One of the consistently popular search strings that brings people here – such is the diversity and intellect of my readership – is “aftermarket MagSafe”, landing people at my ‘MagFoolish‘ rant of March this year. So for those of you whose boat is floated by third-party attempts to circumvent Steve’s vice-like grip on Apple’s proprietary technology, look no further.
No further, that is, than good old eBay. For less than the price of a new MagSafe adaptor from Apple, I got two: one made out of a Mac Mini ‘brick’ PSU, and a natty Kensington travel thing that makes a funny noise when used with my MacBook Pro (but not with our black MacBook), and works on aeroplanes and in cars, too. Joy.
Oh, and thanks to a tip-off from Gizmodo, I got the original replaced at the Apple Store while I was in London. Well done, Steve. Who said people only write about bad service?
Thanks to a pair of HomePlugs, an AppleTV and a bargain Samsung LCD that no-one wanted because it’s last year’s model (and it’s white), we can now enjoy all manner of digital media in the bedroom. Including – and arguably the main reason for this technological extravagance – what I shall nostalgically refer to as Virgin Radio.
[They're 'Absolute Radio' these days, apparently, which has already upset the vodka people. I assume whatever's behind this change in nomenclature is related to the appearance of those gaudily flourescent 'Zavvi' places where the good old Virgin Megastore used to be. Progress, I guess.]
It’s just gone 8am in Moscow. 7am in Kaliningrad. For my colleagues in Ekaterinburg, it’s already after 10. It’s lunchtime in Vladivostok. And over on the Kamchatka peninsula the working day’s already ending.
Just the other side of the Bering Strait it’s still yesterday evening, but it’s too early in the morning to go there right now.
How does this translate in practice? How do you plan a conference call between Sakhalin, Moscow and Houston? Or time your announcement (or even sporting fixture) to hit prime-time in all the major cities? Or simply plan your travel across this vast country?
Soyuz TMA-13 launched yesterday, from the very same launchpad which launched Yuri Gagarin atop Vostok 1. Some fantastic photos of the launcher on the way to its launchpad at Baikonur, at Blake Hounshells’s blog over at FP Passport. Here’s one to whet your appetite.
(Credit: Dmitry Kostyukov, AFP, Getty Images)
On board is Richard Garriott, a video game developer from Texas and son of Skylab and Spacelab astronaut Owen Garriott – whose trip has apparently cost him $30 million.
simond isn’t putting any effort into LinkedIn. Should I be?
Good question, and one I’ve asked myself on occasion recently. Not that I’ve been losing sleep over it, but all the cool kids seem to be using it. So a few weeks ago I signed up. Bit of a palaver, but I got there in the end. And until today, I don’t think I’d looked at it since.
Simon’s tweet prompted me to take another look. I still can’t really see that it’s worth the effort.
My issue, I guess is that I’m not (a) looking for a job, (b) looking to hire, or (c) looking to sell my services. I like my job, I don’t plan on looking for another one for at least a year or two, and (thankfully) I don’t have any gaps in my team. And as far as my ‘clients’ are concerned, I’m a very happy monopolist.
Incoming link the other day from remmrit.com – apparently my post highlighting some of the problems with me.com has been tagged under ‘hacking’. Well OK, thanks for the link, even if ‘hacking’ doesn’t really apply to the post in question – perhaps ‘MacBook Nano’, a couple of weeks later, is more relevant.
The point is, though, aren’t there enough social bookmarking sites out there already? Digg, reddit, stumbleupon … I mean, the addthis.com button at the bottom of each of my posts gives you a choice of thirty-four (yes, 34) social bookmarking / link sharing options. Do we really need another one?
Remmrit’s strapline is ‘Social Bookmarking made easier’. Sure, but it wasn’t that difficult to start with. I’m not convinced that adding another option to the already crowded array of options is necessarily an improvement.
To the guys at remmrit.com, I hope it works out for you. I hope you manage to get sufficient advertising revenue to sustain your business model. In the meantime, though, you might want to sort your SEO – a google blogsearch for ‘remmrit’ throws up six results, and three of those are for porn ‘splogs’ …
Writing this on the newly-released WordPress for iPhone app. Seems to work ok, although it’s more than a little basic.
Can’t quite figure out how to enter links, although I’m assuming that www.apple.com will show up as a hyperlink on screen.
Preview mode is very good, although doesn’t show your photos.
Attaching photos seems to work ok, given the limitations of the iPhone’s rubbish camera. Below, if it works, is the view from my window just now – the G-Wagen, fading perhaps but still King of Moscow’s urban jungle. Incidentally, four went past in as many minutes.
No copy and paste, of course, which – along with the lack of links – has to be the major limitation.
All in all, a pretty good effort. If I were liveblogging an event, for example, this would be pretty handy.
And it’s free. I’d pay for more features, though. Comment management, perhaps, or decent implementation of MarsEdit.
Thanks, WordPress. I look forward to the next version.
