Category Archives: Personal

Personal entries from the author

Will I use Google Keep?

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Yesterday Google unveiled their new service which is clearly in the market to compete against Evernote, Springpad and other services designed to make you organize and remember your life. The idea is nothing we have not seen before as in to save notes of text and images and be able to search for them in a controlled way.

The service might be good, it might even be better then Evernote. Evernote has been the leader of it’s kind for a long time now and is not without flaws. If there was a service presented which took these flaws into account I am sure that Evernote would loose a big chunk of its users.

But, in the light of what has happened to Google services in the past many of its users have been forced to learn how to coop without Google services as a tool in their every day life. Buzz, Wave and Reader is just three example of services that came to market, was loved by some but then pulled without mercy. With the events of Google Reader in close memory it makes it quite hard for me to trust a new service. I still will try it out (I did try to service was overloaded when I did) but I will not be quick to go all into the service.

And yes, I loved Google Wave. It was a bit ahead of its time but it was killed of much before it had time to shine.

The most frightening part of this is that one can only think of the day the Google executives start glancing at Gmail and if the service really is needed or if all mails could be send from within Google+ instead as Facebook has done. That would in fact be the last breath of the free Google service era.

More information
“Google Keep—Save what’s on your mind” by Google Official Blog
“Google Keep, an Overdue Answer to Evernote, Arrives” from WIRED
“Sorry Google; you can Keep it to yourself” from GIGAOM

2011 in hindsight

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Wait, what? Shouldn’t this post be named 2012 in hindsight if any hindsight was to be mentioned? When I started to write up a summary of 2012 I stumbled upon the post I wrote for last new years eve but I then forgot to publish so with that said I thought – why not start the 2012 hindisght with what happened the year before. When reading it through it struck me that there was many events of 2011 which has already almost forgotten. So without further ado, there is 2011 in hindsight to give some perspective before we look at 2012.

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Living off the grid

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Economic crisis, unemployment and lack of just about everything. Media show us a picture of a world in a fast spiral down into the abyss but is is really a truthful picture we see? There are people who have made a decision to let society take it’s toll on it’s own and leave it all away. I’ve found myself to read ever more articles on the subject lately and simply thought I could share some of what I’ve read. This is all about survival in the wild.
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Information (almost) overload

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Let’s start by sharing an important fact before we move along with this article. I am an information junkie. For at least fifteen years I have read more then a hundred electronic articles per day about subjects which can seem almost random. For a long time I have been using Google Reader to follow sites and blogs using RSS feeds. When ever I find a site or a blog I find interesting, I just add it to my Reader account and if gets into the steady stream of articles I get on a daily basis. I have tried to use other readers but I always return to Google Reader since it is the most slimed down  collection of articles which I also can use on multiple devices. But enough about the reader, what and why do I read?
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Learning to use my Mac

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Just a little time ago I went into action with my plan to once again loose as much as possible connected to Microsoft Windows. Windows did have a bunch of years with me at the wheels but using Vista really made me see why I did miss my old (and not really that good) Mac OS 9 so much over the Windows alternative. Said and done, in front of me right now is a MacBook Pro and I just love it.

The change from Windows to Mac introduce a few problems though due to the fact I use the computer for mainly three things: Development, Writing and Graphical work. The application used for these are as always heavily dependent on shortcuts. And shortcuts on Mac is not like those on Windows even though you quite often can change just the CTRL against a CMD to get shortcuts to work. There still is a few shortcuts which really is different.

Tonight I finally found out where PgUp and PgDn was hidden on my MacBook-keyboard. And for those out there perhaps in the same seat as me: fn + Up Arrow and fn + Down Arrow is your friend! Also, one of the best shortcuts I use on Windows (at work) all the time is Windows + E to open a new Explorer-window. For some weeks I was under the impression this did not exist on Mac until I found out about ALT + CMD + Space.

Now everything rocks.