work in library and after my job I allowed to use computer. I finded your address in internet and may be you can help us.

We need portable stove, but we cannot buy it because it expensive for us. May be you have any used wood burning stove which you don't use anymore, then we would be very grateful to you if you can donate it to us and organize transport of its to our address. This stoves are different, and they weight between 60-150kg.

The Christmas coming and I would be very grateful to you if you could send some sweets for my daughter. I will then put them under Christmas tree and it will make my daughter very happy.

I send you best wishes.

Elena.

********************


Some more investigations show that this 'Elena' has sent the same messege to more people...now I don't feel that special anymore, NO wood burning stove for her, nor any sweets to put under the Christmas tree!



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19 November 07 - 13:32

The Gang

Following my earlier post on the return of the Gillmor Gang, aka Gillmor Group; Steve now rebranded it to 'The Gang'...he put the two last shows out there, with the third one up soon, yay!

The RSS-feed is available only for people who joined the 'Gillmor Group' on Facebook and its members are asked to refrain from distributing the URL, sorry...:)

I listened to the first episode on my commute this morning, it's great to have the Gang back together after nearly one year...sjeez guys, I missed you!



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18 November 07 - 16:51

QOTD November 18 2007

Ben Stein: "The first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: Decide what you want."



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17 November 07 - 15:45

Sinterklaas arrived

Sinterklaas has arrived with his 'pakjesboot' (boat full of presents) in The Netherlands today (check the link if you're not familiar with this dutch tradition)...I wonder if he's able to bring me some presents here up north in Norway. :)

 

I never realized how dutch this tradition actually is...my colleagues in Norway had no clue when I explained it (guess they're completely Santa Claus'ed :)).

It's one of those things you miss out on when living abroad...the special atmosphere in the cities, coziness in peoples homes, children going crazy when Sinterklaas and his Zwarte Pieten are present, lovely sweets like speculaas, pepernoten and kruidnoten...yeah, it's a nice tradition!

Hehe, it would be interesting to have Sinterklaas visit Norway, am pretty sure the people here would have a hard time getting the story behind Zwarte Piet (Black Pete or Blackface).



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16 November 07 - 22:52

TGIF!

Plans for the weekend:

- relax

- clean up (we'll get visitors Sunday, Kristel's dad and brother, so we'll make this place look shiny as new!)

- finish some things on a website I made earlier

- RELAX

- dig further into social networking

- watch a movie (any suggestions?)

- chop some more wood (am diggin' it ever since I bought a motorized chainsaw)

- pick-up Kissy from the airport (she's in New York at the moment...uhh, can you believe I told her NOT to buy an iPhone?? Screw me!)

- did I mention relax?

...guess I need more than 2 days, again...:)



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15 November 07 - 22:46

On da road again

Picked up the repaired family car today...the garage gave her a special prep-for-winter treat, heyhey, let it snow let it snow let it snow...it's currently -4dgr C, oof!

A nice bonus was the fact that the guy helping me spoke no english at all...first time norwegian class on a Thursday! I managed to understand what he was trying to explain, so I guess I passed the test, yay! :)



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14 November 07 - 22:44

The Science Show

Mike, my best buddy from Down Under pointed me to The Science Show podcast...will check it out in my commute tomorrow, it's always great to find something new in podcasting land! :)



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13 November 07 - 23:42

One car fixed, one to go

Good news! After going down from two to no cars yesterday, today one car got fixed: the Honda turned out to have a problem with one of the (new winter)tires, the remedy was relatively easy (and free :)).

The Scénic is at the garage at the moment, fingers crossed for a fast and not too expensive repair...



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12 November 07 - 22:37

Cars and costly repairs

My happy friend on the road, the infamous Renault 'the family-car' Scénic needs to be repaired, something wrong with the frontwheel and axis they say...estimated 3000-4000 NOK, damn!

Luckily there is the second car, the old Honda 'red devil' Civic...hmm, todays latest news on that one is that it uhhh, broke down! Probably the exhaust...damn again!

2 down in one day, it's certainly NOT a great day to be my car...



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11 November 07 - 21:19

Virgin Guitar Hero

Last night I played Guitar Hero for Playstation 2 for the very first time of my life...a true virgin. :)

I totally digged it, what a game, great with friends! A perfect combination of music and play, adrenaline running through your veins like you're performing on stage!

Hmm, wonder what Santa is gonna bring me for Xmas. :)



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10 November 07 - 09:15

QOTD November 10 2007

Tallulah Bankhead: "Nobody can be exactly like me. Sometimes even I have trouble doing it."



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09 November 07 - 17:15

iPhone hits Europe

 

Today it's 'Say hello to iPhone'-day for Europe as the 'Invention of the Year' (according to Time Magazine) hits stores in the U.K. and Germany.

France is to follow on November 29, which makes me wonder when it's Norways turn...then again, with the current decline of the dollar I'm a lot better off saving my X-mas $'s for a hacked U.S. iPhone. :)



1 Comment / trackback - §

08 November 07 - 20:30

Gillmor Gang..uuhh...Gillmor Group is back!

Jason Calacanis: "The Gillmor Group... is back (don't tell anyone)"

Check out these Facebook posts for last weeks episode. It's cut in the usual four parts, for what we all hate Steve ;)...fellow geeks, I am thrilled!!! (looking forward for tomorrows commute)



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07 November 07 - 23:43

Dutch Club Oslo

We just came back from the monthly gathering of the Dutch Club Oslo (Nederlandse Club Oslo)...it was nice to meet with some fellow cheeseheads and exchange experiences.

Most of them have been in Norway for years already and it was good to see that they are well integrated and still positive about the country and its culture (without loosing that typical dutch touch!) :)

As other norwegians they seem to prepare for the cold and snow...you bet it's gonna be special this winter!!



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06 November 07 - 11:09

Adding Facebook & Hyves friends

The results of my little test were not too surprising...still, without *any* effort I managed to get 4 friends on Facebook and 8 on Hyves. It shows that social networking is what the name implies, SOCIAL networking, a two way communication tool.

One of the most amazing things though is that an old dormmate from Hampstead Centre (way back in 1994 when I was studying in Australia), found me on Facebook last weekend...very cool!!

I'll start adding friends myself and grow my social network...let's see what happens. 

For the record, Facebook is relatively small in NL (the 'Netherlands' network only has 80,615 people...Norway for instance has 418,937 people in the 'Norway' network, a country with roughly four times lower population!)



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05 November 07 - 12:39

Remember, remember...

Remember, remember the Fifth of November,
The Gunpowder, Treason and Plot,
I know of no reason
Why Gunpowder, Treason
Should ever be forgot.

The rhyme is commonly known from Guy Fawkes Night...this year the event is used on the internet by supporters of the Ron Paul For President campaign in order to raise *a lot of* money in just one day and thus create (media) attention for the candidate and his message.



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04 November 07 - 19:15

QOTD November 4 2007

Jeffrey Rowland: "We've always been here and we'll always be here. We are a specific arrangement of particles and this instant is infinite. Did we luck out, or didn't we? The odds against this sentence having ever being typed, much less the odds against you reading it were inconceivable. Smile, because the fact that you're able to is almost impossible to comprehend."



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03 November 07 - 14:29

Mac Mediacenter

My G4 Mac mini is hooked up to my tv- and stereo system, and I'm using it everyday to watch movies and play music from my iTunes library.

Since there is no IR receiver in the mini I purchased a Keyspan Remote Express (which works great) and have been testing lately some mediacenter apps to work with it (a hack to run Front Row on my G4, CenterStage, iTheater and mMedia which are all freeware. As well as the non-free MediaCentral and XHub in demo mode).

Before I was able to come to a final conclusion I upgraded my system to Mac OS X Leopard.

One of the features of Leopard is the the fact that Front Row now is included in the OS and also runs on older G4-machines...no more need to hack it, and it runs like a charm!

This new version of Front Row (2.0) is doing a nice job as MediaCenter app, the interface is slick (copied from the Apple TV) and it works great with my Keyspan Remote Express. I will keep an eye on CentralStage though...if they can pull off what they show in the screenshots, they have a killer app.

But for now, Front Row it is...Apple pulled it off again!



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02 November 07 - 14:21

Ring Oslo, speed limit

As of November 1, there is a 60kph speedlimit for the Oslo ring, the roadsigns tell me that this is due to a 'miljøfartsgrense'...or, a speedlimit to save environment?!?

I also understood it has to do with wintertires with spikes...they cause extra dust particles poluting the air. Lowering the speed lowers the concentration of particles...hmm, guess we'll have to live with it, until freakin' March 30 2008...aahhh!



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01 November 07 - 15:02

Winter tires

Hmm, someone told me yesterday that from November 1 one can get fined in Norway for not having winter tires when road conditions are bad (snow/ice).

Despite the fact that today is lovely (sun's out with a amazing temperature of 8dgr!? Winter? No way!), I'd better buy some sticky tires soon...today that is! :)



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