Less than two days ago, Blondmonster asked me to review a haiku she’d written for (if I remember correctly) her employer’s Christmas greeting card. We both love haikus and we immediately started brainstorming. “Cow” stanslates as “koe” in Dutch, and we’d joked before about a “haikoe” (which is pronounced just like “haiku” in English). Sometimes you just need to act on impulses like this, so without further ado, I present to you: Haikoe.nl.

The website is extremely beta, and was hacked together from Snapatar leftovers, the Twitter API and some great artwork by Blondmonster. It will break. Possibly even today. But I’ll fix it when it does, and I hope that in the mean time you’ll feed our little bovine friend some haikus. Simply tweet a haiku and tag it #haikoe. You’ll then need to refresh the page to update.

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I believe that as some point in the future, digital cameras, mobile phones and GPS navigation devices will merge into one connected multi-purpose device. You’ll be able to put images and videos online as soon as your take them, and tweet about them without having to look for cables or having to remove the memory card from your GPS-cam-phone-gadget-thingy. We may not be there quite yet, but the Eye-Fi card definitely gives your current digital camera a head start.

Eye-Fi is a wireless SD memory card with up to 4GB of memory PLUS built-in Wi-Fi. Just turn your camera on to effortlessly transfer photos and videos from your camera to your computer and favorite web sharing site (like Flickr & Facebook).

This video was embedded using the YouTuber plugin by Roy Tanck. Adobe Flash Player is required to view the video.

No more cables

I have two small kids, so I take tons of pictures. Every few months I collect them from the three(!) digital cameras my wife and I own and put them into Picasa. I hate having to open up the battery compartments to take out the memory cards and putting them into my computer’s card reader. I know it’s a major improvement over film rolls, but it’s still a lot of fuzz. I’ve given up on cables altogether because I have so many devices it takes forever to find the right one.

By the time I get the images on my PC it makes little sense to upload them to Flickr. Flickr to me is like a blog, but with photos. If it’s old, it shouldn’t be in your photostream. That’s why I thought the Eye-Fi would be great for me. The Eye-Fi is an SD(HC) memory card that stores your images like any other card would do. But it also has a built-in wireless network adapter which it uses to instantly publish your images online. I’d been meaning to try it, so I was very happy when they recently sent me a review unit.

Testing with the Canon PowerShot SX110 IS

I was amazed by how easy it was to set up. the Eye-Fi comes bundled with a small card reader, and the software you need is on the card itself. It’s very self-explanatory and it took me two minutes to set up te card for use with my wifi network. It then instructed me to pop the card into a camera and take some pictures. That’s when I hit a little snag. None of my not-so-new cameras would accept SDHC cards. Fortunately, this provided me with the perfect excuse to borrow my sister in law’s brand new Canon SX110 and use it to play with the Eye-Fi. And I found both of them to be very impressive.

How it works

When you first put the card into your PC, you enter your network’s details and your account info for the services you want to use. I set it up to publish images to Flickr and videos to YouTube. Once that is done you can turn off your computer. Pop the card back into your camera, and it’ll connect to your wifi and upload as you take new images. This happens quite fast with stills, but I found videos to take a little while. The problem with this is that the card needs to be powered to work. If your camera goes to sleep after some time to preserve battery power you may need to dive into the device’s settings to set a longer timeout.

Eye-Fi Manager

If you do leave your computer on, you’ll be able to track the card’s activity. Seconds after you press the shutter, the image pops up in the bundled software, is stored on your PC for safe keeping. Eye-Fi automatically backs up and organizes your photos and videos on your computer in date-based folders. If your camera is out of your network’s range the images will be processed when you get back within about 30 mtr of your access point. If nothing else, this makes it the easiest way to get images from the camera. But there’s more.

Twitter notifications

One feature I particularly liked was the ability to set up Twitter notifications. If I’d had this card at WordCamp a few weeks ago I could have set it up so it’d use the venue’s wifi to upload my photos to flickr and tweet about them using the event’s hashtag. All I’d need to do was take snapshots.

Impressed

The Eye-Fi is one of the most innovative things I’ve ever used. It’s amazing that they’ve fit a wifi adapter inside something as small as an SD card. It provides a glimpse into a future where all devices are connected and you can buy one right now.

You can win one!

Here’s your chance to make your photos fly too. The Eye-Fi people are giving away 12 Eye-Fi cards to reader of this and other blogs. You can enter by doing one of two things.

• Leave a comment on this post


• Tweet a message containing the hashtag “#eye-fi” with a link back to this post

Complete contest rules are here. Be sure to check them out.

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A few weeks ago I rushed out an update to fix a potentially dangerous Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerability in WP-Cumulus. With the PHP part of the plugin shielded from ‘outside use’, I was hoping no more issues would pop up. Still, I’m glad MustLive alerted me to another issue that uses the Flash movie itself. The exploit worked by calling the SWF file directly, and supplying link with javascript. I’m not quite sure how dangerous this is, but I’ve modified the movie so it only executes regular links.

Please update your copy of WP-Cumulus to 1.23 asap. For most users it should only take two clicks.

The should not affect how WP-Cumulus works on WordPress blogs. But there have been a number of ports and other projects that use the Flash movie. I urge the authors of those projects to examine the new Flash movie, and see if it still works in/with their product. The exploit is not unique to WordPress, and they may need to modify the security check to fit their project.

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I while ago I wrote about how Gravity, a native Twitter client for Symbian added some much-needed sexiness to that somewhat outdated operating system. But what Symbian was really lacking was a good, modern browser. And it seems like Opera has just fixed that.

Symbian’s built-in browser is painfully slow to use. It loads pages and then seems to re-render them using the attached style sheet (meaning it’ll first show you part of the page’s content and then appear to start all over again). It also does not play well with modern web apps that use lots of javascript and AJAX. I used it only if I had no other option, and greatly preferred the browser on my iPod Touch.

Mobile isn’t Mini

When I first got my phone I installed Opera Mini, which, probably because it’s Java-based, wasn’t much of an improvement. It had other quirks, not so much fewer of them. But then a couple of days ago, Opera released a beta for their upcoming Opera Mobile 10 browser. I gave it a try, and I have to say I came away thoroughly impressed.

Innovative UI

Opera’s new offering has a completely reworked interface that feels very modern, and is extremely easy to use. It handled everything I threw at it (including things like Gmail and Transmission’s web interface). And apart from a few slowdowns it seemed rock solid. This, much like Gravity is a piece of software that breathes some life into Symbian again. Finally, Symbian users have acces to common features such as tabbed browsing. If the OS is to succeed as an open source project, it’s going to need programs like this. In fact, they I’d recommend they’d use Mobile’s UI as a starting point for a user interface redesign. Now if only Symbian would let you specify the default browser…

*** EDIT ***
In case you’re wondering how to change the default speed dial shortcuts, Opera Mobile has a ‘right mouse button’ function. On a non-touchscreen phone, select a thumbnail and click and hold the center D-pad button until a menu pops up. Another thing to keep in mind is the shift and ctrl keys work like on a regular keyboard. You need to hold them down while pressing the next key. This is a departure from Symbian conventions, and I’m not sure how I feel about this.

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Before netbooks came along, ultra-portable laptops computers were the most expensive ones you could get. I don’t have any prove that the netbook hyped caused them to get cheaper, but they have. I bumped into Asus’ new UL30A model in a local store this weekend, and it was love at first sight. Here’s a machine that can do everything that bigger laptops can, but in a very sexy and slim package. I hate lugging around a big heavy laptop, so this one seemed pretty much ideal for me.

The only major form factor trade-off in the UL30A is that it doesn’t have an optical drive. I’m not sure I’ll ever miss it, but other than that there’s very little to complain about. There’s a Core 2 Duo processor (1.3 GHz SU7300), 4 GB of state-of-the-art DDR3 RAM, a roomy 500GB hard drive, HDMI output, wireless-n, bluetooth, one of those fancy chicklet keyboards and a LED backlit screen. And the cover is made out of brushed aluminium. My wife’s 15.4″ Compaq laptop looks very clunky and plasticky by comparison. I love the UL30A’s clean looks.

Asus

Asus has long been one of my favorite brands. My first ever PC had an Asus mainboard (the famous P55T2P4), and so does my current PC. I’ve had many people recommend their laptops to me for their durability, and my Eee-PC also feels exceptionally well-built. I considered Acer’s Timeline, but I keep hearing horror stories about broken hinges and poor support from Acer customers.

First impressions

I’m not going to be doing a full review, there are plenty out there already. I’d just like to second that the screen is a potential Achilles heel. It has narrow viewing angles and needs to be “aimed” at you to get decent color rendition. And even then there’s a blueish bias. This may be fixable using settings in the driver, but I’d have preferred a better default setting.

Other than that the UL30A is the best notebook I’ve ever worked with. It’s very responsive, doesn’t come loaded with crapware (some, but not a lot) and it runs for up to ten hours on a single charge. The box had one of the worst taglines I’ve ever seen, “Smart Laptop, Smart You”. But it definitely is a smart laptop.

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Yesterday, one week to the day after the release of Windows 7, Ubuntu released version 9.10 of their Linux distribution. It’s got all sorts of new features that have been talked about extensively all over the web, but I just found out it also fixes a bug that’s been bothering me ever since I first got into Ubuntu. Under ‘Karmic Koala’, the video tearing on Intel graphics adapters is finally gone.

Intel’s integrated video adapters have long been recommended for Ubuntu users with modest graphical needs. If you’re not into games and don’t need the absolute best possible video playback, going with an onboard video adapter from Intel was a safe bet. I have two machines that use Intel’s GMA 950 chip, and I found them to work quite well, except for this one issue.

Tearing is what happens when the graphics chip doesn’t keep track of the display frequency of the screen. This means the top part of the screen could already be showing the newest frame when the bottom part hasn’t yet been updated. The edge between the two parts shows as a ‘tear’. The effect is visible in scenes with lots of movement. Under 8.10 and 9.04, all video players would suffer from tearing, and the numerous potential fixes I tried did not help.

‘Koala’ doesn’t just address the tearing issue, the Intel video driver has been updated significantly, and now uses a new, faster acceleration mode. This is what’s so great about open source software. Things get fixed. Of course it would have been better if the previous driver had worked better, but considering how Linux isn’t a priority (yet!) with hardware vendors, this is not bad.

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There are three corporate giants that dominate tech news. All of them have recently made headlines with innovative new products, and all of them have a dedicated following among tech fans, and are hated intensely by just as many. Time to gather pros and cons for Google, Microsoft and Apple and decide who truly deserves your devotion. Please feel free to add yours in the comments.

Apple

Sweet
Sour

Creates some of the best looking devices in the business
Expensive high-end products, ‘Apple tax‘

Focused on ease of use, user experience
Shady, restrictive app approval system for iPhone apps

To be cherished as the only real competitor for Microsoft until Linux catches on more
The minute you get a Mac it is replaced by a newer, faster model for the same price

Degree of devotion among fans is just plain scary

Microsoft

64 bit
64 Kb

From what I hear, Windows 7 is actually pretty good
Expensive, closed source software with restrictive licensing model

No app approval madness for mobile OS, open to anyone
Still absolutely clueless when it comes to the internet

Bill Gates supports a lot of good causes
Long history of pushing own standards and ignoring/sabotaging others

Google

Found
Lost

Offers just about everything it does for free
Knows where you are, what you’re doing and probably what you’re thinking

Embraces open source software, open standards
Excels at making clean interfaces that are still slightly confusing

Reinvented email with Gmail, about to do the same for GPS navigation
Nothing they do looks really sexy, even if it’s potentially revolutionary like Wave

No app approval madness for mobile OS (open source)

I personally prefer Google’s way of doing business and I love a lot of their products and services. But that’s just me. Pledge your allegiance!

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My main work PC still runs a copy of Windows Vista. I’ve tried switching to Ubuntu, but I still need Windows-only software too often for that to work out. So for now I’m stuck with Windows, and as long as I am, I figured I might as well upgrade to ‘7′. But as I found out today there’s a catch.

OEM licenses

I bought Vista with my computer in 2007. Like the majority of Windows versions that come with new PC’s it’s a OEM version, bound to this specific machine’s hardware. Microsoft’s OEM license doesn’t allow me to transfer it to a new computer. I contacted my computer’s vendor to find out if that restriction would still be in place if I used a retail upgrade disc, and they informed me it indeed would.

My computer is now over two years old. It was a pretty high-end machine when I got it, and it’s definitely got some life left in it. Still, I can definitely imagine myself upgrading it with a new processor and motherboard, or buying a new one in the foreseeable future. In both cases I’d need to also purchase another copy of Windows 7. That’s why attaching my Windows 7 license to my current PC seems like a really bad investment.

Same disc, different result

As it turns out, using the same retail upgrade package of Windows 7 can result in both a transferable and a non-transferable license, depending solely on the version you’re upgrading. Since most users have an OEM license, you’d better think about how long you’re going to be using the same PC before you invest in Windows 7. Especially if you, like me, tend to buy custom-built PC’s where buying an OS is optional.

Alternatives

The way around this is to buy the more expensive full version (around €200 compared to €130 for the upgrade). That would allow me to install the OS on one PC at a time with no further restrictions. Not only does this mean an extra €70, it also means my current Vista license would no longer be used. Poor value for money as far as I’m concerned.

UPDATE: Microsoft’s response

I spoke with the Dutch Microsoft sales department, and they made things a little clearer. The upgrade itself is a ‘transferable’ product. But, it needs an activated copy of Vista to install over. So I would still not be able to move Windows 7 to a new blank PC, because my Vista license is bound to my current hardware. I could however use the upgrade version on another Vista PC if I uninstalled it from my current PC first. My guess is that a couple of months from now you’re not going to be able to buy a Vista PC anymore, and if you’d find one it’d probably come with a free upgrade option anyway. Still not a very good proposition if you ask me.

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As Jamie pointed out in a comment on this blog, Nabaztag creator Violet has been purchased by a company called MindScape. The news had escaped me because most of the press released are in French, but I’m happy to see these adorable little rabbits saved.

I’ve written in the past about how poor Violet’s service was at times, and I firmly believe this, at least in part, caused them to go under. They were getting a really bad rep. Nabaztag bunnies need to connect to a central server to operate, and is Voilet hadn’t found a buyer they’d probably all have let their ears hang.

Let’s hope MindScape fixed the software, adds WPA2 compatibility and launches some cool new ’services’. My bunny has been disconnected for months now because it won’t connect to my network and it didn’t really do anything anymore (email notification was broken last time I tried, so were lots of other services). It will be hard to come up with a business model though, as people already have the hardware, and paid services failed miserably for Violet.

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