Gute Nacht Spruch :-)

March 4th, 2010 by amazlow

Ich bin Klein mein Herz ist rein,
mein Popo ist schmutzig.
Ist das nicht putzig!

Im Augenblick des Zusammenkommens beginnt die Trennung.

Je stärker die Bindung, desto heftiger der Ruck, wenn sie reißt.

Mögen die Scharniere unserer Freundschaft nie rostig werden,
möge die Fallstricke des Bösen
nie um deine Türschwelle gespannt sein,
möge dein Geschirr so zahlreich sein,
dass du immer einen Teller für einen hungrigen Gast hast.

Mögest du immer einen Freund an deiner Seite haben,
der dir Vertrauen gibt,
wenn es dir an Licht und Kraft gebricht.

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Sprüche zum Nachdenken

February 28th, 2010 by amazlow

Und hier eine Menge Sprüche zum Nachdenken

Alles hat sein Für und Wieder.

Aufgeschoben ist nicht aufgehoben.

Besser spät als nie!

Der Apfel fällt nicht weit vom Stamm.

Ein gutes Gewissen ist ein sanftes Ruhekissen

Frisch gewagt, ist halb gewonnen.

Hochmut kommt vor dem Fall

Jedes Ding hat seine zwei Seiten.

Kleinvieh macht auch Mist

Lange Rede, kurzer Sinn.

Süße Träume wünsch ich Dir, wieso bist Du nicht bei mir? Meine Augen fallen zu, mein letzter Gedanke, der bist Du!

Siehst Du die Sterne, sie rappen nur für Dich. Ich Liebe nur Dich, wenn ich im Bett liege, träume ich, wie Du neben mir liegst.

Wenn du Nachts zum Himmel schaust und Dir dort ein Sternchen klaust, küss es lieb und denk an mich, denn dieses sternchen, das bin ich.

Ich könnte 1000 schöne Träume träumen, doch sie wären alle nicht die meinen. Ich mag alle nicht, denn Du bist in keinem! Du hast es mir nicht leicht gemacht, doch jetzt wünsch ich Dir eine gute Nacht! Süße Träume wünsch ich Dir!

Ein kleiner Fratz aus weiter Ferne schenkt Dir eine Hand voll Sterne, wünscht Dir eine gute Nacht, bis das Morgenland erwacht!

Leise liege ich in meinem Bett und denk an Dich. Siehst Du da draußen den kleinen Stern, der sagt Dir leise, ich habe Dich sehr gern! Sage Dir hier ganz still gute Nacht!

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Kaffee

February 28th, 2010 by amazlow

Nothing is better then a good kaffee

Vermont-based Green Mountain Coffee Roasters is no stranger to community service. Like many other coffee companies that trade directly with coffee growers and their cooperatives, they have championed a number of initiatives to better the lives of those coffee farmers who make it possible for the business to exist. Thus, it’s no real surprise to see that the organization is one of many specialty coffee companies that have contributed more than $25,000 to Grounds for Health, a Waterbury, VT based organization that has been taking on the problem of women’s health since the mid-1990s.

Grounds for Health was founded by members of the specialty coffee industry who traded with farmers in Oaxaca, Mexico. In the course of the relationships that they developed with farmers and others in the small mountain communities, they learned that women in rural Oaxaca suffer much higher rates of cervical and breast cancer than women in the United States. Part of the reason, they learned, is the lack of access to routine health care and cancer screening.

Thus was born Grounds for Health, a volunteer organization that provides cancer screening services to towns in Mexico, Central America and, most recently, Tanzania. Funded in large part by members of the specialty coffee industry, the program makes use of the networks created by coffee cooperatives to reach women in far-flung rural areas with medical services. According to the Grounds for Health web site:

In many countries where coffee is grown, cervical cancer rates are among the highest in the world. However, this disease is both preventable and, when caught early, one of the most treatable cancers.

Our mission is to bring effective cervical cancer screening and treatment to women in coffee-growing communities. We currently work in Mexico, Central America and Tanzania. We use an innovative, affordable and community-appropriate method called the Single Visit Screen & Treat Approach, which has been endorsed by the World Health Organization.

Our work is made possible through partnerships with local coffee co-operatives, national and regional ministries of health, and specialty coffee companies. These partnerships have made it possible for us to bring better and sustainable health care to women in coffee-growing communities.

To maximize donations to the cause, Grounds for Health operates on a volunteer basis. With the exception of the office staff, everyone associated with Grounds for Health is a volunteer. Those volunteers include doctors and other health care providers who travel to the coffee growing regions to provide the screening and health care services. The services are provided in a one-stop treatment campaign as much as possible to maximize the probability that the needed medical procedures will be carried out.

The ultimate goal for each area with which Grounds for Health works is for the area to eventually be able to manage the health care services themselves. This is what happened in Huatasco, Mexico, where Grounds for Health worked for eight years and helped establish a dysplasia clinic and ongoing screening center for the women in the area.

For more information about supporting Grounds for Health – including information about the Specialty Coffee Auction that raised over $100,000 for the organization last winter – visit the Grounds for Health web site at http://www.groundsforhealth.org.

Caribou Coffee, a distant No. 2 in the coffee chain category next to Starbucks, is attempting to bolster its appeal as a branded coffee company by playing down the ski lodge imagery and, yes, the caribou, with a sweeping rebranding.

More:
Why the New Caribou Coffee Logo Features Less Caribou (BrandWeek)

Tired of hearing about the Tea Parties? WaPo introduces the “Coffee Party”, which aims to “promote civility and inclusiveness in political discourse, engage the government not as an enemy but as the collective will of the people, push leaders to enact the progressive change for which 52.9 percent of the country voted in 2008.”
All fine. But where’s the liquor-based political discussion group?

Coffee  filters …… Who knew!   And you can buy 1,000  at the Dollar Tree for almost nothing even the large ones.

1. Cover bowls or dishes when cooking in the  microwave. Coffee  filters make excellent covers.

2. Clean windows, mirrors, and chrome…  Coffee filters are  lint-free so they’ll leave windows sparkling.

3.  Protect china by separating your good dishes with a coffee  filter between each dish.

4.  Filter broken cork from wine.  If you break the cork when  opening a wine  bottle, filter the wine through a coffee filter.

5.  Protect a cast-iron skillet.  Place a coffee filter in  the  skillet to absorb moisture and prevent rust.

6.  Apply shoe polish.  Ball up a lint-free coffee  filter.

7.  Recycle frying oil.  After frying, strain oil through a  sieve  lined with a coffee filter.

8.  Weigh chopped foods.  Place chopped ingredients in a  coffee filter on a  kitchen scale.

9.  Hold tacos.  Coffee filters make convenient wrappers for  messy foods.

10.  Stop the soil from leaking out of a plant pot.  Line a  plant  pot with a coffee filter to prevent the soil from going  through  the drainage holes.

11.  Prevent a Popsicle from dripping.  Poke one or two holes  as  needed in a coffee filter….

12.  Do you think we used expensive strips to wax eyebrows?   Use  strips of coffee filters..

13.  Put a few in a plate and put your fried bacon, French fries,  chicken  fingers, etc on them.  It soaks out all the grease.

14.  Keep in the bathroom.  They make great “razor nick   fixers.”

15.   As a sewing backing.  Use a filter as an  easy-to-tear backing for embroidering or appliqueing soft fabrics.

16.  Put baking soda into a coffee filter and insert into shoes or  a closet to absorb or prevent odors.

17.  Use them to strain soup stock and to tie fresh herbs in to put  in soups and stews.

18.  Use a coffee filter to prevent spilling when you add fluids to  your car.

19.  Use them as a spoon rest while cooking and clean up small  counter spills.

20.  Can use to hold dry ingredients when baking or when cutting a  piece of fruit or veggies..  Saves on having extra bowls to wash.

21.  Use them to wrap Christmas ornaments for storage.

22.  Use them to remove fingernail polish when out of cotton balls.

23.  Use them to sprout seeds..  Simply dampen the coffee  filter, place seeds inside, fold it and place it into a plastic baggie until  they sprout.

24. Use coffee filters as blotting paper for pressed flowers.   Place the flowers between two coffee filters and put the coffee filters  in  phone book..

25.  Use as a disposable “snack bowl” for popcorn, chips, etc.

OH YEAH THEY ARE GREAT TO USE IN YOUR COFFEE MAKERS TOO.

<P>–from Rev CarlR

The truth is that cats will make themselves comfortable anywhere. On a bed of coals, or atop Mount Doom, or hurtling through space at 99% of the speed of light, a cat will somehow find a way to curl up and doze off. So the idea of including a special place for your cat to sleep underneath a perfectly good cat bed (in this case a glass coffee table) seems redundant. But let’s be honest — are you going to let a little redundancy keep you from buying a cat hammock?

Alas, like most things worth having, the cat hammock is not real. Sure, there’s one somewhere in Japanese designer Case-Real’s warehouse, but I don’t think they’re going to let you have it.

I think I’m beginning to fall in love with Case-Real — they also designed this stunning amplifier from a few months back. Check out the other stuff on their site; maybe we can convince them to start getting it manufactured.

[via 1designperday and Geekologie]

Scented Felt Coffee set and cookies(original photo) by Hope's art

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Ebay a Story

February 26th, 2010 by amazlow

The first change to be crowd sourced this way is a set of new tools to search eBay’s Web site. EBay has about 200 million items for sale at any given time, and sifting through that list can be burdensome.

Instead of rolling out the search features to all users, eBay will put them in a new place on the site Garden by eBay. People can choose to use the new tools, rate them and send critiques to the product team, which will continually tweak them. Some will fail and others will be incorporated into the main site.

“It’s imperative that we have a deeper conversation with customers and buyers,” said Christopher Payne, vice president of search. “It’s fair to say it’s a cultural change at eBay.”

But it is necessary to provide a better retail experience, he said.

This kind of experimentation with the help of users is akin to what other technology companies do to test new products before their release. Google, for example, publicly tries new ideas in its Google Labs area.

John Donahoe, eBay’s chief executive, said in a recent interview that eBay was becoming more of a technology-driven company, including with search. “One of our biggest problems on eBay is we have too much inventory,” he said. “To be told you have 28,000 search results doesn’t really help you if you just want one.”

Some of the changes eBay is testing are similar to methods other e-commerce sites use to make it easier to find the item a shopper is looking for.

For example, categories to narrow a search — such as choosing a style, color or brand of a handbag — used to be buried, but will now show up higher on the page. Right now, to narrow a search to, say, a never-opened Nikon point-and-shoot 10-megapixel digital camera, a shopper has to click on five separate pages. The new tools will let people hover over the categories, narrowing the search with a single click.

A little toolbar that follows the shopper on the page will give the option to see similar listings (such as new digital cameras) or remove similar listings (all camera accessories or used cameras.)

Shoppers will also be able to view items as a gallery instead of a list, or view a side-by-side comparison of fixed-price and auction sales, to determine, before making a purchase, whether there is a better trade-off, said Josh Ramirez, senior product manager for search experience at eBay.

The new search results being tested by eBay are much cleaner, without ads, borders and highlighted text. The search box will stay at the top of the viewing page as shoppers scrolls down, so they can avoid scrolling back up to the top to revise a search.

Users can see an image of the product, its title, price and whether it is selling at fixed-price or auction all on the left side of the search results, as opposed to having to scroll to the right to see sales information. With all the information clustered together, the site looks less like a spreadsheet, Mr. Payne said.

Not every vintage fashionista has the time to page through thousands of eBay listings. But now you don't have to!

Instead, just sneak a peek at my weekly eBay Roundup of Top Vintage Clothing Finds.

An eclectic mix of designer and non-designer vintage clothing, accessories and jewelry, these are pieces that have caught my discerning eye for their uniqueness, their contemporary feel or their highly collectible nature.

As always, buyer beware! Be sure to read the listings closely and contact the sellers with any questions.

CLICK IMAGE FOR MORE INFORMATION

Vintage 1970s Tiger Print Long Velvet Coat (koko1954) | Vintage 1960s Raincoat (timesupshop) | Vintage 1990s Coogi Sweater Dress (kaleidoscope*eyes) | Vintage 1950s Black and White Lace Cocktail Dress (meat-market) | Vintage 1970s Jumpsuit (topazandzoya) | Vintage 1960s Khaki Toggle Coat (melraeb3) | Vintage Givenchy Ruffle Top (claireinc*) | Vintage 1920s Print Dress with Jacket (snyggla) | Vintage 1970s Gucci Sweater (lambi99) | Vintage 1960s Lilli Ann Blazer with Fur Trim (mintmallstore) | Vintage 1950s Paris Scene Dress (matildasvintage) | Vintage Christian Dior Tuxedo Tail Jacket (afro*chic) | Editorial selections are made by Zuburbia without promotional consideration from the eBay sellers (although Zuburbia is a member of the eBay Partner Network).

I’m here at eBay Headquarters in San Jose, CA for the launch of Bloom Energy’s Bloom Box, a fuel cell device that promises to power your whole house with a handheld-sized box. It made worldwide headlines after the Bloom Box’s appearance on CBS’ 60 Minutes.

The room is packed with dozens of cameras, reporters, investors, and special guests. We have been told that both former Secretary of State Colin Powell (a Bloom Energy board member) and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger are here for the launch. The tight security here at eBay HQ is definitely a sign that the heavyweights have rolled into town.

I’m going to provide a play-by-play of today’s launch below, along with pictures from the event.

The Bloom Box: The Live Details

First, here’s an image explaining how the Bloom Box works:

And here’s a picture of the Bloom Boxes already in use at eBay HQ:

- 8:45 AM: They have asked everyone to silence cell phones as they are about to begin the program.

- 8:47 AM: Colin Powell has just entered the room and sat down in the front row.

- 8:48 AM: A short one-minute introduction video has just played

- 8:50 AM: The CEO of Bloom Energy has just introduced Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is now speaking. When your company can bring the governator to your launch, you know you have a lot of buzz.

- Arnold is now introducing some of the key people in the room, including Colin Powell, former Secretary of State Greg Schultz, and others.

- Arnold: Bloom Boxes have the potential to revolutionize the energy industry.

- “A wave of green is washing over California.” The governor is touting the green initiatives of the state.

- Arnold has proposed a law to exempt green technologies from the sales tax, which would cover Bloom Energy. “Jobs, jobs, jobs, right now.”

- Now the CEO of Bloom Box, KR Sridhar, Ph.D., is speaking again, after a photo op with the governor. He started with his past as a rocket scientist at NASA, working on a way to create atmospheric gases on Mars.

- Mr. Sridhar is talking about the energy problem, that you couldn’t mine or drill to solve the problem.

- Now he is talking about innovations and the evolution of products such as computers to laptops, and telephones to mobile phones. He is focusing on reliability and affordability to make any technology mainstream. However, clean energy hadn’t reached that point when they started Bloom Energy.

- Goal on the powerpoint: “To make clean reliable energy affordable for everyone in the world.”

- In 1839, Alexander Grove invented the fuel cell, according to the slide.

- KR has now lifted a cloth on a box and revealed…sand! It is the core of Bloom Energy’s technology, he says.

- The Bloom Fuel Cell is a thin sheet that utilizes “a flat piece of sand,” making it affordable.

- If you have the choice of multiple fuels, you can arbitrage to get the cheapest fuel possible. Essentially, the box needs an imput, but you can choose what input, e.g. natural gas.

- The formula is essentially fuel + air = electricity.

- He just showed off one of the concepts of the future — using solar energy and a Bloom Box to not only power your home, but your hybrid car as well. Cool depiction of this technology:

- The carbon footprint is half of the grid and twice as efficient, Bloom Energy’s CEO says.

- One fuel cell produces 25 watts. although he thinks it will be a lot more soon.

- One stack of fuel cells – 1 kilowatt, enough to power the average U.S. home 24/7, 365.

- Take the stacks and put them into a box the size of a fridge and you get a module, which creates 25 kilowatts of power, enough to power a “small Starbucks.”

- A system creates 100 kilowatts, which can power a supermarket.

- A solution (put a couple modules into a system and then get a couple of systems together) can create 250-500 kilowatts, which companies like eBay and GoogleGoogle currently use to power their data centers and campuses.

- “I would like to introduce to you the Bloom Energy server.” They just rolled out the big Bloom boxes.

- 3 major value propositions: lower energy costs, clean power, and reliable power.

- First point: The box has a 3-5 year payback period, and fixed energy prices for the next ten years.

- Second point: the carbon footprint is 50% cleaner than the grid and 100% renewable.

- Third point: 24/7/365 power with always-on modular architecture. If a box or unit has to be fixed, it will still generate power, like a server farm.

- They have created 11,000,000 kilowatts so far.

- Foundation partners/customers: Coca-Cola, Bank of America, eBay, Cox Enterprises, FedEx, Walmart, Staples, and Google.

- They are now going to do a panel with some of their top customers, discussing the Bloom Boxes.

Panel: Bloom Box Customers

- Waiting for the CEO of Bloom Energy to introduce the panel.

- This is an all-star panel.

- Moderator: John Doerr, partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, an investor in Bloom Energy.. Panelists: John Donahoe of eBay, Bill Simon, the COO of Walmart, Rob Carter, CIO and EVP of FedEx, Jim Kennedy, the Chairman of Cox Enterprises, Brian Kelly, President of Coca Cola, and Larry Page, Co-Founder of Google. Getting all of the names now.

- eBay’s CEO is talking about the Bloom Boxes on campus and how they power about 15% of the campus.

- Now Walmart’s COO is about to talk.

- He is speaking about saving money through a wider rollout of Bloom Energy, solar, and other green technologies being used by Walmart.

- Coca-Cola: We are aggressive about having clean, off-the-grid energy. They have a goal to have the same carbon footprint in 2015 as they did in 2004, regardless of their growth.

- Jim Kennedy of Cox Enterprises is speaking about his company’s use of the Bloom Box.

- Larry Page, Co-Founder of Google, is now speaking. Google says it is “a privilege to be the first customer of Bloom.”

- He’s telling a story about how he learned about the boxes — people thought they were transformers as it was very secretive at the time. There are also a lot of benefits to having power generated closer to where it’s being used.

- Walmart is the first company to deploy Bloom Boxes on multiple sites. Two locations in California.

- We’re going to go visit the Bloom Boxes on eBay’s campus after this event and the Q&A.

- Now they’re playing a video with people talking about the Bloom Box. California Senator Diane Feinstein and NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg have popped up so far. Also in the video: T.J. Rodgers, Founder and CEO of Cypress Semiconductor; Patrick Pichette, CFO of Google; Vinod Khosla, Founder of Khosla Partners; Scott Sandell, Partner at NEA.

- Final keynote speaker: Colin Powell

Colin Powell Keynote

- Colin Powell is on the board of Bloom Energy and one of its investors.

- “I used to have 4 million employees.” He is talking about taking along noisy generators on the battlefield, and that they’re always looking for these types of innovative things to improve efficiency.

- He joined Kleiner Perkins and that is how he first visited Bloom Energy — when it was still a company in a garage.

- Colin is speaking about how to create new jobs and reliable energy. He’s talking about the economic growth of China and the rise of the middle class there.

- He joined the board last year after KR asked him to join.

- Can fuel cells really work? Will it work for 10-20 years? Colin says the proof is in the pudding with customers who are already satisfied, but there’s a lot more that has to be done.

- Now it’s time for Q&A and the tour.

More Pics

Outside the eBay Town Hall, where the Bloom Box is launching:

Everybody grabs breakfast as they wait to be let in:

The Fuel Cell is not a new technology:

We this ebay will help you!

All Sales are Final. All payments must be made within 3 days. I will ship upon receiving payment. I am not responsible for items lost or damage in transit. Shipping and handling is FREE for U.S. addresses. The shipping cost includes postage, packaging and handling. Please email me for international shipping rates.

Auction Searching

eBay’s searching feature is key to the success of buyers and sellers. For buyers, choosing the right keywords can uncover a whole new set of bargains that were missed with more common words. For sellers,
judging the popularity and market price of items is crucial before buying goods to sell. Auction Searching software automates and simplifies some of the tasks that are difficult and time-consuming (if not impossible) using eBay’s search, such as:

HotBidz
HotBidz searches for auctions by category or by keyword, can create preset searches, find items with a minimum number of bids, and sort the results by various fields.

Prospector Professional
Search manager, item tracker, and bid sniper via the publisher’s own bidding server. Features include a search for other auctions that an item’s bidders have bid on, saving search results and more.

AuctionSieve
Attractive and user-friendly searching tool. Each “sieve” consists of a category or keyword search, which is refined by choosing words to find or exclude from the results. May require update following download.

*Sorting search results by the number of bids
*Finding items that have misspellings or typos in their titles (and can therefore sell for less than the normal
market value)
*Saving search results so they can be browsed offline
*Creating virtual photo albums of search results, with full-sized pictures, to speed up buying decisions

You are bidding on a damaged Blackberry 8250, the works 100% but has developed a strange clicking noise when in a call and a chatter. The phone will come wth a charger, battery, handsfree and box.


This phone is sold as is with no warranty expressed or implied.


 


Additional Information about RIM BlackBerry Curve 8520 Smartphone

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Weisheiten

February 25th, 2010 by amazlow

Alles hat sein Für und Wieder.

Aufgeschoben ist nicht aufgehoben.

Besser spät als nie!

Der Apfel fällt nicht weit vom Stamm.

Ein gutes Gewissen ist ein sanftes Ruhekissen

Frisch gewagt, ist halb gewonnen.

Hochmut kommt vor dem Fall

Jedes Ding hat seine zwei Seiten.

Kleinvieh macht auch Mist

Lange Rede, kurzer Sinn.

Süße Träume wünsch ich Dir, wieso bist Du nicht bei mir? Meine Augen fallen zu, mein letzter Gedanke, der bist Du!

Siehst Du die Sterne, sie rappen nur für Dich. Ich Liebe nur Dich, wenn ich im Bett liege, träume ich, wie Du neben mir liegst.

Wenn du Nachts zum Himmel schaust und Dir dort ein Sternchen klaust, küss es lieb und denk an mich, denn dieses sternchen, das bin ich.

Ich könnte 1000 schöne Träume träumen, doch sie wären alle nicht die meinen. Ich mag alle nicht, denn Du bist in keinem! Du hast es mir nicht leicht gemacht, doch jetzt wünsch ich Dir eine gute Nacht! Süße Träume wünsch ich Dir!

Ein kleiner Fratz aus weiter Ferne schenkt Dir eine Hand voll Sterne, wünscht Dir eine gute Nacht, bis das Morgenland erwacht!

Leise liege ich in meinem Bett und denk an Dich. Siehst Du da draußen den kleinen Stern, der sagt Dir leise, ich habe Dich sehr gern! Sage Dir hier ganz still gute Nacht!

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iPhone Rewies again

February 24th, 2010 by amazlow

Out of the box, basic setup is relatively easy: plug in the bridge and open your phone’s settings to register the device to your network. All you have to do from there is open the RedEye app and register your various devices: televisions, Tivo, DVD and BluRay players - even the Roku is there. A couple of quick touches and your devices and their commands are registered. In the rare event that your television brand or DVR is not listed in the RedEye database, the bridge (which also charges your iPod) can learn any infrared device.

The next step is somewhere between a pretty quick task and an all-day adventure depending on what you expect from your remote. Because the RedEye is incredibly customizable, creating the visual interface can be as simple as accepting a default template or as incredibly complicated as you want to make it. RedEye supports macros so the remote is capable of multiple commands with a single touch.

Once you are setup, it’s just a matter of touching buttons like you would on any other remote. And for some basic functions like changing channels or adjusting volume, multi-touch gestures allow for eyes-free control.

The RedEye system slots right into the price range of most universal remote control systems with a price tag of $188, with a significant difference to other universal remotes in that RedEye uses hardware that you already own. But RedEye’s position is that the price is actually a good deal because they offer the same feature set as high-end, luxury, multi-controller systems, which can cost in the neighborhood of a thousand dollars. Aside from its customization, each bridge is capable of receiving commands from multiple iPod touches and iPhones.

My biggest complaint is that - while setup isn’t impossible - it’s not nearly as intuitive as it should be. I’ve grown accustomed to great user interfaces and smart setup for most Apple-related applications. RedEye misses the mark on this count, leaving me pretty frustrated at times. For example, visual interfaces for devices must be setup under “Activities” from a text list in the setup. (That doesn’t make sense to me at all - why not put it under “Devices” or “Commands” where you’d expect a device’s commands to be?) The app does have a help system and an online owner’s manual that — while not as straightforward as I would like — got me back on track, but only after repeated readings of the manual and a good deal of trial and error. Once you’ve set the device up, it works as expected - it’s just that getting there can be a laborious chore.

Also, if your iPhone rings while watching a movie, you would probably want to pause or mute your entertainment. Unfortunately - since the phone takes command of the screen - backtracking to pause or mute becomes a bit of a headache.

RedEye will also be available for the coming iPad, with special features that take advantage of the iPad’s screen real estate. And to get ready for the iPad, RedEye has just launched a refer-a-friend sweepstakes. For every friend you refer that purchases a RedEye universal remote control system before March 31, you’ll be entered in a chance to win an Apple iPad. More here.

Wired: The system is immensely customizable. Deep database of devices and infrared codes.

Tired: High price barrier for some users. Setup and menus are not as intuitive as other applications and devices.

The RedEye universal remote control system, $188.


Hey guys, some fun news to share: Engadget for iPhone / iPod touch 2.0.1 was just approved by Apple and is now available on the App Store! The big new feature is landscape mode in article, comment, and sharing views, but we've also bumped up font sizes, made some improvements to the commenting experience, and added the ability to edit tweets directly in the app. Oh, and you can also now email photos from galleries from within the app, and customize the toolbar. Of course, that's in addition to our regular features like offline viewing, built in streaming for The Engadget Show, and in-app tip submissions — you know, for when you see the iPhone 3GT leak out.

So what are you waiting for? You can download the app right here, or just click the image above — if you've already got it installed the update should be waiting for you right this second. Full changelog after the break.

Once again, a big thanks to the team at AOL that makes these apps happen: Sun Sachs, Andy Averbuch, Hareesh P, Anibal Rosado, Rajesh Kumar, Rich Foster, Claudeland Louis, Mike Wolstat, Eric Wedge, Vikas B R, Milissa Tarquini, Asha Indira and Bob Gurwin. High fives all around.

P.S.- Updates for the BlackBerry and webOS apps should hit in March, and that's also when we're scheduled to launch our Android app — stay tuned!

What's New in Version 2.0.1 of the Engadget App:
Landscape Support with bigger fonts!

  • Added Landscape support for Article View, Comments View and Sharing.

Tweet you own way!

  • Added ability to edit twitter posts.

Even Faster Commenting Flow!

  • Added “+” sign at top right of comments page to anchor down to commenting box so you can be heard right away.
  • UI Tweaks to Comments view for a smoother user experience and better keyboard/text field interaction.

Tab bar customization:

  • Edit button in the “More” screen to configure the tab bar to display the tabs used most often.

Improvements:

  • In-App Email Share with attached image for Photos in Galleries
  • Minor bug fixes.

Kleer wireless is gradually gaining momentum, and the D&A RX1 fills in another gap in the audio market: cutting the connection between your iPod and your iPod speaker dock without cutting out sound quality. A simple receiver dongle which plugs into an iPod dock and promises CD-quality wireless audio, we slapped the RX1 into our test system to see if this affordable Bluetooth A2DP alternative delivered on its promises.

A quick Kleer refresher for those unfamiliar with the technology. An alternative to Bluetooth A2DP, Kleer has a similar 10m range but higher audio quality; think 16-bit 44KHz CD quality rather than the sometimes crunchy sound you get from stereo Bluetooth headphones. You can also pair a single transmitter – which can plug into a standard 3.5mm headphone socket or into the 30-pin Dock connector of an iPod – with up to four receivers simultaneously.

So far all the Kleer receivers we’ve tried have been integrated with headphone systems, whether modular (but using proprietary plugs) as with Sleek Audio, or built into headphones as with Digital Opera. D&A’s RX1, meanwhile, is intended to plug into an iPod audio dock, streaming music from your iPod over to the speaker system.

Setup is straightforward, as it should be when you have a single button and a single LED as your user-interface. Pairing with a Kleer transmitter requires plugging each into their respective device (dock and iPod) and holding down the pairing button on each for 7 seconds; everything else is done automatically, and takes less than a minute. Subsequently, as soon as there’s power they’ll automatically reconnect.

Once that’s done, you basically operate the iPod as you would if it were in the dock, and the bottom line is that we noticed no difference in audio quality. D&A say the RX1 will work with most iPod docks, though whether the dock’s playback controls or remote will be functional seems to depend on manufacturer and model (obviously you’ll need to use a Kleer transmitter that plugs into the dock port if you want any chance of remote control). There’s a list of those known to be fully compatible here.

The main benefit is that you can be browsing the internet, emailing and generally using other features on your iPod while still playing music through the speakers. Another benefit, however, is that it opens up the iPod dock market to non-Apple audio sources. Use one of the generic Kleer transmitters, and anything with a 3.5mm headphone socket can transmit audio, be it your laptop, a non-Apple PMP or anything else.

If you’ve already got a Kleer headphones system and an iPod dock then – at £35 ($56) – the RX1 is a no-brainer addition. Rival Bluetooth systems do exist, and may even be a little cheaper, but you lose out on audio quality. If you’re yet to climb on board the Kleer wagon, things get a little more expensive; you can pick up an S5T wireless audio transmitter (which plugs into the iPod’s docking connector) for £42 ($67), or in a bundle with the RX1 for £75 ($120). Those with basic speaker docks might not deem the flexibility worth it, but if you’re using a more audiophile-friendly system and want to cut the cord, the RX1 blows Bluetooth A2DP out of the water.

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Mein niedlicher Welpe

February 23rd, 2010 by amazlow

Ich weiss noch an die Zeit wie unser Flohtaxi noch niedlich war.
Das Hundekissen war vor andertalb Jahren noch
viel zu riesig für unseren Flohzirkus.
Das praktische war, das wir das Hundebett einfach abwischen
konnten, wenn wir mal nicht schnell genug mit unserem Hund draußen waren.
Das waren schon wilde Zeiten.

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iPhone Tipps Storys again

February 21st, 2010 by amazlow

Christian Lindholm is Managing Partner and Director at convergence design agency Fjord and a long-time developer of mobile products.

Three years since the launch of the iPhone, the iPhone is the de-facto smartphone. The only option for other handset makers now is to stop copying the form factor of the iPhone and differentiate themselves in other ways.

The first iPhone was maybe not a great phone, particularly feature-wise, but it has been universally acknowledged as a huge step forward in phone design. It became dominant. As with any case of a dominant design, other phones rush in to imitate.

Since its launch, we have seen a number of mobile devices trying to imitate the look and feel of the iPhone.

Early designs patently did not succeed in this, and it took a long time before a phone was released that could feasibly beat the iPhone at its own game. No phone came close to providing an adequate substitute experience.

These ‘iPhone killer’ devices have gotten progressively better, though, and now, at Mobile World Congress 2010 (this week in Barcelona), we are beginning to see a new class of device that can, more or less, match the iPhone for functionality. The Samsung Wave is one example of this.

The Wave presents a realistic challenge to the iPhone — it has the same form factor as the iPhone, and even features an iPhone style ‘app store’ for downloading games, mapping, eBooks, and lifestyle applications. It has an iPhone-like hardware set too — a 1GHz processor, a 3.3 inch touchscreen, an anti-smudge screen.

It is too early to say how much impact the Windows Phone 7 Series will have on the market. The videos produced by Microsoft were thin, hardware unavailable to test, and details sketchy. We have an inkling that it will be a fun, locked down, iPhone-like phone with a gorgeous OS, but that’s about it.

Nevertheless, we are now seeing devices that are able to pose a realistic challenge to the iPhone. Devices such as the Samsung Wave and the Windows Phone 7 Series will, to an observer not caught up in the Apple hype, present a reasonable substitute to the Apple devices.

The iPhone has not yet reached a level of emotional attachment where it will be bought even when reasonable substitutes exist. Some people will think, what the hell, I just want a phone, and this offers roughly the same experience.

The real turning point however, will be when developers stop trying to copy the iPhone’s design, and accept that they can create something unique and cool outside the iPhone’s form factor.

Increasingly, manufacturers are doing just that, and we are seeing the first wave of these kind of devices at Mobile World Congress 2010. We are seeing three different segments develop in the market around features, cost, and size.

Nokia, for instance, has created the N900. The N900 is a bit like a micro-tablet. Through differentiating the size of the device, Nokia has created something that neither looks nor feels like the iPhone.

Sony has released the XPeria X10 and the XPeria X10 Mini Pro. The pro version has a slide-out QWERTY keyboard — and stuff like Timescape for aggregating all of your content in one place. All of these features seem to fall outside what Apple can or will be willing to do with the product. This can only be a good thing.

Similarly, we may see a class of innovation on features, on simplicity, on energy efficiency, or on robustness. In any case, the genie is out the bottle.

In 1997, the dominant phone in town was the Nokia 6110. Manufacturers found the only way to beat it was to create phones with different form factors, costs, and feature bases. From that, we saw innovation and segmentation in three key areas — features, cost, and size. We may just be in for a new wave of innovation.

Christian Lindholm is Managing Partner and Director at Fjord, a convergence design agency. In his previous role as Vice President of Global Mobile Products for Yahoo, he was responsible for the global creation of the company’s various mobile products. Before joining Yahoo, he spent 10 years with Nokia in various roles in the areas of user interface, product creation and venturing. During that time, he invented the Nokia Navi-key user interface, fathered the Series 60 user interface and created Nokia Lifeblog – a multimedia diary. He’s based in London.

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Am I the only person that doesn't give a frack about this in comparison to the GAPING functionality hole of NOT being able to access your mobile me contacts in mobile safari?

Imagine I've lost my iPhone (something I've done more times than I'd care to admit — let's just say I'm on iPhone #6)… friend X I'm with has his. I need to call friend Y, who friend X does not know. Suddenly, Mobile Me is nothing more than another alliteration.

I've been a Mac user all my life. I miss the days of MacAddict and MacUser. If I have one frustration with Apple (and obviously I don't have just one), it is this: in their quest for feature-perfection (and their choice to consistently play it safe - yes, i said it) they avoid use-perfection with the patience of an old teacher winning a long game of chess despite losing numerous key pieces. Copy and paste or a camera in the iPad are both perfect examples of this. “Planned obsolescence” looks a lot better in your (their) bank account than it sounds or feels.

Yes, I'll probably still get an iPad. Yes, it might be magical someday, if there's an app for that (of which there will be many). But I think the press' reaction to the iPad's marketing should be a warning sign to Apple execs. Apple has always been behind the curve in many areas (nobody's perfect). The last thing anyone human should ever do is call themselves magical. That's the press' job, if you're lucky.

In summary: Apple routinely misses little details like this in the quest for a simpler and easier to use system. In the big picture, they get it. But sometimes they miss the forest for the trees (or am I saying the trees for the forest?). I just want to turn my brightness down and disable 3G and push without clicking and swiping six different ways to sunday.

p.s. The best part of this UN-implementation on Mobile Me is that when you launch it, you have the opportunity (for about 5 seconds) to see the REAL mobile me interface, and you can even click on your contacts. It then redirects you back to the mobile safari page that tells you how to setup your contacts. Exactly what I didn't want to do. Oh, the irony.

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Meebo Is the New King of iPhone Messaging Apps

There are some very good paid instant messaging apps for the App Store, and plenty of free options too. Meebo is the first that manages to be both, with almost no compromise.

Meebo was one of the first companies out of the gates with an instant message web app for the iPhone, so it's weird that it took them this long to go native. But hey, whatever, they did, and it's goddamn fantastic. Here's the cream of the feature list:

• Multiprotocol support, including obvious choices like AIM, Google Talk, Facebook and MySpace, as well as an impressive list of smaller networks
• Push notifications, which automatically activate when you close the app without signing out.
• conversation logging, not just on your phone, but on Meebo's servers, as associated with your Meebo account.
• “Now typing” notifications, away messages, message copying, landscape mode, swiping between chats—the kind of stuff that makes the experience rich, versus merely acceptable

Meebo's aesthetic is subdued and unobtrusive, and gesture and navigation behaviors make sense throughout the app. Patchy EDGE connectivity didn't seem to degrade my experience at all, push notifications worked like a charm, with roughly two seconds of delay versus a regular client.

In short, Meebo does everything I need from a chat client, does it well, and does it for free. My only hangups? There's no Skype messaging support, and—though I haven't—some iPhone 3G users are experiencing crashes during regular use. But! (And I can't say this enough!) It's free. Just give it a try. Even if you've already paid for a Trillian or a BeeJive, you might find something you like here.

Send an email to John Herrman, the author of this post, at jherrman@gizmodo.com.

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Esprite Lagerverkauf

February 20th, 2010 by amazlow

Ich war jetzt beim Esprite Werksverkauf in Ratingen. Die KlamottenAnziehsachen|Kleidung} dort sind gut.
Etwas Ellbogen ist das schon gefragt bei den ganzen Wiederkäuder
das ist dort ein ganz schöner Kampf und ich war begeisert das ein oder
andere Schnäppchen zu machen.

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zum Nachdenken

February 19th, 2010 by amazlow

Eine kleine ZitateSammlung Zitate

Lange Rede, kurzer Sinn.

Wir geben den Kühen Futter,
dafür geben sie uns Milch und Butter.

Ein Esel, der Bücher trägt,
ist noch lange kein Doktor.

Was wäre Nike ohne Air,
was wär der Gummi ohne Bär,
was wär der Bleistift ohne Mine,
was wär der Zug nur ohne Schiene,
was wäre Becker ohne Stich,
was wäre ich nur ohne dich!
Danke das es dich gibt!

Unter den Blinden ist der Einäugige König.

Der Tag beginnt so,
wie Du ihn dir macht und endet so,
wie und wann Du es willst.

Um das Wunderbare zu erlangen,
muss man das Unvorstellbare denken.


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