iphone

Just read about an experiment of Starbuck’s – in Seattle and the Silicon Valley, you can buy with your iPhone…

This is greatly leveraged technology – same as the soda machine that was standing in Basel a couple of years ago, where you could by your coke by sending an SMS. It’s time to let go of good old money – at least, of coins and paper….

Also, this ties back neatly to the stories I have read in recent days about augmented reality (e. g. over at smashing magazine) – we are at the edge of a new time…. and it’s important to leverage these things for the better for all of humanity.

We are already seeing new media breaking down barriers; Twitter did not (yet) bring Ahmadinejad to fall – but almost so; Wikipedia has not (yet) helped to push general education to the next level – but it is in its start position; facebook might be dangerous in terms of privacy and terms of conditions, but at the same time, the social control can actually get better with these things… imagine SOMEONE would have paid attention to the announcements of the suicide killer in Winnenden…

Technology CAN actually lead to a better society – and the iPhone used to pay in Starbucks is just a simple example how we are converging… it’s time to be optimistic, go out and change the world!

Here’s the challenge: My wife and myself have a lot of appointments; I am working on three different sites regularly – and we should have access to each other’s appointments in order to quickly fix dates.

I found a neat solution – it involves google calendar, lightning for Thunderbird (or Sunbird) and my iPhone.

First – I set up a shared google calendar that is accessable for both my wife and myself.

Then, I set up my iPhone to sync it. This involves two steps:

1. Follow the steps to set up Google Sync with your iPhone provided by Google. This step erases all Calendar data, so it’s a good idea to export them and re-import them to Google Cal, in case necessary.
2. The step above will only set up your PRIMARY calendar to sync with the iPhone. However, the calendar I created for shared access is my SECONDARY calendar. So – on the iPhone, launch Safari and open up m.google.com/sync. IF your iPhone is in a language other than english, you get an error saying that your device is not supported. To get around this, simply change the language to english – et voila, you will be able to select up to 5 calendars your iPhone shall sync with!

(Note that when creating a calendar entry – you can specify the calendar it shall be created in)

Now, on my desktop, I use Thunderbird. First, I installed Lightning, the calendar plug in. I also need the Google calendar provider for Thunderbird / Lightning.

To set up the google calendar in Lightning, use the steps described in the GCal Wiki. Basically, this involves copying the XML-address for the shared calendar into the address of a “new network calendar” in Lightning.

Voila – as my wife uses Thunderbird as well, we now have all access to our calendar…. and once our son gets grown up, he will get it too.

Some great stuff coming through from Apple today; with iPhone OS 3.0, we will see such exciting features as MMS and copy / paste – but also a lot of minor improvements… (isn’t it amazing how Apple creates a hype around features that all others have had for YEARS?)

Good thing is that we will also see a new iPhone, with better camera, stronger hardware and better battery life. Now – what do I do with my old one?

Snow Leopard will be out in September which, apart from new versions of existing software, will bring more speed and performance to all Apple boxes…

Finally – new MacBooks, shinier, better prices, better hardware.

I know, it has been a while since I published here. I am very busy, currently, trying to keep up with my studies, my work – and we have been on holidays in Ireland!

Now, Ireland is a really great country, for those who don’t know it yet. We had a very good accomodation (self-catering) at Radharc na Mara in Dingle, Co. Kerry. Although pretty expensive, it was worth it. Go have a look at it on the Dream Ireland webpage!

Then, we stayed three nights in two B&B’s – the first one, Emohruo, run by Margaret Carey in Doolin was pretty much ok-ish, with some nice rooms and the B&B is located quite near to the Cliffs of Moher.

The second one, Wellfield in Oughterard, Co. Galway was a disaster – the room smelled like cold cigarettes, it was hot, filthy and not cosy at all. The folks who run it, Mary and Pat Rattigan, were seldomely seen, very much on their own, which was a petty. Oughterard itself is not really the place to be – or so it seemed…. however, it’s a nice starting point to go looking around in Connemara.

Finally, we stayed in Dublin for two nights at some standard hotels. All in all – great holidays – let’s see, I might try out some new features of WordPress 2.6 (just updated) and post some images. After all, I should now have a media-gallery……

The other great news is that I finally own an iPhone…. I got one through IBM Switzerland’s internal supplier for mobile phones for a very good price.

Now, I am figuring out what apps to install… it’s temping to clutter the phone with all kind of stuff that you don’t need…. it is indeed a great little device, with all the known drawbacks (most prominently lack of synchronisation possibilities with Lotus Notes, need of recharging the battery quite often and no MMS sending / receiving capabilities…)

So, that’s pretty much the status update as per now – stay tuned…

Those of you that followed my blog here know already that I am a fan of Apple and of cool gadgets – and the best of both worlds of course is the iPhone.

Now, I realise that it still is not there where other phones are – for example, it lacks the possibility to easily sync with Lotus Notes (which would be nice, since I am using Notes both as e-mail client and calendar at work). But hey – one can live with some downsides, and isn’t it nice when you DON’T have to carry your work stuff with you all along?

Anyway – I will probably get an iPhone at work (though I have to pay it myself), and thus, I looked through some reviews. For example, there is a good one at gizmodo and the very same site also reviews the latest iPhone software (2.0). Speaking of software – with the SDK now available, there are already quite a number of good apps available – one list is at Mashable and a very interesting app is mentioned on DownloadSquad.

One of the bloggers in my resident town blogged about some ecological (and possibly ethical) issues of the iPhone. While I can follow this point of view and very much understand it (for those of you that don’t read german: The blog is referring to Greenpeace and their evaluation of how ecological the different IT-companies are); I still think that I have to make an exception on my usually strong convictions on the iPhone… sometimes the “must-have” factor is probably just too strong…. and yes, I feel guilty about it.