Dear Santa...

I know it is quite early to put in requests for Christmas presents but this morning I came across three very cool products and I would appreciate if you could get me at least one of them on Christmas day.

(1) Sony ODO wind-up camera

How can't I fall in love with this device? It's definitely one of the coolest things I've seen in quite some time. Plus I'd just love to pull that thing out when out in bars or partying somewhere else. You think an iPhone 3G gets you attention, wait until you pull out the ODO, recharge it on the bar-counter (avoiding all the beer and shot glasses that will undoubtably be there) and snap a photo of that gorgeous waitress!

(2) BlackBerry Bold

Even though I was lucky to recover my stolen mobile phone (thank you WMATA!) which I had reported missing back in June I can't help but drool over the BlackBerry Bold. In my opinion this is the most desirable mobile phone at the moment (take that Apple!) even though I'm admittedly also intrigued by the upcoming BlackBerry Storm (the phone formerly known as Thunder). In case you can't get a Bold I'd also be willing accept a Nokia E71.

(3) Eee PC 901 GO with built-in 3G

I've been following the whole UMPC / MID / NetBook story since day 1 (see umpcportal.com, jkkmobile.com and eeepcnews.de for all the news you're ever going to need) and we're finally getting to a point where I can seriously consider products from those device categories. While I love my OLPC XO sometimes I wouldn't mind something a little beefier in terms of the processing speed. Currently there are four products that I'm seriously considering:

Asus eee PC 901: Love the size and battery life, not sure about the keyboard though. Having 3G included would be a big plus!
Asus eee PC 1000H: Battery life and keyboard sound great but might be a tad too big so I'll have to look at one in person before I could commit to it.
Dell Inspiron 910: Need to wait for the first reviews but that one could be a good choice too.
MSI Wind: Available today, good keyboard but the relatively short battery life could be a deal-breaker.

Getting a subsidized device in combination with a 3G contract would be quite appealing to me so I'm keeping my fingers crossed for T-Mobile to also bring this offer to Austria. On the other hand I'm still not 100% sure I want to get such a netbook and will definitely wait to see which products the u:book program (high quality notebooks selected by university and sold to students at very attractive prices) has on offer this time 'round.

Update: Please forget what I said above, if you really want to make me happy then bring me one of those just announced Samsung X360s!

Full disclaimer: I actually believe in the Christkind.

FSF speaks out against the iPhone 3G

I'm the first one to say that the Free Software Foundation (FSF) sometimes appears like a bunch of nut jobs, I dare not say, fundamentalists. However with their "5 reasons to avoid iPhone 3G" they have really hit the nail on the head. I'm not going to comment on the whole piece, you should really take a look at it yourself, but rather just comment on 3 quotes which seem important to me.

Apple, through its marketing and visual design techniques, is manufacturing an illusion that merely buying an Apple makes you part of an alternative community. But the technology they use is explicitly chosen to divide people into separate digital cells, and to position Apple as sole warden. When your business depends on people paying for the privilege of being locked up, the prison better look and feel luxurious, and the bars better not be too visible.

Oh, stop it, Apple manufacturing illusions? No way! It's totally normal for people to queue up in front of stores for hours whenever a company releases a new product. It has nothing to do with the perception that their lives will be much improved once they own Apple's latest and greatest. And yes, Apple's prison's is damn sexy!

As of November 2007, 3.3 billion people in the world had mobile telephones, and the number continues to rise rapidly. For many of these people, phones are becoming the most important computers they own. They are vital to their communications and they are with them all the time. Of all the technology people use that could be turned against them, this is one of the most frightening possibilities.

This one is definitely one of their strongest arguments. Mobile phones, especially when they're basically personal computer such as with the iPhone 3G, are per definition more personal than regular computers and for many people they're also vital life-lines for both their private and professional lives. Most of us (not me!) can go for a week without a computer, how how many can imagine a week without their phone?

Especially when it comes to your location mobile phones will reveal significantly more about your whereabouts than any notebook or desktop computer ever will. As an example let me use my own online-habits these days while I'm traveling:

Tracking my computer's IP address you could quite easily follow me through the various cities I've been in. You could find out in which public spaces (e.g. San Francisco's Union Square), cafés or hotels I've gone online. But then again, look at my blog and you can pretty much find that information out as well, even though it's not quite real-time. Plus I'm not online 24/7 so the best one can do is to locate me a couple of times a day.

However if you tracked my location via my mobile phone, which is turned on as long as I'm awake, you could basically track my exact whereabouts in real-time. Now some people aren't scared about that, I however do think this is quite a delicate situation. And I can't help thinking: How would George Orwell's 1984 have gone if he had known about such technologies? Definitely no getting away from Big Brother and all the cameras in the country side...

Plus my reverse argument when it comes to local-based services is always that they don't really offer too much value, at least to me. In order for me to even consider giving up my real-time location I need to see some significant benefits, not just the location of the nearest 10 Starbucks locations from where ever I'm standing.

In the end let me take this to the extreme: These days you pay for location-based services, how hard is it to imagine a future where you pay in order for your phone not to make its location known to anyone who asks for it?

We can trade our freedom and our money to get something flashy on the surface, or we can spend a little more money, keep our freedom, and support a better kind of business. If we want businesses to be ethical, we have to reward the ones that are. By not enriching companies that want to take away our freedom and by rewarding those that respect us, we will be helping to bring about a better future.

I agree, but please, please someone else start supporting the better businesses, I totally bought into the whole idea of my life being so much more worth living once I have all those flashy and pretty gadgets! (Especially if they help you get laid...)

To cut a long story short: I won't buy the iPhone 3G for a whole host of other reasons but now I can even provide all those Apple fanboys with a philosophical and political reasoning on why I'm not getting it.

[via lifehacker who add some interesting comments on their own]

6 days in Vancouver. And counting.

Man, how times flies, I just realized that it's almost been a week since I got into Vancouver. It's been an incredible week, especially thanks to my excellent hosts here in the city. Upon my arrival I was initially spoiled by Igor and John before moving into Mike's house mid-week. Here I was greeted by an high-end a/v setup (a real thing of beauty!), excellent Thai-steak-salad and freshly brewed beer:

Ahhh, gooooooood.

A lot of the past few days was spent just randomly exploring the city. I certainly have to say that I really love this city and now I understand why everyone told me just how great this place is. As ever so often it's not all that easy to say why exactly I'm so attracted to Vancouver but walking through it, sitting in cafés, enjoying the beach, having great Asian food and just watching the multi-cultural crowds of people on the streets somehow feels right. There's certainly a reason why Vancouver is consistently ranked among the top 5 cities when it comes to quality of living (in a 2008 report only topped by Zurich, Vienna and Geneva).

One of the things I realized when I walked along the beaches of Stanley Park just north of downtown Vancouver is that one of these days I'll have to spend at least some weeks or months living in a city located on the sea. This is not the first time I had this idea as I had similar thoughts a couple of years ago when I walked through the old-town of Split, Croatia and realized just how great it would be to live there for a month or two. When I was in Kenting in the south of Taiwan I also badly wanted to stay for a couple of weeks and enjoy the good life there. The last reminder was when my friend M., who had spent a half a year in Cadiz, Spain told me about having the good times at the beaches there. To me there's something deeply fascinating and relaxing about sitting on a beach and watching the sea. Combined with the proximity of an urban center such as Vancouver this is just an outstanding environment to be in and something I should definitely do in the years to come!

Anyway, back to the present... After watching Wanted on Thursday and with the iPhone 3G launch on the horizon the guys decided to get up early on Friday morning to get in line in front of a Rogers (a Canadian provider) store so they could be among the first people to get their hands on one of the phones. Not being the kinda guy to miss this sort of crazy action I crashed on their couch for a couple of hours so I could join them for the fun in the morning. We got up at 6 a.m. and initially joined a queue of 5 other people who had spent the night at the closest Rogers store before we moved to another one where only one person was in front of us. Unfortunately that store was only to open at 10 a.m. and without having a laptop on me I got bored pretty quickly. So I went home, got some e-mailing done and took a shower before heading back into the city. Somehow I got confused when getting off the bus so I had to walk the last 15min to the store. By the time I got there the guys had found out about the omnipresent activation-issues and therefore had to leave the store without their iPhones.

Boys and their toys.

Afterwards we split ways and I spent the rest of the day going through the city and ended up walking a total of just over 18km (according to Google Maps). Took a lot of photos, had some good southern-style lunch, a couple of wifi-fueled iced-coffee breaks and just generally thrived on being in the moment.

On Saturday I got up early (8 a.m.) in order to tackle the Grouse Grind. For those of you who are too lazy to click on that link: it's a 2.9km trail up Grouse Mountain with 850m of elevation gain. Apparently the record for the trail is like 26 minutes or something. Before we started going up the mountain Igor had mentioned the goal of getting up in under 60 minutes so we started out and pushed pretty hard. When I hit the 1/4 mark after 19 minutes I realized that doing it in under 60 minutes wouldn't be feasable. After the 1/2 mark things got really steep and I was somewhat reminded of insane hiking we did at Olchon, the island on Lake Baikal, during the TransSib journey last summer.

Grouse Grind

In the end me and John's girlfriend managed to get up to the top in 80 minutes and while I could have probably shaved off 5 minutes anything faster would have required significantly more efforts. The view from the top was incredible and definitely well worth all the blood, sweat and tears.

The gang at top of Grouse Mountain.

The afternoon was spent at a nice birthday-BBQ on the beach, water-baloon fights included. Afterwards I intended to walk home but somehow ended up spending 5 hours just enjoying the evening and getting some writing done in a Starbucks and bar in the Yaletown district. This is another one of those up and coming neighbourshoods with lots of cool (and expensive) restaurants, cafés and shops. Definitely a very nice and relaxing evening after an excellent day!

I still haven't figured out the details but I think for the remaining days here in Vancouver I'll probably pay a visit to one or two the islands close to the city and just generally make the best of my time with the people here. After all it's not every day that I get a chance to hang out with them...

P.S. I know I should really be uploading all those photos to Flickr instead of posting a limited selection here but I just haven't had the time to sort through them yet...