As I am in Santa Clara, California now, I thought about picking up an Oqo O2 while I am here. Being in the technological center of the world, I supposed that should be possible. Also, since Oqo is San Francisco based, it should be even more possible.
According to the Oqo website, MicroCenter is a retailer for the Oqo, and there happen to be a shop just a couple of blocks away from the hotel I am staying in. So I went to the shop and asked for the Oqo. Unfortunately, they were out. Not even out as in no exemplar for sale, but they even didn't have one on display. The salesperson told me that the Oqo is so popular that they got a list of people waiting for one, and as soon as they get shipments, they call people on the list and the Oqos goes out of the door again. I saved some $2000, which is probably not a bad thing.
I can go buy one on the internet of course, but it is kind of scary buying something I even have not held in my hands. As I have mentioned before, I am happy to this day that I didn't got stuck with the Sony UX50 as it turned out to be horrible in my hands when I finally got to hold it. I think the Oqo O2 is very different, but I have to be sure.
I am visiting Chicago on my way home, maybe I can pick up one there...
Some of you might wonder what's up with the Usenix annual tech conference, as this is where I am right now. I think it is kind of average. Some good talks, some not so good. And nothing special to report like big braking news or anything like that. I got the chance to speak with Guido van Rossum though, which was of course kind of cool for someone like me using Python all the time - I enjoyed that. I have also made some new friends, both from Norway and from USA - which is always good and a main reason for going to conferences. So all in all, it was ok for me to be here. Tomorrow I take off and head east.
Take care!
Friday, June 22, 2007
Sunday, June 17, 2007
Well done, Apple!
That was it for this year - the WWDC'07 is history. My first post, based on the impressions from the keynote, was a bit harsh in the tone, so I figured I should say a few more words.
First, I must say congratulations to the folks who put together WWDC'07. Just face it folks, they must have had a big problem. All the announcements were done in 2006, probably under the assumption that everything would have been on the streets this year. Which did not happened. Still, they managed to put together an impressive program. While the keynote was a bit bad, and as a side note - I am not the only one who have that opinion; most of the people I spoke to at the event shared my view - the rest of the event was very good. Unfortunately, all the other sessions are under NDA so folks that did not attend will not know much about that. But because our shared opinion was that the keynote was not outstanding, the people at Apple who was responsible for the program and the content and the presentations deserved a big thank you. Many of the presentations was excellent both in content and delivery. And especially in the developer tools sessions we saw and heard a lot of new things. Which we can not talk about of course. But, developers out there, expect cool stuff :)
Hopefully that set the record straight. I still have to just dream about my favorite 10 inch touch-screen macbook pro though, as now new hardware was revealed. We'll see what they can come up with next year.
Now I am off to the more academic Usenix Annual Tech, and can speak freely again! That does not mean that I have something to say, of course. By the way, I can also still play with my Leopard seed dvd which I must say is quite functional :)
Until later, take care!
First, I must say congratulations to the folks who put together WWDC'07. Just face it folks, they must have had a big problem. All the announcements were done in 2006, probably under the assumption that everything would have been on the streets this year. Which did not happened. Still, they managed to put together an impressive program. While the keynote was a bit bad, and as a side note - I am not the only one who have that opinion; most of the people I spoke to at the event shared my view - the rest of the event was very good. Unfortunately, all the other sessions are under NDA so folks that did not attend will not know much about that. But because our shared opinion was that the keynote was not outstanding, the people at Apple who was responsible for the program and the content and the presentations deserved a big thank you. Many of the presentations was excellent both in content and delivery. And especially in the developer tools sessions we saw and heard a lot of new things. Which we can not talk about of course. But, developers out there, expect cool stuff :)
Hopefully that set the record straight. I still have to just dream about my favorite 10 inch touch-screen macbook pro though, as now new hardware was revealed. We'll see what they can come up with next year.
Now I am off to the more academic Usenix Annual Tech, and can speak freely again! That does not mean that I have something to say, of course. By the way, I can also still play with my Leopard seed dvd which I must say is quite functional :)
Until later, take care!
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Qtpfsgui - new version
Hi guys, Giuseppe have put together a new version of qtpfsgui, and as always, I try to keep up with the version for OSX. As I happen to be at the Apple developer conference, WWDC'07, right now, it's a great time for poking around with this stuff.
So, alas, the 1.8.9 version of qtpfsgui for OSX is out on sourceforge now. Besides that, there is not very much to say, I have not done any special mac-tweaks this time. Check the regular files for general changes.
Again, I do not provide a version with Qt built in, as I have not seen any request for that. Head over to trolltech and get Qt there if you don't have it. I understand that version 4.3 of Qt is out now, but I still put this together with the previous version. I plan to grab the new Qt and check that everything works as it should, but if someone gets ahead of me, please comment on success or failure.
So, alas, the 1.8.9 version of qtpfsgui for OSX is out on sourceforge now. Besides that, there is not very much to say, I have not done any special mac-tweaks this time. Check the regular files for general changes.
Again, I do not provide a version with Qt built in, as I have not seen any request for that. Head over to trolltech and get Qt there if you don't have it. I understand that version 4.3 of Qt is out now, but I still put this together with the previous version. I plan to grab the new Qt and check that everything works as it should, but if someone gets ahead of me, please comment on success or failure.
Monday, June 11, 2007
The WWDC'07 keynote
This years WWDC'07 keynote is history. As always it was delivered by Steve Jobs. I have to say it was a mediocre event. The presentation was smooth enough, but Steve seems to be a bit uninspired. And with good reasons, as much of what was delivered was just a repetition of what we heard last year. No new hardware was presented, the shipping date for the "Leopard" is still october and the iPhone is not out yet.
The only new things really was that there will be a new desktop and a new finder (the file browser and management thing in OSX). Not a very big deal, mostly graphics tweaks that people like myself tend to avoid anyway. There was quite a few animated demos on stage, but notting to brag about to be honest. Sure, Leopard will be great and everything, don't get me wrong. But we know most of it already!
There was also announced that EA and id will have more games on OSX in the future, which I guess is great for people who avoid apple due to limited gaming support. And then Apple will start pushing browser to windows users, but I don't care much about that either as I use firefox anyway. It might be good for IE users, though. And it is supposed to be fast, too.
There has been some discussions on iPhone and development tools. This was but was not presented, too. What apple had to say on this is that iPhone will have a full safari engine inside, so people can do web2.0/ajax style applications that can be used on the iPhone. Which is a no-solution solution. It was not mentioned whether such applications can be downloaded and installed or have to be run from a webserver all the time. It was mentioned that such applications should get access to the phone and network services of the iPhone, but nothing specific was presented. I think this was another mediocre part of the presentation. Maybe good enough for some, but certainly not what most developers had in mind when they asked for development tools. It remains to be seen if Apple is right on this one.
What else is there to say? A large crowd was gathered as usual, more than 5000 persons we was told. And apple did the usual but very annoying marketing trick of lining people out before we could get in - had to stand in line for quite a long time. Now, I'm usually not the line-standing kind of guy, but I am still somewhat on the Norwegian timezone as I flew over only yesterday, and couldn't get much sleep after 5:30 in the morning anyway. So I get out of bed, had a shower, went to a breakfast place which was quite nice - Cafe Venue, I'll post the address later on if someone care. And then I went down to Moscone convention center. There I found a long, long, long queue of people waiting to get in. Which is only marketing of course. It was 7:30 in the morning, and a couple hundred people waited to get in as this was a rock concert or something. There where rumours around that someone was getting into the line 3 in the morning. That is simply a freakshow.
So, Apple, I have this suggestion for you for next year. If you don't have anything more to give us than we got this year. Please, just open the doors and let people walk in and get a seat, just as we usually do. No need to be so annoyingly special all the time.
Ok, that's it for now - I'm off to more presentations. While the keynote wasn't that good, I hope the other presentations will be. At least, the rest of the week will have more technical content delivered by engineers. I'm looking forward to that.
Take care!
The only new things really was that there will be a new desktop and a new finder (the file browser and management thing in OSX). Not a very big deal, mostly graphics tweaks that people like myself tend to avoid anyway. There was quite a few animated demos on stage, but notting to brag about to be honest. Sure, Leopard will be great and everything, don't get me wrong. But we know most of it already!
There was also announced that EA and id will have more games on OSX in the future, which I guess is great for people who avoid apple due to limited gaming support. And then Apple will start pushing browser to windows users, but I don't care much about that either as I use firefox anyway. It might be good for IE users, though. And it is supposed to be fast, too.
There has been some discussions on iPhone and development tools. This was but was not presented, too. What apple had to say on this is that iPhone will have a full safari engine inside, so people can do web2.0/ajax style applications that can be used on the iPhone. Which is a no-solution solution. It was not mentioned whether such applications can be downloaded and installed or have to be run from a webserver all the time. It was mentioned that such applications should get access to the phone and network services of the iPhone, but nothing specific was presented. I think this was another mediocre part of the presentation. Maybe good enough for some, but certainly not what most developers had in mind when they asked for development tools. It remains to be seen if Apple is right on this one.
What else is there to say? A large crowd was gathered as usual, more than 5000 persons we was told. And apple did the usual but very annoying marketing trick of lining people out before we could get in - had to stand in line for quite a long time. Now, I'm usually not the line-standing kind of guy, but I am still somewhat on the Norwegian timezone as I flew over only yesterday, and couldn't get much sleep after 5:30 in the morning anyway. So I get out of bed, had a shower, went to a breakfast place which was quite nice - Cafe Venue, I'll post the address later on if someone care. And then I went down to Moscone convention center. There I found a long, long, long queue of people waiting to get in. Which is only marketing of course. It was 7:30 in the morning, and a couple hundred people waited to get in as this was a rock concert or something. There where rumours around that someone was getting into the line 3 in the morning. That is simply a freakshow.
So, Apple, I have this suggestion for you for next year. If you don't have anything more to give us than we got this year. Please, just open the doors and let people walk in and get a seat, just as we usually do. No need to be so annoyingly special all the time.
Ok, that's it for now - I'm off to more presentations. While the keynote wasn't that good, I hope the other presentations will be. At least, the rest of the week will have more technical content delivered by engineers. I'm looking forward to that.
Take care!
Travelling from home to SF
As I told you already, I have left safe home for San Francisco, CA, USA, and
the WWDC'07 as well as USENIX Annual Tech in Santa Clara. Leaving home was easy
enough, as my wife drove me to the central train station in Oslo. After kissing
wife and kids godby, I entered the airport express train.
The train starts rolling, but after a few hundred meters it wants a rest. Power
is out, the crew announces. Now, this was easily fixed and after a few minutes
we are rolling again. Nevertheless, I got the feeling that this travel wasn't
supposed to be like every other travel from home to US I have done in the past.
After some 20 minutes on the train, I arrived at the airport and mentally
prepare my self for endless queus, as I assumes I have to check in at the
counter. But, hey man, turns out I can do self service check-in even when going
as far as US. Great! After a quick visit to the check-in station I am all set.
Only that the machine was out of baggage identifying tapes or what you call
them. So, that was unusual event no. 2. I was lucky bumping into some helpful
guy that fixed the baggage for me and after a line with only three others, I
was all set.
Security check at Oslo airport Gardermoen has improved a lot recently. There
was almost no queue at all and I passed through in a matter of five minutes. At
this stage I am impressed and forget all my concerns about the unusual travel.
But it is not supposed to last. Next thing coming up is a delay. The flight to
London Heatrow is 35 minutes late. There should still be enough time for the
transit at Heatrow, but we better be in the air after those 35 minutes. And we
are - the pilot even manage to get some extra speed out of the stylish Boeing
737 so we are only about 20 minutes late when we arrive at the airport of every
nightmare, London "Nightmare" Heatrow.
Everything looks just fine when we enter the terminal, but after following the
"flight connections" sign for a few minutes, I see a looong queue in front of
me. I assume that queue is something not concering me and walk by on the side.
To be sure, though, I show my ticket to some airport person and ask where to
go. You guessed it right - back at the end of that queue is where I belong. So
I line up, check the time, and start moving very slowly. Wondering why there is
such a queue - must be something unusual I think, stupid me. Clock is ticking,
I should be at the gate 13:30 and when it passed 13:00 I know for sure that I
will have to run thorugh the terminal. It's the security check of course. Don't
get me wrong, I have nothing against the security checks, I am all for safety
on board. But here they obviously squeeze everyone just using Heatrow for
connecting one international flight with another thorugh I bottle neck of only
four scanners. That is way to little. So all the hundreds of people have to
line up, sweat, become warm and angry and mad and every other silly thing. Not
me, of course, I just observe the madness. Still, I may have one or two thing
to say to the managere of "Nightmare" Heatrow. This does not cut it at all. I
hope they have something in the works. For the record, I will say to everyone:
Avoid Nightmare-Heatrow for connections if you can!
After finally getting through the checkpoint, I am a bit behind schedule as
clock has ticked passed 13:30. I start walking as fast as I can, looking for
places to check gate information and try figuring out in my head which flight I
am supposed to be on. "Flight is closing" blinks on the screens behind UA931 to
San Francisco. I walk faster and almost run and find gate 27 in terminal 3 and
it's still open. Turns out that flight is delayed to. So, thats probably
unusual thing no. 3 - only this turnes out to be helpful! I get on the plane
and stay there for 11 hours. Nothing particular interesting to say about that!
And with that I have had my share. I was prepared for a similarily long queue
at the US border check, but apparently there was mostly US citizens arriving at
this time, as there was only a very few persons in line at the non-us visitors
counters. My bag appear on the belt rather quick, and after a quick ride on the
BART metro system, I arrive at the hotel. Next thing is checking in at the
event, but that will be for another post.
Take care!
the WWDC'07 as well as USENIX Annual Tech in Santa Clara. Leaving home was easy
enough, as my wife drove me to the central train station in Oslo. After kissing
wife and kids godby, I entered the airport express train.
The train starts rolling, but after a few hundred meters it wants a rest. Power
is out, the crew announces. Now, this was easily fixed and after a few minutes
we are rolling again. Nevertheless, I got the feeling that this travel wasn't
supposed to be like every other travel from home to US I have done in the past.
After some 20 minutes on the train, I arrived at the airport and mentally
prepare my self for endless queus, as I assumes I have to check in at the
counter. But, hey man, turns out I can do self service check-in even when going
as far as US. Great! After a quick visit to the check-in station I am all set.
Only that the machine was out of baggage identifying tapes or what you call
them. So, that was unusual event no. 2. I was lucky bumping into some helpful
guy that fixed the baggage for me and after a line with only three others, I
was all set.
Security check at Oslo airport Gardermoen has improved a lot recently. There
was almost no queue at all and I passed through in a matter of five minutes. At
this stage I am impressed and forget all my concerns about the unusual travel.
But it is not supposed to last. Next thing coming up is a delay. The flight to
London Heatrow is 35 minutes late. There should still be enough time for the
transit at Heatrow, but we better be in the air after those 35 minutes. And we
are - the pilot even manage to get some extra speed out of the stylish Boeing
737 so we are only about 20 minutes late when we arrive at the airport of every
nightmare, London "Nightmare" Heatrow.
Everything looks just fine when we enter the terminal, but after following the
"flight connections" sign for a few minutes, I see a looong queue in front of
me. I assume that queue is something not concering me and walk by on the side.
To be sure, though, I show my ticket to some airport person and ask where to
go. You guessed it right - back at the end of that queue is where I belong. So
I line up, check the time, and start moving very slowly. Wondering why there is
such a queue - must be something unusual I think, stupid me. Clock is ticking,
I should be at the gate 13:30 and when it passed 13:00 I know for sure that I
will have to run thorugh the terminal. It's the security check of course. Don't
get me wrong, I have nothing against the security checks, I am all for safety
on board. But here they obviously squeeze everyone just using Heatrow for
connecting one international flight with another thorugh I bottle neck of only
four scanners. That is way to little. So all the hundreds of people have to
line up, sweat, become warm and angry and mad and every other silly thing. Not
me, of course, I just observe the madness. Still, I may have one or two thing
to say to the managere of "Nightmare" Heatrow. This does not cut it at all. I
hope they have something in the works. For the record, I will say to everyone:
Avoid Nightmare-Heatrow for connections if you can!
After finally getting through the checkpoint, I am a bit behind schedule as
clock has ticked passed 13:30. I start walking as fast as I can, looking for
places to check gate information and try figuring out in my head which flight I
am supposed to be on. "Flight is closing" blinks on the screens behind UA931 to
San Francisco. I walk faster and almost run and find gate 27 in terminal 3 and
it's still open. Turns out that flight is delayed to. So, thats probably
unusual thing no. 3 - only this turnes out to be helpful! I get on the plane
and stay there for 11 hours. Nothing particular interesting to say about that!
And with that I have had my share. I was prepared for a similarily long queue
at the US border check, but apparently there was mostly US citizens arriving at
this time, as there was only a very few persons in line at the non-us visitors
counters. My bag appear on the belt rather quick, and after a quick ride on the
BART metro system, I arrive at the hotel. Next thing is checking in at the
event, but that will be for another post.
Take care!
Sunday, June 10, 2007
On my way to WWDC
I am taking off to WWDC right now - I'm looking forward to see what
this year will bring to the table; will some of mine or the numerous
others expectations out ther be met? Will it be good?
this year will bring to the table; will some of mine or the numerous
others expectations out ther be met? Will it be good?
I will do some reporting here, if you have questions, please don't
hesitate to use the comment function! And to all of you that will also
be there, hope we can get in touch :)
Sunday, June 03, 2007
Nokia E61i and Papyrus
Hi, I got some questions about the E61i and Papyrus. To be more exact, the question was if it was possible to see detailed notes on tasks and events. Today I have downloaded and installed a trial version of Papyrus for Symbian S60, v.9.1. The version of Papyrus I have installed is 1.2.13, as the latest version, 1.2.14, use some funny language when used on my E61i with Norwegian menus.
I can at least confirm that the longer notes does show up when Papyrus is used. So you guys out there who want the notes and like to use Papyrus - you can go ahead and make the purchase.
Besides that, thanks for the tip about Papyrus. It looks some much nicer than the default calendar application! I guess I have to buy it in order to test it as default calendar application (now, I have to open it each time I want to look at it). Comments are appreciated on that.
Take care,
I can at least confirm that the longer notes does show up when Papyrus is used. So you guys out there who want the notes and like to use Papyrus - you can go ahead and make the purchase.
Besides that, thanks for the tip about Papyrus. It looks some much nicer than the default calendar application! I guess I have to buy it in order to test it as default calendar application (now, I have to open it each time I want to look at it). Comments are appreciated on that.
Take care,
Friday, June 01, 2007
More on FoneLink and phones
A couple of days ago, I raved about the FoneLink program from novamedia, a very slick program for transferring information between my nokia E61i and a OSX machine. After a few more days of use, I realize that iSync still has its niche - the everyday simple syncing is probably better than with iSync. Bur for transferring documents, sounds, pictures, and in general organizing the content on the phone, FoneLink is better.
After blogging about FoneLink here, I got in touch with novamedia. I obtained a bit more information from them about a few issues that I and maybe someone else wonders about.
First, the note or description on events and todos. The reason this does not appear on the E61i and similar phones is that it is not supported by the default calendar app from Nokia. We can beg Nokia to fix this, or we can maybe use something else like papyrus (which I still have not got around to evaluate). At least, FoneLink can not solve this problem.
Further, I had to more questions for the FoneLink guys. As most of you know, the smartphones from SonyEricsson has really terrible support on OSX. So my follow-up to novamedia was whether support for the smartphones (like M600i , P1 and so on) from SonyEricsson was planned. On this question I was told that it is in the works, and probably available in about 3 months time. That will be really great - maybe I can go back to my favorite smartphone :)
My other question was about combining usb and bluetooth for syncing a device with FoneLink. Usually, you just want to connect with bluetooth for the everyday syncing, but from time to time you have larger amount of data you need to transfer. Today, a device in FoneLink is a combination of the device and the connection, so my E61i over bluetooth and the same E61i over usb is two different things. This mean that I can not choose the connection to use dependent on the amount of data I need to transfer. Now, there are ways around this but it will be rather neat if it get supported out of the box. I was told that novamedia is working on this, although I did not get an estimate on when we can expect this to be available.
So much about FoneLink and the great guys at Nova Media doing this fine application.
I have another problem with my E61i - predictive text. With all the smartphones I have had the last years, I have been able to start typing a word and the application I use, whether it is email, sms, or some other text, will suggest matching words from the dictionary. This is something I just expect to be in place, so I didn't gave it a thought at all when buying the E61i. After fiddling with settings and buttons quite a few hours, and reading manuals as well, I went to google. Just to find out that there are no predictive text support on this phone. Some claim in formus and the like that you don't need this on a phone with qwerty keyboard. But they are plain wrong. The M600i from Sony Ericsson for instance, have this - and a full keyboard, and I wrote messages much faster and more comfortable on that one than I do on the E61i.
So if someone hear me - please!
And while I wait for the perfect device, I note that every small device has it strengths and weaknesses. Maybe the manufacturers do this to have people like me hunt for the perfect all the time. I have been on the search for 10 years now, and I am still searching.
For a few days my plan was to replace the Fujitsu Siemens P1510d I am writing this on with the Oqo O2. But now I read online that there seems to be some quality problems with the oqo, which gives me some doubts. The most recent device seems to be the Everun from Raon. In addition there is the new Q1 ultra umpc from Samsung which seems to be interesting, as well as the Fujitsu U8240. I doubt any of these are the perfect device, but maybe close enough that I am willing to give them a try... The big question is of course how well they can run Linux, as I am allergic to bad operating systems.
Take care, folks!
After blogging about FoneLink here, I got in touch with novamedia. I obtained a bit more information from them about a few issues that I and maybe someone else wonders about.
First, the note or description on events and todos. The reason this does not appear on the E61i and similar phones is that it is not supported by the default calendar app from Nokia. We can beg Nokia to fix this, or we can maybe use something else like papyrus (which I still have not got around to evaluate). At least, FoneLink can not solve this problem.
Further, I had to more questions for the FoneLink guys. As most of you know, the smartphones from SonyEricsson has really terrible support on OSX. So my follow-up to novamedia was whether support for the smartphones (like M600i , P1 and so on) from SonyEricsson was planned. On this question I was told that it is in the works, and probably available in about 3 months time. That will be really great - maybe I can go back to my favorite smartphone :)
My other question was about combining usb and bluetooth for syncing a device with FoneLink. Usually, you just want to connect with bluetooth for the everyday syncing, but from time to time you have larger amount of data you need to transfer. Today, a device in FoneLink is a combination of the device and the connection, so my E61i over bluetooth and the same E61i over usb is two different things. This mean that I can not choose the connection to use dependent on the amount of data I need to transfer. Now, there are ways around this but it will be rather neat if it get supported out of the box. I was told that novamedia is working on this, although I did not get an estimate on when we can expect this to be available.
So much about FoneLink and the great guys at Nova Media doing this fine application.
I have another problem with my E61i - predictive text. With all the smartphones I have had the last years, I have been able to start typing a word and the application I use, whether it is email, sms, or some other text, will suggest matching words from the dictionary. This is something I just expect to be in place, so I didn't gave it a thought at all when buying the E61i. After fiddling with settings and buttons quite a few hours, and reading manuals as well, I went to google. Just to find out that there are no predictive text support on this phone. Some claim in formus and the like that you don't need this on a phone with qwerty keyboard. But they are plain wrong. The M600i from Sony Ericsson for instance, have this - and a full keyboard, and I wrote messages much faster and more comfortable on that one than I do on the E61i.
So if someone hear me - please!
And while I wait for the perfect device, I note that every small device has it strengths and weaknesses. Maybe the manufacturers do this to have people like me hunt for the perfect all the time. I have been on the search for 10 years now, and I am still searching.
For a few days my plan was to replace the Fujitsu Siemens P1510d I am writing this on with the Oqo O2. But now I read online that there seems to be some quality problems with the oqo, which gives me some doubts. The most recent device seems to be the Everun from Raon. In addition there is the new Q1 ultra umpc from Samsung which seems to be interesting, as well as the Fujitsu U8240. I doubt any of these are the perfect device, but maybe close enough that I am willing to give them a try... The big question is of course how well they can run Linux, as I am allergic to bad operating systems.
Take care, folks!
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