“This is Ze Frank thinking – so you don’t have to.”
(I LOVE THESE VIDEOS!)
Month: March 2006
Gates, AOL et al
Weil ich in letzter Zeit wieder vermehrt emails weitergeleitet bekomme, in denen irgendwas von “Bill Gates verteilt gerade sein Vermögen” steht, und es sich dabei eindeutig um einen langweiligen Scherz handelt – an dieser Stelle für alle meine deutschsprachigen Leser der Hinweis auf folgende Website, die vielleicht die eine oder andere weitergeleitete Peinlichkeit in Zukunft verhindern hilft:
Aber auch wenn diese Übersichtsseite nicht existieren würde, so gäbe doch alleine schon gesunder Menschenverstand den Hinweis darauf, dass bei der Macht des viral Marketings eine solche Aktion (“AOL/Gates/etc verschenken Geld”) viel zu schnell ausufern würde und es eher unwahrscheinlich ist, dass einem im Internet (außer freier Software & hilfreicher Web 2.0 Anwendungen) geldwerte Vorteile verschafft werden. Wer glaubt so einen Scheiss?
Dann schon lieber diese netten Briefe aus Nigeria, die wenigstens amüsant und unterhaltend formuliert sind…
Aber die bottom-line des Ganzen ist wahrscheinlich nur, dass man Aussagen jeglicher Art vor allem und am Effektivsten via e-mail verbreiten sollte um maximale Reichweiten zu bekommen.
nini?
What’s this?
They call it “The Telephone Lips”, and it is nothing else but a fancy hands-free desk unit with synchronized lip movement for your cellular/mobile phone.
…and just one of those things out there where I think: Haiiiyaaaaa, I SO need to blog this. Who buys this crap?
Flagge zeigen
Eben beim Stöbern im Werkzeugkatalog gefunden: die Autoflagge und Sitzauflage in Nationalfarben zur Kenntlichmachung temporären Freudentums.
Ein für mich exemplarisches Beispiel dafür, dass es in Dland diesen kaputten National”stolz” gibt, der nur bei sportlichen Ereignissen in Erscheinung tritt und sonst tunlichst vermieden wird, um “bloss nicht negativ aufzufallen”. Oder irre ich mich da?
Für TCKs (third culture kids) wie mich und viele meiner Leser hier sicherlich eine Zwickmühle, da man im Gegensatz zu den Briten, deren Union Jack sogar als Marketingprodukt auf einem Rover Mini plaziert wird, gerne auch bekunden würde, wo die Herkunft festzumachen ist und bei der Erwähnung des Wortes Deutschland im Ausland nicht nur Mercedes-Benz, Hitler und Beckenbauer & Klinsmann hören möchte. Und die nicht vermeidbare Frage, wieso sich die Menschen in Dland 60 Jahre nach Kriegsende immer noch so schwer damit tun, einen nach außen erkennbaren Bezug zu Dland zu bekunden, auf den sie vielleicht nicht unbedingt stolz sind, sich dessen aber auch nicht schämen müssen.
Oder um es mit den Worten von Carlo Schmid zu sagen: “Eine Nation ist nämlich etwas anderes als eine bloße Bevölkerung und sogar etwas anderes als das, was man zu Recht unter “Volk” versteht. Nation ist kein Wachstumsprodukt, sondern ein Produkt des Willens, Nation zu sein”.
Manchmal, so erscheint es mir, ist der Sport Fussball der einzig gemeinsame Nenner, auf den man sich international einigen kann.
Raphael
…the man was killed here before, by cutted with this pangas into pieces. I got the job because he was killed.
When I hear some robbery, I can just go sloooowly, now will be waiting becos what is needed: don’t shoot him if he is out of the fence. What is needed, you wait him enter in the fence, and then you can shoot him. Inside of the fence.
And if you are heeero, you can even leave him after getting in the fence, you can even leave him and then you wait till you know what he needs to do. Maybe to run with the car, or to take the tyre of the car, or to broke the door to find where’s the cash – then you caaan: shot him.
Therefore, you must be ready for fight.
There’s something to this man called Raphael, a man working as an askari (night guard) protecting the National Fishing Institute in Hubert Saupert’s award-winning documentary “Darwin’s nightmare” (as mentioned earlier), that still fascinates me. What exactly is it? His low and soft voice I’ve seen with so many other askaris before? I don’t know.
What I do know, though, is that this is the best documentary I’ve seen by far.
Simba mwenda kimya ndiye mla nyama.
kikufundi
Am I a geek? A “multitool-pouch-geek” maybe ;-)
You see, I like carrying my Leatherman Wave around with me, and have ever since been looking for an alternative sheath / pouch / holster that could accomodate a bigger multitool, a small AAA maglite® as well as some extra tools, like the flat bit set which comes along with the Leatherman Wave series. This is what my collection of sheath looked like before – with the content that needs to fit in:
The downside with all of these sheaths is that they do not provide enough space for fitting all these items (Leatherman, torch, bit set) at the same time, and even if you manage to do so nevertheless (like that black leather sheath which is supposed to be big enough), the result is a baggy conglomerate of stuff on your belt – which makes you look like a nerd. I am not a nerd, I am a geek. Geeks are cool, good looking nerds. Hehe… :-)
The solution is to make your own sheath – like the one I’ve made a few months ago out of green canvas (from Kenya) and blue brocade. It being my first try on making sheaths, I didn’t make it strong enough and so it became rather baggy on the belt and didn’t have an inside pocket for the extra tools (despite looking good, but that’s just my taste on these things :-)
Now, since I wasn’t really happy with that interim solution, I figured I should check the market for a more prêt-? -porter sheath – like this Nitze Ize® Pock-Its holster:
This huge holster fits an AA maglite® as well as a Leatherman® multitool – nice, although ugly and btw wayyyyyy too big. I bought it nevertheless because I had different plans with it:
Yesterday evening, I just ripped it up and made a new sheath with an inner pocket for the bit holder:
And of course, this new pouch still looked too normal so I had to further modify it to fit into my very own Kikuism-world (I call it Kikuyumojawear® :-)
Googleardhi, part 5
Having blogged about Google Earth before here, here, here and here, there’s something new to add, something we’ve all been waiting for: new maps!
I don’t know if all these maps are THAT new – but they are more detailed at least.
I read a story on a german IT website about GoogleEarth doing this for Germany, and so I thought I better check Kenya as well. Et voilà, our new Nairobi map:
Cool! (dito Eldoret Airport, Kisumu, Mombasa Airport (MIA), etc. :-))
As for Germany, some maps improved, some were edited or even worsened while others are just horribly detailed.
That red object is my ‘89 VW Golf II in front of the house….go figure…
ajaxWrite
I received this newsletter from Michael Robertson, founder of mp3.com & Linspire, today and there’s something to this typical & sometimes also strange personal marketing approach ("hey buddy, look what I’ve made for you" etc) we are also used to from guys like Steve Gibson of grc.com or even Steve Jobs of Apple Computer – something were you would go: "oh, okaaaaay, now that’s cool". An approach that these guys have brought to perfection whereas a lonely ranger like Bill Gates still needed to learn that consumers want to be approached from this "look, I’ll explain this to you in simple terms" level instead of "my company is SO great and we have this high-tech blablabla" level. Keep it simple.
So the cool news of the day is that Robertson & "a guy named Hishem" have come up with something called ajaxWrite.com – which is an online word processor for your instant needs. The advantage? Well, instead of buying word processor software or even just downloading free office packages like the OpenOffice suite, what we get here is an online word processor based on AJAX technology for instant use. And this is what it looks like:
Bookmark this in your del.icio.us account and when you’re in a cybercafé with limited resources at your hands, point a browser window to ajaxWrite.com and you can still have access to basic word processor functions, write some text, format it and then save it or even print it out! I think this gets us one step closer to a more independent IT environment. No more need to buy software or the hassle of installing it, but instead the convenience of using technology whenever you need it – free of charge and at reasonable size. And Robertson goes on saying: "It’s a slim 400K. You read that right – its size is less than one megabyte, which means it runs equally well on a low-powered laptop as well as a high-powered desktop."
Low-powered Laptops? Huuuu….doesn’t that make us think of the US-$100 OLPC initiative?
And yes, there have been other ajax & web-based programs out there – however, this one gives us the feel & look of Word & OpenOffice, so there’s less adjustment to a new user interface. After all, all we want is to get things done. Also, there will be more ajax-based applications to be launched on ajaxLaunch.com in the coming weeks, so let’s stay tuned for more goodies. Enjoy :-)
P.S.: Yes, I know that there are a lot of computers out there that don’t have 24/7/365 access to the internet – however, I think this is a good start in the right direction anyways. As for the OLPC initiative – I can well imagine a scenario where these laptops are connected to a local server via wlan which could be running the ajax application…