on my mind!! - just some random stuff thats on my plate.

 

Outlook/Exchange alternatives/Integration! its obvious that LDAP/Caldav will somehow, one day may need to be integrated but its bloody amazing that Outlook just comes to life once you have exchange server - sharing calenders, contacts and all - however auto-complete contacts (NK2) are not importable via outlook using some friendly interface which would be great - as I (in a thick Indian accent) "having to do this manually" at the moment. Dare I say most users who are not familiar with Outlook/Exchange are totally dependent on NK2, and something should be done about this - perhaps like how google automatically adds contacts - even though you may only use that user once - its a good idea - space is not an issue for a few lines of text of an email address - autosave/autocomplete.


MIT Open Course Ware this is my new iphone/ipod addiction. Downloading the free lectures from ItunesU and transferring them into my iphone, then listening to the lectures on the tube or whenever. ITS brilliant. I'm kinda bored of transferring my DVD's to Mkv/mp4 to watch on my iphone - perhaps its a long process that bores me and the guilt of having to leave my PC on whilst converting huge VOB files into one mp4 that gets to me - after all - this feels like the age of being green and here I am with my PC on all night converting DVD's to mp4! - I did manage to convert Matrix (thats 1, 2, and 3) into mp4 which is still cool to watch on an iphone as is any film!.

Really sad ending though (ok I know I'm off topic), I wish that Captain Lock (played by Harry Lenix) could have seen the power of Neo and watch him blow up those machines - that was an incredible idea - however the whole excitement/magic was summed up with the first Matrix at the end when Tank goes "How?" and Morpheus says "He is the One" - this is right after we see Neo re-born. Then in Matrix 3 we don't get that same spoon fed reaction, whens its even more amazing that he can destroy them the machines in the real world, it would have been great to see other characters reactions, especially Captain Lock. This has been done before in several films where a non-believer military/goverment type guy - towards the end of the story sees or realises that all that he thought he knew is now irrelevant, and ultimately all this time he was WRONG to doubt the main character of the film.


Well alot of credit goes to the people at MIT for doing this, its not easy having to video lectures and then upload them and i guess there is alot of hard work involved, they don't mention the cameramen, or how they edit the footage which might be good for other uni's to do - (sometimes I've been a cameraman and its hard work, you're the first person to arrive and the last to leave and you get NO credit, nothing! - but its not about that). Currently I'm following the Computer Science lectures and learning a bit of python which feels more rewarding than when I was learning Java back in 1999 - as I look back fondly sitting in my armchair, with a pair of simpson slippers and a jack russell - one remembers, oh how I wanted to use swing interfaces but you had to wait 10 years for java to compile your code, and then another 10 years for it to run on your 200Mhz machine running windows 98. I tell ya, now is the best time to be a study or be a computer scientist (except if you were a student in the 50s/60s/70s/80s, they had some cool kit back then!)
 [ If I had seen the MITS Altair I'm sure I would have been inspired about one day creating Win32APi's, Dll's, Registry's, Icon's oh and lets not forget Outlook/Exchange server hahaha, sure why not. Even that made me laugh.]

This is a great film by the way - I may have mentioned it before - but I just realised that the scene with Bill Gates talking about stealing code is not in the film. Great music/soundtrack too! Pirates of silicon Valley.

Ipad This Geek says I do! maybe...

OK so everyone well lets say the many geeks out there have been having a go at bashing the ipad. I for one, won't make the same mistake of underestimating the ipad until I've actually used it. I've been reading a few articles/blogs that criticise various issues like no-flash, no native HD, and a few others. However what my Dr said to me the other day, (he was going to say it in Urdu which probably would have sounded better?)

"doesn't matter if you cut the melon with the knife, or the melon falls on the knife - its the same thing"

What this means is ( I don't know) - but it does have some context for me such that let me explain at this stage where Apple are now incredibly successful, incredibly powerful and incredibly brilliant at what they do (largest mobile maker? really Steve? you could have added that, "we are the best mobile maker thus far"!! be honest its true). Back to my point is that people geeks in particular seem to want to find faults no matter what Apple do, granted it did seem a bit rushed, but so did the original iphone. I remember thinking to myself when it first came out 3 years ago, what really? who cares about a phone with an ipod? whats so great about that....and now I own one - and don't leave home without it - unless I forget to charge it.

What I'm trying to say is that even if Apple had presented the meaning of life to us, the very point of our existence on this planet, said that they had been contacted from another alien species who thought the ipad  was cool, and in exchange for "our" (our meaning earth - aliens would naturally think that the ipad was a human creation) ipad technology they would be willing to share with us the meaning of life, ultra-lightspeed technology, in addition a cure that will bring the end of disease, famine and drought - oh and while we are at, let's show you a technology so incredibly amazing, so unbelievable that there is not a single word in the human dictionary to define it, call it what you want - you could not comprend its meaning, it would be like going to the edge of heaven and seeing God.

What?

What's that I hear, a little voice in the corner....sounds like, sounds like its saying......

"does it have flash though?"

At the end of all this, us geeks/non-geeks would still be dissatisfied and complaining to our new Alien friends that the ipad doesn't have flash, so thats why it sucks - oh and probably something else that Linux is blah blah gloop gloop. I think you get my point.

Seriously it seems no matter what Apple does there is the minority who will always complain, bicker and generally have a dissatisfaction about it. This my friends is human nature, and an important part of our earthly dna. It's who we are. Whats also important is that geeks don't usually rush to buy things so who does? that is the consumer, the shopper, the buyer. In their hands will determine the success of the Ipad.

I'm not going to make much of judgement on the issue, except that I've been wrong about the ipod, iphone (I've got both now!), and I'm not going to make any assumptions about the Ipad. I think it has enormous potential, the kind of potential that itunes+ipod did to revolutionise the music business. Again nothing new, but revolutionary overall.

Cue "I can't make you love me" by George Michael. I think this is the song of choice for the ipad. "")



I don't buy newspapers, but recently I downloaded the New York Times app to my iphone and dare I say its my favourite app, this app is the benchmark for all newspapers, magazines, glossy's etc to follow/build upon. i'm in the UK and I'm reading the New York Times on my iphone - not just because I can (and a part of me thinks its "cool"), but also because its bloody damn good - there are some amazing articles, much more interesting than some of the stuff I read here. I'm bored of the free newspapers - and I look forward to reading The Times/Independent/ or whatever maybe some Vogue or Elle now their marketing and adverts in their glossy's are fabulous - sometimes incredibly artistic..on either my iphone, or maybe the Ipad if I do get one in 3 months or whenever - we'll see! That is where the future could be, supplying quality content for free using all types of advertising on a device like the Ipad - Apple get's its 30% cut, advertisers get to advertise, and newspapers/publishers get to do their thing. I also assume there may exist a hybrid applications that can gather all news from all your favourite publishers and put this together as one publication using RSS - and present it as MyNews, or whatever.

I leave with this brilliant piece by Andrea Elliott. Before Saturday I never knew this guy existed.

MAGAZINE

The Jihadist Next Door

By ANDREA ELLIOTT

Published: January 31, 2010

In his small-town Alabama high school, Omar Hammami was among the coolest, most gifted students in his class. How did he grow up to become a leader in an African terror group linked to Al Qaeda?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/magazine/31Jihadist-t.html
**Final note.
* I do some how, think this will affect sports - shall we say no more pay per view? Why well because now its all about free content with advertising, and I think that some clever person at one of the promotions companies will figure that to have 500 million people watching for free is worth more than having 2 million pay to watch. Especially for advertisers.

I was wrong about ITUNES!!! it was awesome!

I was wrong about ITUNES!!! its awesome! really bad!!

Ok so now we're past the honeymoon stage and what do I think about using itunes with my iphone - put it this  way my next phone will probably be an android. I'm so put off my itunes that I've stopped syncing music from my iphone; its just inhibitive/slow and is almost the complete opposite user experience of the iphone itself.
I can't stand Itunes, anymore - I thought it was good but its not.

I am an avid follower of noah of phonedog.com on youtube, and Jon (asian dude) is so funny his reviews are great. Well im very interested in the Android Evo 4G. I want to use my phone as a usb storage device if I can, I want to be able to drag and drop using windows explorer, and I am a bit of geek. http://www.phonedog.com/2010/06/02/noah-s-evo-4g-review/
But how will the internet experience shape up? Will it be as good as my iphone? We'll see.

ok, so I know I was going on about how unfriendly itunes (the actual windows app used for syncing with my iphone) is. Well I figured out how to use it as drag and drop and dare I say its actually better than WMP11. I mean I can't complain anymore because its doing exactly what I want it to do. Before I put it down to my own ignorance of not knowing how to use this software. So now I've been ripping/converting my DVD's to mp4 using the wonderful app called Handbrake. Yes originally designed for BeoS (An awesome operating system), but now available for all other systems. Its great, I can't believe how simple it is to use.

Gigs and Gigs and Gig of RAM!
So I was thinking, since we've got 64-bit CPU's and the ability to use stacks of RAM I'm talking way beyond 4GB limits (some systems I've seen on forums have got 32GB! RAM!!!). Could we create a RAM drive place the application Handbrake and together with a folder of the VOB files (from the DVD) and then start to encode it to Mp4 for the iphone? Would this have significant speed implications? I was just thinking that Hard drives are damn slow, and annoying. I've recently replaced my 3.5inch SATA drive with a 2.5inch (laptop) drive and its much more quiet and feels a little bit quicker (but this could just be my wishful thinking imagination).

So if anyone does the above, please let me know.

Music for fun?
I mean there was a time when I got my first keyboard a casio my dad bought me ( back in the 80s?) it was awesome, I've still the little thing...its funny; as I was saying there was a time when music was just for fun, but somewhere along the lines I completely forgot about how much fun you could have with music. Now speaking about fun this guy Ronald Jenkees (from youtube), is an absolute legend of a musician. I was in total awe of his musicianship and was so happy he was using fruityloops (FL Studio as its now known) to create his beats, and I can see why. If your like me and make music on your PC or whatever it can be a little too much if you've been used to playing a physically involving instrument like a guitar or keyboard. Software like Cubase or Reason, I've just never understood properly - I mean there are courses which teach you how to use them - but its nothing like picking up a guitar (electric - preferably with some distortion and plugged into an amp with volume set on 11 - Spinal Tap ^^) and strumming to make some noise. There is no configuration necessary to start playing, whereas with so many music arranging applications - they are so "un" fun that I feel they overcomplicate things and take the fun out of making music. Now FL Studio on the other hand is so easy! I've only used Fruity Loops version 3 which is even more funny, as it has no street cred (well certainly among any budding young produca!), so stuff the street cred as its bloody brilliant fun to play with. The thing I dislike about these applications, and the producers that use them is that their almost revered as though they were unattainable pieces of jewels, and theres a certain pride involved in saying "yeah I use protools".

Well, enough of me ranting on, I hope we see more people like Ronald Jenkees reminding us how much fun you can have with a simple set-up. Keyboard, FL Studio, Good Monitors. You're done! No more investing £5000 on a sterile, studio setup.