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Hi, I am Martin.

This is my blog on mainly technology, entrepreneurship and design. Links about just about anything comes through now and then though. I also run a site on photography called Digital Photo Guide! If you are into photography, why not check that out?

Go to digitalphotoguide.net

Reflection

Who will take care of all the brats?

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I WAS HOME this weekend with a bad cold which led to me spend alot of time in my sofa infront of my tv. Let me start by saying that I am not a big fan of reality-TV or the programs that are beeing sent as “prime-shows” today. I am more of a person who buy a full season (need I say that I live in a rural part of the world which has not yet recieved any TiVO? ) of whatever show I like which has an actual script and watch it in whatever order I feel like. But whatever, I felt ill and I craved for some entertainment so I turned to the tv.

THE SHOW that really got me going was ‘My Sweet Sixteen’ aired on MTV. For all of you who haven’t seen this show it is spoiled brats with bad parents throwing parties to show the world which douchebags they really are. The goal of the entire party is to spend as much money as possible and try to build up an image of a young person who would loose a leg to get their fifteen minutes of fame. Now you may say that the show is all free to watch and if I don’t like it I should just keep away and sure, I could. But I didn’t and now I’m here. It was just like when you are about to see something really awful. You know there will be bad dreams if you see it, but you can’t really turn your head either.

BACK TO THE EPISODE I was watching. This girl in the episode of the show was planning her party and was with her parents to a store to shop for a car. She picked one out but after hearing that it cost only about $40’000 she blew out of proportions and started to yell at her parents to pick a ‘more expensive car’. That’s right, she didn’t want a prettier car, a car of another color or even a cab. The only thing she wanted was a more expensive car and by refusing to give her this, the parents showed her that all they felt was utter hate and dispise of her. In her own words. And guess what – nobody want a screemy and spoiled teenage kid, so she freakin’ got it.

THAT WAS THE CUE for me to turn the tv off and go read a book instead. I have been raised to appreciate what I got and to do my best with what I have. I wonder how the kids of the newly rich of today will coop with the fact that real life someday catches on and everything is no longer all cuddly and fluffy. Who will take care of the brats when the stupid parents are no longer around?

ACCORDING TO a New York Times article the show reached 24 million viewers between the age 12 and 34 in the second quarter of 2008[1]. Now this is an amazing number of viewers one might think, another way of seeing it is that there is 24 million people out there with absolutly no brain. And for that last rant I sadly have no reference.

References:
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/23/arts/television/23mtv.html

Technology

Picasa 3.5 – now with facial recognition

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Just read that Googles awsome photo-mamanger Picasa is beeing updated to version 3.5 and of the new features one do stand out – Facial recognition!

With the use of this feature you can have Picasa automaticly go through your photos and find images of you and your friends. This have been one of the great features that I’ve been waiting for in Picasa to make it a good contender for the photo management tools out there.

Looking forwad of giving the new Picasa out for a spin! As usual you can get it at http://picasa.google.com

Technology

HTC Hero vs. iPhone, a beginning

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SO I AM ONE of the lucky few who got my hands on both an iPhone and a HTC Hero. This makes it possible to actually compare the two phones on a day to day basis to see which one of them makes the best handheld.

TO START OFF by some numbers and comparisons the iPhone is the expensive one of the two. The HTC is running Android and the iPhone is running the iPhone OS. They have about the same screen, the same size and the same battery-times. But I have to say that the battery in the HTC actually delivers a bit more punch then the one in the iPhone. Battery between the two is quite hard to compare though because I use different things on the two phones. For example I run my Facebook-app on the iPhone which makes me use that phone more then the HTC (yeah I know, I should be ashamed).

SO WHAT ARE the pros and cons after just a weekend with the HTC and about a month with the iPhone? Well first I have to say that the camera on the HTC feels quite a bit better then the iPhone equivalent.

iPhone
+ Design
+ AppStore
+ Simplicity
– Battery-time

HTC Hero
+ Personalization, you can change about everything
+ Camera
– Trackball, no use really with a touchscreen this good
– Android store, hard to find what you’re looking for but good when you find it

I WILL DO MY BEST to revisit this comparison when I’ve been using both phones for a bit longer. Most likely will there be more features or lack thereof I will find until then. But as for now, I have to say that the iPhone still is the champion of smartphones out there, even though it is one of the most expensive ones.

Art & Design

Stunning old photos from New York

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old-new-yorkI CAME ACROSS this set of photos taken in the early parts of the twentieths century. They’re photos of ongoing construction work and the sheer complexity and logistics of the engineering is amazing.

FROM A PURE PHOTOGRAPHY point of view I just love the colorrange and lightning of the images. Many amateur photographers today just enable a sephia filter on top of their images (me included) without thinking really. By looking at photos as these shots from NY one can actually have something to strive after.

See the full set of images at Panoramio.

Technology

‘Audiobooks’ for the iPhone

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QUITE OFTEN I FIND MYSELF in situations where I have to wait for someone or something for a few minutes or even up to hours. For a long time I have been a great fan of audiobooks to fill this spot in my life with both education and fiction. What made me a bit upset though was that the aggressive pricing on audiobooks, sometimes even higher then the printed edition. This have defenetly stoped me from buying alot of books which I wanted to own as digital editions. If pricing would be lower, I would buy more. As simple as that.

SO WHAT TO DO before the market is on the same track as me and set the prices on new books in a way where I feel that I want to contribute? Free stuff!

Librivox is a project where books which are no longer under copyright is digitalized into audiobooks by people for free. Just about anyone can pick up a book, read it in front of a mic and get it into the archive. Of course, this can not be done with new books which are still under copyright but there is so many classical writings which are not so it can actually be an alternative for quite some time.

WHEN I BOUGHT MY iPHONE I was really looking forwad to find a service where I could get audiobooks with a subscription-plan or perhaps with a solution using ads just as Spotify did with music. What I found was a small application called ‘Audiobooks’ by Travelling Classics. This was an interface to Librivox-readings which could be streamed to the iPhone and I was thrilled. If streaming is not you cup of tea there is also a version of the same app where you download the files and can listen to them offline. For all travellers and jetsetters this is a great opportunity to not having to stream data while abroad which can be costly.

THE INTERFACE of the app is not really good looking, it is instead nearly as simple as an interface can be just before it seem to lack something. But as the reason of the app is to listen to audiobooks, not to sit and watch the UI the problem disapear almost instantly.

AS AN EVEN GREATER BONUS on top of all this, the app is free.

Technology

Pigeon is faster than broadband

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Do you ever feel that pages load too slowly in your browser or those files take forever to get downloaded?

An IT company in South Africa got fed up on the slow rates of transfer using a ADSL-connection and in frustration a member of the staff allegedly said that the data would get faster delivery even if using a pigeon. Said and done, the event was created as an idea that was about to be put into reality.

“We renown ourselves on being innovative, so we decided to test that statement,” Unlimited’s Kevin Rolfe told the Beeld newspaper.

A pigeon named Winston was carrying a 4GB memory stick while completing a one hour flight, and unloading the data from the stick into the recieving system was another hour. All in all the transaction to the receiving system was two hours. At the same time as Winston got air beneath his wings a transfer was initiated over the companys ADSL for the same amount of data. When the two hours have passed and Winstons data was secure in place out of the memory-stick, the ADSL had transfered amazingly 4% of the data.

The entire event was broadcasted and hundred of people is said to have followed the race between nature and technology and I myself must admit that I would have followed it as well if I just had found out about it earlier.

So what did the telecom-company have to say about the great spectacle showing off their bad networks? Of course they are not to blame about the country’s infrastructure and also they claim to have asked the company with the pigeon to perform changes. But one might think that they would take the opportunity to actually show off some goals of how the situation is to get better instead of starting a blame-game. For me as a remote reader in another part of the world it just seem like they tried to get away.

The story is never the less great news in many places and it again shows that our networks is not build for big transfers. It was created to fetch information and exchange information, not delivering truck-loads of pure data. So for the next time you’re about to send those dvds containing pictures from your last trip to friends and family, check what it cost to send them in a box – not a package.

The full story at BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8248056.stm


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