Ideas

About a year ago I bought an LG Chocolate. Pretty nice looks, but after a week I found that it was one of the worst phones ever made, my first Nokia 3310 phone was way better and that was 8 years ago. I finally managed to find a phone I liked, the Sony W880i. It looks good, has awesome walkman software, and I have to say, I have been pretty content up until about a month ago.

Line clarity has become simply awful. Many times its fine, very clear, but then it breaks up, and it seems like I’m in a deep, deep cave. Now voice quality is ok, it’s the line quality that’s really bad and this happens on sunny, clear days. We can’t hear each other, the line breaks up, only parts of what we say get through, it is very, very agitating.

I decided to sell it after such an occasion, but I held myself back, I will try and update the software first. Now, I downloaded the update service, which then simply refused to run, because I needed Flash 8 or higher. I was a bit confused since I have Flash 9, and last time I checked nine is a bit more than eight. I realized that Flash might just be a plugin, so after removing it, and installing it with IE it works. How stupid is that? So anyone, if you get Flash error messages for the Sony Update service, just install Flash Player with Internet Explorer.

Also, the update service displays downloading for a while, then just disappears. In the services it shows no CPU use, so it was quite difficult to tell what’s going on. After about 5 minutes things started happening and my phone is updating as we speak. I have had some negative experiences with Sony in their phones, although I have to say no phone has impressed me yet really, especially in the PC connectivity area. If the line is still so bad after the update I will sell my phone without a second thought and never again buy Sony or LG. The only phone maker I’ve been content with is Nokia and I’d rather have a phone that doesn’t look as good, but actually performs.

I got a letter today from someone offering me marketing for Blogtastique for $2500 a month, which is an awesome low price, since for companies they usually offer it for $5000, but they appreciate how startups have less money. How kind of them. They offer to create buzz through thousands of blogs and forums because that’s where buzz is.

My first problem is with thousands. If they would have said, we’ll get you into the top 5 blogs I would’ve been more believing. This is so much like those “SEO products” getting you into thousands of search engines. Well, create your site, put it online and chances are than in 3-4 days you will already be there. Anyway, there are only 3-5 bigger ones and out of those thousands, probably 95% use these bigger ones anyway.

Second of all, I do not want artificial buzz. Artificial buzz is spam, even if it is really good quality and not the filth I get in my blog comments. I want people to like Blogtastique because of the service. Because a person who likes it tells his blogger friends who tells his blogger friends and so on. Now that is buzz, and when it reaches a critical mass, it become the über-mega buzz everyone wants. Yes, I’d love buzz, but natural buzz please.

I spend 5 minutes of my life thinking of a reply, and in the end I just told the person I won’t be needing these services. I just hate these people.

If you don’t know already, TED is a conference of about 1,000 people, with some of the best minds of today sharing their thoughts on their work, the world and their views in general. This material is now fully available from the website, under a creative commons license. You can view videos, comment on them and so on.

For me this is a great find, since I have a very broad spectrum of interest. Even if you hated biology in school, the talks on it will still pull you in, since people are talking about cutting edge science, often in a way that is very consumption-friendly from a layman’s point of view.

I am thinking about opening a new blog reviewing TED talks every week. I just recently finished a talk by Ron Eglash who is an ethno-mathematician, studying mathematics and culture. You might think “boring”, but it’s really not. The talk was about fractal patterns occurring in African design, and these people don’t know what a fractal is, at least not in a mathematical sense.

If you want to hear very smart people talking about cutting edge stuff, take a look!

I’ve been looking at some laptops for a few weeks now because I’m planning to buy a new one in a few months. I have used my empirical knowledge to deduce that there are two types of laptops. You can either get a good looking one, or one that is actually usable in the hardware department. Good looking laptops almost all have integrated video cards, come with laughable memory and whatnot. My main problem is the video card, I don’t necessarily want a gamer laptop, but I like to play the occasional game now and then, and I would appreciate some power under the hood.

On the other there are the quality laptops with great stuff purring under the cover. These laptops usually have weird lights all over the place, exceptionally ugly speakers, and other visual awesomness which makes my eyes water.

One other complaint I have is the position of jack inputs. Why oh why do they put these so often on the front? Have you ever tried to listen to music while working curled up on your bed? The jack pierces your gall bladder, while it also messes with the jack input itself. I would also love to have a normal numpad, although that is of secondary importance.

So let’s se what my perfect laptop is like. First of all it has to look good. Speakers are generally disguisting, so they must be well designed, also the touch pad should be simmple, no fanciness there. The video card needs to be a decent one, just as the actual processor. I would lke 2GB RAM, but worst case scenario, I just buy extra. A numpad would be great, but thats not a problem if it’s not there. Oh, and having the lid outside matte black would be great, I hate the glossy stuff they put on these days. That’s it, I don’t think I’ll ever find this model though, perhaps as a sort of bare bone, put it together yourself buy.

As you may or may not know, I am Hungarian and I live in Hungary. I think I’ve had a good education, not school-wise, but from my parents. We lived in the US for 3 years, Ireland for 4 years and Greece for another 3 and my parents were very democratic and understanding in our upbringing. I like to think that I have a broad view on life and I think I can think myself into other people’s shoes quite well.

The main problem with my country is that people have a total lack of this capability, and if they can do it, they only see the negatives. This is paired with a huge dose of envy, which seems to be the only impetus people have around here. Here’s a quick example.

You have to know that income tax up until yearly 1,700,000 HUF (roughly 10,000 USD) is 18%, above that it’s 36%. There are some nuances, but that’s the core of it. One of the parties said that they wanted a unified rate of 18% for all income groups. Someone I know commented this morning that she disagrees because this way richer people pay less tax and poor people will not be better off, so the richer will just have another reason to laugh. Well, this is the stupidest comment ever. I mean you can judge and comment on the actual plan, but isn’t it stupid to argue against something by saying, I don’t want this, because people other than myself will be better off? The other problem I have is that this person (who I like very much apart from this) would be the first to let hell break loose if she would be paying 36%, because this is disproportionately larger.

So my problem with Hungarian society is that for most people there is an equality between “I’m better off” and “the other one is worse off”. This is a quality I hate the most in anyone, just because my blog performs worse than others I am happy for those guys who do better, and help them if I can. Everyone would be better off doing this, since mostly people do better because they know something you don’t, or they are simply better at it. Instead of wishing them to do worse, why not accept that they are doing better, and try to catch up.

This is the huge difference between US culture for example. People are brought up to be hugely competitive, in an environment that thrives on competition. Some people seem to have a problem with this, and while it does have faults it does provoke thought, and breeds the kind of people who do not give up after one failed attempt. People also tend to have a more open mind, not thinking of competition as the enemy, but simply as competition.

Everyone wans to live better in my country, but all they can do to achieve this is to bring down those who actually do live better. While this is theoretically a viable route to take, I don’t really think it’s the good one. Instead why don’t people try to do better themselves?

I was driving home the other day when I heard that Iran has called for a boycott of European products because of a movie depicting Muslims in a negative way. I am actually quite happy because of this, and here’s why.

The main reason is that this is what civilized people do. You don’t go around threatining to drive planes into peoples’ homes just because you’re pissed about something. I am happy that Iran is choosing this style, a boycott, to go against this movie, and not terrorism, or some other stupid act.

The film depicted the Koran and the Muslim faith in general as being violent and violence oriented. Now this is just totally not true. I mean sure, you can call it violent, but then again you can call the Catholic faith just as violent, of not more so. Oh sure, the Bible is all nice and teaches people good things, but in the end this is not what counts, just as the Koran doesn’t count for them.

Oh, I know, 9/11 was horrible, and we all know that those nice people in the crusades gave a gentle spank on the bottom to the infidels right? An estimated 200.000 people were killed in the crusades by Catholics, I don’t think the Muslims are quite there yet. Oh also, don’t forget the happy times everyone had with those nice people at the inquisition. The comfy Judas Chair and the workout you got from the rack were second to none. They killed around 5,000 people by the way.

My point is, that while I am not a huge fan of religion, there’s nothing bad about the content of the religions themselves, neither of them. It’s the people who are the problem, as always, twisting and turning the words of their sacred books and brainwashing people to do bad things.

What I was trying to say is that Iran is doing the right thing with this boycott. You can disagree or agree with the subject matter all you want, but the reaction was the right one. It’s a glint of hope that we are going in the right direction, that the other side of the word can also act rationally. I don’t know what Iran is up to with the nuclear stuff, but this is a step in the right direction.

I have to say the title looks a bit EMO, but let me explain a bit. I am not against saving the environment or trying to cut back on needless waste, but I try never-ever to participate in these things. Instead, I try to do my part every day. I recycle, I turn of the lights if I don’t need them, and I also use a lot of candles, which help reduce lighting and also look good.

The reason I hate these “once every year” things is that they give normally wasteful people a chance to clear their conscience. They waste electricity all year round, but it’s ok, since on Earth Day they switch all lights off for an hour. How convenient! In reality that one hour means nothing, if you turn lights off you don’t use every day you will probably save that much electricity in a few days.

My point is that you don’t help the environment by being really loud on that one day. I never advertise environmental friendly views, but I try and use less water, always recycle and do some other small things I can. Instead of switching off all your lights for an hour that day switch them all on, and on all other days try and conserve some more.

Spam my site with links, I understand that. Spam it with very comment-like stuff that are actually spam, thats “ok” too. I also see a lot of scraper sites putting my copyrighted content on their site automatically and not giving me credit, leaving me a backlink, which is essentially spam, that is understandable as well.

But why, oh why, do some people leave spam comments like:

“qijeh ihweuhpjebhbc lwhejbxhb ewbu jdncbljsbdj weujb jbhcb lajeb b3″

The only reason I can think of is that hackers are testing themselves, but couldn’t they create a site for themselves to test their skills on? Oh, by the way, all my comments are hand moderated, so none of you have a chance.

Google is possibly the best company I’ve seen ever and is actually doing things smartly, rather than just using its size as a leverage. I mean it made Microsoft more community based and development focused, while only having a fourth of the employees and a third of the income Microsoft has (this is changing of course).

The reason I love Google is that it is combining open source with the big advantage that a heap of capital can give you on the market. They developed Gmail for instance, the best Gmail app ever. Then along came some clever people and developed scripts for it, called Greasemonkey, which enables you to skin Gmail, make it wider, embed Gooogle Reader and so on. Google, instead of saying “stop hacking our app”, which they could indeed have said, simply built many Greasemonkey functions in, while also acknowledging the the Greasemonkey community. They didn’t just steal these ideas, they looked at them, liked them, thanked the developers and built them in. This is how a company should operate I think.

Another recent development, Google Code University also shows the nature of the company. Google seems to understand that no matter how many employees they have, no matter how they sieve the talents, there will always be someone better (someone as in a person or a community). They not only want to tap into this knowledge, but they are willing to help budding coders by helping them along the way.

I am really happy Google is doing well because I think it is doing things the right way. Yes, it is big, it makes a ton of cash and it is another huge corporation. On the other hand it gave us the best free online applications ever, employees enjoy saunas, pools, game rooms and free services on campus and they are even willing to help out other folks. If Google takes over the world I will happily bow before them.