Bloggers@large

Monument Valley I just love wallpaper. And I don’t mean the stuff you throw against a wall with that gooey, white stuff. I mean computer wallpaper: images used as a background on my computer screen. They are my window on the world (or should I say: desktop) and show me what beautiful places the world has to offer. As such I do collect high-res images that can satisfy my curiosity (for instance: click on the image on the left for a beautiful 1600×1200 background). I put them on my server in my Coppermine photo gallery. This weekend I added some […]

One of my readers (Joel Eland) commented on my Portable comparison story in which I tried to outline the current range of portable devices for us digital nomads that travel a lot. And although I have been very charmed by the solution that MojoPac offers, there are also a few hardware-based solutions out there that look very promising. One of them, as pointed out by Joel, is Project BlackDog: BlackDog is a fully self-contained computer with a built-in biometric reader and a host of other powerful features. Unlike any other computing device, BlackDog is completely powered off of the USB […]

Still buggy as hell Ok, folks, as I reported this saturday, Vista RC 2 build 5744 is out. I was obviously one of the few to obtain it in time, because this Monday, only two days after making the Release Candidate 2 (RC2) version of Windows Vista available to the public via the Customer Preview Program (CPP), Microsoft pulled the download already. Anyway, according to sources Microsoft only plans about two more interim releases before it goes final. So one would expect that this version is damn close to the final product – although the official amount of bugs that […]

$1.65 billion To me it is one of the most intruiging things about the Internet: how companies create money by spending it. The more you spend the more you get in the end – or so it seems. It worked during the Internet hype (1995-2001) and it’s obviously how it still works now in the post-bubble era: Google announced yesterday that it will buy YouTube for $1.65 Billion in stock. You can take that to the bank! I can understand the idea behind Google buying YouTube: it is far more popular than their own Google Video. But there is one […]

Act of stupidty Policing the world is a tough job. While George W. Bush was trying to make sure the US will have a steady oil-supply from the middle-east, he neglected the trouble from the far-east. A small country there, called North-Korea has been trying to get his attention for a long time now. Like a little kid that does not get its way, North-Korea has been holding it’s breath, jumping up and down and threathening the world. And today they allegedly had their first nuclear test. And I am quite sure it was no coincidence that it was on […]

Back on track? I can’t remember when I had such lengthy discussions with the VP of any company, as I have been having with RingCube’s VP of Business Development, Katya Falakshahi in the last few days. They must be working around the clock there (the same work ethos I remember from my time at Lost Boys) to redeem themselves and make their product a success. And as I mentioned many times now: I do like their product. It is easy to use – when they don’t screw up with a bad update – and it actually is a brand new […]

Just a quick note to all of you out there that Windows Vista RC2 (Release Candidate 2) build 5744, is out and will be released soon via the Customer Preview Program, which means that literally anyone can download it to give it a testdrive. It is the last public build before this next-generation operating system is released to manufacturing. You can download it here: Windows Vista RC2. Both 32bit and 64bit versions are available. As a note: you will need a valid serial to install and activate, but if you had a serial from a previous testversion it will work […]

Dodging bullets Apparently launching a new portable software solution isn’t that easy: after a major glitch in their software (making it impossible to install on some devices) MojoPac just shut down their forums, citing “an overwhelming number of requests from many of you who asked us to revamp our forums.” Sounds more like a corporate spin doctor at work. As I wrote Thursday, I was very much surprised frustrated with the way RingCube (a start-up company from Mountain View, California) is handling the problems they have after they managed to shoot themselves in foot, by launching a new version of […]

Bad Mojo About two weeks ago I wrote about this new portable solution called MojoPac. I was pretty amazed about the way it works and how it actually is a new approach to the problem of portability of software and data. I installed it on my 2inch Trekstor 30gb USB 2.0 external drive and installed stuff like Office 2003 and other software on it. It worked like a charm: sweeeet! Until this weekend when I fired it up again and got notice that there was an update to the software. Off course I tried to install that newer version of […]

Dead man’s hand The US government effectively dealt the online gaming industry (or more accurate the online gambling industry) the proverbial “dead man’s hand”. The US Senate passed a bill that would make it a crime to use credit cards or online payment systems for Internet betting. As a result, several online-gambling companies said Monday that they planned to stop doing business with customers in the United States – by far the largest market for Internet gambling. Analysts said the measure would effectively bar online-gambling companies from operating legally in the United States, fundamentally altering their business models and perhaps […]