Month: December 2005

It’s gadget time!

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Sleeptracker

I’m currently in the US and will be here for about a month. I will mostly stay at the same place. What does that mean? People living in the US will of course not see any obvious and revolutionary advantages from this fact. Apart from the fact that being in the US is quite fun in general.

I’ll give you some hints: Amazon, eBay, Best Buy. Webshops! Ordering stuff from the fantastic assortement of Amazon when you live in Norway is OK, but it always include huge amounts of waiting, payment of taxes and hideously expensive shipping.

Now, for the next four weeks I can order stuff for something close to half the price compared to buying the same goods from my home in Norway.

I don’t have unlimited amounts of money, so I have to consider each purchase carefully.

That’s why I kick this off with a product that I have absolutely no faith in. The Sleeptracker. I have read fantastic reviews. I understand the concept. Still, I don’t think it can help this seriously sleepless blogger.

But if it can. I mean – wake me up after my not-even-close-to-enough hours of sleep at a moment that makes the horrible exercise of getting up slightly easier. It’s worth every cent.

Of course I’ll be back here with more info when it arrives.

It’s gadget time!

SkyMall – Holiday 2005 Edition

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SkyMall

As a passionalte gadget freak this amazing product catalog called SkyMall that I find on board american planes has always fascinated me. It’s one of the very rare printed publications that actually can give me just as much fun as half an hour of good web browsing. SkyMall is a product catalog with all kinds of stuff that you can order.
A fantastic collection of everything from high quality well known brands to the most amazing crap you can imagine.

And of course I have to share some of the highlights of amazing crap in this edition. Please note that all the pictures will be enlarged if you click them. I’ll start quite simple.

iPulse

Buy yourself a stylish iPod. Then add the world’s most ugly set of speakers. It’s called the iPulse. “Colorful LED lightshow plays in sync with your music!”. Only $129,95

Gravity – that’s sooo last century

FlyBar Gravity defying boots

SkyMall to the rescue. This edition gives you both a Gravity-Defying FlyBar and a pair of Gravity-Defying boots. FlyBar for $299.95 and Boots for $139.95.

Earband

Then for the haute couture. First, the essential accessory for any serious american. “Earband makes your ball cap warm for winter” You have to wear your cap. No matter what. So, rather than buying something that is suited for winter you simply add a earband to your cap. Excellent. $19.95

But if you want to look really ridiculous. I mean, seriously ridiculous. Of course SkyMall can still help you. Not for the modest price of $19.95, but if it’s important enough for you to look ridiculous, then the $227,- Original Woven Collar Shirt should not be left untried.

“The shirt that allows you to show off your expensive ties”

Woven Collar Shirt Woven Collar Closeup

“Exclusively fashioned with american ingenuity and european style”
– I haven’t seen anything like this in Europe though.

Then, what do you get if you combine haute couture and gadgets?
Continue reading “SkyMall – Holiday 2005 Edition” →

SkyMall – Holiday 2005 Edition

New York – December 2005

eirikso4 Comments
New York Snow

First:
Because of several small happenings regarding this blog lately my logs tell me that I have a couple of new readers. So, first of all I want to say:

Welcome to my new readers! I hope you’ll find interesting stuff here. I’ll promise to not overload you with articles and will at the same time recommend you to subscribe to my RSS-feed or mail update. That way you will be noticed when I post something new.

So, back to this post:
I am currently travelling in the US. On my way to spend five weeks in Florida. I spent a night in New York on my way, and experienced the city in deep layers of snow. As a Norwegian, snow is something that I am used to. I guess the New Yorkers are used to snow as well.

Still, I found it interesting that most of the schools where closed beacuse of the snow. The winter in New York can’t possibly be that different from the winters in Bergen on the western coast of Norway where I grew up. I can’t remember one single day of closed schools because of snow.

Anyway, the plane to Fort Myers was nearly on time and I could continue my journey.

I was flying Continental and one of the biggest events of flying an american airliner is something that resides in the seat pocket in front of you. The insanely interesting magazine called: SkyMall. An amazing collection of products.

I will be back here soon with some of the gadgets and useful things I found interesting this time.

PS.
Yes, the picture is from New York, the 9th of December 2005. It’s not something from Norway that I found in my archive.

New York – December 2005

w00t! This blog is a winner.

eirikso15 Comments
GullBloggen

As mentioned earlier eirikso.com was nominated for “Best Technology Blog” in Dagbladet’s competition (Norwegian) where they want to find the best blogs in Norway. Dagbladet is one of Norway’s biggest newspapers.

Now, the voting has ended, and this blog won a “Golden Blog Award” for best technology blog.

If you master the strange language of Norwegian you can head over here to read the public announcement and an interview with eirikso.

Fantastic. Because the two other blogs nominated in the same category are very good ones as well, I take this as a huge compliment from the people that voted for this one. The two other blogs are in norwegian: Tversover and Jo Christian Oterhals’ søkeblogg.

A huge, plain, simple, upper case “THANK YOU” to all the people that voted for this blog. Still, this also has to be the time to thank my readers in general for comments, feedback and motivation.

This blog started out as a personal tool for myself to remember hacks and tweaks for all my technology experiments. After gaining a bit of readers I have started to post articles on other stuff as well. Several posts, including the one about the guy to the right has driven a bit of traffic. I am now the happy editor of a blog that gives me more knowledge about the thoughts I post here, new friends all over the world and experience running a web site that actually reach out to a certain amount of people.

Special thanks go to:
First of all the person that entered my blog into the competition! I didn’t know about this competition before I saw the traffic from Dagbladet… Then Oyvind at Brilliantdays for huge amounts of knowledge and a link to my post trying to convince people to vote for me. Ian over at The Media Center Show for mentioning me on the show! Thomas Hawk for nice compliments and a link in his excellent post about my short comparison of Flickr and Webshots.

And:
Simon, the Australian beef cattle farmer that voted for my blog. I mean, how many Norwegian blogs get votes from Australian beef cattle farmers from Wagga Wagga?

If you are new to this blog…
…please check out my most popular posts through the list in the right sidebar. You can also find some selected links here and here.

– “Yeah. Right. I found all the technology and some food. Now, where is all that travel?”
– Try this one, or maybe this one.

Gullbloggen

Update:
I just recieved this badge that I can use on my site. Making the competition, taking blogs seriously, helping people understand more about the Net and all these new tools. All of them very good initiatives from Dagbaldet. Winning the technology category is an honour. Still, I have one problem. I find this badge ugly. Aesthetic judgement is a personal thing. I am sorry. Can’t use this one permanently on my site.

I guess I’ll have to stick with the glory and honour, keep up the good work and make an even better blog. Without this badge in my sidebar.

w00t! This blog is a winner.

What if Sony had…

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Sony BMG

While writing my little story about three of my MP3 players I thought of something. What if Sony was the company that made the Diamond Rio? Sony has done a lot of mistakes lately. Two of the worst has to be:

1. Sony owned the market for portable players for two decades. The Walkman in the 80s and the Discman in the 90s. Then, because of a very stupid deal with some very stupid content owners everything went wrong. From the fact that they where way too late into the market of MP3-players. The fact that their first Mp3-player actually did not support the MP3-format…

2. Then they started to infect their customers with evil software full of vulnerabilities. Evil and absolutely useless software.

That last trick is amazing. They have not stopped one single song from entering the filesharing networks. But they have managed to make their customers, their artists, the dealers and just about everyone very very angry.

In general these two horrible mistakes has both been done because Sony’s content division has been afraid of loosing money to filesharing and piracy.

Now they are struggeling. Would they struggle today if they took the market of MP3-players, streamlined communication from their players with the Playstation, made a music shop for the Playstation and just kept producing good content instead of infecting their loyal customers with evil software that don’t stop any pirates?

(Cool Sony CD image courtesy of Collapsibletank)

What if Sony had…

MP3 player roundup

eirikso7 Comments
Diamond Rio and iPod

The ancient (to the left)
My good old Rio PMP300. Not the first one ever, but the first well known commercial MP3-player ever. 32 MB of on board memory and possible to expand with memory cards. At that point horribly expensive memory cards. Communicates with your computer through the parallell port!

The new one (to the right)
iPod 60GIG. Music, photo and video. Yes, I have managed to turn my mobile phone into a cool device for podcast listening, but there’s no doubt. For convenience, usability, battery life and sound quality. My new iPod’s podcasting capabilities are fantastic. And, I am actually already amazed over the development within the video podcast scene. Already some high quality content out there. Among other stuff, a fun revisit to the Happy Tree Friends. I had nearly forgot about those guys.

I want to play my music both on my iPod and in my Media Center, so after upgrading to iTunes 6 I have stopped buying music at the iTunes music store again. For a while, running iTunes 4 and jHymn to remove the stupid FairPlay DRM I have been a happy customer of iTunes Music Store. Now I’ll have to stick to cool shops like allofmp3.com to be able to buy music that will play on all my devices.

Or, I could of course visit my local CD shop and buy the unencrypted masters they still sell over there. Just stay clear of Sony. Or, maybe not. My media center runs AnyDVD, and has actually protected me against evil stuff like the Sony rootkit from day one. (And yes, I know. There are a lot of free music out there that will play on all my devices and that will not infect my machines with evil software, still – I work for the content industry and I actually make sure that I legally own the music I have on my computers and devices.)

Quite interesting actually. As an old mac user, complete gadget freak, above average interested in design and above average interested in music – this is my first iPod. So all hints, links to web sites, tweaks and hacks are welcome! Use the comments.

Right now I have successfully converted a couple of movies using Videora iPod Converter. High quality. Very easy.

Inovix Sport - For kids?

And last but not least – The MP3 player for the kids
I agree with Oyvind, make a huge iPod maxi for the kids. It’s not there yet, so I headed for the sports department. Inovix Sport. 128 MB built in memory and expandable by SD or MMC. Cheap. Built in FM radio. Water resistant. Quite sturdy. Big buttons. No movable parts. Together with a cheap 1 GIG or 512 MB memory card this one is actually quite cool!

MP3 player roundup

You would never ever steal anything here

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A coworker just joined a friend that bought himself a new set of tires for his car. He used a legendary and low priced dealer in Oslo. It is run by some extremely efficient and clever people looking like they divide their time 50% doing work for the shop and 50% lifting weights at the gym. Not the kind of people you would mess with.

At the entrance of the shop they have put up a sign that is kind of interesting here in heavily regulated and streamlined Norway. It says:

“Theft will not be reported. It will be punished.”

Theft will be punished

Fantastic. This is what I call efficient communication!

Via HappyGoLucky.no (Norwegian)

You would never ever steal anything here