At 12 this morning/afternoon I had my dissertation presentation and they were happy with it. Then I turned in my thesis and laptop and I’m now officially done.
Hooray!
I put online a PDF version of the (KeyNote) presentation for those interested, although it probably will not make sense to many of you, due to the lack of text and explanation. It’s my first Zenified presentation.
I’ve been getting them for the past months I guess, but since yesterday afternoon they just keep coming and coming. When I woke up this morning I had 21 new e-mails of which 20 were such stupid e-mails containing text like:
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causing response news just made. acting Powder evening hasten slumber. xanax rohypnol purpose. Other amplify minimize neurons. exhibit rewarding Later DAT/SERT knockout rhythms possibly involving termed genes. solely reward. needed centers Issues Dysphoria magnifies albeit improves mood. worsening cannot opposite occurring Therapy CBT promising results. vaccines desirable National country modafinil Anonymous modeled helpful spiritual Alcholics success recovered aided Emission scans showing primates brains. Red gamma vinylGABA
My question: what’s the point in these e-mails. They don’t sell anything, they’re just random text. And it’s friggin’ annoying because Gmail’s spam filter doesn’t recognize them.
During the writing of this e-mail I already received 3 more! Aaargh!
My Gmail’s spam folder now contains 3052 e-mails, which means that in the past 30 days I had that many spam messages. That’s over a hundred a day, this is getting crazy!
As I quickly flipped through this article I wondered, why haven’t eBook readers caught on yet? I would love to have a simple, thin, light device with a big screen (preferably around A4) that could just display PDFs. That’s all it has to do, display PDF and allow you to flip through the pages.
The device described in the article costs $650 and that’s way too much. Isn’t it possible to produce a cheap (say around $100-$150) device that you could plug into the USB port of your computer to upload a number of PDFs to. So I could finally switch off the computer and read the files on my couch? As I said it would have to be thin, light, preferably last on a battery for a number of hours. But the screen can be simple, black and white if need be and back lighting would not even be a requirement. It would just be a replacement for paper. I so often want to relax and sit and read a paper, some news, a web page without staring at a computer monitor.
It would only need, say, five buttons: up, down, left, right (you never know if the PDF doesn’t fit the screen) and select. You start the device, select a file to read and go. That’s it.
Does something like this exist in an affordable form?
Apple is recalling 1.8 million batteries given out between 2003 and 2006 in iBook G4s and Powerbook G4s that may overheat and catch fire. It turns out I’m the lucky owner of such a battery (my battery’s serial number is in the ranges given). So I ordered a new one. Great.
If you own an iBook or Powerbook you better have a look at this. It seems to be that battery recall time of year, not so long ago I think Dell also recalled batteries didn’t they?
Anyway, there’s good news too. My thesis is done! I just brought it to the printer/binder this morning. Just little over one week more to go and I’ll be going back to Holland. Hooray!
Personally I’ve been waiting for this for a while for this feature and it has finally arrived.
You can now play MP3 attachments straight from your inbox without having to download the file. As the screenshot shows a little “Play” link can be found next to MP3 files, when you click it you get a little pop-up with a flash MP3 player in it. Works like a charm.
I already used my Gmail to securely store some of my music, now I can also use it to easily play music on computers that are not my own without having to download files.
This recent post on Techcrunch about a new feature of Zooomr called “portals” made me realised how far we are from perfection when it comes to photo and video sharing and generally what you can do with those online.
This is the video that demos the portals feature in Zooomr:
I think around five years ago we had to buy a new TV. My dad said we’d buy a cheap one because soon the digital television would that would completely change the television landscape. Broadcasting would happen through the internet and it would be interactive. But has it happened? A little bit, there is digital television in some areas but it’s not very interactive yet. There’s more and more video material available on the internet and systems like windows media center would allow you to watch it on your television. But the real big shift still has to happen.
Have a look at YouTube for example. It’s a great site. Lots of content. But still all traditional, sit back in your chair video. Why is there no interactive video yet? I think people could have good fun with even a simple way to offer options during the video to change the story line for example. Or by allowing you to click on a door in a room to move to next in videos which try to sell you real estate.
New online flash video sites are being launched all the time, increasingly these even offer ways to edit your videos online using a flash interface. Cut them up into fragments, reorder them, combine them and so on. Wouldn’t it be interesting to allow users to also create simple menus inside the video that determine the next video to play? It would be so simple, yet so powerful.
Yes, I do realise that you do not always want interactive television, sometimes you really just want to sit back. But especially the videos that you watch sitting behind a PC can be made interactive. People probably sit in uncomfortable chairs anyway, they don’t always like sitting back they like to click.
This is such a great time to be a web developer. I wish I still enjoyed programming like six years ago I would be working on so many projects doing great stuff. When I did web development the most exciting thing you could do was building a bulletin board. Gosh times have changed. I wish I was very rich and could hire people to do the programming for me.
