Britain's Got Talent 2009 - I'm getting suspicious

I'm really starting to get suspicious about the BGT 2009 show being fixed.

 First, there was this oh so ordinary middle-aged woman Susan Boyle:

 Okay, she can sing absolutely lovely. But I thought the reaction of the judges was a bit over acted. As if they already knew.

 Second show, with the 12yr old Shaheen Jafargholi:

 

 He starts out with "Valery" by Amy Winehouse, which sounds a bit odd. Then Simon Cowell stops it and asks "what else can you do?". The boy then starts "Who's Loving You" by Michael Jackson. Which sounds beautiful of course.

 Now, how come he gets a second chance? And why did Cowell know he had a different rap up his sleave.

 I say: fixed!

What's wrong with this picture??

The Palm Pre was announced in early 2009. The apps will be created with web techniques, using cloud services to store and sync your stuff.
Now this article: Gmail sidesteps the appstore

Let's go back to the introduction of the Original iPhone. Steve jobs stated that apps should be created using web techniques and use cloud services to store and sync stuff. All hell broke loose! That was insane! You can't create a decent application with only online storage and tools!

So, what has changed by then? The web techniques were available then already. So why don't we hear anyone complain about Palm? And why is this GMail webapp so important all of a sudden?

As an answer to the article linked above, I don't think webapps will be a thread to the appstore. They're an addition to. Some apps you still want to run locally.

Someone smarter than me please enlighten me about the conflict above though!?

Great CS experience @Griffintech

Now, this is what I call a great Customer Service experience!

My Griffin Technology RoadTrip has been acting strangely straight out of the package. It works fine when using the default iPod function on my iPhone, but once I use a 3rd party app it quits broadcasting (and picks up broadcasting again once I switch back to iPod). Very strange and not easy to reproduce, supposedly.

I sent an email to @griffintech explaining the issue and they asked me to try some tests. This was back in February. Then I broke my shoulder and I wasn't able (nor feeling up for it) to try the tests. A few days ago, I tried and was still unsuccessful to get a proper broadcast for e.g. streaming radio using 3rd party apps.

So I emailed @griffintech support again and they will send me a new RoadTrip! I didn't need to return my current RoadTrip until the new one was tested. Oh, and I'm not US based either, so that makes the service an extra A+ worthy.

Great products, but even more important great service! :-)

EU wants to "protect" users, don't fall for it!

Don't believe the EU claims found in the BBC article here.

Let me give you a quote from the article:

Last month, the social networking site Facebook was forced to abandon a plan to change its policy towards privacy after a backlash by users.

The EU cites this as evidence that the regulators need to intervene to protect consumers.

Okay, so as we all know, Facebook wanted to change their policy so that they could use user information even after the users removed their account. The whole internet blew up with complaints, articles etc and Facebook thought it might be better not to do that. 
So, this to me seems pretty self regulatory, without a need for any intervention by the government.

The internet works like this: if a company or organization wants the screw the users, the internet community revolts and either the company changes their policies, or the users leave. Problem solved. 

All the EU wants is CONTROL of users and information! No protection AT ALL. So be warned!

Pet Shop Boys - Yes

(This is not a review :-))

Last night I was stuck behind the computer because of some insomnia. At about 0:05 I got an email from the Apple iTMS that the pre-ordered Pet Shop Boys album "Yes" was now available for download.

Allright, straight away downloaded and put onto my iPhone (OS3 ;-))

The album is more or less split up into two parts, where the seconds half is more somber and sad than the first, happy and sunny part. The boys also give a track-by-track commentary on the album, which is nice to hear what the reasoning behind certain songs was.

Recently I've also downloaded the new U2 album, but for some reason that one doesn't "stick" .. I don't think it's very remarkable. The Pet Shop Boys "Yes" album maybe of a completely different style, but I feel it lasts much longer than the U2 album. Many people will disagree, but I just don't think "No Line On The Horizon" is that good, and certainly not what all the hype promised. 

Back to the Pet Shop Boys album. Some songs actually really sound like they have been written for Kylie Minogue. Even though she didn't accept them. In all, the album is nice and fresh, but still pretty Pet Shop Boy-ish. The dub mix of Love Etc is good for turning up loud in the car.

Great album, welcome back boys!

Redux: lack of smooth playback with blu-ray

Yesterday I purchased the Panasonic DMP-BD55 blu-ray player because our DVD player started to show some weird defects. In a previous post I wrote about my experiences with the combination PS3 and blu-ray movies. I was very annoyed to see a stuttering playback in slow panning shots.

 First thing I did when I fired up the panasonic was to put the output from automatic to 24p and 1080p. My TV supports both. I also connected the panasonic with a high end Monster HDMI cable to the TV.

 Then the test. First Disneys Cars. What an amazing quality! And no sign of stutter effect in slower moving scenes.

 Then a "real" movie: 10.000bc
Superb imaging, and no sign of stuttering either. The movie itself is enjoyable, not extremely good, but nice to watch anyway.

 Last one was old but very good "The Goonies". This old material even looks better on blu-ray. Maybe they used the original movie reels to create a blu-ray version? Anyway, the movie is a classic and didn't show any signs of stuttering either.

 I can only conclude that either the PS3 isn't very good for blu-ray playback, or the used TV doesn't really support 24p.

 I also found out that the used hdmi cable actually *does* matter for better playback quality, so I opted for the high end Monster 1000ex cable.

 In any case the stuttering isn't inherent to the blu-ray standard, which I was afraid of.

 But one should really be aware of what components to buy. And double, triple check those manufacturer specs to be sure your TV actually support the right settings.

 My perfectly working combo:
Player: panasonic dmp-bd55 (299,- euro)
TV: samsung le37a656 (1199,- euro oct 08)
Cable (hdmi): monster 1000ex (120,- euro)

 Yes, 399 euro would give me a ps3 but I really (and I do mean REALLY) don't like the bulky ugly casing. And I truly believe the ps3 has been surpassed in blu-ray movie playback by the other players in the market. Since I'm more of a casual gamer, the gaming aspect is not important to me.

 Media center? Well, I think an Apple TV will be next :-)

iWork '09 and iWork.com after three days

iWork '09 (and then mainly Pages) for the last couple of days. Sharing documents with others through iWork.com. I'm pretty pleased with the possibilities of this service, since it also seems to perform very well on the receiver side (web).

It's nice to discuss a document online with others, however I can see that the service isn't finished yet. Actually, I dare to say that the whole iWorks'09+iWork.com package is not ready for full collaborative working.

It starts with the uploading of the Pages document. Does it need to go through a cloud? Why not just implement a Peer-to-Peer collaboration like Coding Monkey's SubEthaEdit?
But I can see that there's revenue in a cloud service for Apple, and of course the documents are available when the author isn't (which is not the case for peer-to-peer sharing). So, I can overcome the extra cloud option.

The downloading options are of course very nice, I do not need to keep a word or pdf document next to my Pages document anymore. It's converted along the way (although I fail to understand why a Pages document is so much bigger than a doc or pdf even).

The commenting and "chatting" in the iWork shared document area is great, however there is no way for the author to directly edit the document. Also here, I can see that this is not needed (or even desired!) for the shared online document. But additionally there is currently NO way to "sync" comments back into the original Pages document.

Say for instance I send a document to my manager for review. He has some comments and we discuss these online. All fine, but in the end, there are a few items that need changing, and those comments should be available in the "offline" version as well! At least iWork '09 should retrieve the comments when I load the Pages document and highlight the areas, showing the active comment in a sidebar or HUD of some sort.

Now, I need to keep Safari open, and flip back and forth between original and shared document to check for comments and change accordingly.

Annoying, especially when you have a large document with lots of comments.

So, please Apple add the above functionality in iWork '09 and I'm a very happy puppy :-)

Additionally, some way of user management would be nice. Maybe I want my manager to be able to edit the document, but someone else only viewing/commenting. Those changes can then be synced back and marked into the original document by iWork '09. 

By the way, did you know iWork.com also has an iPhone optimized site? Unfortunately it is then only possible to view the shared document, you cannot add any comments to it. Still, it's okay for quickly reviewing smaller documents while on the road, I guess.