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Archive for April, 2006
Google Calendar
After some time, Google released their web-based calendar late last week. Initial reports of the new application being available at the URL www.google.com/cl2 led to a blank screen with an error message. Now, the functional calendar and scheduling application Google Calendar is available to all!
It does what you’d expect from a calendar. Enter appointments, enable notifications and schedule meetings across various calendars. The mobile operators supported to provide mobile phone alerts for events seems restricted to carriers in the USA for now. Instead, you can elect to have your daily agenda mailed to you or have event notifications forwarded to your email address. Other than maintaining some basic settings, that’s it. The option to import from external calendar applications is restricted to a manual operation. I’m sure it won’t take long for someone to come up with an automated mechanism to keep the Google Calendar up to date.
In the meantime, I need to find my Office CD to install those darned export translators…
Chuck Norris
6 years ago
What the hell is it with everybody going on about Chuck Norris? There are so many Chuck Norris one liners, it’s scary! Here’s a list of Chuck Norris IT facts:
1. Chuck Norris invented C++ after roundhouse kicking C – TWICE
2. Chuck Norris is the Domain controller
3. Chuck Norris has the IP 0.0.0.0
4. Chuck Norris can ping 256.256.256.256 and get a reply.
5. Chuck Norris can hack into ANY bank with his palmtop.
6. Chuck Norris’ computer boots into Windows XP Pro even though only DOS 6.2 is installed.
7. Chuck Norris’ email address is ChuckNorris. He IS the internet domain.
8. Chuck Norris is mailer-daemon
9. Chuck Norris is Dr Watson
10. format c: is the request to have Chuck Norris come roundhouse kick your PC
11. Chuck Norris has Windows XP on his Apple MAC
12. Chuck Norris never gets the page cannot be displayed error
13. Machine code is another name for Chuck Norris language
14. Chuck Norris CPU doesn’t have a fan
15. Chuck Norris can write DVDs on floppy drive
16. Chuck Norris invented the internet
17. Chuck Norris can paste pics in Notepad
18. Chuck Norris roundhouse kicked his 14400k modem & thats how we got ADSL
19. Chuck Norris’s Dot matrix printer prints photos – in colour
20. Chuck Norris uses Notepad as a database
21 Chuck Norris’ PC speaker gives him 7.1 DTS surround sound
22. Chuck Norris monitor has no glare…no-one glares at Chuck Norris
23. Chuck Norris can edit PDF files
24. Chuck Norris rips CDs with his hands
25. Chuck Norris can download Metallica mp3s using Naspter
26. Chuck Norris has a yahoo account with hotmail
27. Chuck Norris has an Intel CPU on an AMD motherboard
28. Chuck Norris can program a MAC with excel macros
29. Chuck Norris website has never had a hit – Nobody hits Chuck Norris’ website
And not to forget:
Get some cheap tunes
Legal access to music downloads is a problem. South Africans have the option of buying their music at retail outlets, or making use of the Musica online store. The Musica store offers a fair selection, but prices are high, you need to use IE and the content is full of crappy DRM. Apple’s iTunes store will take its fair time getting a store sorted for the EMEA region, so what is one to do?
Well, there’s the Pirate Bay…if you like Swedish folk music and are prepared to use BitTorrent. Maybe you don’t want everything for free.
Why not look a bit farther afield – say, to Russia. AllofMP3 has been going for ages and is a site I discovered some years back. The thought of putting a credit card through to Russia was always a cause for concern. What if the Russians offered iTunes look and feel, tons of music, payment through a third party and songs for as little as USD 0.10? It’s available at AllTunes!
Download the frontend application from AllTunes, install and allow it to pull down the latest catalog. The catalog is updated regularly and populates the frontend’s database. Make a USD 10 payment via the Netherland’s based ChronoPay, then enter your PIN into AllTunes. Pretty anonymous and your payment information remains in continental Europe, without wandering across the iron curtain.
Select music as desired, by searching.
Then download.
Payments are deducted automatically from your available credit, not by number of songs, but by data volume. So, you may get an entire album for just over a Dollar at an acceptable sampling rate of 192KHz. The interface is slick, works extremely well and the catalog has a fair number of songs.
Legal? Russian copyright law is skewed more in favour of the consumer than the record label, hence the low prices. Downloading outside of Russia? Heck, this is the Interweb – data is meant to be shared. Or is it? Use at your discretion, then!
Offline Internet
Webaroo is another company trying to solve the vexing problem of “Internet on the go”.
Their solution is based on web packs that are created by the Webaroo servers. The web pack contains the most relevant data the user requires on the go. Web packs are assembled and synchronized with a laptop or mobile device. Alternatively, favourite web sites may be downloaded.
I’d hate to know what storage this requires. Obviously, the amount of required space is dependant on the data set selected. However, with the ease of accessing the Internet at any point in time from a handheld device using GPRS or even 3G, solutions such as this make little sense.
Wooden floor blues
6 years ago
by manfred
in Moblogging
Wooden floor blues
Originally uploaded by MHertenberger.
45 sq. m of laminated wooden flooring. 16 hours…
Don’t sing along
6 years ago
This one is funny:
Anti-terrorism detectives escorted a man from a plane after a taxi driver had earlier become suspicious when he started singing along to a track by punk band The Clash, police said on Wednesday.
I’m no big fan of The Clash myself, but let the dude sing what the dude wants to sing! Another perfect example of paranoia in action – the best type of terror any terrorist could possibly hope to inflict.
via Reuters
PS3 pricing
Sony has mentioned an expected price range for the PS3. Sony Europe reckons the PS3 will cost between €499 and €599. In the worst case, that’s about ZAR 5400, which is a fair bit of cash for a gaming rig.
The inclusion of a hard drive should hardly be responsible for an increased price. If anything, low capacity hard drives should be given away to clear warehouses for the high capacity drives on their way. The primary reason for the higher-than-expected price is probably the Blue-Ray drive. It would be a pity if that went the way of the UMD – no sense in paying lots of dough for something that has a limited shelf life!
via Engadget
Shower decreases risk of HIV
6 years ago
Politics and the affairs of government officials are of little interest to me. The Zuma trial is showing up some ridiculous thought processeses in the head of the chairman of the South African National Aids Council, though. Not only did he have sex with someone he knew is HIV positive, he seems to reckon that a shower is a means of lessening his chances of contracting the virus:
Johannesburg – Jacob Zuma took a shower straight after sex with his HIV-positive rape accuser as a way of reducing his chances of contracting the virus, the Johannesburg High Court heard on Wednesday.
“It… would minimise the risk of contracting the disease,” he told the court.
What next? A garlic cure, perhaps?
via News24
Frustrating YP online
6 years ago
Is there any particular reason for the online Yellow Pages to not immediately indicate the telephone number of the company one is looking for? I thought the main reason for the Yellow Pages is to find and contact companies.
Why the hell do I have to click the Phone entry just to display the damn number? In most cases, the numbers aren’t correct in any case, so their whole database and interface needs a bit of a reworking…
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