Visit Enterlab - Enterprise IT Innovation Laboratory!

You can also visit the danish version of Enterlab: http://enterlab.dk

Enterlab is all about innovative usage of IT for the big enterprises. First of all Enterlab is enhancing the usability and end user experience of SAP NetWeaver applications. First of all web and mobile front ends.

Secondly Enterlab enhances existing SAP NetWeaver applications such as the SAP NetWeaver Portal, SAP FSCM-BD (Biller Direct) and SAP Internet Sales/SAP E-Commerce (isa/xeco).

Thirdly Enterlab helps enterprises moving current SAP NetWeaver applications to the Cloud, to minimize cost of application management and hosting.

Visit them! :-)

Went to tumblr.com!!

After trying to finding a "better way" to do my blogging using TextMate Blogging plugin - which doesn't support blogger.com - I went to wordpress because of their MetaBlogger support (which is used by the TextMate plugin).

But it didn't work as I hoped for, because I tend to use Textile/Markdown for marking up my entries.

So now I went to tumblr.com instead. I hope you'll update your link (again)! This time the link is: http://luposlip.com. And it will stay there (if I change the underlying system again one day, the link will stay the same :-))!!

I hope to see you there.

Woopsie!!

Great work, myself.. My new blog was private!! I just changed this setting, so now it's public again.

Please try again - my new wordpress-blog is here (and public): http://luposlip.wordpress.com/

New blog!

From now on I'll update my blog at Wordpress instead of this one.

"Why" you ask - because I want to use TextMate for blogging, and blogger.com doesn't support the MetaBlog API (XML-RPC based) as the TextMate blogging bundle supports.

Please update your link, and visit: http://luposlip.wordpress.com

:-)

Apple bans "the A-word" (Android) from App Store

Crazy!

Apple bans "the A-word" from apps submitted to their appstore!:

http://www.pcworld.com/article/188696/apple_bans_the_word_android_from_app_store.html

Crazy, crazy I say! When will they censor out a book from iBooks, an article from New York Times or a website from being accessed by the iPad?

Read here for more of the same complaining:

http://luposlip.blogspot.com/2010/02/apple-ipad-hmm-not-with-total-drm.html

Which electric car will win?

I wonder which electric car will end up winning the title of my family's first electric car..

Will it be Tesla S - the coolest, biggest electric family car out there (but not available for the next couple of years):

http://www.teslamotors.com/models/index.php

Will it be the Renault Fluence Z.E., probably cheaper than the Tesla S but presumably not on market any earlier:

http://www.renault-ze.com/dk/#/dk/electric-cars-range/fluence-ze-concept-family-saloon-car.html

Or perhaps just the Mitsubish iMiEV as our second car - cheaper (though not exactly cheap), coming to Denmark next summer (2011) but much smaller:

http://www.mitsubishi-motors.com/special/ev/

Or a fourth I haven't considered yet?

Apple iPad - hmm... Not with total DRM control!

It took me a while. The first couple of days after the introduction of the iPad I felt a combination of disappointment and "yeah, but it'll be a nice tool for x, y and z".

The following link is a must read for nerds/geeks/techies:

http://diveintomark.org/archives/2010/01/29/tinkerers-sunset

Note: The text is (in my opinion) not just Apple-specific, but specific to all vendors of closed app stores!

I'm actually not sure anymore that I wan't the iPad.

I think it's ok that Apple makes the hard- AND software inside of my laptop. Because I've never had a PC that worked as good as the one I have now (an almost 2 years old MacBook Pro).

But if I use the iPad Apple will not only control the hard- and software, but also the content on it - through their iBooks bookstore and which newspapers they make deals with.

I'm not being paranoid here, but I just don't like it. It's alright as long as my OSX is a FreeBSD unix I can tweak and hack as I want. My iPhone can be jailbreaked, but I don't want to. It's "just" a phone. But a tablet PC shouldn't be DRM controlled..

I still think the iPad looks great, and it seems to be possible to view non-Apple approved .epub and .pdf ebooks on it. But it's just easier and "more sexy" to buy content through iTunes/iBooks. And if Apple don't wan't a certain book (or movie for that matter - ever tried to search for "deep throat" in the iTunes Movie store?), then it's just not possible to buy it.

In the future - who knows if New York Times is allowed to write critical articles "against" Apple? Will Apple filter the article away? Will they kick out NYT in the end?

An iPad would be a wonderful email/surfing/movie/eBook-reading tool. But it should be open, not DRM-closed and controlled by a single entity.

Developers - please read the link in the beginning of this post, it's mandatory! :-)

But you shouldn't read the first one, without also reading this one (until the end):

http://gizmodo.com/5461485/ipad-snivelers-put-up-or-shut-up?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+gizmodo%2Ffull+%28Gizmodo%29

Have a nice one.

Voice mail doesn't work after upgrading unlocked iPhone

Yesterday I upgraded my unlocked iPhone from version 2.2 to 2.2.1.
After the upgrade, the Voice Mail my Voice Mail configuration was reset - i.e. it didn't work anymore.

So just for reference - here is the guide on how to set the Voice Mail number on the iPhone (at least this work on a Danish iPhone, originally bought from Telia):

If your Voice Mail number is (+1) 123-1234, you should go to the Phone app, open up the dial tab, and type in the following:
*5005*86*+11231234#

Just for clarification, the template is:
*5005*86*[VOICE MAIL NUMBER INCL. +LANGUAGE CODE]#

And then press the Dial button. That's it! You'll probably have to do this after each upgrade.

Please comment if the template looks different for your country/original service provider!

VirtualBox 2.1.2 on OSX

Wow, I almost missed this one! VirtualBox 2.1.2 has been out for a week now, and I don't see it until now.

But this is the time for rejoice. An issue that's been bugging me for 4 months now (since 2.0.2) has been fixed! It was actually a pretty critical bug, in my opinion. The issue was that on OSX hosts (which uses a journalising file system) a sudden loss of power might render the windows guest OS unbootable! It took me some time to persuade everyone that this was actually a big issue. I saw it a day that I'd closed the lid on my Mac Book Pro, making it go into suspended mode. It was a friday afternoon and the battery had only about 5 percent left. During the weekend - in which I didn't use the Mac - the battery died, and my windows guest died. Reinstall "fest".

Looking in the changelog for 2.1.2 this is now fixed:

Mac OS X hosts: save the state of running or paused VMs when the host machine’s battery reaches critical level

This sounds as the exact issue I posted:
http://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/2267

This is SOOO great, thanks for recognizing the issue Sun! :-)


Outlook and networking

Another note on the changes in 2.1.0 (yes, not the newest one): When using outlook I've seen that in earlier versions outlook took a long time connecting to our Exchange server via http. Since VirtualBox 2.1.0 this is no longer an issue. This makes my day.

iLife '09 first impressions

Today I got my copy of iLife '09 from the local Mac store on the way home from work.
I was especially keen on getting my hands dirty using the new face detection and recognition feature of iPhoto 8 (='09). Secondarily I looked forward into trying the new stabilizing feature of iMovie.

After installing the bundle I booted up iPhoto. It immediately began to search for faces in my about 5000 local photos. It took about 40-45 minutes (dual cpu intel mac book pro).

Then it was my turn. I found the first photo containing faces, and labeled the first one. Then it immediately suggested a lot of other photos that might be of the same face. At first it was a bit imprecise. But after just labeling 2-4 different photos of a face, it actually got very precise! After no time (read about 20 minutes) I'd labeled about 20 faces in almost 1000 pictures. Amazing.

It happens like this: iPhoto suggest a lot of photos when you decide to confirm faces (by clicking a button). Then the suggested photos are shown, where you can either confirm or reject the faces as being of that person. It all goes pretty darn fast.

I actually believe this is the photo management application I've been looking for in years! I used to use Adobe Photo Album 2.0, then Picasa (both on PC) but when I shifted to Mac about 10 months ago I started using iPhoto. I wasn't totally amazed by it, it lacked the speed of Picasa (and Picasas way of easy sharing to picasaweb and geotagging). But now iPhoto supports it all, and more. It exports to mobileme (of course), flickr and facebook. And rocks.

When you've tagged a lot of photos for the same face, it seems to be a bit more reluctant at suggesting new untagged photos, which in my oppinion is a bit of a shame. It gets a bit too precise at this point, ignoring pictures that match the face and those just close. I'd prefer this face search algorithm to be a bit too optimistic, in contrast of being too pesimistic.

Perhaps Apple will fix this in the next fix? Well, it's not a bug at all, just a little nuisance.

Then onwards to the new features of iMovie. I just used it for 5 minutes. But in these 5 minutes I took a small video clip from a family birthday (just under 1 minutes long) which was quite jerky on the stability side. In the 5 minutes before I started writing this blog, I succeeded in applying a theme for it (nice themes they've added!). A theme is a title, transitions and an end effect. Furthermore I added stability to the clip, virtually removing all jerkiness from the clip!

The way iMovie removes jerkiness is of course by zooming in at certain points. But you have full control over the maximum allowed zooming level so you won't loose important details.

I'm impressed. iLife ´09 is a bargain!

I can't help digging deeper into the new features (including green-screen filming and composition of iMovie, learning to play my synth in GarageBand and getting all my older photos imported into iPhoto. iPhoto is definitely my primary (and only) photo management app from now on!

Go fetch.

iPhone 3G and heavy rain

Woopsie! A couple of days ago I came home from the grocery store, and put my iPhone (3G) away outside, just while emptying the car. After doing this I forgot all about the phone, and after a short while it began to rain. Heavily.

It rained for about 30-40 minutes. After another 30 minutes I went out, and saw the iPhone facing up, covered with large drops of water.. :-[

I thought to myself "stupid, stupid, stupid". I went inside, dryed the phone. I couldn't see any visual damage (water/moisture behind the display glass, water inside the speaker, the home button etc.). I turned it on, and everything worked like a charm.

Now after a couple of days of use, I can say that absolutely nothing went wrong with the phone. It is absolutely as before the 30-minutes-of-heavy-rain-facing-up-test.

Well built Apple! :-)

VirtualBox 2.0 for OSX vs. Parallels Desktop

I know - it's been a long time since I've been blogging. There are new kids on the blog (tsk) that requires my attention. In more than one way that is.

And on to the point of this post..

I use OSX Leopard. Because of my work, I have to use Windows as well (for certain developer tools unavailable for OSX as well as Outlook).

Until recently I've used Parallels Desktop 3.0, because of the tight desktop integration compared to VMWare Fusion.

But the last couple of weeks I've used VirtualBox 1.6.4. The only thing I've had against VirtualBox during this period was the lack of host interface networking (bridged networking). This is a feature that has been present in the Windows, solaris and Linux versions, but not OSX (I need it because of some local servers on our network, on which I've needed to access LAN-only ports).

With VirtualBox 2.0 this is no longer a problem for OSX hosts - VirtualBox 2.0.0 supports host interface/bridged networking for OSX hosts! :-)

So I can only recommend VirtualBox for current Parallels Desktop/VMWare Fusion users! VirtualBox is free (as in free beer), and new features/bugfixes are coming up fast.

There are still a few things I miss from Parallels Desktop, but not enough to make me consider re-installing Parallels:

1. The possibility to have the Windows taskbar present in all Spaces in seamless mode
2. The possibility to have (selected) Windows applications appear in the Dock
3. The possiblity to use CMD-TAB to be able to tab between open OSX applications, without having to press the "host" button first (which per default is also the CMD key)
4. This is almost the same request as the above: The ability to switch between Spaces using a CMD-based shortcut, without having to press the "host" button first.

The two last points could perhaps be merged to a feature, that makes it possible to use certain (selected?) OSX only keyboard shortcuts/gestures - if they aren't used in the virtualized operating system, without having to "uncapture" the keyboard and/or mouse first.

Congratulations Sun - VirtualBox is truly an amazing Open Source offer, on par with the best commercial products. Where VirtualBox lacks minor nice-to-haves, VirtualBox seems significantly faster than - at least - Parallels Desktop 3.0. For most personal/business users this is much more important than a couple of nice-to-haves. Including myself ;)

No matter if you are using Windows, Linux, OpenSolaris or Mac OSX as your host operating system - go ahead: Use VirtualBox for your virtualization needs (and please comment if you don't agree, have additional facts or else you want to share).

UPDATE:
Another feature would be nice to have: Drag-and-drop between the virtualized and host desktops.

Bluray won the HD format war!

Now it's official: Bluray finally won the HD disc format war over the HD-DVD format.
Just as expected I might say :-)

Today Toshiba announced that they will stop any further development of the media and players that support the HD-DVD format. However they will continue to support and repair the players and other gadgets already sold.

They say that they won't be doing any Bluray stuff themselves but rather focus on all the other areas that they can impact the adoption of High Definition technologies (such as TV sets etc.).

Congratulations to Sony for succeeding in pushing a new technology and helping Blueray to win over HD-DVD.

Microsoft stays silent on their future HD strategies.

Read the Toshiba announcement here:
http://www.toshiba.co.jp/about/press/2008_02/pr1903.htm

Choose Bluray, not HD-DVD!

Today (about 3 hours ago) it was announced, that Warner Brothers - one of the early backers of HD DVD - have now chosen to exclusively back Bluray! :-)

Links to the announcement can be found here:
http://www.highdefforum.com/showthread.php?t=60942

This just might be the beginning of the end of the format war. Joy to all us owners of PS3/BD players!

Personally I'd like to see Dreamworks/Paramount move to Bluray as well. Movies like Shrek the Third should definitely be on Bluray.
You can sign a couple of online petitions here:
http://www.petitiononline.com/BD1/petition.html
http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/gobacktobluray/

BTW: If you're interested in Bluray and a Java developer, you should read about BD-J:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BD-J
http://www.blueboard.com/bluray/

Blogged with Flock

Netbeans 6.0 final released

Hey - I've been too busy lately. But one of my colleagues hinted me about the announcement of the final version of Netbeans 6.0.
Good work guys!

For those of you who haven't used NB6 yet because you wanted to wait for the final version - go get it now! ;-)

Get it here:
http://sunmicro.vo.llnwd.net/c1/netbeans/6.0/final/

Read about all the glory features here:
http://www.netbeans.org/features/

N95 20.0.015 software update!

Nokia has released a new update for the software on the N95 - version 20.0.015.

It should increase the performance and stability of many major parts of the software (including Maps), and enhance the battery lifetime by about 30% while listening to music (from 9 to 12 hours of listening).

I haven't tried it out for myself yet, but I'll update this blog very soon when I have.

In the meantime you can fetch it for yourself here:
http://europe.nokia.com/A4579163

Specs on the update can be found here:
http://europe.nokia.com/A4577225

After updating you can install the new enhanced menu structure using this link:
http://nds1.nokia.com/files/support/nseries/phones/software/New_Menu_Structure.SIS

UPDATE: After installing it myself, I strongly recommend all you N95 users out there to do the same. The entire phone seems remarkably faster, in the menu, the applications (calendar, messaging, contacts) and in just about every corner of the feature set that I've visited tonight.. Go get it!

JRuby 1.1 beta 1 released

Last Friday JRuby 1.1 beta 1 was released:
http://docs.codehaus.org/display/JRUBY/2007/11/02/JRuby+1.1b1+Released

The last time I tried to check out from trunk (about a week ago), I couldn't get it to work properly with the Rails support in Netbeans 6.0 beta 2, but I'll try it out again as soon as possible.

The performance is now better than MRI (the original C based Ruby implementation) in 14 out of 18 tests, and what's very important to many: It's even faster on Rails!

JRuby is now the most performant option for Rails deployments. w00t!

Congrats JRuby team! :-)

Blogged with Flock

More performance numbers on JRuby 1.1

I finally got the time to take a deeper look at JRuby 1.1 (trunk).
just checked it out, and ran a small performance test.

Immediately after I ran the exact same test for MRI.

These are the results, showing an approximate 4-10 times performance from JRuby over MRI!!!

E:\ror\jruby>jruby -J-server -O test/bench/bench_method_dispatch.rb
Control: 1m loops accessing a local variable 100 times
  0.422000   0.000000   0.422000 (  0.422000)
  0.282000   0.000000   0.282000 (  0.282000)
  0.141000   0.000000   0.141000 (  0.141000)
  0.156000   0.000000   0.156000 (  0.156000)
  0.156000   0.000000   0.156000 (  0.156000)
Test STI: 1m loops accessing a fixnum var and calling to_i 100 times
  3.781000   0.000000   3.781000 (  3.781000)
  3.625000   0.000000   3.625000 (  3.625000)
  3.125000   0.000000   3.125000 (  3.125000)
  3.110000   0.000000   3.110000 (  3.110000)
  3.172000   0.000000   3.172000 (  3.172000)
Test ruby method: 1m loops calling self's foo 100 times
 12.094000   0.000000  12.094000 ( 12.094000)
 11.859000   0.000000  11.859000 ( 11.859000)
 11.063000   0.000000  11.063000 ( 11.063000)
 10.890000   0.000000  10.890000 ( 10.890000)
 10.875000   0.000000  10.875000 ( 10.875000)

E:\ror\jruby>ruby test/bench/bench_method_dispatch.rb
Control: 1m loops accessing a local variable 100 times
  5.625000   0.000000   5.625000 (  5.672000)
  5.625000   0.000000   5.625000 (  5.625000)
  5.562000   0.000000   5.562000 (  5.562000)
  5.704000   0.000000   5.704000 (  5.719000)
  5.640000   0.000000   5.640000 (  5.703000)
Test STI: 1m loops accessing a fixnum var and calling to_i 100 times
 18.891000   0.000000  18.891000 ( 19.328000)
 18.937000   0.000000  18.937000 ( 19.344000)
 19.016000   0.000000  19.016000 ( 19.235000)
 19.375000   0.000000  19.375000 ( 20.125000)
 21.172000   0.000000  21.172000 ( 23.781000)
Test ruby method: 1m loops calling self's foo 100 times
 37.156000   0.000000  37.156000 ( 42.984000)
 39.141000   0.000000  39.141000 ( 55.672000)
 33.812000   0.000000  33.812000 ( 37.156000)
 33.047000   0.000000  33.047000 ( 34.032000)
 32.938000   0.016000  32.954000 ( 33.609000)

The Gimp 2.4 final

Yup, the final release of The Gimp version 2.4 is finally out! :-)

Windows users - get it here:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=121075&package_id=250052&release_id=549292

Other users can find their version here:
http://www.gimp.org/

Netbeans 6.0 Beta 2

I was too busy last week, didn't have much time to blog about anything..

Now is the time to briefly mention the most important news from the week that passed.

The first one is Netbeans 6.0 beta 2. Since I haven't been using much of it's Java features recently, I decided to go with the Ruby-Only version.
And what a joy that is!

It's a tiny download - about 19 Megs.
It starts in a flash!!
It rocks..

Get it - now - here:
http://download.netbeans.org/netbeans/6.0/beta2/