Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Public Parts

Thanks to the Amazon Kindle pre-orders, I'm now proud owner of Public Parts by Jeff Jarvis on my Kindle.

Or am I? "Owner" that is  - with all that DRM nonsense?

Anyway... I have it... and can't wait to read it.

Thursday, September 22, 2011

That Hurts

So the Apotheker had to go, after the webOS and PSG disaster.
Good.

SCOTTY mobil for Android

The Austrian Federal Railways (OeBB) finally released their mobile timetable / route-planner app for Android.

After they claimed for years that it would be available for "all relevant mobiles" [1]... only not for Android, when it already had top market share.

Anyway... it's here now. And it looks good :)

SCOTTY mobil - Android Market


--
[1] "für alle gängigen Handymodelle"

Why did Google buy Zagat?

Because they not only need to index the pure content (and pagerank it by means of links etc), they also need to know the author's location in your social network.

Hence Google+.
Hence Zagat... The review alone is not sufficient, they need the author as well.

Sunday, September 11, 2011

Annoying DNS Problem

If you cannot reach this blog [1], your ISP is probably Telekom Austria.

Since about early August this year, they must have changed something in their DNS infrastructure that no longer allows them (nor their clients) to resolve it-conservations.com (nor execmampf.at - my food blog - for that matter).

I was affected, too.
When I noticed this, I asked some google+ followers to check from their side, and only Telekom Austria (aon) customers had problems.
Interestingly, their mobile half (a1.net) and their nameservers don't have a problem.

Well, I changed the nameserver setting on my router at home to 8.8.8.8 (Google nameserver); so all my clients work fine now.

So if you can read this despite of DNS problems and you are NOT on Telekom Austria, kindly let me know in the comments section.

--
[1] but you are reading this right now... weird :)

Saturday, September 10, 2011

Google+ Follower Model

To be honest, I haven't quite come to terms with the Google+ follower model. I am of course familiar with it from Twitter (i.e. anyone can simply follow you, ...). But Twitter is public. As public as can be. So on Twitter I don't really mind or care who's following me. It simply is their problem, not mine, if my chit-chat clutters up their Twitter stream.

I know that I should have the same approach to this on Google+, but somehow I don't. It definitely is a bit more personal that Twitter, that's probably why I do care a bit more who's following me. Still not as much as on Facebook.

But it does not mean, that I have to follow them. And I don't.

So thanks Google, for implementing this here the other day:

Really helpful.

Friday, September 09, 2011

The Amazon Kindle tablet

I'm pretty sure that the details MG Siegler provided on the roumored Amazon Tablet - allegedly to be called Kindle like the ebook reader - are accurate.

So it will be a 7" Android device, without any of that Google stuff, a less sophisticated multitouch, but full Amazon store integration.

The ultimate Amazon shopping device.
The perfect media consumption device, that does not even pretend to be for work and all the enterprisy stuff.

Calling this an Android tablet is probably wrong - even if technically correct - and misleading for both, this gadget and all the other "real" Android tablets.

Its a multimedia kindle.

Sunday, September 04, 2011

A thought about Android

With the currently ongoing patent wars around Android (and iOS) where everyone is suing everyone over alleged patent infringement (usually over patents that shouldn't have been awarded in the first place) and copied design, I think the real fight here is not about the mobile space (i.e. smartphones and tablets) as it appears, but rather about the upcoming embedded space.

Both Android and iOS are already beyond phones and tables, see Apple TV and Google TV.  And then there's also the range of all the other devices, where visionaries about 10 years ago (and more), told us, they'd be connected and "intelligent":
Like the fridge (not sure if that will ever make sense), or smaller wearable devices, like a wrist-watch  and/or a pulse watch etc etc. Maybe digital cameras as well.
See what WIMM are currently releasing as technology prototype and developer platform for such devices. All Android based.

Kind of the Java promise from 1995 :)