DeLonghi Nescafe Dolce Gusto Creativa Plus Coffeemaker

• This is a great little coffee maker, but needs to use a replaceable metal part for dispensing coffee. It currently uses a plastic capsule that includes a thin plastic sheath above the coffee; a foil pressure shield (which punctures under pressure and a plastic base creamer device
• I’ll see if I can get a stainless steel replacement module made up and post back later. Then I can use my own coffee and avoid plastic residues being ingested – all plastics leach small amounts of residue, no matter what the manufacturers are willing to tell us – they hedge their bets and assume it won’t kill us in the long run, a calculated gamble of sorts
• I’ve just made another espresso using old capsule, by putting a small amount of ground coffee into the capsule and hey-presto, it works a treat. So no need to buy expensive replacement capsules

Windows 8 Release Preview performance

• Windows 8 RP really looks well polished. I like the new task manager and how it create a simple yet effective heat map on what processes and apps are causing load issues. Here I’m running the disk defrag tool; no GUI version as yet

WIndows8 Release Preview

• First impression is that it’s fast, stable and overall a good installation experience over the web
• Down side, is that you have to rebuild your PC which is typical of all MS beta programs
• I have so far installed on a Samsung slate via USB and directly to a Dell XPS. Loosing Media Centre and DVD playback is a sad loss. Depreciating functionality between betas is poor planning IMHO, but falls in line with MS policy on their SKU’s

Apple has more cash the the US Treasury department

• At 20:40 Max Keiser talks about how if Apple were to become a bank, that with up to 80Billion US$ they could leverage that sum to 800Billion and become a trillion dollar company equivalent to something like JP Morgan (BTW JP Morgan are likely to fold – see KR 170)

Dot matrix waterfall

Amazing waterfall

• This is a dot matrix array driving a water printer. Impressive use of technology

Linear brushless motor

• Here’s what looks like a first example of a linear brushless motor mounted to a standard pushbike. Doesn’t look like it has much torque, but for a first attempt, looks promising

Filming of Toyota Auris-hybrid

• Managed to track down the creators of the video commercial for the new Toyota Auris, Hybrid. Impressive array of technology. The wheels are surrounded by phosphorescent lighting strips used in boutique hotels and discos. The rest is lighting projectors, 3D CGI mapping overlays. The second video shows the manufacturing process of the car. You get to see how relatively small the battery pack is. The battery pack is covered for 8 years under warranty and can be factory returned and recycled. At one time it had a solar roof, but for the UK at least, they took it off, because it wouldn’t be cost effective, plus in the concept car it looks a bit distractive
• The battery uses NiMh – Nickel Metal Hydride technology which is environmentally friendly according to Wikipedia, There is also a very interesting and revealing post on patent encumbrance by Texaco/Chevron. It’s well worth the read, because it explains why up until recently, why there have been few pure EV cars like the iMiEV on the market..

72 Windows 7 phone tips

• Reposting a tips blog post

New Toyota Auris hybrid hits the UK

• My next car perhaps?

Toyota Auris hyrid. 70mpg. We shall see..

What is BI–Business Intelligence

• I am currently brushing up on SharePoint 2010 BI and stumbled upon a Office 2010 Developer Training kit

Download

Windows 7 phone–recipe vault

Windows 7 Phone - Office 2010 mobile and SharePoint

• Very nicely done indeed. Make’s an iPhone look like a toy by comparison

Windows 7 Phone–Office Mobile/SharePoint–yeah baby!

Microsoft Lightspace

• Interesting video demonstrating a 3D interactive system, whereby presenters can move light objects around a table, from table to screen, or person-to-person utilising infrared sensors Aka an interactive surface. I think we may have borrowed some ideas from external folk, because I have seen something similar using a reverse engineered Wii remote and a wearable interactive projection system. Cool tech though. Look’s like you need a steady hand to not drop the ball

Popplet

• Interesting application for sharing ideas via a kind of white-boarding flowchart like app. Also available on the iPad

• Here’s a video done with Popplet for a Work Smart from FastCompany

The age of gadgets

• At the tail end of this video short from Engadget on the Jimmy Fallon's Late Night Show, you’ll see a quadricopter flying in the studio, controlled from an iPhone. Some very clever stabilisation electronics in the puppy, that’s for sure:

  The AR.Drone uses a pile of pretty sophisticated magic to enable it to fly -- those aforementioned cameras are just the start (one forward facing, one facing down running at 60 fps that allows stability in light wind) because you've also got two ultrasonic transmitters for vertical stability, a three-axis accelerometer, and a two-axis gyroscope paired with a single-axis yaw precision gyroscope for good measure

• Windows Phone, Blackberry control to be added later hopefully A tad pricey though at $299

NeoSmart - EasyBCD

• So, the final tweaks are under way. I created a P2V VHD (Virtual Hard Disk) of my existing boot OS, using the System Internals Disk2VHD utility. I then updated the boot configuration data using the GUI based EasyBCD utility from NeoSmart
• Next I plan to see if I can mount the same .VHD under hypervisor on my server, though I suspect it won’t mount properly. My plan is to boot natively to a clean VHD I normally use for demos and have my main OS hosted under Hyper-V on my server and remote into that. I will then strip down the old file based OS and expand the local boot VHD to be my primary OS, keeping differencing files for tests
• The main aim is to see how fast VHD’s are in the cloud/server when accessed via terminal services, or on external drives whilst also providing backup and instant restore scenarios
• Ultimately I’m looking for a way to have a image based ‘locked-down’ instant restore capability, were, no matter what happens I can always get back to a stable OS
• Updates, patches etc. always lead to an unstable OS that ends up bloated unreliable and difficult to troubleshoot

NeoSmart EasyBCD

Why women live longer then men?

• Easy does it ;-)

Gmail–priority inbox

• Well now that Microsoft have Mail Sweep, GMail now improve there already good web mail product
• Nicely done video

Captain Jack Flash–SPAM assassin extraordinaire

• Here’s a very funny SPAM smail I received today. Make I laugh

From: patrick lenz [mailto:patricklenz33@gmail.com]
Sent: 13 September 2010 05:30
To: MSN
Subject: Re: Celica

Hello,
Thanks for your reply.
I want to inform you that i will buy your car for your last price but I have a business proposal for you. I am  a captain with the United Nations troop in Iraq, on war against terrorism. Based on the United States legislative and executive decision for withdrawing troops from Iraq come this year, I have been deployed to come and work in your country's military base soonest. Our mission is to help beef up terrorist targeted states, mostly the United states and the European Union on the war against terrorism. I will need a car for myself and that is why i contact you. On the other hand i want to inform you that I have in my possession the sum of 10.2million USD. which was recovered from one of our raids on terrorists here in Iraq  because they keep most of their money at home for evil activities which they normally get through illegal deals on crude oil.
Based on the suffering we undergo here some of us do meet such luck. It happened that i went for this raid with the men in my unit and i decided to take it as my share for my stress here in this evil land filled with suicide bombers. I deposited this money with a red cross agent informing him that we are making contact for the real owner of the money. It is under my power to approve whoever comes forth for this money. I wish to use this money for charity purposes in Turkey, where we have about 3 million Iraqi refugees and Sudan where we have currently the highest numbers of refugees displaced as a result of war. You need to visit such places. I want to invest the money on stock fish from Norway to this refugees because base on my experience on battle ground in this places, they lack a lot of fish and meat to add to their meager and unpalatable meals which they get in little quantity just to keep them living until God knows when the problem ends. Instead of allowing this terrorists to get the money and spend it on purchasing arms illegally from Russia and North Korea it is better channeled to saving the world.
I cannot move this money to the United states because i will be in Europe for about 3years,so i need someone i could deal with. If you accept, I will transfer the money to Europe where you will be the beneficiary because i am a uniformed person and i cannot be parading such an amount so i need to present someone as the beneficiary. I am an American and an intelligence officer at that so i have a 100% authentic means of transferring the money through diplomatic courier service .I just need your acceptance and all is done.
Please if you are interested in this transaction i will give to you the complete details you need for us to carry out this transaction successfully. I decided to find someone that is real and not imaginary and that is why i went to a secured car site where i can be sure that the person is real. I believe i can trust you. where we are now we can only communicate through our military communication facilities which is secured so nobody can monitor our emails, then i can explain in details to you. I will only reach you through email, because our calls might be monitored, I just have to be sure whom i am dealing with. If you are interested please send me your personal mobile number so i can call you for further inquiries when i am out of our military network. I am writing from a fresh email account so if you are not interested do not reply to this email and please delete this message, if no response after 3days i will then search for someone else. I am doing this on trust, you should understand and you should know that as a trained military expert i will always play safe in case you are the bad type, but i pray you are not.10.2million USD is a lot of money which is the dream of anyone.
I wait for your contact details so we can go on. In less than 7days the money should have been noted on your account and i will come over for my money. I will give to you 30% of the sum and 70% is for my dream. I hope i am been fair on this deal.
Regards,
captpatricklenz

Samsung galaxy 10

• Interesting prototype of a new slate like device. Would that be WebOS, or Samsung’s own OS I wonder?. Going to be a busy Xmas and onwards in the portable space that’s for sure