Category: Articles

Preboot

I’m sitting in the main room of Kedelhallen watching Thomas fiddle with his laptop. We’re ready to start rebooting. Yesterday we arrived in the evening, quickly checked into the hotel and went into town for a bite. After a burrito at a dodgy latin tourist trap, we went over to a stylish coffee bar for some espresso and sweets.

Aso, I’ve given my new IXUS 60 a spin yesterday, and am very pleased with it’s performance. Later I’ll start uploading some stuff to Flickr.

Preboot is done, let’s get rebooting. (Yay!)

MacBook at a glance

White MacBook product shot, courtesy of AppleSo today I dropped by both Apple stores that have recently sprung up in the centre of my hometown to check out the new MacBook. My thoughts in a nutshell:

The shiny screen isn’t as shiny as the xblack ones on Sony’s Vaios, I actually kind of liked it.

The matte finish on the black MacBook really does get all oily and smudgy, like Derek already pointed out a while ago.

The new keyboard looks great. The spacing between the keys doesn’t bother me since I have big hands, but the flat surface of the keys is an annoyance. Interestingly, the guy at the shop told me that the new keyboard is supposed to prevent the keys from touching the screen when closed – which is the only real problem I have with my current 12” iBook G4.

All in all it looks like a really sweet piece of hardware. Nevertheless I think I’ll wait to see what problems spring up with the first generation and when those are fixed, probably take the plunge.

Signals from the Leapfrog offices

Or in other words, what I’ve been up to, besides keeping myself busy over at Info.nl.

  1. Reboot 8 is shaping up to be another great conference. I’m already looking forward to seeing Matt Webb and Chris Heathcote speak, among others. I’m also still thinking about doing something myself, the question is: what?
  2. While we’re on the topic of conferences, make sure you don’t miss The Web and Beyond – the 10th annual SIGCHI.NL event. I’ve been helping with the organisation and must say it’s promising to be an interesting look at the web 2.0 phenomenon from an interaction design perspective.
  3. I have a heap of articles and posts lying around waiting to be fed to my del.icio.us account (I actually read all that stuff before bothering you with it). Now to just find the time to tag them all – to think this stuff is supposed to have a low cognitive load!
  4. Right after visiting Reboot 8 I’ll be off to beautiful Italy for some much needed R&R. Be sure to keep an eye on my Flickr photostream for slightly crappy cameraphone shots of Napels, Rome, Florence and Venice. Looking forward to that!
  5. Finally, you may have wondered about the “martial arts enthusiast” bit in this blog’s introduction. Between all of the above I’m getting myself ready for some examinations in Takeda Ryu this summer. When I get back from Vienna, I hope to be a certified teacher’s assistant and second dan in Aikido. Wish me luck.

Now back to our regular programming – deathly silence while I get some more client work out the door.

Random brick writings

An awesome random phenomenon in Woerden, the Netherlands: Just after moving into his new villa, André van Zuilen noticed the word “dick” on the front of his house. An act of vandalism by a disgruntled construction worker or coincidence*?

Original article in Dutch over at AD.nl. Via Edwin.

Schuttingwoord in metselwerk
  • We all know there’s no such thing as a coincidence right?

Een internet der dingen (open.info.nl)

“De web 2.0-hype een beetje beu? Moe van het bijhouden van alle start-ups die als paddestoelen uit de grond blijven schieten? Maak je borst maar nat, want er volgt spoedig (weer) iets nieuws. Niet web 3.0 (het web-OS), maar iets écht nieuws: het internet der dingen Parallel aan al het social software-geweld en de semantische web-discussies doen interactieve media al enige tijd moedige pogingen om de sprong van bits naar atomen te maken. Dit veld wordt gedomineerd door een wirwar aan termen, zoals: “tangible computing” (populair gemaakt door Nokia-researcher Chris Heathcote), “ubiquitous computing” (vaak afgekort tot het onooglijke “ubicomp”), “everyware” (een vrij nieuwe term) en lastpakken als “blogjects” en “spimes” (bedankt Bruce Sterling). Mijn voorkeur gaat uit naar “internet of things”, getuige de titel van deze post.”

Lees verder op open.info.nl »