Technology

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!

I remember very well reading in computer magazine about the latest game with amazing graphics, extreme humour and brutality: "Duke Nukem 3D". Then, a couple of months later I had that game on my computer - with the aid of a class mate who was one of the first lucky guys to own a cd burner. And it really rocked! Not only the single player mode was fun with all that monsters and prostitutes... we had the best gaming nights with the multiplayer mode! OK, the aiming wasn't really realistic, you basically only had to get the horizontal direction right. But maps were cool - one had even a moving subway. And the main character Duke was soo cool - not to mention his sayings. You didn't have to speak English very well to realize that...

This was about 12 years ago.

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.

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!

In a previous post, I talked about how to use D-Bus to get information about network status changes. Now, since I have been using a private VPN with my Ubuntu as a client, I came across another scenario, where a script using D-Bus could help: The VPN works fine, but sometimes just disconnects. It does not happen very often, but when it happens, it is annoying and I'd like to see it reconnecting automatically. Moreover I'd like to stay in the VPN whenever I have a network connection available. Unfortunately, I didn't found any option within the NetworkManager to manage this. I ended up in writing this script which can be invoked like autovpn <VPN_NAME>, where <VPN_NAME> is the name of the VPN which is displayed in the NetworkManager under VPNConnections. You can even run it automatically on system startup by placing it in "Startup Applications". It does two things:

It tries to connect the VPN whenever it detects an active internet connection.

It tries to reconnect the VPN, whenever it disconnects unintentionally. The number of attempts is limited to 5 and there is artificial delay of 5 seconds between attempts.

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.

Apple just released this press release a few minutes ago:

"CUPERTINO, California—December 16, 2008—Apple® today announced that this year is the last year the company will exhibit at Macworld Expo. Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, will deliver the opening keynote for this year’s Macworld Conference & Expo, and it will be Apple’s last keynote at the show. The keynote address will be held at Moscone West on Tuesday, January 6, 2009 at 9:00 a.m. Macworld will be held at San Francisco’s Moscone Center January 5-9, 2009.

Apple is reaching more people in more ways than ever before, so like many companies, trade shows have become a very minor part of how Apple reaches its customers. The increasing popularity of Apple’s Retail Stores, which more than 3.5 million people visit every week, and the Apple.com website enable Apple to directly reach more than a hundred million customers around the world in innovative new ways.

Apple has been steadily scaling back on trade shows in recent years, including NAB, Macworld New York, Macworld Tokyo and Apple Expo in Paris."

So what does this mean? Well, Apple could still hold its own special events (at more appropriate times than in early January), but there are two things that concern me (after the jump):

When I see America's future president using Web 2.0 technologies to create a Digg-like website, where users can post - and digg questions to the president elect, I begin to grasp just how much I look forward to the next administration. The idea is simple: Anyone can post a question to the site, and other (logged in) users can vote for questions of their interest. At the end of a round, the ten most popular (most votes) questions are selected, and answered by Obama and Biden themselves. Click Read More to find out the winners of round one. I can tell you this much: I am really interested in the answer to the top question!

As you can tell, I've been in real video posting mood these past few days, and here is another little demo I have wanted to show you for a long time. It's a small app I developed a while ago, which does live color object tracking with your web-cam (in this case, the iSight camera from my iMac). I blogged about it before, but I think we all agree that a video would better explain how this little thing works than a textual description. So check it out after the jump!