MacBook Pro. My new MacBook Pro came back from repairs in about a week with a new keyboard. Apparently initially Apple didn't want to replace it, but then the repair center convinced them that it was unusable. They say they are replacing quite a few new keyboards.
Leopard. The only serious issue that I have with Leopard is that every time I need to connect to an office file server (running MacOS X Server 10.4), it takes up to a couple of minutes to get the list of volumes. It's quite annoying, even if after the volume has been mounted it works smoothly (it might be a little slow considering that this should be a 54Mbit network, but I haven't done serious testing and most of the stuff I do goes trough the 2Mb internet connection which is the bottleneck anyway). I have started running TimeMachine and I feel very well backed up now (and the UI is amazing). Today I installed widemail, which is finally replacing an utility I was using on Tiger to have a 3 column version of Mail.app.
Gmail. For the last couple of weeks I have been forwarding all my mail to a gmail account mapped to our evectors.com domain. It works very well, I love being able to access my mail from my iPod Touch via the web UI and from my phone via IMAP.
iPod Touch. I'm very happy with my iPod Touch, I use it all the time for web surfing while at home (it's Wikipedia in my poket). iPhones are not available in Italy yet, and most probably I will get one once they become available, but I must say that I feel I will be adding an activity I hate (phone) to one I love (surfing): one of the reasons I like my iPod is that it doesn't ring ;-) A slightly larger version, maybe less portable but with some more pixels, would be great tool.
Fender FM 25 DSP. It's my new cheap practice guitar amp (not that I do anything else but practicing with my guitar). It's average quality, but it's way faster to use than hooking everything up on my computer at home. So I'm playing a little bit more.
About 3 weeks ago the screen of my MacBook Pro went dark. The screen was still working, I could see images pointing a strong light, but it was not backlit. Since I was about to leave for the US and we were planning to buy a new MacBook anyway, I ordered a new one, transferred everything, and send the old one for repair.
Something I noticed right away with the new MacBook is that the keyboard doesn't work very well. All keys work, but I need to push much more. While writing on the keyboard of the old MacBook was a delight, the new one was hard and quite often there were missing letters in what I was writing.
Anyway, I went to New York, while there I bought Leopard and upgraded, and when I got back I found my old MacBook repaired.
After working one more week on the new one, I have decided that the keyboard is flawed and I'm sending it back for repairs. So I just moved everything back to my old MacBook and tomorrow I'll send the new one away.
Thanks to the migration tools the transfer is quite smooth (some applications need to be re-registered, but it's not a big deal), if everything goes well I will move everything back to the new machine next weekend, for the third time in a month.
I'm writing this post mostly to enjoy using a nice keyboard again, it's like playing my Gibson ES335 versus my old acoustic: it feels great (and I can play a MacBook much better than a guitar ;-)
Today the iPhone was launched on the UK market, other European markets will follow, sooner or later, and I'm still wondering what I will do when they will make the phone available in Italy.
Not only the phone doesn't support European fast 3G networks (like most other modern phones do), but it also come bundled with a contract, which is something that really bugs me.
According to some rumors, Apple is required to sell an "open" version of the iPhone on the French market (and maybe even the Italian one), and some say that they will, but at a significantly higher price. Which probably means that Apple is getting a share of the contract with the telco.
Actually I do remember reading that the iPhone is so complex that it's necessarily more expensive than other smartphones, and that Apple needs to sell it with a locked contract in order to cover this additional value.
Yet, I look at my iPod Touch, I look at an iPhone, and I notice that the first has just the same hardware as the second, minus a camera, a GSM and a Bluetooth chips, and a few less applications installed. And the price difference is €/$200.
Now, with 200 bucks I can buy a couple of phones with a camera and a GSM chip (and a battery, a case, a keyboard, a display, etc.). Which I think it means that Apple is making more money with the iPhone than the iPod Touch even before getting a share of the traffic contract.
These are very cool products, and even if they are still in their early stage, you can see genius. But before parting from all that money, I guess I will wait a little bit to get a slightly better deal.
(Or, quite possibly, I won't resist and buy one as soon as it becomes available).
Coming back from a big conference in Berlin, my friend Marco has an interesting idea about a different type of meeting. He's calling it "pod", here's how it should work:
8-10 participants
everybody pays about €200
participants choose an organizer (the organizer doesn't pay)
the organizer... uh... organizes and invites a discussion leader, who gets paid €1000 (the rest of the money is used to pay for the room and food)
the venue should be near an airport with lots of low cost flights (for example Stansted)
A schedule for a pod day:
8am-10am breakfast
10am-1pm discussion leader introduces the pod theme
1pm - 3pm lunch
3pm - 6pm b-side: conversations about the theme
6pm - 8pm cocktails and dinner
The key elements of this format should be:
timing optimization
symmetry between time dedicated to discussion and time for casual conversations (6+6 hours)
everybody participates (8-10 people sitting around a table)
it should be a learning and business networking opportunity at the same time
It sounds like an interesting approach, maybe €200 are not enough but spending a little more should not be an issue. It's quite clear that Marco has been thinking about "around a table" type of events recently (he just invited me to such a gathering in Genova). In times of huge conferences it's an interesting approach.
Recently I have been thinking about a little device which I think would make my already pretty happy digital life almost perfect: a 3G/Edge/wifi router.
I can get on-line everywhere with decent bandwidth with my 3G phone, I can plug a 3G USB modem in my MacBook Pro and WiFi networks are becoming common everywhere, allowing me to use my Mac and also my iPod Touch.
But being able to get on-line everywhere is not as easy as it could get, I have to configure a lots of hardware and software, buy different subscriptions and deal with every system update and assorted incompatibilities between devices.
I got this idea when I was sharing my 3G modem via wifi with Dave while sitting in Piazza del Duomo in Milano. It worked well, but I would like achieve the same result with a little toy which could very well only sport an on/off button.
I would buy this little device (which should also have a rechargeable battery) from a cell service provider with some sort of convenient flat data service, and it would contain a SIM card.
Clicking the ON button should trigger a connection (3G, Edge or whatever other standards are supported around the globe) and share it on a local wifi network. It doesn't have to be very powerful, it just have to get all my toys on-line in a very simple and configuration free way.
PS: if such a device already exists, please tell me where I should send my money ;->
Yesterday Blognation run a post about Evectors Pages (thanks for the great post Amanda), a new technology we have been working on recently.
Working on a client's project, we wanted to introduce a tool which would allow several authors to work on the same document, while maintaining ownership of their contributions to the page. A sort of wiki organized in posts if you like, or a blog page not in reverse chronological order.
Not finding an existing application doing what we needed, we started working on a new app with some new ideas.
For example, an interesting characteristic of Pages' architecture is the fact that all editing tools are based on Ajax and run fully in the browser. Html code for each post is generated in the browser and sent to a server via a set of API. Not only this allow real time editing on the page, without any reload, but it also takes all the rendering load off the server, to the point that there are no calls to any database when serving a page, allowing very flexible architectures and big scalability.
Pages is completely modular, each module talking with others via a set of simple API. For example we can very easily replace the authentication layer, extend the editorial tools features or modify the rendering service.
This is just a first step, we have some very interesting plans for the future of this technology. If you want to give it a try, ping me and I'll be happy to invite you to the beta program.
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