Just picked up a Griffin itrip today - this thing is awesome!

For those of you who don’t know, this is an FM transmitter that allows you to stream audio from your ipod to any nearby radio. Plug it into the ipod, play a song, and it displays an FM radio frequency on-screen (you can also select your own frequency). Then tune in on the radio - e.g. in the car, and voila, listen to your music without wires.

This is the best solution I have found to have essentially portable wireless speakers for an ipod, which is what I was looking for.

At only 1cm in thickness, this Samsung 40 inch screen gives a whole different meaning to flat screen. Although it’s not the thinnest I’ve seen, it’s the thinnest I’ve seen released. I’m interested to know the cost..

Via Engadget

A new IMAP feature has appeared in Gmail and mail for your domain accounts. This addition will make many people happy, and may even provide a real alternative to some people to host email, if Google’s privacy policies don’t put them off.

For those of you that don’t know what IMAP is, it is an alternative email protocol to POP (which Gmail already supports), which provides more redundancy and improved speed than POP. E.g. if you connect your Gmail account via IMAP to your mobile device, laptop, and home PC, any email’s sent, received, deleted e.t.c. will be reflected across all these devices. I.e. if you delete an email from your home PC, it will also delete from the other devices when they connect; If you reply to a message, it will be marked as replied on all mail clients. This of course includes the actual Gmail web interface.

No doubt the IMAP feature will be a popular one. But at the same time, for Google, this brings up the issue of Monetization. There is no way to display ads to IMAP users, unless in the messages themselves which would probably turn people back away from IMAP. And I know personally at least, I prefer my desktop mail client over any webmail interface - as long as there is also a webmail interface if required, e.g. on a guest computer or in case of SMTP authentication problems, which I experience frequently while traveling.

I only use my Gmail account for junk/non-important mail, but the addition of IMAP may make me use it a bit more for general online use for which I’m not too bothered about security or availability.

Via Download Squad

Google pays the Mozilla Foundation commision to have it’s search box the default in the Firefox web browser, which this year amounted to a cool $57 million. Considering Firefox is used by 120 million people, that’s not a bad deal for Google. I know I don’t type google.com in very often - pretty much exclusively using the built-in the search box, which is set to, Google. Then if Firefox were to ship with the default to, say, Yahoo, I’d switch it to Google as soon as I downloaded it, as would many (and of course as people do if their engine isn’t Google).

This comes from the financial statements Mozilla released today, and in case you’re wondering, their total revenues were $67 million, with expenses in 2006 of just under $20 million. Why doesn’t Google just buy Mozilla?

See here for more..

Interesting earnings report from Apple today. One of the interesting points was that of the 1.4 million iphones sold to date, apple estimates 250,000 of them were sold with the intention of being unlocked. I’ve seen quite a few cellphone shops around Europe selling unlocked iphones, mostly for around 950 EUR ($1350 USD, £660 GBP), so in addition to the many people in the US unlocking their iphones, quite a few of these probably ended up in the hands of consumers outside the US. And for less than the price of an unlocked iphone in Europe I could fly to NY and pick one up myself.

They sold 2.16 million macs, 10.2 million ipods, and 1.11 million iphones in the quarter that ended Sep 29th. Revenues for the quarter were $6.22 billion with a net quarterly profit of $904 million, and for Apple’s fiscal year 2007 revenues were $24 billion, with a net income of $3.5 billion. Not bad.

photo courtesy of apple

I use Firebug all the time to track javascript errors, AJAX requests and to monitor network requests, and it’s a real cool part of my web development arsenal. But Firebug can be helpful in more ways than just testing and debugging your own apps.

So, I’m pretty much in the middle of nowhere, in the only decent hotel (definition: has broadband) in the area. I connect to the network, bring up the usual sales page and enter my contact and payment details. Ok, all good.

Error: Invalid zip code. I go back and check the details I put in, and the zip code is cut-off as this form only accepts 4 digits (bad design), when my credit card zip is 5. So I open up firebug, switch to the inspector, click the zip field, and change the maxlength attribute of the input to 6. Voila, I type my zip code in, re-submit, and I’m online!

Of course, I could have emulated the form by copying the code, changing the maxlength attribute, saving, opening in a browser and re-submitting, but that takes time and would loose the SSL. Or, I could write a quick greasemonkey script to make the change, but again, more time consuming.

I’m not a big public transport user (other than the French TGV, and Paris metro), so I’m not up to the latest trends in this arena online or off, but I’m in switzerland for a few days and have been making good use of Swiss public transport, especially focusing on their website.

The website simply asks for your place of departure and destination. It then combines all methods, including Metro, Tram, Train, bus and even short walks to create several options to swiftly reach your destination. And it can even take you cross-country (e.g. Italy, France).

In my case, going to Italy from Geneva, this was a 90 minute train ride, 5 minute walk, then 2 hour bus ride, on which I’m typing this post (and almost dropping my laptop every 5 mins going up the mountains). The whole thing is smooth, perfectly timed, and even getting the ticket is easy - just one for the entire journey. I also love how the bus drivers seem to collect post from all the little villages they stop at.

I seem to recall Google has something similar for major cities (they have most things if you look hard enough) - but only for major cities (which is cool, this isn’t an automatized thing). But it would be nice to see more of the government-run sites following the Swiss. ehem. Belgium.

Does anyone know of any other good sites doing similar stuff?

31CW has announced it will acquire web design and development firm CreativeSTL.

CreativeSTL will provide clients with a lower cost alternative to gaining an online web presence, and specializes in Blog, Forum and basic website design and development on open-source platforms such as Wordpress and vBulletin.

Further details to come..

Like several people I know, I have accounts with Gmail, Yahoo and MSN - and just use them for receiving junk or, more often, to use the chat service that goes with each (i.e. Gtalk, Yahoo Messenger and MSN Messenger). Every so often I open up MSN Messenger (the mac version), and a few times it’s asked me to upgrade (you can’t use it without upgrading). Annoying - but at least they make the upgrade pretty straightforward.

But they’ve seriously managed to make the application pretty heavy - adding a user is a few step process, then the user online statuses seem delayed - and then there’s the sound effects.

And finally, there’s availability. At least it alerts you politely when kickin’ you off:

Software maker’s need to take a lesson from “web 2.0″, and make stuff simple, usable, yet powerful. It’s not hard to do, just think in the right mindset, and don’t forget about your users.

/ok I’m done. And I use skype day-to-day if you’re wondering…

This is the Dexia building in Brussells - with some pretty cool interactive lighting. By night it becomes the focal point of the city - seen for miles, when all 4,200 windows of this building, which are equipped with RGB LED’s, illuminate.

But where it gets interesting, is anyone can go and interactively stamp their mark on the tower for a few minutes, using any combination of colors, shapes and animations using the touch screens downstairs. The LED’s can be switched on or off, and form different colors as required to create pretty much any effect. Even writing or images (comparable to pixel art I guess - I didn’t see any). A remote camera captures the image of the tower with your lighting effect.

And although it sounds like it consumes more electricity than the rest of the city, the architects claim the building uses a third of the electricity the Eiffel Tower uses. To allow these low-powered LED’s to light up the building properly, all the window blinds automatically close before the lighting extravaganza starts each evening. It lasts 5 hours in the summer, and 9 in the winter - and appears to start at 9pm.