kuusanmaki

Web 2.0 Services

Published on July 31, 2007 in IT, Personal and in English. 3 Comments

Every once in a while I do a major revamp to my computing habits. I have always liked to keep everything in hierarchical order and preferred storing all the information locally on my hard drive; including mails and bookmarks. But now, as finally the online services are mature and digital convergence has taken big steps (internet & mobile, tv & computer), it is time to move on. It is not hierarchy anymore, but tagged material (metadata added) accessible everywhere.

For me there are four major areas/needs for everyday computer use: e-mail, rss-feeds, web sites (bookmarks) and communicating tools like Skype and Messenger. In addition, there is the entertainment aspect including music, photos and tv. In the following chapters I concentrate on rss and boomarks.

1. iGoogle
This is the starting page for my web experience. Google Personalized Homepage is a customizable homepage with the capability to add web feeds, Google Gadgets and apply themes. There are many other and more advanced webtops, like Netvibes, but iGoogle is suitable for my purposes and the nice thing is that there is no need for another account as many of us already has an Google Mail account (I have been thinking also of moving all my mails to Google Mail, but this needs some more evaluation).

My iGoogle setup.

2. del.icio.us
I found my bookmarks bar to get filled with stuff and was re-arranging and cleaning them twice a year. But what if there is no need to store bookmarks in hierarchical folders? Maybe they can be used more like e-mails: one folder with good search tool and the ability to add tags. Del.icio.us is one of the many social bookmarking web services for storing, sharing and discovering web bookmarks. The service is a little slow, but most importantly: your bookmarks are accessible wherever and to whoever. The share feature is also nice: no need for “this is a nice page / interesting article” e-mails as it is possible to send bookmarks to friends using a for: tag.

These are my bookmarks.

3. Google Reader
RSS enables keeping up with news and updates without the need of manually visiting sites to look for updated content. I was using Safaris built in reader, but it was quite limited. Once again I didnâ€™t want to use another separate application, so Google Reader came nicely out. Google Reader is a Web-based aggregator, capable of reading Atom and RSS feeds online or offline. This is Google, so once you have logged in to iGoogle, you have the access to your feeds. If you are lucky enough to have an iPhone, RSS mixer might be worth checking out.

With this view I spend at least half an hour per day.

4. LinkedIn
It is good to have an online cv and also keep updated if your friends change their work place. LinkedIn is a business oriented social networking site and as of May 2007, it had more than 11 million registered users. The features are kind limited, but hey, this is for business, not playing.

View from my contact page. Here is my profile.

5. Facebook
If LinkedIn is missing some features Facebook has them all plus a dozen more with the recently launched Facebook Platform. The service was first only for university students, but is now open for everyone. As a result, there are some scaling problems as the service has over 30 million members worldwide and is growing rapidly with over 150,000 new users daily.

When registered to the service, you can build a profile similar to this.

6. Last Fm
Last.fm is a UK-based internet radio and music community website, founded in 2002. It is one of the world’s largest social music platforms with over 15 million active users. So, when listening music using iTunes or iPod, a special application can send all the data to the service resulting different charts and displaying info about artists etc. You can also listen to personalized web radios, check out what your friends are listening and can discover new music. Adding events is a nice feature and it is possible to even sync those with iCal.

My account overview.

7. Jaiku
This might be the coolest application for mobile. Jaiku is a social networking and micro-blogging service (a little like Twitter, but has a mobile aspect) developed in Finland. According to Jaiku’s web site â€œJaiku’s main goal is to bring people closer together by enabling them to share their presenceâ€. The service can be used and presence information updated using a computer (there is a really handy dashboard widget for mac users), but if a mobile application is installed, the service is great. You know your friends location, can see if they are busy and when was the last time they were using their phones. There is also a nice mashup called Jaikuvision.

My jaikus.

Simpsons in Paris

Published on July 30, 2007 in Design, Personal and in English. 0 Comments

The Simpons Movie is out (interesting it took 18 years before a movie was made) and I’m planning to visit the local movie theater this week. Related to the subject, in the latest issue of Harper’s Bazaar (August 007) there are fantastic illustrations in an article titled “The Simpsons go to Paris with Linda Evangelista” (more images here).

Simpsons in Paris
Versace, Chanel, Gaultier, Vuitton – cool illustrations by Julius Preite.

Juhannus – Midsummer

Published on June 30, 2007 in Personal and in English. 0 Comments

Over a week has passed since the Midsummer eve. This is the difference between mid-winter and mid-summer:

Sun

I hope to post some longer stories during July and after that no one knows as I have to start and finish my Master’s Thesis.

Nokia 6120 Classic

Published on June 25, 2007 in Mobile and in English. 5 Comments

Those of you who are in search for a new handset, there might be a new model to be considered. Cool and feature rich devices exist, but a base model with all the necessary features with a price around 300€ are best value for money. My personal recommendation has been Nokia E50, but today as I played a little with the latest models this changed. Nokia 6120 Classic is one of the newest 3G handsets; really small and light (89g), full featured S60 device with HSDPA, 2 megapixel camera, flash and priced at 260€ (in Finland; including taxes). Check this out.

Nokia 6210
This is the one to go while waiting for iPhone.

Update: I found a blog entry with instructions to use Nokia 6120 Classic with Mac.

Photos Page Updated

Published on June 13, 2007 in Personal and in English. 2 Comments

Half year ago I was valuating different possibilities to share my photos. Few months have passed and I have tried different possibilities like Flickr and Gallery, but was not satisfied. My collection of 6 000 photos is waiting for tagging, therefore I’m eagerly waiting for a new release of iPhoto – software I use for my photo management – that is speculated to have support for Google Maps and Geotagging. This would enable totally new ways to share and search for photos; not only by time or keywords, but location. Hence, while waiting for the future, I decided to continue with the old way: publishing some galleries if there is a reason and need.

Etana
Three days gardening reveals many nice creatures like this snail.

apple.com Refreshed

Published on June 11, 2007 in IT and in English. 0 Comments

Nothing special on today’s WWDC Keynote. New Finder and Desktop with Stacks in Leopard are nice, but nothing groundbreaking was revealed. What about ZFS and resolution independence, for instance? And iLife? I guess the latter will be released in October, simultaneously with Leopard. Maybe the biggest news of today was the updated apple.com. The site, including Apple Store, is wider and black, clearly sporting the same design as Leopard. The site embodies AJAX with nice features for selecting software and checking out galleries, while for example the download area has gone through an extensive information restructuring.

New, wider apple.com

Back to the Keynote. Jobs announced that Safari has been ported to Windows. The Safari 3 Public Beta is available for download for both Mac and Windows.

Organizing objects into Stacks can help with crowded Dock, but for me the overall look may be too candy with the reflections.

Finder is like iTunes sharing the same user interface including Cover Flow.

During the last 20 minutes of the Keynote Jobs announced that the forthcoming iPhone will run applications created with Web 2.0 Internet standards. Jobs stated that the innovative approach lets developers create amazing new applications while keeping the iPhone secure and reliable. This is nice as Apple can keep their code secret while providing a ready platform for developers to build their apps and test with Safari. Naturally writing native apps with a decent SDK would be better than this AJAX base solution. My concerns as a consumer are the phone performance with heavy apps and the offline accessibility of these widgets. But we will see as first iPhone (begins shipping on June 29) reviews are in shortly. Oh, and have you heard about brushed aluminum iMacs…

iTunes U

Published on May 30, 2007 in IT and in English. 0 Comments

Apple on Wednesday announced the launch of iTunes U, a dedicated area within the iTunes Store featuring free content such as course lectures, language lessons, lab demonstrations, sports highlights and campus tours provided by top US colleges and universities including Stanford University, UC Berkeley, Duke University and MIT. iTunes U as a concept isn’t new, but now it is promoted worldwide and the site is redesigned.

Microsoft Surface

Published on May 30, 2007 in IT and in English. 0 Comments

While waiting for iPhone to hit the streets more is happening on the touch screen business. Today morning Microsoft unveiled “Surface”, a table-shaped computer that responds to touch. Until this morning, the project – almost five years in the making and code-named “Milan” – was top-secret. PopularMechanics has video and some details of these “Surface Computing” tables. The video includes an interview with Jeff Han, well known for his multitouch demos.

Microsoft Surface
Microsoft’s official site for “Surface” was also launched.

Surface computing uses a blend of wireless protocols, special machine-readable tags and shape recognition to seamlessly merge the real and the virtual world. The table can be built with a variety of wireless transceivers, including Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and RFID and is designed to sync instantly with any device that touches its surface. “Surface machines will cost $5000 to $10,000 at launch and are probably first seen in public spaces like bars and restaurants and people want to expand it into other environments” states Pete Thompson, Microsoft’s general manager for surface computing. Personally I can see this type of large devices work in groups, social places, where interaction is needed, but not for personal working. Or could the working methods change from “sitting in front of a desk and typing keyboard”? Also is multi touch the one to shift the software driven industry back to hardware driven?

Eurovision 2007 Helsinki

Published on May 15, 2007 in Personal and in English. 1 Comment

Thanks to Lordi, Helsinki hosted the Eurovision Song Contest this year (more details in wikipedia). As this quite surely was once in a lifetime opportunity, I had to check out Semi-Final’s Dress Rehearsal on Wednesday at 21:00.

True Fantasy artwork

An airport style security check welcomed the visitors when entering Hartwall Areena. The hall itself was transformed from an ice-hockey arena to an enormous studio with thousands of lights and massive amount of other technical equipment clearly broadcasting in mind. The stage and surroundings were aesthetic and professionally made (probably none of the team members in charge of the 2005 World Championships in Athletics were involved this time).

Eurovision 2007
Lights and screen after 4,000 hours of programming.

The rehearsal was an exact copy of the semi-final including all the interviews and voting results. Two large screens located in both upper corners of the arena showed the actual TV picture with all the graphics and postcards between performances. The stage with the enormous transparent LED-screen (after a closer examination I found it to be actually a metal net with small LEDs located about 3cm from each other to create the illusion of transparency) worked well and visuals, meaning mainly light and screen design, were fascinating and unique for the presenting artists. The screens were made by Barco and the moving lights by Robe – both links include interesting technical details. Pyrotechnics were also widely used, which is an interesting detail as almost everything is prohibited especially in indoor concerts. Camera work was mainly enjoyable and especially the spider cam moving above the crowd was impressive.

Eurovision 2007
The stage formed a transformable entity with five screen areas.

Well, Serbia won the final (no idea why). It felt that better songs were present in semi-final than in final. As an example Andorra and Denmark were eliminated. My personal favorites included Georgia (Sopho – Visionary Dream), Bulgaria (Elitsa Todorova – Voda) and Hungary (Magdi Rózsa – Unsubstantial Blues). Rózsa won the Best Composer Award which is given to the best songwriter among the Eurovision song composers every year. Belarus was a catchy one and Germany neither France was bad.

Eurovision 2007
Mikki Kunttu’s and his team’s light design in use (notice the turned off LED screen).

For once, a decent production not to be ashamed of as a nation.

Keychain, Forgotten Passwords

Published on April 29, 2007 in IT and in English. 0 Comments

If you have entered a password in your browser, logged in to Skype or e-mail client, your Mac has probably asked whether you’d like to save that password to your Keychain. Next time there is no need to re-enter the user name and password. However, the downside is that it is very easy to forget the passwords.

So, for Mac users the Keychain stores all the passwords. To access it, open Keychain Access (Applications -> Utilities -> Keychain Access) and find the missing item. Double-click on it, press “Show password” and enter your Admin password (the same as login password).

Visit Keychain Access for your passwords.

Firefox uses it’s own Password Manager (as it was built to run on all platforms), so the info is not stored in Keychain. Some OS X users (including me) find themselves switching between the two browsers, and it is infuriating to have some of the passwords stored in Firefox, and others in Safari (Keychain). Firefox 3 is supposed to have Keychain integration meaning that whichever browser you are yousing, the passwords will be synchronized.