Today I saw, that Apple's new Air Port Extreeme, but I remembered the much older Home Integration consept from Bang & Olufson was quite similar.
I have compared the two 3D explanations, and let you be the judge...
I just talked to CEO of the new interesting company ownox yesterday, and it seems to be very interesing things they are doing. Right now everything is quite hush, hush - but I expect we'll hear more from them in late 2007.
Well I'm not alone here in Denmark. A recent study on 137 product launches on the 16 EU countries shows that Denmark is the fastest to adopt new technology - what the authors calls Innovativeness. In Denmark the Time-to-takeoff is average 3.3 years, where the Scandinavian average is 4 years. The average in the Mediterranean countries is 7.4 years. The study also shows that there is a large differs between various product groups. Mean time to takeoff for "white" goods is 8 years, where it is only 2 years for entertainment and information products.
It would be mad it big product vendors doesn't test new products on the Danish market. The market is small, cheap to advertise in and as the study shows very fast to adopt.
If you suddenly meet 100 people in a fast food restaurant making some kind of "ballet dance" or you in a ToysRUs sees 200 people waving their hands at the displayed dinosaur you have probably seen a "Flash Mob". This new event is the newest "moving Cyberworld to the Real World" kind of thing. It starts off with people mailing their friends about where and when to gather and what to do there. It usually just takes on about 5-10 minutes and then it is over. The first Flash Mob was started by a guy "Bill" in New York, but it has now spread throughout the world - like when 200 people a few weeks ago marched to a London furniture store selling sofas and then they started to make mobile phone calls praising the sofas.
I have newer heard about web cliques until they were mentioned today in wired, but I seems like a new web phenomena, which binds servers and people together in communities based on interests so they can discuss, chat and show off their interests. If you have a thing with some kind of food, chocolate or if you think you are an http://members.aol.com/swankivy2/joincliq.html#ucsuper, there is a clique for you. It is interesting how this will evolve, but if this is connected with weblog's then it should be easy to build a kind of communities on top, based on systems like drupal.
These guys couldn't find the Ctrl+Alt+Del keys in their car:
"The Thai finance minister was on his way to a meeting became trapped in his car when the onboard computer of his BMW malfunctioned, shutting down the engine, locking all the doors and windows, and sealing him and his driver in. With air running out, they found out the hard way how well-built the cars are, and had to have someone come around with a sledgehammer and smash one of the windows after they failed to kick one out from the inside."
Read it in the Sydney Morning Herald.
There is a lot of portals out there: MSN, Yahoo,.... you name it. Useually they are full of popup banners and other AdWare, but a new start has entered the sphere: MyWay.com.
It is fast, easy to configure just like I like my start page. You can even get a MyWay toolbar, but it replaces the google toolbar, so I think I stick with that.
I think this is a great example of a customizeable portal - you can even custimize the logo to be your own, ie. "Hørup's Homepage" or whatever. It is still very american, so sports results, stocks, TV program, movie releases is for people living in the US, but you can get the weather - it you can't live with Hørup's vejr.
Finally it is possible to use international characters like the danish æ,ø and å, but you need a plugin for your Internet Explorer Browser (sorry - no support for Netscape/Mozilla/Safari yet).
The Internet standard for Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) is approaching completion. Currently the final IDN standard is being reviewed by the IETF, the standards organization for core Internet protocols like DNS and email. In anticipation hereof, the registry for .com and .net has – in cooperation with the registries of .jp (Japan) and .kr (Korea) – launched a solution for resolution of your domain names. Unfortunatly the registry for .org has chosen to wait with enabling a solution before the IDN standard has been formally approved.
I have already registrated www.hørup.org, www.hørup.com and www.hørup.net, but only .com and .net is working. It seems like email's is not yet supported - I have tried to mail jens@hørup.com from Outlook and my Squirrelmail, but no succes. The address is rejected and the mail programs claims that the server doesn't exist.
If you don't have the plugin you cannot go to a webdite like www.hørup.com, but the plugin actually converts the site name to a obfuscated URL like http://www.bq--abupq4tvoa.mltbd.com. If you have the plugin, you can actually try to make a mouse over on the obfuscated URL and check in the lower left corner of your browser (if the status bar is on) and see that it shows the correct URL with ø.
The smiley :-) and its many variants are an important (and fun!) part of the worldwide online social culture -- allowing emotions to be conveyed in plain text. It has been in widespread use since the early '80s, when it was first proposed. Yet the original message in which the smiley was invented had been lost -- until now. :-) After a significant effort to locate it, on September 10, 2002 the original post made by Scott Fahlman on CMU CS general bboard was retrieved by Jeff Baird from an October 1982 backup tape of the spice vax (cmu-750x). Here is Scott's original post:
19-Sep-82 11:44 Scott E Fahlman :-) From: Scott E Fahlman
I propose that the following character sequence for joke markers:
:-)
Read it sideways. Actually, it is probably more economical to mark things that are NOT jokes, given current trends. For this, use
:-(
-----------------------------------------------------
Thanks to Anders Rask (well, now you got the link to his homepage, please mail him to get some good stuff on his homepage), I found this at Microsoft research.
There is more here.
"640K ought to be enough for anybody." (Bill Gates, 1981)
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."(Ken Olsen, Digital Equipment Corp, 1977)
"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons." (Popular Mechanics, 1949)
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." (IBM's Thomas Watson, 1943)
"This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us." (Western Union internal memo, 1876)
"Everything that can be invented has been invented." (Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899)
I read an article in Wired about a new thing called GEOcaching.
If you are (like me) one of the geeks who have bought a GPS, but when it get down to reality, you never use it for anything, then you should try geocaching.
Around the world (134 countries) is hidden around 25000 caches. A cache is a small box with a few items (keyrings, CD's, etc) and a log-book. Sometimes the also carry a camera, so you can take a photo of yourself when you discover the cache.
On the geocaching site you can registrate and view a list of the caches closest to you.
I have only discovered 3 caches, 2 around where I live and one on my vacation in Rhodes. I also tried to find one near the Danish city Odense, because I was in a business meeting there already. This was not a good experience - I ended up in the middle of a very wet corn field all dressed up in the Armani suit and then I discovered that I have entered the wrong coordinates in my GPS for the cache - bummer!
Well, I would recomend it to anybody - the kids love it and so do I.