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iTunes Ping – Finding people, adding friends

Frank Koehntopp — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 01:19:46 PDT

There’s a lot to write about Ping, but before I get to that I need to play with it for a while. iTunes 10 was only available for download late late last night, so I haven’t done a lot. I have created an account (yet another network to maintain – ), and like many other people I have been unsuccessful in adding a picture. People have hinted that Apple may review pictures. If that is the case, new Apps in the store will probably be delayed even longer ;)

Anyway, after I created the account I started looking for friends I knew had also created accounts, but I couldn’t find any. Again, somebody said that you probably only appear in the directory after your image has been approved (not that this is available as a status message somewhere).

But I have found a way to add people nonetheless: go to your profile and right-cllick on your name:

Click on “Copy Link” and send it to your friends, tweet it or post it on Facebook. Friends can then find you and connect to you easily.

Everythings Amazing & Nobodys Happy

Frank Koehntopp — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 10:50:28 PDT

Just a little bit of perspective to ponder over the weekend.

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Nikon introduces the D3100 entry level DSLR

Frank Koehntopp — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 11:02:15 PDT

(Funny how they spell ‘Nikon’ – being german, I always thought it would be ‘N_eye_kon’…)

Nikon’s latest entry level DSLR looks like a winner to me. I have used the D3000 as a travel camera and liked it a lot, except maybe for the speed and the back display. The images were nearly as good as with my D90, certainly nothing to complain given the sub-$300 price tag.

Even in low light situations image quality was impressive – I have seen images from a dance competition with only stage light at ISO 3200, and they were really really ok. Can’t wait to see ISO 6400 or 12800 sample images from the D3100.

The only thing that seems strange to me is the $699 price tag in the Amazon pre-order page. That would be higher than the D5000, which strangely is no longer available there. Has it been discontinued? Heck, I only paid 669 for my D90 (which is also rumored to get a successor soon)!

Anyway, the D3100 is certainly worth watching – a small body with decent image quality is always nice to have.

David Grady: The Conference Call

Frank Koehntopp — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 08:30:35 PDT

This is too awesome not to share:

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The times they are a-changin

Frank Koehntopp — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 08:39:30 PDT

Tweet of the year, if you ask me.

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WordPress 3.0.1 Widgets not draggable? Here’s what solved it for me

Frank Koehntopp — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 02:21:35 PDT

After upgrading to WordPress 3.0.1 I suddenly came to a point where I could no longer just drag and drop widgets to my sidebar.

The only solution to work with widgets was to got to “Screen Options”, enable “Accessibility Mode” and klick my way through configuration.

Googling for a solution came up with that workaround and “disable all plugins”. Luckily I had not installed too many plugins recently, and the culprit was found quickly: after disabling the Feedburner Widget plugin dragging and dropping works perfectly again. I have no idea what might be wrong with the plugin, but maybe the author can find it.

Hope that helps someone with the same issue…

Facebook integration for WordPress

Sick and tired of international price gauging

Frank Koehntopp — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 13:03:32 PDT

I’m long past the software piracy age – I’m willing to pay for software I like and use, and that includes software in the price range of a few hundred dollars if it’s good enough. I’ve bought Apple’s Aperture 3 and a few plugins (Hydra HDR, PTLens etc.). I used to work with Nikon’s Capture NX2, which is why I’m looking at buying Nik Software’s Viveza 2 now. I’ve hesitated for a few months, mainly because of Nik’s inability (or willingness) to provide a 64bit version that will allow me to use Aperture’s full potential. Unfortunately it’s that good (and the good people at Nik Software have hinted at a 64bit version “real soon now” on Twitter) that I’m willing to switch Aperture to 32bit for the time being.

Nik’s plugins are anything but cheap, so of course I’m looking for the best deal. Nik’s german site has – as an example – the Complete Collection for Aperture for EUR 299,–

Let’s forget for a second that the price for the download version is the same as for the boxed version – at least it’s not more expensive as in the Adobe case.

Now I’m googling for a coupon code, and there is one for 15%! Not bad, but there is no coupon field on the german site.
Let’s check the US site instead:

Not bad, that’s quite a bit cheaper! If I pick the right country on checkout, no taxes apply and that’s the final price. I’m not even sure about the legality of that – would that be tax evasion?

Anyway, even if I add 19% german sales tax and a assume a final price of $305, it’s still A LOT cheaper than in germany, and it’s the same product!

I’m really sick of that. Before the internet, regional pricing may have served the cause of financing regional distributors, but for downloadable products with no delivery cost at all this is a slap in the face of the customer. Let’s make the download price the same worldwide, add taxes if you must, but stop gauging international customers!

Best Linux Distro for a primary school?

Frank Koehntopp — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 12:44:48 PDT

Part of my yearly summer vacation duties is looking after my wife and kids’ primary schools computers. So far, I have 16 quite slow PCs running on Ubuntu Linux (9 point something or other). Kids are mostly working on text, or on a few education programs that run in WINE.

One PC has been the dedicated “server” where every other PC had an NFS mounted folder. That worked most of the time, but sometimes broke due to flaky network connections.

Next week we’ll try something new. I’m looking for a Linux distro that is cloud oriented, i.e. either gOS (is that still being maintained?) or PeppermintOS.

I’m looking for pre-installed Chromium browser and Google Apps support. I’ll be installing DropBox to share and backup (!) files, and replacing OpenOffice with Google Docs.

Has anyone done that yet? Is that a feasible approach? There aren’t going to be any dedicated email accounts, it’s all about backing up and sharing files. Is it possible to share the WINE drive via DropBox? Any creative ideas appreciated.

Web based jailbreak for all iOS devices available

Frank Koehntopp — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 21:29:23 PDT

It seems Apple’s relation to Adobe might take another hit – the latest jailbreak seems to rely on a weakness in Safari’s PDF reader. The cool thing is that it does not need any Mac or Windows software to run, just point your iPhone browser to http://jailbreakme.com/.

Disclaimer: try at your own risk!

OK, who won the war now?

Frank Koehntopp — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 02:06:35 PDT

;)

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I want my bike back.

Frank Koehntopp — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 03:53:50 PDT

No, this time it’s not a dutch guy saying this. It’s a vulcan.

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The scariest movie you’ll ever see

Frank Koehntopp — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 03:48:12 PDT

This is a clip that starts in 1945. 1 second in the clip corresponds to one month.

“This piece of work is a bird’s eye view of the history by scaling down a month length of time into one second. No letter is used for equal messaging to all viewers without language barrier. The blinking light, sound and the numbers on the world map show when, where and how many experiments each country have conducted. I created this work for the means of an interface to the people who are yet to know of the extremely grave, but present problem of the world.”

From: http://www.ctbto.org/specials/1945-1998-by-isao-hashimoto/ via http://www.promago.de/news/?p=6091.

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Another failed eGovernment attempt: DE-Mail

Frank Koehntopp — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 02:40:01 PDT

I have to admit, I never groked eGovernment. I always saw these efforts as a subsidy for new technologies like electronic signatures or digital receipts.

This morning my wife asked me about a flyer in the paper promoting DE-Mail. First sign of failure: the message did not come across, my wife dropped the ad into the paper basket.

The idea behind DE-Mail is to provide a secure means of communication between government agencies and you. That’s already the first issue I have with DE-Mail – I live online, yet I had no desire to communicate with any government agency in the last 10 years (not that I can think of). I either call them or drop by directly – most of the time you need them to sign some document that they couldn’t send electronically anyway (passport, drivers license).

Here’s an excerpt from an article on DE-Mail (sorry – german only) that highlights all the great ideas:

Here’s what I think is wrong with DE-Mail:

What you need to do:

You need yet another EMail address. No, thank you very much.
You need to register at the post office with a passport
You can only use it from a special web site
Each session needs additional authorization with a mobile TAN

What you get for all that effort:

If a government agency sends you something it counts as delivered after 3 days, even if you’re not at home
Once you open your mailbox, the agency gets a digitally signed receipt. No more denial.
If you send something and want the agency to acknowledge receipt, YOU need to pay for that
You can send documents to people with no DE-Mail address. That will then be printed out and delivered via paper mail, at additional cost

Don’t think that will fly. At all.

Can’t Stand Sultans Of Swing

Frank Koehntopp — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 02:35:20 PDT

Just stumbled upon another fine mashup (thanks Caschy!):

Whenever I see something like that I quickly fire up EVOM and download a copy – these videos disappear as quickly as they appear.

EVOM makes it really easy to download a copy to iTunes. You can even chose to get ‘just’ the audio of the track (which I did here).

Now all I need is a Chrome extension “Send to EVOM” ;)

MacOS 10.6.4 – Mouse moving randomly

Frank Koehntopp — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 01:04:38 PDT

Ever since I installed the 10.6.4 update my mouse started jumping randomly across the screen – often into active corners, starting the screen saver.

At first I thought the batteries were empty or the mouse needed cleaning, but that didn’t help. Neither did using a mouse pad.

It seems this is not an isolated issue:

I even connected my Logitech Laser Mouse (which I’m going to use in the future instead of my MagicMouse – it’s just too good…), and it shows the same identical issue.

Any ideas?

UPDATE: It seems to be connected to the Magic Mouse after all – when I tested the Logitech I had the Magic Mouse still switched on and connected, too. Once I switched the Magic Mouse off, the pointer behaved well again.

ZX Nostalgia – Manic Miner on the iPhone!

Frank Koehntopp — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 03:16:13 PDT

Finally – a ZX Spectrum emulator for the iPhone, complete with 14 games!

All that for 99c – a no brainer.

Artikel wurde nicht gefunden

Farmville for iPhone is here!

Frank Koehntopp — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 00:05:31 PDT

Warning: file_put_contents(/www/htdocs/w0076451/wp-content/plugins/appstore/cache/375562663.png) [function.file-put-contents]: failed to open stream: Permission denied in /www/htdocs/w0076451/wp-content/plugins/appstore/AppFunctions.php on line 71

Error in function _realLoadImage: The supplied filename '/www/htdocs/w0076451/wp-content/plugins/appstore/cache/375562663.png' does not point to a readable file.

(Disclaimer: I’ve never played the game. But from what I’ve heard it’s the real reason for last year’s financial meltdown, so be careful…)

FarmVille by Zynga
Hersteller: Zynga
Freigabe: 4+
Preis: Kostenlos Download (Aff.Link)

Flickr: I don’t need no macro lens

Frank Koehntopp — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 13:48:48 PDT

Shot with my Nikkor 18-200mm and a Hama Macro Lens – amazing what you can do with such simple tools.

The Vuvuzela – a marketing desaster for South Africa?

Frank Koehntopp — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 07:37:36 PDT

It’s just a few hours until germany’s first game in the world cup, but the trending topic on the internets is not the german team:

Everybody is talking about the Vuvuzela, an oversized hearing aid which – if you turn it around and blow into it in a soccer stadium – creates a lot of noise.

Thomas here seems to like it though, but as he’s living and working in germany now, he’s also subject to our constant nagging about it (we’re good at that).

With every new game, the anti-Vuvuzela movement is gaining momentum. Facebook groups are getting more users every day, my prediction is that there’ll be more than a million “fans” out there soon.

Of course there also is a song already:

But the best link I have found so far is by Tobias Herre: http://www.surfpoeten.de/tube/vuvuzela_filter

He has constructed an audio filter that eliminates the noise from the audio channel. Let’s hope german TV implements this quickly….

UPDATE: Turns out there are africans that don’t like it, either!

“We South Africans, a mighty musical nation if ever there was one, will have replaced hearty renditions with the noise of something called the vuvuzela.

This instrument, which emits a sound akin to that of a goat on the way to slaughter, is now at the centre of a growing row in international football.”

Speculation: New iPod Nano at WWDC?

Frank Koehntopp — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 14:51:23 PDT

Well, it’s not like I’d have any sources telling me that, it’s just that the market has been funny over the last few weeks:

- iPod Nano discounts were being offered in most major electronics stores around here

- the 16 GB iPod Nano is sold out in many places, and the girl in the store told me “Apple won’t send us any new ones”

- Apple’s refurbished iPod section suddenly has the iPod Nano, previous *and* current generation, in all colors readily available

The iPod Nano has always been my favourite model – I really really would like to see them come out with a 32 GB or even a 64 GB model…

What do you think? Likely or not?

Version 4.6 of Dynamic-Phot HDR is out!