Sun wins over IBM

At least in James Governor's Dopplr challenge.

James Governor’s Monkchips: Sun wins the Dopplr 2 By A Nose:

"Sun wins the Dopplr 2 By A Nose Well the results are in folks. During the course of last week both IBM and Sun pretty much doubled their dopplr user populations, but Sun came out just ahead by close of play on Friday."

Well, I'm always glad to help.

About choice

Slightly - but not entirely - off-topic here...
but only slightly: currently IT and the surrounding industries are all about choice...

• Linux vs Solaris vs Windows
• Intel vs AMD vs Sparc vs Power
• Java vs .net vs Python vs Ruby vs ..
• Nokia vs Sony vs iPhone vs ...

to name just a few.

There are 2 great talks from TED about choice and our (=mankind's) inability to cope with decisions vis-a-vis choice:

1. Dan Gilbert: Why are we happy? Why aren't we happy?
   
   



2. Barry Schwartz: The paradox of choice
   

I recommend you stick to this order...


See my other TED recommendations here.

FlightAware

Recently I stumbled upon this great service: FlightAware.

It is a free flight tracker that comes with all available (I think) information on flights (US only, right now) and Airports.

Want to know where the plane from JKF to Austin is right now ? - look here:



Comes with up-to-date location and arrival information and a nice history of the same flight in the past days/months.

You can also see what is going on around a certain airport:




Really good and cool stuff.
Just utterly, utterly useless here in Europe...

IMAP for Gmail - here's how to wait...

Although my gmail account is still not enabled for IMAP, I added an IMAP/Gmail account to my Thunderbird.
Now Thunderbird will check, if I'm already enabled.

I'll get the following error message until my account is enabled:

Easy. And says it all.

IMAP for Gmail ! ... please hold

So the IMAP support in Gmail is not just a rumor but actually there, as the official gmail blog reports.

However, not everyone has is right now as they admit in the fine print:

(Psst. If you don't see the "IMAP" in the "Forwarding and POP/IMAP" tab, then check back soon. We are giving it to users as fast as we can).

So, I'll be checking back soon, i.e. daily...

Mozilla Lightning 0.7 has been released

Major steps for the Mozilla Calendar project:

Lightning 0.7 & Sunbird 0.7 have been released

Lightning in the plugin (or add-on as they are now called) for Thunderbird.
(There's a standalone version, too, called SunBird).

I've been using betas and nightly builds for (almost) the last year now, and it is really quite stable.
Can't live without it anymore.

Great job, guys.

Now would you please fix the bugs I reported ;-)

IMAP for Gmail ?

TechCrunch reports that Gmail [is] Apparently Enabling IMAP Support.

That'd be cool...

It's true, they talk about it in their help on how to enable IMAP, but it is not yet there in the application.

I wonder if and how the map tags to folders ??
Or just a "plain"

• Inbox
• Sent
• Draft
• Spam

structure...

Then I'd finally have my local copy of Gmail in Thunderbird really in sync with the Gmail service, something POP3 simply cant do.

Lets (wait and) see.

James Gosling: JavaME is NOT dead

Boy, I thought I misread all the recent posts about James Gosling (godfather of Java , i.e. God and father of Java) declaring Java ME dead.
He rightfully points out that it is NOT. James Gosling: on the Java Road

Dopplr

Ok, so James Governor challenged us ("us" being Sun and IBM), and since my veins carry Sun and IBM blood (whatever colour that might yield) I had to accept.
James Governor’s Monkchips � Now its a game, an IBM vs Sun game. dopplr meets cagefightr



I now have dopplr account... I just don't travel that much these days... but I checked in my "trip" (within Vienna) to the World-of-Health-IT WHIT 2007 conference.

Ok, I'll most probably go there by underground, but it still counts as a trip, doesn't it... (please say yes).

Know what's great: dopplr accepts openID...

So finally know what I can do with my Sun openid...

Information R/evolution

The best ever explanation of tagging vs categories... since this

through Techchrunch

Sun and Samsung developing 'Java phone'

A late edition of an April Joke ???

"McNealy said Tuesday in Seoul that the companies were working on a 'Java phone' that would surpass Apple's iPhone in functionality and cost less, the mass-circulation JoongAng Ilbo reported."

Report: Sun Microsystems, Samsung developing 'Java phone' - International Herald Tribune

Oracle and BEA

The news about Oracle to buy (or bid for) BEA Systems is... well not really news, and wont really change a lot in the industry.

The funniest and news-worthiest (??) part is, that BEA thinks they are worth more... IMHO, they are lucky to be bought at all... now.

Several companies have fought over BEA years ago, but now ?
What do they stand for ?
What is their position in the market ?
And which market by the way ?
The Appserver market ? - nope, lost to IBM, JBoss (and more and more Sun/Glassfish)
The Integration/SOA market ? - too small a share.

I think, Oracle is just buying some remaining customers for their application server / integration story... to kick it off.

Wont really rock the industry... And (as usual with such acquisitions) the combined Oracle/BEA market share will shrink, they'll lose to JBoss/Sun... (I hope).

Turing Test Extra Credit

xkcd - A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language - By Randall Munroe

Finally, I got del.icio.us

Not the account, I have had that for quite some time now.

But last week - for the first time ever - I sent out a link to a del.icio.us tag instead of a list of links.

Now, whenever I add something to del.icio.us (with this tag), people (if they are smart) get the update via RSS... or (if they are less smart) when they retrieve my email with the link to del.icio.us they will still get the "new" link list there...

Finally, I got del.icio.us.
Pretty cool.

Comic: Little Bobby Tables

This is just fantastic:



xkcd - A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language - By Randall Munroe

flickr loves me

Seems to be a new feature, or maybe I just didn't look carefully enough in the last year...
On the start page the now also tell me the group/discussion updates.

That's nice.

OpenOffice as a Java Update

This just popped up on my computer...



would be even cooler if it detected my (running) StarOffice ...

Announcing the Apple iProduct

found here
thanks, Gernot

Nokia 6233 update fixes my bluetooth problem

I used to have problems with the bluetooth connectivity of my Nokia 6233 in my car.
Bluetooth connection would drop every 2 minutes or so, and then reconnect...
Unless (get this) I had the mobile "hidden" e.g. in the pocket of my jeans, ... then it would work.

With the new SW update this problem has now vanished.
Great.

Nokia vs open

Just listened to the most entertaining podcast from the O'Reilly Emerging Telephony Conference (from IT conversations): Tero Ojanperä (CTO of Nokia) made my day with the following line:

We [Nokia] have been long time advocate of the openness.

Bruhaha. And to prove my point:

Porting between S[eries] 60 and open source will be really easy...

Porting between open-source and anything... just shows their mind set

Apart from that it just shows a totally uninspired Nokia when it comes to internet and mobile.

Ballmer Peak

from xkcd.com