Monday, March 29, 2010

eCard problems continued

Well, the problems with my healthcare card (eCard) as an Austrian Citizan Card (Bürgerkarte) still continue.
  1. My old card had problems, so it was replaced with a newer version last December...
  2. Then the availabe citizen card software (Bürgerkartenumgebung) was not compatible with the new type of cards, and I was told this would be fixed in January.
  3. It was not
However, now there is a new citizen card software called MOCCA: it is Java based (finally) and available through webstart...
Works quite well for the one application where I would not really require the Bürgerkarte: Finanzonline - the federal tax return/claim application. It does not require a citizen card login... but there it does work.

For applications that require the login, like my (federal) pension plan, it still does not work.
Error code 2006:
HTTP/HTTPS binding: Incorrect parameter encoding.
Seems that they are not ready for MOCCA yet (after about 2months).

Could someone out there please coordinate the government agencies? What about synchronized releases of obviously interdependent pieces of software?

Tuesday, March 09, 2010

Flickr language - could this be any more embarrassing

Remember how I ranted about how Fickr changed the language to German for my account, and I could not find how to change it back to English...

Oh this is sooo embarrassing.... really... but I have to admit this...

Anyone ever take a look at the bottom most bar in flickr?


Yeah... that one.

Turns out, that when you click on English, it changes the language to English.

Another example, if you click on Deutsch, it changes the language to German/Deutsch.

Funny stuff, really.

Monday, March 08, 2010

Flickr language

And why exactly is it, that Flickr fall of a sudden talks German to me?
I did not change any preferences, still have en_xx way before de_xx in my browser language settings, ...

But starting last weekend, Flickr is German.
And no option[1] to turn it off.

What the f%&/( ??
--
[1] none that I could find, anyway.

Friday, March 05, 2010

April 3rd - I'd rather stay offline

So, the iPad will hit the stores on April 3rd this year...

I think I'll stay offline that day, because all the blogs, twitter, facebook and whatnot will be full with love and hate messages, and Why the iPad is the best device ever, and Why it is total crap...

The usual fight between Apple fan boys and the Apple haters, as well as those who expected a thinner/smaller MacBook with a full OS and those who love the idea of a larger iPhone...

I'll just stay offline ....

Monday, March 01, 2010

Google Acquires Online Image-Editing Tool Picnik


Odd .... Google Acquires Online Image-Editing Tool Picnik (see also here)
I know Picnik mainly from / for Flickr, which now is a Yahoo company...

So, did Google just grab Picnik before Yahoo had chance?

Then again, it was also available for Picasa et al... still surprised me.

Skype on Nokia E71 - update

So, I've been using (native) Skype on the E71 for a couple of days now, and it really works quite well.
Faster then the Java version (and that's me saying this). And more complete.

It does, however, not honor the settings for
  • Default access point
and
  • Sign In [When Skype starts].

It currently ignores both.

I changed them to their other respective values, restarted Skype, changed them back, still no change.