Calibre - e-book management application

• Interesting little application that allows you to control content on multiple devices plus a rather neat ability to pull online newspaper content from the Internet and pull/push to multiple devices such as the Kindle, iPad, HTC phone etc. Look’s like a winner

Phillippe Starck – species mutation

• Genius or madman? Somewhere between I dare say, but nonetheless a sentient and highly intelligent individual whose design inspires others. He is currently working with the Pramac Racing team on their Green Energy program, specifically on their livery as witnessed during last weekends Mugello MotoGP
• Here, he is speaking at TedTalks. Very French and very funny and a very mercurial personality

Live Essentials (beta) Wave 4

• Wow! I’m just loving the new Live Essentials beta updates. Live writer always was a great blogging tool, but this version is awesome. Plus, all the other Live wave4 tools and the web companions rock! Well done Microsoft, a round of applause is much due

Predators tools

• Go and kill a site using the Predators tools. Cool! Love the sound effects

http://www.predators-movie.com/predatortools/

iPad

• Would I buy an iPad? Nope, not until I see version 2, with a camera, more books and PC like apps that I can use
• Do I like the look of it? Sure, it’s pretty, but I’m not impressed with 10 hours of battery life, nor how big it is, nor how heavy it is. First thing that will happen, is it will roll off your knee or you’ll drop it with a resultant cracked screen
• If you get a chance to hold a Amazon Kindle v2 (not the DX model) you’ll see what an e-reader should be all about. The Kindle fits in my jacket pocket, runs for a whole week on one charge, can be held whilst reading and is very easy on the eyes
• I think the iPad is competing with better net-books that have a full app suite, touch and probably as good battery life. It also kind of competes with their own MacBook..
• If they came in at $299 I might be interested, but at $499 I could buy a Lenovo net book with Windows 7 and have touch with a full app suite
• Pretty? Pretty useless in my honest opinion. Video on the go? Any net-book can do that. They should have made it thinner, lighter and focussed squarely at the books market. It’s really just an iPhone on steroids but without a phone!
• People are already taking the mickey out of it. It’s a shame, because I think Apple make some amazing products and their app-store is sheer genius

Tesco entertainment anybody?

• My wife is a big fan of Michael Bublé, so today I moseyed over to the new Tesco entertainment site and within 10 minutes had setup my account added my Tesco club-card and started downloading the Crazy Love album for £3.97. The same album on iTunes is £7.97, so a whopping £4 saving
• Well done Tesco. Now’s who’s going to beat them? Spotify maybe? The other players had better get real with their pricing structure, because now that Tesco has entered the fray, the musical pundits will now be forced to give us genuine market prices and the torrents will eventually die off, as people will prefer to have legal ownership

Can Dad’s dance?

• Robert Llewellyn demonstrating how Dad’s end up dancing in middle age. True? yeah sadly so, arf

How the Windows 7 login screen came to be

• Denise Trabona, Senior UX Lead (User Experience) walks us through how the Windows 7 logo (login) background was developed. After a good amount of fruitful internal work Microsoft decided to look to an external  illustrator called Chuck Anderson of NOPATTERN
• You can see some of Chuck’s work on Flickr 

yellowBird – 3D movies anyone?

• Picked this up from #carpool on Twitter. Pretty cool technology. I especially liked looking backwards at the skiers

Roaming hacker

• I was just reading a blog BornToLearn at MSLearn.net and stumbled across this supposed hacker – could be a spoof, not investigated it yet, but from all accounts this guy is for real – funny he hasn’t hit the prime-time TV news yet..

 

Hacking a train station

 

Hacking building lighting systems

Hacking a train station