Ok guys & girls. This post is a full-blown rant aimed against Google and the annoying way they do their offline advertising! Why is it that I can’t open up *any* magazine here in Holland without this annoying piece of paper falling out of it? WTF! It’s 2011 and Google uses PAPER to spam us! I am talking about the 50 Euro credit advertising for Google Ads. Literally for months and months now I am getting annoyed with this! It is just as bad as back in the 90’s when both CompuServe ad AOL where spamming us to death by […]
Welcome to the (Joli)Cloud
As an Asus Eee Pc 900 netbook user (the 900 model that came with 20gb), I use a homemade, slimmed and trimmed down Windows XP Professional version as my main OS. I installed over the dorky Linux version that came with my Eee PC. I prefer XP because I can get all the apps that I need for it, but still I think it’s too bloated. Thats why I also installed EeeBuntu (EB for short) on a 8gb SD-card as an alternative. It’s real easy to do and it works – so far – like a charm. But Eeebuntu is based […]
Google bashing the new fashion
This week Google launched yet another service to enhance the experience of Internet users in general and Google users in particular; they came up with their own public DNS services. For those who are not tech-savvy: when you type in an address in your browser, your PC sends of a request to what is called a DNS service (Domain Name Server). This will translate the easy to remember name (i.e. www.cnn.com) into a not so easy to remember IP-address like 157.166.226.26. You could look at DNS services like a postman; he knows where to put your mail – well, most […]
Motorola Droid and Google Maps: a cool combo
I have about a year to go before my current mobile subscription ends and I will be able to pick out a new phone. People that know me (or read my blog), know that I am a big gadget lover. Many have asked why I do not own an Apple iPhone. I currently own a T-Mobile MDA Vario IV (HTC Touch Pro) running Windows Mobile 6.1 Pro. Well, quite simply: Apple is just too trendy, too expensive and too closed-source to me. But mostly the first part: everyone already owns an iPhone or iPod. And most of their owners have […]
Waiting for the Wave
My small Google Wave invite post from yesterday was a great success. All 12 invites that I had left (out of 20) where all gone in a matter of a few hours. However, the time it takes Google to process their request (what the hell are they doing? checking them manually?) is kind of absurd. Google Wave seems like a nice beta testing grounds for tech-savvy people like myself, but it is totally useless if you don’t have any people to actually test it with! It’s been about 24 hrs (give or take) since I invited everyone, but as far […]
My wave
Ah, finally: I got a Google Wave beta account! It wasn’t through begging that I got it, but because I signed up for it in June this year. At the moment it is rather empty because I have no other people (yet) that I can test it with. I am sure however, that Monday morning all my colleagues that have a Gmail account, will want an invitation as well. Well, I’m not going to lie to you guys, but I got 20 invitations, and I am reserving 8 of those for people I know (colleagues, girlfriend etc..) but I promise […]
Google Chrome OS hype
Big news in IT land today. Google announced officially it’s working on Chrome OS. As usual the press immediately translated this news into something like “Google declares war on Microsoft Windows”, which is complete and utter nonsense. I used to be a journalist myself and I find it increasingly annoying how the press nowadays is just giving a twist to news that is besides the truth. Just another hype then? Don’t get me wrong: I love competition and the choice for consumers that comes with it. But Chrome OS is not intended to compete with Windows per se, simply because […]
Do the Google Wave
Forget about Bing. Do the Google Wave! While the evil forces of steve Ballmer were introducing their feeble attempt to regain control over the Internet with their search engine ‘answer machine’ Bling Bing, Google had their own party. While Steve was trying to do his best to convince the press why Bing will be important, Google VP of Engineering was rocking with his own keynote speech. The same developers that gave us Google Maps (it’s just brilliant), came up with a new technology called “Wave”. And yes, as with all Google products, its going to be available for everyone and there will […]
Mayday! Mayday! Gmail down!
Hmm, I don’ t hope this is going to be a trend, but this morning around 10:20am (GMT) Google Gmail went down globally! Since then it has failed to come up again. I noticed it because my Gmail checker on my Mac ceased to work and said it timed out. Off course I tried to find out if it was just my connection or if something else was going on. I soon ran into a page in the UK that confirmed what I figured out already: Gmail is down globally! And it’s the second big outage in two months. On […]