Woohooo!

This is the first blogpost I'm creating on my new iPhone, lying on my bed in NYC. And it works great!
Too bad the 16GB model is sold out, but hey, you can't have it all!

The Two of Us

My niece's new album is out: The Two of Us on her very own label Polly Maggoo Records. I think her style might be classified as punk rock, but I could be wrong, of course (I most probably am, anyway). I admit, I am struggling to get my auditory canals around it, which is not surprising as our tastes in music were always quite different. But this album is different somehow. Whereas I hitherto used to dismiss Lili's music as art of noise with barely any discernible structure (to me!), here she goes and produces something that is almost close to melodic! She ends the album in a rather chamber music inspired mood With a picture - genius! A pity it's not on her MySpace ...

Swiss iPhone 2.0?

So, there will be an announcement during the Mobile World Congress that Swisscom will start selling a UMTS capable version of the iPhone in the Swiss market come 29 February 2008. This is the gist of several recent reports quoted by Macworld UK. The sources appear to be rather good and the news would be perfectly plausible as well. 

This report changes my shopping plans (as well as those of four more family members, I guess) as I had every intention to get an iPhone in London tomorrow, to use it jailbroken. And I still would, just to avoid the incredibly cheeky Suisa surcharge levied on Swiss music players, if there wasn't the likelihood of a new version imminent. But as I will be in London again during said Congress, I can still get it, should the announcement fail to materialise. In any case, I am looking forward to having an incredibly durable iPhone on either 14 or 29 February ...

Change is pain

Here's an interesting piece about the Neuroscience of Leadership. It is particularly interesting because it does away with a lot of received wisdom in management literature. The salient points are:

• Change is pain
• Behaviourism doesn't work
• Humanism is overrated
• Focus is power
• Expectation shapes reality
• Attention density shapes identity

I am not sure that the authors' statement that the brain is a quantum environment really holds, though - an electron is certainly not an atom-sized entity. Nor do quantum effects usually apply in the "chemical" world.

10.5.2 imminent

Cupertino has just blessed us with upgrades to all elements of the iWork '08 suite of applications, quoting compatibility issues with Mac OS X that need addressing. As I haven't noticed any compatibility issues with 10.5.1, that can only mean one thing, I guess ...

In other Mac related news, I can report a successful conclusion of an experiment. The other day I read about a guy who had his white USB keyboard washed in his dishwasher, and it came out squeaky clean and working. Since my bluetooth keyboard is a real mess and I don't need it anymore anyway (upgraded to the new flat iMac kb, remember?), I thought, heck, why not give it a try. So to the dishwasher it went, in the eco programme and without detergent (that's important, I think). Now it's really seriously clean, and after waiting for two weeks to complete the drying, it works perfectly. So, it's ready for auctioning!

A Swiss iPhone

Please sign this petition, asking Apple and Swiss mobile phone companies Orange, Sunrise and Swisscom for a release date of the iPhone in the Swiss market! 

Sounds like fun!

"Our business model is one of very high risk: We dig a very big hole in the ground, spend three billion dollars to build a factory in it, which takes three years, to produce technology we haven't invented yet, to run products we haven't designed yet, for markets which don't exist.

"We do that two or three times a year."

Intel CEO Otellini

Essential watching

This is essential watching for every Anglophone who stares blankly at continental Europeans quipping about the same procedure as last year. The video is a 1963 Swiss-German co-production that is traditionally aired on virtually every TV station on the last day of the year.

Wallpaper* Basel

A while back, I got the Wallpaper City Guide Basel, among others. The fact alone that this guide exists had me surprised, as Basel is not exactly a hotspot of urban culture, with the occasional exception confirming the rule, of course. So, insofar as a city guide is a review of a city, this is a meta-review.

First, let's drop some names from the Urban Life section (this is the useful part): Stucki Bruderholz, Le Lertzbach (just across the burn, btw),  NT/Areal, Acqua, Fumare Non Fumare, Chez Donati, Grenzwert, Campari Bar, Coumou (already closed), Das Schiff, Bar Rouge, Johann, Nuovo Bar, Eo ipso, Noohn. I'll admit straight away that about a third of the names I have yet to try, so coming from a native, that is already a compliment. The other places are definitely top rated in town.

The Wallpaper City Guide is quite a useful small (very!) companion catering to the urban chic city traveller who doesn't care much for the jetsam that traditional guides provide. In that, it is also handy for the native who might discover a new gem or two in the place she calls home.

Good stuff!

If you ever happen to need a simple, efficient tool to produce maps, here it is!

Sometime along the way to Mac OS X, I lost touch with SETI@home, the experiment that uses Internet-connected computers in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Meanwhile, you can even use your spare CPU cycles in the screen saver to help calculate climate change models. How cool is that?!