marv's blog

Just a quick reminder that the Apple event is on this evening at 6pm (Ireland)/7pm (Germany). Apple is expected to introduce the "iPad", a new tablet device, iPhone OS 4.0 and iLife 2010. As always, the closer we get to the keynote, the more legitimate rumors are popping up, with a very convincing photo of the iPad in a lab (no, not an elevator) surfacing today.

In any case, I will be leaving work a bit earlier today, and if any of you geeks want to join me in following the ticker and later on the video stream, please give me a shout!

Hope to see many of you tonight!

When Google launched its search engine four years ago in China, and bowed down to Chinese authorities who required Google to censor their search results, I was hugely disappointed. I had always been a strong proponent of Google's "don't be evil" motto, and even more so, having worked there for a short time, I firmly believed that Google management actually took their motto seriously. But then, after the entry to the Chinese market, my long discussions with friends and colleagues, trying to convince them Google was indeed not evil, became much more difficult and I seemed to lose quite some credibility. The promise that Google would only remain in China if progress was made on the freedom of speech issues seemed like a poor excuse to harness the lucrative business opportunities gained by entering the world's fastest growing internet nation.

Today, all that has changed. Read on to find out why I believe the recent developments are so important to China's future.

As 2009 concludes we look back at a year - and a decade - with mixed feelings. With the economic downturn it seemed the world turned a bit slower than usual, and "progress" would hardly be a fitting attribute of the past year. But now it is time to wake up from your economic slumber as the year 2010 has a lot to offer. So before you get the champagne ready and have your toast (along with the resolutions you won't keep), let's make sure we all know what great things are heading our way in 2010. In the following article I have put together some of the things that I am most looking forward to. After reading this I hope that you too will be excited about the year that lies ahead. Of course, leave anything I may have missed in the comments.

Do you ever write documents that contain code snippets? Do you ever include code in your presentations? If yes, you probably know how nice it would be if the code was actually syntax highlighted to make it more readable. With the context dependent services in Snow Leopard, I will show you how to add a service that will allow you to syntax highlight code in almost any application. By right-clicking on any selected text, you will be able to select the syntax highlighting service in the context menu, which will add that extra bit of color to your code.

A few days ago a colleague of mine was shocked to see that his MacBook Pro no longer booted correctly. He called me over to his desk to show me the hopeless situation: Just as the MacBook seemed to boot, it shut back down. It reminded me of the situation I had experienced a few months earlier when my iMac showed no reaction to pressing the power button whatsoever - as if it was not plugged in. A similar thing happened to my Netgear router, which did not seem to switch on when plugged in. Luckily the solution to all of these problems is simple, yet not widely known.

So if you have an electronic device that seems to be misbehaving (and you have ruled out that it is a software problem), follow these simple steps:

1. Unplug the device (remove any other cables plugged into the device as well).
2. Hold down the power button (or on routers the "reset" button) for at least 10 seconds.
3. Plug the device back in.
4. Voila! You're good to go!

By holding down the power button you are basically causing the power controller to reset. This may vary on some devices, so Google is your friend.

People who read this blog (if they exist), may know that I am a big fan of the Trackmania games. These are racing games, where you need to complete tracks in a given amount of time. You can play against the clock or online against anybody who is part of the huge Trackmania community. On top of that, you can create your own tracks and race against your buddies. In this entry I will show all intel Mac users how to get the awesome Trackmania Nations Forever running on their machines. Best of all, getting this game up and running won't cost you a dime! (In all fairness though, it may cost you some time, depending on the installation and how addicted you will get once you have the game installed).

Right, I know I haven't been blogging in a long while, and that now that I am blogging I should probably tell you about Dublin. Well, so that I don't look like a complete geek (as if I could give you any other impression), Dublin is nice, rainy, has Guinness and lots of people with strange names.

Much nicer of a place however is Beer Island, which I have been telling many of my colleagues about, and who are very eager to see it. (Also, some are skeptical it actually exists). So if you'd like to see proof that Beer Island exists, please read on!

This is probably the best live piano interpretation of a video game, that I have ever come across. Sure brings back a lot of memories...

The day after tomorrow Obama will be become the 44th president of the United States of America. His biggest challenge will be to clean up the enormous mess Bush has left behind. If you have forgotten how Bush has transformed the world's mightiest nation into deterioration, or just need to realize the full extent of it, watch Olberman's summary of Bush's 8 years after the jump.

Don't forget to tune in to the MacWorld Keynote tomorrow at 6 pm Berlin time. As usual, there will be no live stream, but you can follow the keynote transcript live with pics at the known places, such as engadget, gizmodo, MacTechNews (German), and this year on MacRumors. As you have probably heard, although Steve is not giving the presentation, there are quite a few rumors surrounding the keynote, so that we are probably in for quite an interesting event. Read on to learn more.