Offline for more than expected :(

I'm feeling very isolated today :(

My server rack was damaged in the move yesterday so although Time Warner is connected I'm unable to mount my servers and connect everything back up.

Posting this from my cell phone browser sucks.

It's times like this running your own email and voip phone servers sucks.


Cheers,
Dean

Time to hang up my work boots

Well it's time for me to hang up my work boots and get back to my normal life.

Most of you reading this will know that Jodie and I recently purchased 2 apartments in Brooklyn heights and for the last 8 weeks and 3 days I've pretty much been working full time 6 days a week on the site.

I'll post a full debrief in the weeks to come but basically we gutted 90% of it and joined it into a single 1br + home office whole floor apartment and as today was the last day of construction some interesting thoughts.

There is something very powerful about manual labour. It clears your mind, all the minutiae that you normally worry about just isn't there any more.

It can also help you realise how much you appreciate your normal life.... and make you look forward to going back to white collar life.

There is also something very comfortable about not having expectations, knowing there is no pressure for you to IPO a company, or that the pickup truck you drive at the moment is practical and suitable and there is no need for you to make enough money to purchase a Maserati or something else superfluous.

There is also something cool about watching the little people scurry on the subway to their jobs while you sit in your work clothes....oh and if it's been a hard day and you stink you can always get a seat :P

Well I'll be offline for the next 2-3 days, moving servers and all my other gadgets that make my life sweet but look forward to having you all over for dinner at the new place soon.


Cheers,
Dean

3D augmented reality magazine advertisement

Read this article today on a 3D augmented reality magazine advertisement
http://gizmodo.com/5112176/new-magazine-ad-displays-3d-car-in-augmented-reality




If you are interested in implementing something like this you might want to check out Moseycode that I posted about last year here
http://deancollinsblog.blogspot.com/2008/01/moseycode.html

O2 launches multi mobile OS App Store

O2 a mobile carrier in the UK are launching an App Store for mobile apps across multiple platforms (apps are available for Windows Mobile, Symbian, Java ME, Flash Mobile, BlackBerry, Linux and Unix)

http://www.trustedreviews.com/mobile-phones/news/2008/12/16/O2-Tests--Litmus--Multi-Platform-App-Store/p1

I love the quote "And no, the iPhone isn't part of this - Apple, doesn't share remember!"

Personally i dont understand why someone hasn't done this earlier. Using wurfl it's a snap to be able to monitor which handset is visiting the store and present the selections appropriate to the visitors handset model.

I purchased the domains;
http://www.mobileappstore.com/
http://www.mobileappstore.net/
http://www.mobileappstore.org/
http://www.mobileappstore.mobi/

a little while ago with the view to setting up an application rating community but for now have held off on doing anything with them as I've already had a few offers to buy them so i might flip them before implementing a destination site, I'm just waiting to see if i get some counter offers.

Either way I think 2009 is going to be a huge money spinner for mobile application developers....I'm just not sure if Apple will still be leading at the end of 2009 in the same way it is at the end of 2008.


Cheers,
Dean

Virgin Broadband rolls out 50mb home internet

:(

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/technology/technologynews/3773928/UKs-fastest-broadband-service-to-launch.html

Virgin announced they are rolling out 50mb home internet service in the UK.

This is crap, especially on the same day that I called to transfer my cable tv and internet services to Brooklyn Heights to the new apartment.

I was told that Time Warner had dropped their 'extreme' 15mb service and the fastest service they now offer is only 10mb. How crap is that.

Aren't we supposed to be the worlds 'Internet' country, how is it that the USA is slipping further and further behind in home internet broadband speeds.


Cheers,
Dean

Breakout

wow - just watching a CNBC documentary on the early days of video games, I had no idea that Steve Jobs worked for Atari in the first few years and invented the BreakOut video game.

Cheers,

Dean

Steve Jobs points of wisdom

Check out these points of wisdom from Steve Jobs;
http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2008/fortune/0803/gallery.jobsqna.fortune/index.html

You can skip the first 5 or 6 as relatively basic PR bs.

But the one I wanted to draw your attention was slide 15

On managing through the economic downturn
"We've had one of these before, when the dot-com bubble burst. What I told our company was that we were just going to invest our way through the downturn, that we weren't going to lay off people, that we'd taken a tremendous amount of effort to get them into Apple in the first place -- the last thing we were going to do is lay them off. And we were going to keep funding. In fact we were going to up our R&D budget so that we would be ahead of our competitors when the downturn was over. And that's exactly what we did. And it worked. And that's exactly what we'll do this time."

This is something I totally agree on.

This 'crisis' should be seen as a huge opportunity to pick up some great people and invest in some great projects that will make you stronger and better once the spending does increase as people get more confident about the economy.

Think of this downturn as a chance to reset your processes, get leaner and better and use this as a chance to come out on top.


Cheers,
Dean

Filtered Internet Protests in Australia

Some of you might have seen my post from a few weeks ago. Today there were street protests in various cities across Australia to protest.

http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/270896/pictures_aussies_rally_against_against_sanitised_internet?img=13164&ssid=1&fp=2&fpid=2

Cheers,
Dean

www.CommunityOfVeterans.org

Most people know that I'm anti-war and definately anti USA overseas imperialism and domination in overseas countries but this advertisement is on such a human emotional level it's perfect as an 'advertisement'.

I dont know anthing about www.CommunityOfVeterans.org but wow their advertising firm should really be congratulated - what a perfect advertisment.

Cheers,
Dean

wow less than 25% of us households have HDTV?

Wow less than 25% of us households have HDTV?

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081212-neilsen-says-hdtv-adoption-in-us-doubled-this-past-year.html

WTF are you people waiting for?

After my bitching last week about 16:9 I can understand why cable companies are waiting, with only 1 in 4 having made the switch I wouldn't either.

Is there the possibility that these figures/survey are mistaken?


Cheers,
Dean

Yes Virginia this is a recessionary Christmas

Yes Virginia this is a recessionary Christmas.

I felt sad for the local Christmas tree seller this morning and snapped this photo, he has been so bored the last few days and is just sitting there rather than being run off his feet like last year.

He's a really nice guy, we got to talk to him last year and found out he spends a few months of the year in Australia each year (actually near Tharwa in Canberra near where i did my Outward Bound hike).

Unfortunately as we are moving on the 23rd of December we wont be buying a tree this year.....i guess we aren't the only one.


Cheers,
Dean

Detachable camera on camera phone

wow how cool is this. what a neat concept.

If this is able to record not only still photo shots but video as well to the phones memory card what a cool technology, i hope they patent it and make a ton from other vendors licensing the concept.

www.engadget.com/2008/12/09/jingpeng-e1181-shoddyphone-harbors-totally-excellent-detachable


Cheers,
Dean

Fictional character human rights?

I came across a really interesting blog post today;

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/12/word-person-included-fictional-or.html

the background of the story is that a man in NSW, Australia was charged in this case http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,24767202-2,00.html - I'm torn on this issue but based on this 90% of Manga is now illegal, and if I draw a stick figure doodle having sex on paper i can be charged with 'production' of pornography.

I love this quote "And, I should warn members of the Australian judiciary, fictional characters don't just have sex. Sometimes they murder each other, and take fictional drugs, and are cruel to fictional animals, and throw fictional babies off roofs. Crimes, crime everywhere."

Thoughts?


Cheers,
Dean

Borealis

Just watched a really interesting 'science show' (I love living in NY with how many cool 'niche' tv shows are on tv), anyway the thing that I learned is that Borealis are caused by weaknesses in the earths electromagnetic shield.

Because the earth shield is weakest at the poles this is why they are seen in the northern/southern most parts of the earth.

What was also interesting is that because of the continued weakening we could see borealis as far as the equator, of course is this happens we'll all be fried with deadly cosmic rays from the sun but at least it will be pretty.


Cheers,
Dean.
P.S. Something else I learned is that polarity (eg compasses pointing north - swaps about once every 800,000 years).

Mini - Augmented reality magazine ad

Shows the making of the new Mini augmented reality advertisement



I think this is very much stage 1 of a long road but great first step, expect to see more.


Cheers,
Dean

Wall of TV's - oh yeh

This image is so sick!!

Lol can't wait to get a wall in my house built like that.

Way cool.

Cheers,

Dean

P.S. Sorry about the crappy image quality, taken with my mobile phone.
P.P.S. A friend of mine who works for Samsung just told me to watch this space, the monitors above have a distance of 22mm between displays (eg 11mm edge on each monitor), they are about to release a line of monitors which will have a combined gap of only 7mm (eg 3.5mm per display). THIS WOULD BE REALLY COOL!!!!!