Amazing as it is, yes, I’m still alive. Alas, the past few months have been really busy, what with the move, finding a mini-job (yes, it’s really called tha way), going self-employed…
Anyway, I just upgraded to the WordPress version 3.0 and thought I’d let those of you who still follow know that I haven’t given up on this blog yet. I’ll be trying to write more regularly now that things begin to calm down slightly.
I’ve been meaning to write a post about my progress of looking for a suitable flat for quite some time but couldn’t get around to it. Now, a few weeks later, it’s definitely time for an update about where we are.
We’ve visited seven flats until now, had, in addition to that, three visits cancelled on us because the flats were taken prior to our meeting and there is another visit scheduled for this coming Sunday. Of course, using immobilienscout24.de, we’ve done a thorough pre-selection according to our criteria explained in a previous post. In the end, all flats we visited are located in the area close to the main station but not too close either. Four of the eight flats are ones we’ll apply to – applications will go out this weekend – and there’s a clear favourite. Question is now only whether our application can convince the owner that we’re great people, totally calm, totally willing (and able) to pay the rent every single month and that we won’t be a bother for them. We’ll see, I guess.
Now, to the tools I used to get us where we are now: just before beginning to seriously search for a flat, I discovered Evernote 3.5 and immediately put it to use to store all information relating to the possible flats in addition to opening an account with immobilienscout24.de to save the flats. Using Evernote, despite the web clipper, was a bit of work, but it allowed me to use tags to sort through the images and text files and made it easy to find information quickly. It also has an iPhone app and since my spouse has a new iPhone, we tried that out as well. It worked reasonably well, but sifting through a couple hundred files – I had stored other information in Evernote by then as well – was painful, since the tags are useless in the iPhone app. One can’t search using them, one has to go merely by image or title of a file to find what one is looking for. At least, it allows to group files according to notebooks, but that is, alas, not sufficient to really use it for consultating files.
Eventually, it became too bothersome and just wasn’t practical while on the move – as weird as this may sound. So I returned to a little more oldfashioned tool: Excel. To draw comparisons, a spreadsheet really is the best option. Plus, you can easily print out the tables. :) Carrying around a piece of paper also doesn’t put you in danger of running out of power, making it impossible to jot down notes. So it’s an Excel table that I use during the flat visits as well, taking down important information about the flat.
A few days ago, I also noticed a functionality within immobilienscout24.de which is not obvious on the first point of view. When you click on “My notes” on your list of remembered flats, there’s a pop-up where you can check boxes whether you have already contacted the realtor, set up a date to visit the flat or have visited it. There is also a field to enter a comment. I’ve found this to be extremely useful and have noted general impressions about the flats after visiting them. Of course, for setting up the appointments, I used Google Calendar.
In the end, a basic Excel sheet, a calendar and some well hidden functionalities of the realty website are quite enough to organise the flat hunt. Of course, once we actually do get one of the flats, the fun part will start: arranging furniture. :)
Today, Google announced their newest product: Google Buzz. Here’s their intro video, as always with Google, quite nicely done. As you will be able to see, Google Buzz will be conveniently located in your Google Mail account (if you have one only, of course), and will allow you to connect to different social web applications from this unique location.
It makes me think a bit about Google Wave in terms of collaboration, but also quite obviously ressembles Twitter and Facebook as well as photo sharing websites. But that’s to be expected of a service that will bring them all and in the darkness bind them.
Ok, wrong movie. ;) Still, it will very likely make Google even more powerful and, of course, allow them to gather even more data about its users. And we all know that gathering data about consumers is like printing your own money. But it’s Google and they’re cool, right?
Sarcasm aside, there are other services which offer to combine your different social networking sites on one website to make accessing them easier for you. I can’t say whether they’ll have access to your data or are merely doing it out of pure selflessness, but it’s clear that Google don’t do it because they want to help you manage your online life better. They do it because they can. And because… well, the idea is good. Keeping up with what’s happening on your different social sites is quite a bit of work. Personally, I’ve at least five accounts with services like Twitter, Xing, Facebook etc. and probably a few others that aren’t all that important. Being able to eventually access them from one single account would be great. Sure, Google would know even more about me. On the other hand, Google already knows that I’ve got a Xing profile. They know my YouTube and Twitter accounts. They quite likely also know what I buy at Amazon. They know basically my entire browsing history. They probably know the content of my Google Docs files. Or could, if they were so inclined.
So what? We’re more and more moving towards what consumer protectors call “transparent human being” anyway and I don’t think there’s anything or anyone that can stop this process. Admittedly, I wouldn’t want anyone to know my medical history aside from my doctor, but having, for example, one single profile for every person in a country to which are linked data from your driver’s license, taxes, ID card, marital and family information etc, would make life a lot easier. No more telling twenty different services that you moved, for example. One letter (or, eventually maybe, one DE-mail) and you’re done. The services would then proceed with creating updated ID cards etc. for you which you could fetch in one go.
But I disgress. I’ll definitely check out Google Buzz as soon as it’s available in my Gmail account, probably in the next one or two days and see whether it will really improve my online social life or whether it’s, a bit like Google Wave, a hyped product rather than all that useful.
It’s been all over the news yesterday evening: first the “follow our live blog” offers, then the articles more or less in favour of Apple’s newest product: the iPad. The name is probably the biggest surprise since most sources went for iTablet or iSlate. I quite like iPad (which a friend of mine quickly dubbed iPADD – which may be the intended inside joke). The name, that is. The product? I’m not certain. I’m not an Apple fangeek though I appreciate their success in designing sleek, quite stylish computers and gadgets and I do own an old generation iPod shuffle – because it was the smallest device out there that I could find, though certainly not the least expensive and I still don’t like that I’m forced to use iTunes to load music onto it.
But I’m not here to rant about Apple right now. I want to talk about the iPad. I followed the Engadget Live Blog yesterday evening and I think noone was surprised anymore that the newest Apple product was a tablet.
The specs aren’t something that makes me go “waoh, so cool” either:
The screen is a bit surprising given the 4:3 ratio which is very outdated if you have a look at current computer and notebook screens. But Apple probably put some thought into that. The rest of the specs are, as I said above, not spectacular but rather something that I’d expect on any tablet that wants a share of the market. The iPad does not have an integrated webcam which some people think is a bad idea. Personally, I don’t use webcams so I wouldn’t miss it.
During Steve Jobs’ presentation, he and others demonstrated web browsing, watching videos, some games, a movie, iWork (an office software), an image editor and iBooks (an ebook software) with comments about how awesome everything is and how the iPad just makes things all so very easy. iPhone apps can be used on the iPad as well and new apps can be developed now especially for the iPad – all available, of course, through iTunes. Oh, what I forgot to mention: there’s an onscreen keyboard very much like the one you can see on an iPhone only bigger.
Now, the question I’ve been asking myself for a while now, not only concerning the iPad but other tablets as well is: what’s the point?
From my personal perspective, there’s no reason at all to buy a tablet. When I surf or write or chat, I need a keyboard that is usable and not simply an onscreen keyboard that takes away screen real estate. Sure, for a short mail that is probably all that’s needed, but I doubt you can work for hours with just the iPad. Yes, Jean Luc Picard uses PADDs for the day-to-day ship life, but he used them mostly to read reports. To input data, it seems to be normal to use a stylus. Now, we’re not in Star Trek, and there may well be people who like to sit on their sofas and idly browse while watching TV for for whom such a tablet may be a lot more practical than having to balance a netbook or notebook on their laps, but if it’s for more than just watching movies, browsing and viewing images, I still doubt the practicability. 
Even for ebooks, I wouldn’t use it. That’s what dedicated ebook readers are there for which use an e-ink display that is matte and is made especially for reading continuously for hours without strain for the eyes.
Still, this is an Apple product and until now, the company has succeeded amazingly in creating hype and need around products that are certainly sleek and stylish but don’t necessarily offer more than others and that for a price that is generally a lot higher. But the iPad is different in that regard. Pricing, that is. It’s “cheap” for an Apple product with the basic unit (16 GB storage, no 3G) at $499 and even the most expensive unit (64 GB storage, with 3G) with $829 still well below the usual $1000+ prices one can generally see with Apple products. Of course, these are US prices. In Europe, they will probably just exchange the $ with a € sign and be done with it. And while the iPad comes out in the US in 60 and 90 days for models without and with 3G respectively, a release date for Europe is not planned before the summer, apparently to cut a similar data plan deal with European phone companies as they have done with AT&T in the US, i.e. $14.99 for up to 250 MB data and $29.99 for an unlimited plan. Prices are per month without a minimum contract period which is very interesting.
So, given all this data and the fact that the brand “Apple” is on the product, I was expecting that everybody would be rushing to pre-order the iPad. I was therefore a bit surprised by a poll done on jkOnTheRun, a mobile tech blog. The question was “Are you planning to purchase the iPad?” and I would have estimated at least 50% to 60% saying yes. But the final results of the poll with 2,000 participants were as follows:
That’s not even close to my estimation, but after reading some comments, I come to understand that quite a few people are disappointed by the lack of webcam, no handwriting recognition, no USB connectivity, no multi-tasking, no flash… Seems Apple may not have wooed the fangeek crowd as they used to do.
We’ll see how the sales turn out. As one commenter pointed out, the entry level iPad may well be a great Christmas gift this year. Not for me, though. My next gadget will be an ebook reader. :)
I’m so proud! I wrote a blog post over at my friend Gizmo’s stupidities blog (don’t be fooled by the title, it’s not only stupid stuff :)) about the MSI e-reader that was presented at the CES 2010. With this entry, I managed to land on the first place in a Google search!
Of course, that wouldn’t have been possible without Gizmo’s great SEO, but I wrote the copy so it’s not all just because of the background settings. :)
Alas, I just had to realise that the entry is now on the fourth place only… Oh well. SEO and search results aren’t an exact science anyway. Still feels good though, to (have) be(en) at the top. :)
