Archive for October 2004
Bush and Kerry Are Candidates In Finland Also
30 October 2004 in Root | Comments (0)
This week, the campaining for the position of President of the United States of America, went a bit over-board. How you ask? Well, George W. Bush and John Kerry have started campaigning in Finland — or so it seems:
Baboo, err… I mean Bush.
Mr. Kerry.
No, Finns aren’t allowed to vote in the American election — at least not yet. 
This is in fact advertising for an elaborate online “shadow election” — located at the address VarjoVaalit.com — which is the brainchild of the Finnish advertising bureau, Bob Helsinki. An elaborate and ingenious way of self-advertising for an advertising bureau, and a great way of getting the people involved in an experiment. 
Who would we vote for? Kerry, of course, with 73% of the voters choosing him (at the time of this post). We wouldn’t stand having a president that makes us all look like fools. (Not that we have had much foolish presidents in the past, but one fool is too many.) Let alone, we’re still laughing when mentioning Bush and making really bad jokes about him á la Conan O’Brien. 
This is, by the way, the same advertising bureau that went on to save some baboons from getting executed at Korkeasaari/Högholmen/Helsinki Zoo (the same place, just in three languages). Apparently, they felt it fit to continue with the baboon theme *cough* (read:Bush) *cough*… 
REVIEW: Nokia Bluetooth Boom Headset HS-4W
27 October 2004 in Pocket PC | Comments (0)
My first review of a Bluetooth headset is up at PDAGold.com. It was the first time I also tried taking pictures of an accessory and therefore the pics aren’t anything near good, but only ‘OK’. I now know what I have to improve upon when trying to take macro shots: the light!
The intro goes like this:
One of the must-have accessories for Bluetooth fanatics to get must be the Bluetooth headset. The Bluetooth headset is almost the reason for getting Bluetooth phones in the first place. Since, it means that you are relieved of the tangles and webs of wires running to and from your headset, and no wires to get caught in. Now, let me take you through a review of Nokia’s bumerang-inspired Bluetooth headset and see how well it works with Pocket PCs and reality.
Yeah! iTunes Finland finally opens!
26 October 2004 in Root | Comments (0)
Just opened iTunes today to find iTunes Music Store for Finland OPEN! Yeah, baby yeah! 
No sleep for me tonight!
(Look below the Prodigy “ad” for the Finnish-flag-icon )
Fujitsu Siemens Loox 720 Pictures
25 October 2004 in Pocket PC | Comments (0)
Interested in the Loox 720 camera and how well it performs? In my opinion, quite well but it is not replacement for a digital camera — at least not for the important picture moments.
I have put up an album of pictures taken with the Loox 720’s integrated 1.3 megapixel camera. The most noticiable problem is colorfringing which creates a strange, purple-ish halo around bright objects. The second is the focus which is equal to zero — since the Loox camera does not have an adjustable focus lens.
Other than those nit-pickety problems, the Loox is set to be a suitable camera for catching spontaneous shots, and doing some mobile blogging. The latter of which I will start to do really soon…
The Nokia 7710 phone to be annouced soon
22 October 2004 in Phones | Comments (0)
The world’s first, err… no sorry second digital TV capable phone is to soon become official material. According to PhoneMag.com, the 7710 is to be officially annouced at Nokia Mobility Conference in Monaco in November.
The Nokia 7710 is set to be something of a multimedia smartphone and PDA with a large touch screen, MP3 and AAC (probably not Apple DRM compatible) music player, FM radio, XHTML browser, Bluetooth and able to synchronize with PC.
It would be so cool to try out the digital TV part of the 7710. But, currently it seems like I would have to go down to Helsinki to try out the sweeeeeet DVB-H accessory on the 7710…
How to connect a Pocket PC to Palosaari Campus Wireless Network
22 October 2004 in How-To | Comments (0)
Introduction
The following guide describes the steps required to get a Windows Mobile Pocket PC 2003 or 2003 Second Edition to connect to PCWN. The older versions of the Pocket PC OS do not feature the zero-configuration methods introduced as of Pocket PC 2003 and as such should be avoided due to their complicated configuration methods.
Bad, bad notebook lock!
22 October 2004 in Fun | Comments (0)
What happens when you let F-Secure-guys play around with notebook locks?
“Physics experiments” and notebook damages, as in the picture below:
They manage to prove that security locks can’t prevent theft at all, but we all knew that didn’t we…
The new Tungsten T5 is a bugger
19 October 2004 in Root | Comments (0)
Kent Pribbernow of Pocket Factory and Digital Media Thoughts fame, has written up his expeiences with the Tungsten T5. All I can tell, is that his expeciences with the T5 is all but good with the bugs he has got listed. The most annyoing, and funniest described bug he lists has to be this one:
Another bug appears in many deletion confirmation dialogs. If you attempt to delete a file from within some third party apps, like Zlauncher, the confirm dialog box appears (as it should) but the active input area begins bouncing up and down like a Jack Russell terrier, which of course means the system has locked up AGAIN! Jeesh!
I’m sorry that I can’t help to laugh at problems like these, but the reference to a Jack Russel terrier just describes the bug too well. (I can already see these dogs jumping around the place like they’re high on coffeine…*bouncy bouncy bouncy* )
Most of the problems Kent lists are really serious bugs, like the calendar that has got a can-not-do-month-view-without-crashing-bug. If Microsoft would have left such a bug in Pocket PC OS, then I would also go berserk and probably rant about it as well.
It sure makes me wonder: can we still today revert the growing “trend” of increasing buggy software? Is there resources for such a thing as quality control anymore in our world? 
Cheer up from the gloomy autumn
18 October 2004 in Fun | Comments (0)
The best part with cartoons is that they are always there to cheer when you’re down. Especially now when the daylight hours are decreasing in lenght around here, we need something to keep us sane. My “scientific research” has proven that a daily dose of reading comics is an excellent resource of color for the gray autumn days.
What is the magical ingredient? The result of the storyline that building up a good laughter at the end of the strip. A very good example is today’s UserFriendly strip…
The secrecy behind encryption
15 October 2004 in Root | Comments (0)
An interesting book to read is the fictional book “Digital Fortress“[affiliate], by Dan Brown, which plays around with encryption, deception, the National Security Agency and love all mixed into one juicy story. As one might guess, the ingredients for a good story is there but I think the book fails to deliver the story in an original way. Sure, the book is ready for Hollywood, but it is of no blockbuster material.
One thing that I did like about the book, is the background work the author had done on encryption and managed to weave it into the story. One of the more interesting semi-facts in the book is how the National Security Agency has managed to play part in creating some encryption algortihms. In the book, the encryption Skipjack was supposedly created to have a backdoor especially made by the NSA to allow them to decrypt the non-critical encrypted emails sent inbetween the government institutions. The backdoor was officially non-existing and very cleverly hidden so that non-NSA mathematicians at that time thought the encryption algorithm was really safe when they analyzed it.