Fisker car spotted

Just saw this new car based on the Mercedes SL55 AMG near the French/Italian border between Frejus and Torino.

Jim Morrison at Pere Lachaise

Every time I visit Paris I take a look at the grave of Jim Morrison and I have never seen it without fresh flowers and fans from all over the world. Thanks to the wonders of new technologies, the music of the Doors is not only in my head, but also stored as MP3 files in my mobile phone, namely my Treo650.

mini G5 in Paris

Saw this by accident in a shopping window in the 2nd arrondissement in Paris...

Nokia 770 release date postponed to Q4/2005

Sorry for posting this so late. About two weeks ago I got an official information from a Nokia representative, who told me, that the Nokia 770 won't be available in Q3, but in Q4 and definitively before Xmas. I thought I had posted this already weeks ago, but with all the preparations for the Apple Expo in Paris, this news snippet somehow got lost...

MacWay miniPartner without fan

For their 15th anniversary MacWay is selling their miniPartner 250GB hard drive with 2 additional USB2 and one additional Firewire port for 178€. They sell through the web or in their nice shop at 39, rue Lafayette, just across the corner from Galeries Lafayette in Paris. The miniPartner is quite unique as the case is real aluminium, just like the Mac mini and no fan means less noise.

Nabaztag WiFi rabbit

I saw this at Apple Expo last Tuesday and again on Saturday evening at Colette in Paris. It is a plastic rabbit that plugs into a power connector and connects to the Internet via WLAN. I think, that you can do a setup via a personalized website, where you define, what the rabbit should do, depending e.g. the price of Apple stock or the weather in San Francisco. It can wiggle its ears, light up in various colors and can generate sounds. Available right now mainly in Paris for roughly 100 Euros.

Novatelwireless Merlin U740 PCcard

Another highlight from the Apple Expo in Paris: Novatel Wireless showed their Merlin U740 PCcard with HSDPA/UMTS2100 and Quadband EDGE. They are even working on a version with support for UMTS 850/1900 for the US; as well as on a Mini PCI Express card with the same technology, which should be available in Q2/2006.

Madsonline Lucille shown in Paris

Madsonline showed their Powerbook power adapter with powered USB and Firewire ports, called Lucille at Apple Expo in Paris. As I wrote already in August, it will be available in October 2005 for 88$.

ElGato EyeTV EZ

In another Apple Expo announcement in Paris ElGato introduced EyeTV EZ, a small, analog USB2 TV tuner box for 150. Unlike the more expensive EyeTV 200 the compression of the signal happens on the Mac; not on a hardware chip inside the EyeTV, so you need a pretty fast Mac for doing the compression in real time.

ElGato EyeTV 1.8.3

At Apple Expo in Paris ElGato announced EyeTV 1.8.3, which now supports digital radio and progressive scan.

Fujitsu ScanSnap for MacOS X officially announced

Today at the Apple Expo in Paris, Fujitsu finally and officially announced the ScanSnap for Macintosh. The bundle includes a driver for MacOS X in English (no need for Japanese anymore!), as well as Adobe Acrobat for MacOS X, all for less than 500. The design is not black, as the Windows version, but white with silver decors.

AddressBook instead of Hypercard?

I even thought about using AddressBook instead of Hypercard, as I use it mostly for my more than 9000 addresses. I enter them in Hypercard, i look them up, and mostly I export them, namely to NewtonOS2, PalmDesktop and AddressBook, as well as to various special formats for mobile phones. I guess since MacOS X 10.4 Tiger and Spotlight, AddressBook finally is fast enough to use it on a daily basis, and exporting to Palm and various mobile phones is already built in, or I could export data manually via AppleScript. The only problem is, that I would still need a development environment to do custom applications, mostly on MacOS X, but more and more for mobile phones, too, especially for PalmOS, PocketPC, Symbian60/UIQ, Linux (Nokia770!) and eventually J2ME.

So what should I do? What I would really like would be either a cross platform Hypercard, similar to the prototypes of Hypercard 3.0, that I saw years ago or SK8. SK8 was a research project at the Apple Advanced Technology Group. Basically it was Hypercard on steroids, written entirely in CommonLISP. Maybe it would be the best to grab the sources of SK8, and build a new object oriented, LISP based Hypercard, running on every decent mobile OS...

Databases instead of Hypercard...

Another approach for replacing Hypercard might be a database like FileMaker or 4D. While both run on MacOS X and Windows, and FileMaker even has mobile versions for PalmOS and PocketPC, albeit very poor ones, they lack the elegance and familiarity with Hypercard. On the other hand, they are both multi user and as real databases you can throw nearly every computing problems at them.

Hypercard clones

There are basically two Hypercard lookalikes, namely Revolution and SuperCard. While both run on MacOS X and Windows, Revolution even supports MacOS System 7, Windows 3.1 and quite a lot of UNIX dialects, including Linux for Intel. Both can convert Hypercard stacks, but somehow both feel awkward compared to Hypercard, and there is no Nine2Five Reports for any of them. Biggest minus for me: no current plans to port them to PalmOS, PocketPC, Symbian60/UIQ or Linux for ARM (Nokia770).

Hypercard replacements...

The next few days I will post about possible replacements for Hypercard as my main development environment. I will cover the pluses and minuses of such programs as Revolution, SuperCard, FileMaker, 4D, AddressBook and possibly some more...

SendStation earBuddy

SendStation announced earBuddy, an ultra compact carrying case for (iPod) earbuds. Available in September 2005, pricing not yet determined...

MacWay miniPartner without fan noise

MacWay has an external hard drive case called minipartner without a fan, that also adds two USB2 and one FireWire port to a Mac mini. Available with hard drives from 80 to 500GBs, but unfortunately not without a drive.

HP 6515 with built in GPS

HP introduced the HP 6515 with SD and miniSD slots, GPS, a 2,5mm Nokia compatible headphone/mic jack and Bluetooth. The screen shows only 240*240 pixels and there is no WLAN included. The sucessor coming January 2006 will sports WLAN built in, but will lack the full SD slot.

ebay buys Skype for 2.6 billion $

ebay buys Skype for 2.6 billion $.

http://sendthisfile.com

http://sendthisfile.com allows you to send big files in digital form to recipients, without the normal 10 MB file size limit of email.

4D Office Object Library

4D introduced the free 4D Office Object Library, that lets you integrate iCal and AddressBook from MacOS X with a 4D database. It generates Word and Excel documents directly from 4D, too.

TomTom Mobile 5

TomTom has a new GPS bundle called TomTom Mobile 5. It consists of the necessary software including maps for Bluetooth phones and a small Bluetooth GPS receiver, all for 300 Euros.

iTunes on Motorola ROKR

Apple introduced iTunes on Motorola ROKR. How is it possible, that Apple dares to put their name on something so ugly? The image of the Motorola phone including the user interface for the rest of the phone is typically Motorola. And a self imposed limitation of 100 songs, even if you have space for more songs, gives the impression, that Apple crippled iTunes on Motorola ROKR on purpose, so it won´t cannibalize sales of their iPods.

iPod nano

Seeing is believing! Apple introduced the iPod nano, the sucessor to the iPod mini. Available in black or white, in 2 and 4GB versions for 199$ and 249$.

Car PC Hacks book from Oreilly.com

The newest book from Oreilly.com in their hacks series called Car PC hacks is available for 25$. Includes tips how to install a Mac mini in a car.

2-port Serial ATA CardBus card for MacOS X

FWdepot announced a 2-port Serial ATA CardBus card for MacOS X for 60$.

Reports 2.1 for Hypercard runs on MacOSX 10.4?

A nice person named Chuck mentioned in a comment on my blog, that Nine2Five Reports for Hypercard version 2.1 runs fine in Classic with MacOS X 10.4. Unfortunately he didn´t leave an address to contact him. Is there anybody out there who still has Nine2Five Reports for Hypercard in the 2.1 version and can you confirm, that it works in Classic under MacOS X 10.4? I know, I will have to switch from Hypercard to some other development environment until next year, as Classic won´t run on the new Intel Macs, but in the meantime I would like to use Reports for Hypercard for maintenance tasks on some of my stacks...

Fujitsu ScanSnap with drivers for MacOS X

Finally there are MacOS X drivers for the Fujitsu ScanSnap, a less than 500 $ 15 page per minute duplex scanner. Right now in beta and only in Japanese, but there is a patch to turn the Japanese version into an English one.

Panasonic SDR-S100 3CCD MPEG2 SD camcorder

Panasonic introduced the SDR-S100 3CCD MPEG2 SD Camcorder with 10 times zoom for 1200$.

Brother MFC-620CN testing conclusions

Now after a few months with the Brother MFC-620CN some experiences. It works great as an answering machine, but you need some secret codes to change the time it waits after picking up the phone and answering with the outgoing message. The default is so long, that most people hang up, before even hearing the answering machine message. Switching between voice and fax is reliable. Using the Brother MFC-620CN via USB from MacOSX just works, only the dashboard widget to show the ink levels needs the network connection via Ethernet.

Ethernet connectivity works just as well, including for scanning, but the setup of IP numbers, and various other settings show up only when connected via USB.

The wireless connectivity called NC2200w is utterly useless, as there is NO network scanning for MacOSX.

The manual recommends connecting the Brother MFC-620CN only to a built in USB port, and a maximum cable length of two meters. I use an unpowered USB hub and more than 5 meters of USB cables via various USB extension cords and had no connection troubles at all. USB Printer sharing in MacOSX 10.4 Tiger works reliably, too. Scanning to a connected Flash memory did not work for me, but using the Brother MFC-620CN as a USB based Flash memory reader/writer is ok.

The document feeder is very practical and works reliably, but scanning speed is much slower than on a HP2710, that I tested a few days ago.

So all in all i still recommend the Brother MFC-620CN, as it is the only all in one device with built in answering machine and fax switch. But if Brother would take a look at the HP2710 and improve the sucessor of the Brother MFC-620CN accordingly, the next Brother AIO might be the perfect AIO machine.