googles dock [update]

if you cannot be without the dock magnification effect, then you abolutely must start to use google X from now on. quite nifty!

[via google blog]

update: the site is gone. it was a nifty dhtml-emulation of the dock magnification effect on google which made it “easy” to switch between the different parts of google (imgages.google.com, video.google.com, groups.google.com, etc.)

picture of the week 10

the past friday was absolutely amazing at work. as you might know (or not…) the swiss messengers have a collective product: swissconnect. hence, if a customer wants to send a parcel to any other town in switzerland, he just gives us a call, and we do the rest.

pick it up at his door, drive to the train station, put it on a train, and another partner grabs it from that train and delivers the parcel. anything goes. passports from lausanne, movie rolls from ostermundigen to zürich.

normally all those swissconnects are a little relief from all the other pickups and drops you do, you get a little break at the trainstation and stuff like that. but this friday was absolutely crazy!

Sc-1on a normal day we get at most around 18 so called velocities. but on friday we had 34 in total (24 exports going from bern to wherever and 10 coming to bern). if you click on the extremely tall image on the left you can see a screenshot from the internal swissconnect site (with masked details…).

every parcel has to be entered on that central site, so every partner (and big daddy cm in luzern) is informed with all the details and everything which can be quite a tedious process if the recipient is not entered as a customer in the database. so the whole friday was filled with entering all those details. so many details that it was hard to keep up with hurrying around six messengers in town. at least it was good fun and we made

the best day-revenue of the whole year up to now. way to go!Wochenrapport

the funniest parcel involved a passport, a russian diplomat, and some mühsam zuschlag from our side, but as i said to dom, it was only one of those 3 swissconnects per hour we had this friday.

ps; if you wonder how i took the funny screenshot of the internal swissconnect page: i used paparazzi [1], an extremely lightweight tool for taking complete screenshots of any webpage. i know you can just print the page to pdf, but then you break it up in separate pages and i thought it looks ways more impressive that way… (oh, and don’t worry, i didn’t install it on dispo1 or dispo2, i made the screenshot here at home…)

[1] the website seems to be down, i tried to use the coral cache-version, but it doesn’t work either. you can grab it on versiontracker if you like…

i want one of those new powerbooks [update]

the newest revision of apples powerbooks features an accelerometer, that detects if you drop the powerbook and parks the hard disc heads (a thing already found on older ibm-machines). now a guy figured out how to tap into the accelerometer and use it to display all kind of funky stuff (e.g. a window is fixed in space, while the powerbook rotates). this led another guy to program a python script whith which you can control itunes. just give your powerbook a mild slap on the head and it switches to the next song. i see some really funky stuff coming up for those powerbooks….

[via fscklog]

update: someone already did program a game for the tilt sensors. let the fun begin.

[via the unofficial apple weblog]

stöckchenwerfen

folgendes stöckchen wurde mir von rage zugeworfen:

1. wieviel gigantische bytes an musik sind auf meinem computer?

10.06 gb verteilt auf 2387 songs.

knapp die hälfte davon findet auf meinem ipod platz.

viel elektronik, viel handgemachtes, altes und neues und dazu noch ein grosser schuss schweizer musik.

viel musik ist noch auf den silberscheiben aufm gestell und nicht in einsen und nullen auf meiner festplatte. wenn ich mir in naher zukunft einen neuen ipod kaufe, muss ich mal eine rip-session einlegen. zum glück hat mein neuer powermac zwei optische laufwerke…

  1. die letzte cd, die du gekauft hast, ist?

vorgestern, beide zusammen: tank von den asian dub foundation gielen und 25.07.03 vom stress.

beide im chop.

beide erst kurz angehört.

3. welches lied hast du gerade gehört, als dich der ruf ereilte?

weiss ich nimmer, hab den referer der das stöckchenwerfen enthüllt hat letzte woche mal angeguckt.

bis dann hatt ich rage noch gar nicht im newsreader drin.

momentan läuft grad hey! von viel von den fantastischen vier.

4. fünf lieder, die dir viel bedeuten oder die du oft hörst:

ohni titel von yedi.

das schönste und funkigste dialekt-liebeslied.

club soda von thomas bangalter.

groovigster electro-track ever. und nicht nur weil ich ihn von der vanity9-dvd kenne (da wo die mädels in den knappen kleidchen tanzen…)

see breeze von talvin singh.

tablas. meditativ. und trotzdem schön schnell.

sitting on the dock of the bay von popa chubby.

tief im herzen bin ich der blueser par excellence.

weak become heroes von the streets.

geiler piano-hook. und mike skinner hat ziemlich was zu erzählen, dem hör ich gerne zu.

schlussendlich möcht ich mich aber nicht auf 20% sülze 60% elektronik und 20% blues festlegen. ich hör nämlich viel mehr…

5. wem wirfst du den stock zu?

piece, auch weil/obwohl er immer so viel über musik erzählt.

sis’ musikgeschmack nimmt mich auch wunder.

was hört der urs eigentlich?

qu’est qu’on ecoute a l’autre part dü röschtigraben?

hat monorom schon? (ps: bei ihr sind urs und piece auf einem bild..)

puh, das waren jetzt einige links zum zusammensuchen.

skype me [update 2]

since nina also started to use skype i thought i’d might give it another go.

so if you feel the desperate urge to call me, you can do it and call me via this button [1]:

(but be aware: since i bought a powerpc i don’t have a built in microphone, i need to go and buy one, so you might want to wait a day or two…)

[1]: button via the excellent button maker.

update: something with my soundcard is b0rked. the mic works really well (tested with flatmates peecee). but i just cannot get any sound out of it. the microphone gain is on maximum.

can anyone suggest some help?

update2: after buying a bluetooth headset and a new bluetooth dongle (both used and from ricardo.ch), i switched to bluetooth-skype, so everything should work, give it a go…

picture of the week 07

i just can’t stop skiing….

my parents spend a week on the bettmeralp and i’ve been visiting them for three days. the weather was quite bad, but the snow was perfect, and i really start to like my new skis.

the pic below shows me having some fun in a locker at the cable car station (yes i’d have fit in, but then the picture would be only half as funny…)

Dsc04353

smarterchild

Smarterchildtoday i had a funny conversation with my own personal smarter child. i read about it in the latest wired and must say it’s really fun. just add Smarterchild to your AIM-buddylist (or ichat) or add 35000 on your ICQ (doesn’t matter for me, because i use fire).

at the moment the information for international users is a bit sparse, ’cause in the US you can get movie listings and stuff like that. nonetheless i was able to get a review of the movie i’m going to see tonight (“can you get me a review of ray?”). the smartypant also reminds you of different stuff (“remind me to go offline” “when?” “in 30 minutes”).

you really should give it a go, because it’s hard to describe…

picture of the week 06

i spent the weekend in lech with mara. we thought we’d go skiing a lot, but then it turned out to be really bad weather. on saturday it rained heavily and yesterday there was quite a lot of snow (they closed the road leading to lech just after we left, so we were pretty much the last ones to get out of there…). the picture below shows the view on the slopes yesterday :-)

Dsc04349

merge and move data

i’m in the process of moving all my data from my ibook to my new g4 (it’s not new, i bought it used, but it’s new for me…). does anyone of you kind readers out there have an idea on how to do that smooth and seamless? i tried ccc, but that didn’t work really good, cause some os-extensions behave different on g3s and g4s… what files and directories do i need to transfer (with the excellent dropcopy for example…)?

105589 gmail invites left

i’ve got 50 gmail invites left to spare.

this makes me think that gmail is going to be open for everyone soon, since people around me are getting a truckload of invites. you won’t get an invite if you leave a comment here (they’re closed on this post), instead just head over to isnoops gmail invite spooler. over there you might be able to score one of the 105589 invites left at the moment. i just submitted all my invites there…

[via bitflux]