Archive for the 'Blog' Category

Why I like Panasonic so much

Panasonic, of course we’ll have to call them Matsushita until the end of the year, is my latest favourite company. As I told in my previous post, I just bought a very nice piece of notebook made by them, my fifth product from their firm in the last two years. First of all, there was the mobile phone of my uncle. Having spent the day at Singapore’s airport on his way to Australia ten years ago, he found it in some shop where they didn’t realize its true value because even then it was outdated. Small, black & white display, the only thing it offered was its size and weight were nothing compared to the Motorola Startac 130 he used until that very moment. Two years later, he again moved on to some other Motorola device, but now I needed a new one and purchased it from some E-Bay seller who also didn’t realize its true value, mainly because it then was even more outdated than my uncle’s when he bought his. My GD-55 was silver-blue, 55g and I wore it around my neck for more than three years. I couldn’t have done that with my previous Nokia 7210.

My next experience with Panasonic was my uncle’s Toughbook W2, I guess. As I switched to Apple, he always had problems with his because of his excessive use of his harddrive and Zero knowledge of Windows. Bad combination.

I then bought a pretty cool whet/dry shaver ES8807, had to replace it once, but it works perfectly! It is fast, reliable and doesn’t make my face look like I tried to eat spaghetti for breakfast. Very cool, and Made in Japan.

Next was my headphones, the ones from Apple kept falling out of my ear and they replaced it with a pair of Sony that I gave to my brother. I bought myself some very cheap, and after their death on my running track and a bit of rain I knew: A pair of Panasonic would do the job. And they do!

Then the many DECT phones I bought for my mother’s company that where the only chic on the market. Stylish, minimalist and with a nice tone. Again, my uncle had one before, and after the purchase of four for Nuremberg and another three in Vienna, I bought myself a set, too. Okay, its date and time settings are always a mess, and I guess I have to bring it back soon, I simply can’t hand it in. I cannot live without it.

And then there is one of the best: My camera FZ-18. Light, black, Leica optics, what else could one want? My uncle has a FZ-30, wants to sell it all the time, my granduncle a FZ-10 (and at least he knows what he is doing if it comes to photography), so I guess it was a very good buy. Well, I had to send it in for the cleaning of some minor dirt inside the optics and am waiting for it right now (thus no pictures at the moment), but nobody’s perfect.

And last but not least: The CF-R7! The smallest and best notebook ever!

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Windows XP Review

Dear friends of all sorts of computers, the Macintosh, PC, mobile devices and whatsoever. Today I’d like to talk about my new experiences regarding my new operating system: Windows XP.

Well I am late, really late, although it seems some other folks around are just now experiencing the same thing. When my new new notebook arrived, It was flashy, small and damn fast. And it was a PC. After having used Macintosh computers for almost seven years now, I got to be familiar with MAC OS versions 10.3 till 10.4. A G3 iBook, G4 Powerbook and my brother’s G3 eMac were for sure THE alternative for someone who wanted a fast, reliable and usable interfaced device. It cost us lots of money (we were gladly paying), but only had one downside: It was going to become slower with each update. These beautiful and smart boxes were on the edge of their time, but didn’t give you real alternatives: In the process I discovered GNU/Linux, Solaris and all sorts of BSD, but yet it would only be possible to use these up to a pretty much defined grade, where hardware incompatibilities were regular and even Ubuntu dropped its support. Power consumption, the problem of not being able to get the notebook to hibernate and the berserk Broadcom WiFi contributed to my last decision: Switch back to MAC OS X.

Suddenly everything happened really fast: The computer went beep, beep, beep, and my paper was gone. And it was a really good paper. I gave up.

Why didn’t I live my dream of a simple interface within a simple computer? I had to make a decision wether I would try and jump into the cold water, or… well, there was no alternative. My family over in Austria helped me to find some really neat devices, as I had to live through some rough weeks without the Internet. Finally I made up my mind and opted for my all-time favourite, from my new favourite company: A Panasonic Let’s Note CF-R7. Complicated payment, weeks of waiting for it to arrive from Japan, the only country where they are sold, gave me enough time to think about how to install Ubuntu on it. It doesn’t even have a CD-drive. Then it finally arrived, taxes had to be paid, and I was free to take it home.

What greeted me? A fine selection of Japanese keys, Windows Vista Business (of course in Japanese, too) and some really nice explanations (in Japanese). So what next? I knew all of this before I purchased it, so I was very glad, and I knew the first thing I would do is to install an English OS instead, but first I had to get myself a external DVD drive, which turned out to be a lot more space consuming than my new 10 inch R7. I brought it back, and got myself another huge DVD drive. No small devices available.

Installation was smooth, Ubuntu made my day. First cool feature: 1.2 GHz Core 2 Duo (U7600) are fast, and played back HD-Video that wouldn’t even start on my 1.3 GHz G4 as if there was no tomorrow. The first bummer: Turns out its battery only lasted 2.5 hours, and it became really hot in the process. The fan too wouldn’t stop for a second. It had to go. Everything I wished became reality, but Linux was not. Power consumption, again. 14 Watts wasted for nothing. Alternatives? None.

I had to switch back to Windows, but as I for now was striving for better power management, I decided in favour of Windows XP that also came with the R7. Funny, isn’t it? It turned out that Panasonic developed about 20 applications custom for this type of computer, that regulate all sorts of consumption settings. You may alter the fan’s speed, the display brightness and there is a special ECO mode which only charges batteries 80%, and thus lets them live a happier (and longer) life.

What did I learn from the switch to Windows XP, then? I never before used this operating system, and it is in Japanese, which I haven’t mastered so far, but still it is very intuitive, virus liking, but runs for more than 5.5 hours, sometimes even up to 7 hours. There are lots of applications, drivers, open-source even nowadays makes my day. And I can type 新幹線 without having to click around, because there are five dedicated keys for it.

Conclusion: Windows XP isn’t that bad, and I happen to rather like it. OMG.

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Library of Congress @ Flickr = Splendid

So you thought you’ve already seen everything? You were waiting for Web 3.5 beta to arrive, right? Instead, there is a really cool thing going on on Flickr. The Library of Congress is constantly uploading more and more of their photo archives in an unprecedented effort of making remarkable pictures available to a greater audience, namely you.

So they got themselves a pro-account and started the whole thing.

This splendid merger of interests I think is a good idea, alone the fact makes me a bit sad, that they got themselves some kind of own rights policy similar to the one they had up until now. No “Free as in free beer,” only “Free as in free until someone rises from the dead and asks for royalties.”

The photograph of the lady by the way is in its original colors, you may even download it from the Library of Congress itself, as TIFF if you like, 141MB only. If you are bored, count her wrinkles!

There are also many pictures of everyday life, on farms, as well as in Washington DC itself. Very cool.

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Floopy Hamster!

When I found this, I got really lucky!

Floopy, isn’t it?

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Why free content is utterly important to our modern society

Thats a long title, isn’t it? “Why free content is utterly important to our modern society.”, I could have abbreviated that to something like “Why ‘for-free’ is fun!”, but that wouldn’t quite have had the same connotation. Free content, like them Linux-Gurus say “Free Beer”, that is. Free as in “you can do with it whatever you want”, and not “free as long as you don’t make money from it.”

So why do I think it is important to have such content; texts, pictures, music, programs, whatsoever? Because with communication — and remember: we live in the age mostly shaped by that — comes the question, where the stuff is from, or at least you want to know if you actually steal something or get it handed as a present, don’t you?

It is that simple with the other aspect of the whole thing: The right of building something atop of it, the modifying part. Of course if I own something, I can almost do with it whatever I want, but let alone that knowledge adds up in the process is very interesting. Of course you have always think of our predecessors, mention and thank them for their wonderful work — if it is not, we at least mention them; and redo it completely. Isn’t that great?

Wade — The Test SampleSo if you watch closely, you may have noticed pictures around, not always free, but mostly, as well as a piece of extraordinary music made by Wade (from Krakow, Poland) on moonlabel. The electronic chillout beats of his midnightsoundz compilation instantly catch your attention.

Snapo — Summer NightAnother great piece of work I’d like to share with you is that of Snapo, with his Lord i say.ep. Both of them are featured under jamendo.com, where tons of other free music can be found.

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Amazon’s Kindle

Amazon\'s KindleToday I found out about Amazon’s (new) portable book substitute named “Kindle”. Its name — first of all — reminded me of the German word Kind, which means child. Maybe its the child of books? Then to kindle sth. itself came to my mind, having said this you probably will look at it a bit differently. Are we going to set those books on fire?

So I watched the surprising videos introducing this small device. It said it was for sale at about $399, had built-in wireless connection with no need for cellular contracts. That’s what caught my interest.

Books, as well as national and international newspapers, magazines and even special versions of blogs can be purchased right at the spot, and — if e.g. you made a subscription to a newspaper — have it delivered to you — immediately. So sad its download capabilities do not work abroad.

The other thought that came to me was the remnant image of my Apple Newton, and I started asking myself if I really had heard those strange click-beep-noises when the presenter scrolled through books and articles on it or if it only was in my imagination.

Anyway, it is for sale, at least you could have a look at their video gallery here.

Also, Newsweek has a very extensive and interesting article/review on the device.

All in all, Amazon’s Kindle seems to be a nice gadget, although I would never dare to buy one. First of all, it seems to me a bit to large, heavy, and not intuitive enough. For example the navigation keys: Scrollbar wheel, large buttons that cannot be missed, even when you only wanted to hold it steady. Many also point out that it doesn’t have backlight, which is funny, because that is what you pay for — having a readable display. However, I also have to admit that the Kindle sets new standards. Not for design, not for its usability, but clearly for its wireless approach. I can imagine its fun to have one around, and I am very excited about the next step in this direction.

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Cheap Housing

If we look at cheap places to live at, aesthetics is almost always disregarded due to expensiveness. In their new article, PingMag tries to take us on a trip through Ken Oyama’s world of housing complexes.

Besides having taken stunning photographs of these otherwise (I’m sorry to tell) boring spaces, he makes us believe we are gathering around some kind of cool place. Details of unbeknownst surprise are revealed, the actual boredom is peeled of.

Interestingly, not only photographs, but also engineering drawings are presented with even more descriptions and interestingness.

Totally worth checking out.

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Human Machine Interface

Today I discovered a very interesting approach to a Human Machine Interface called “InfoTouch”. Long sought after ease and simplicity — lets say its very minimal for its own sake — is to be brought by this development of students at the Cognitive Science Programme at Linköping University, Sweden.

When the user tears at some tag, all others automatically follow. Of course, it always can be smoothened further, but I think they have done a great job.

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