So products like the iPad will probably break all the time unless people put them into big cases, in which case they might as well have bought a notebook.

So I started wondering whether the solution would be to roll up the computer instead, and my father-in-law has now sent me a video that shows that I wasn’t the first person with this idea:

It looks like a great idea, although I’m wondering whether the outer casing won’t scratch the screen when it’s rolled up — I would have thought it needed to be soft on the outside. I also wonder whether it needs to be so big. An iPad rolled up wouldn’t be much bigger than an banana, I reckon, so it would fit into a jacket pocket or a lady’s handbag.

Sadly, however, this is just a design project AFAIK, not an actual product.

But perhaps somebody will make an actual product out of this one day. If it’s Apple, they could call it the iScroll.

Share and enjoy:

I’ve been discussing with wifie who’ll use the iPad, and we find it hard to find a single group of people that it’s perfect for. Let’s have a look:

• School kids and students won’t like it because they can’t play the Flash games that are their raison d’être, and because they multitask all the time (homework is always done while MSN’ing in another window).
• Content creators (such as bloggers) won’t like it because it doesn’t have a proper keyboard, and because it’s hard to attach a camera.
• Gadget nerds will think they don’t really need it because they already have an iPhone, a netbook, a laptop and a portable DVD player.
• Mature technophobes who would really like a minimal solution for light web browsing and emailing won’t like it because the iPad requires a proper computer for synchronisation, too.
• Business people will not buy it because it cannot be connected to a lightpro for presentations, and they might also want a front-facing camera for conferencing.
• Commuters won’t like it because it’s hard to hold on to on public transport.
• Porn addicts will dislike that it needs to be held in the hands.
• Book readers will not buy it because the screen isn’t as good for reading as electronic paper.
• Women won’t buy it because of the name, and because it doesn’t fit in a handbag.
• Game players will only buy it if there are games available for it that are better than their equivalents on other platforms, and that’s not the case (yet).

So I must admit I find it hard to figure out who exactly will think it’s worth the money, unless some ground-breaking games are soon released for it.

Share and enjoy:

However, fewer people will be aware that the “Apple iPad” was already mentioned in July of 2006:

I wonder whether the producers of this sketch are going to try to sue Apple, too.

Perhaps Apple knew it already and thought that it was so funny that they’d make it happen?

Share and enjoy:

The usual crowd seem to love the new iPad, but neutral observers seem to be distinctly unimpressed (and not just because of the sanitary name).

I tend to agree.

If it’s supposed to be Apple’s netbook, it should be running MacOS, not the single-tasking OS of the iPod Touch and iPhone that is restricted to applications from Apple’s application store, and it should have at least one USB port so that you can connect a printer, a camera or a keyboard, and a monitor socket so that you can connect it to a lightpro if you’re giving a presentation.

If it’s a hand-held web browser, it should support flash (which is needed for 90% of the web games that are Marcel and Charlotte’s main reason for using a computer).

If it’s an eReader, would most people not prefer a “real” one like the Kindle which uses electronic paper instead of a back-lit LED display, especially as the iPad is only 132 pixels per inch (ppi) compared to the Kindle’s 150/167 ppi or the iPhone’s 163 ppi?

I can also see a problem with how to hold it. You typically balance a netbook on your legs or put it on a table, and you normally hold a smartphone in one hand while you operate it with the other one. Neither seems practical for the iPad: If you balance it on your legs or put it on a table, the angle is wrong for looking at the screen (and you could easily drop it if you’re using it on public transport), and if you hold it in one hand, you only have one hand to operate it with (which is not ideal for fast typing), and it could easily be snatched out of your hand.

I therefore think that most users will buy the keyboard dock and/or the iPad case, which allows the iPad to be positioned upright or at an angle (scroll down to the bottom of the page if you follow the link), but that makes it even more expensive, and even less practical to carry around.

To conclude, I really don’t think the first-generation iPad will catch on. However, Apple could easily design a very attractive second-generation device if they added a few ports, upgraded the OS and integrated the case.

Share and enjoy:

The kids got a shared Wii Fit Plus for Christmas, and I have been using it too, mostly once they’re finally in bed.

I’m OK at many things and quite bad at others, as could be expected.

In general, I seem to be better at yoga than at the supposedly fun games (perhaps harking back to all the yoga I did during PE at high school).

However, I’ve now found my true vocation in life!

Whereas all the others struggle to sit still for more than a minute in the “Zazen” exercise, I managed to get the maximum points (180 seconds without moving at all) after just a couple of attempts.

And it wasn’t just a fluke. Marcel asked how I had done it, so I showed him.

I really don’t understand why they haven’t added an expert setting – three minutes is far too short a time for true Zazen masters like me!

Share and enjoy:

I’ve put it all below and highlighted the worst bits.

Langtidsstegning af and	Long Drawing and
Min far og mig bruger hvert år denne opskrift fra dk.kultur.mad+drikke, når vi skal lave juleand (tak til Stig Bergmann):	My father and I spent each year this recipe from soc.culture.laos when we do juleand (thanks to Stig Bergmann):
Ænder bør altid veje 3.000 gr og derover, der er ikke megen kød på mindre ænder.	Ducks should always consider the 3000 degrees or more, there is not much meat on the smaller ducks.
Anden renses og gnides ind og udvendigt med salt og peber.	Second cleaned and rubbed in and outside with salt and pepper.
Til fyld renser du og skære 3-4 æbler i skiver, det må gerne være Belle Boskop eller endnu bedre Cox Orange.	To fill purifies you and cut 3-4 apples into slices, it must be like Belle Boskop or even better, Cox Orange.
Bland de skivede æbler med en håndfuld svedsker uden sten, luk anden med kødnåle.	Mix the sliced apples with a handful of prunes without stones, close second with kødnåle.
Læg anden på bradenpanden, fuglen skal vende brystsiden nedad.	Put the other on a roasting tin, the bird must turn breast side down.
Lad den stege i en 130 grader varm ovn i 4 timer.	Let the roast in a hot oven 130 degrees for 4 hours.
Vend derefter dyret om og lad det stege færdig i 2 timer.	Then turn on the animal and let it cook finished in 2 hours.
Den er nu så mør at den knapt skal parteres.	It is so tender it barely be parties.
I år er jeg dog kommet for sent i gang, så jeg har været nødt til at skrue lidt op for temperaturen	In the years have I come too late in time, so I had to screw up a bit of temperature.
Glædelig jul, i øvrigt!	Merry Christmas, also!

Share and enjoy:

It’s annoying that they mention Microsoft towards the end, but I guess that’s natural given that this book was published by them. Probably one of their better products!

Why don’t other companies make ads like this?

I can just imagine “Why my mum drives a Citroën”, “Our new fridge-freezer” and “How cavity wall insulation made our house happy”.

Share and enjoy:

So I thought other might perhaps benefit from this.

First of all, you might know that if you right-click on a bookmark in the Bookmarks menu, you can bring up Properties in a window.

The Keyword field there will allow you to go to that bookmark by writing this keyword in the address bar. (That is, if you’ve made “widmann” the keyword for the bookmark for this blog, you can just type “widmann” in the address bar instead of “blog.widmann.org.uk”.)

The interesting feature here is that you can use ‘%s’ in the Location field, and this is then replaced by whatever you write after the keyword.

That is, if you have created a bookmark and set the location to “http://ordnet.dk/ods/search?keyword=%s” and the keyword to “ods”, you can type “ods blog” in the address bar and this automagically expands to “http://ordnet.dk/ods/search?keyword=blog”.

This can be really useful for dictionary-like sites such as Wikipedia.

Share and enjoy:

RSS feeds are a great way to read news and blog postings.

However, I have a problem with RSS feed readers (aggregators).

Some of them create one folder per feed, which is great for the fairly quiet feeds that you want to read all of, such as personal blogs.

Others simply list the most recent items from all feeds, which is great for news sources, but not so good for quiet blogs.

In other words, the aggregators I know tend to work well if your feeds have a similar level of activity, but if you put in a few news sources that bring you dozens of updates per hour and add some personal blogs that are updated a couple of times a week, the latter tend to be drowned out.

I’m starting to think one should simply use two separate readers, one for the news and one for the blogs.

However, in theory a combined reader should be possible, by adding more prominence to items from quiet feeds, but only showing the most recent items from the busy ones.

Can anybody recommend such a program?

Share and enjoy:

I’ve been playing around with iPhoto on and off ever since Complexli bought the Mac mini for me.

In particular, I’m interested in face recognition. It would be so nice if all your photos could be tagged correctly to show who’s in them.

However, I’m less than impressed with iPhoto’s performance in this area.

One thing is that the face recognition on its own is quite bad. I appreciate it’s a hard thing to do well. It appears to me, though, that it’s doing a worse job recognising the blond members of the family, such as Léon, than spotting the darker ones, such as Anna. I read somewhere that it’s been developed by a Japanese company, which might explain this.

However, I have two major complaints.

Firstly, if you upload a lot of photos in one go (I tried about 15,000), it will keep processing faces in the background forever. It’s now been running almost constantly for over a week, so I think it might have entered an infinite loop somewhere. This means that it will almost never make a suggestion, and it keeps one processor 100% busy constantly, which is not great for system performance.

Secondly, it seems not to use any other information when making guesses.

For instance, if ten photos have been taken within half an hour, and the nine of them contain only Léon, wouldn’t it be reasonable to suggest that the tenth also contains him? iPhoto doesn’t think so: It will happily suggest it’s Léon on one photo, Anna on the next one, then Gordon, then Charlotte, and so on.

Also, it doesn’t seem to take dates into consideration. If there’s a baby in a photo, it’s a good guess that it might be Marcel if the photo is from 1997 or 1998, Charlotte if it’s 2000, Léon if it’s 2005 or 2006, and Anna if it’s 2007 or 2008. But iPhoto will happily make suggestions that are not reasonable given that all photos have a date stamp.

It’s so frustrating to know that it could easily be improved, but it’s closed source, so I can’t do anything.

I prefer open source!

Share and enjoy: