Testing the Opera browser on Nintendo DS Lite

As I already mention in a previous post, the Nintendo DS Light (NDS Lite) will be able to do voice over ip (VOIP) as revealed in the article: Latest Pokemon titles morph DS into kid-friendly VoIP phone at Engadget. During my visit to the i-city event, I had some time to test out the Opera Browser for the Nintendo DS Lite. The Opera browser is a 45 euro package that consists out of the usual flash card that has to be inserted into the top slot where normal games are inserted and an extra card that has to be inserted into the front slot that contains extra memory:

Remark that the front slot is a different in a NDS and a NDS Lite. Check carefully for the right version when you would buy the browser.

My experiences using the Opera browser on the NDS Lite:
first of all, the DS lite Wifi connection only support WEP encryption. Since at home I'm using WPA, I could not test it at home. Setting up a Wifi connection is not childplay. In some cases indepth knowledge of the wifi router settings were necessary. This is not something to blaim Nintendo for, as setting up Wifi links is in general a difficult task. Probably only Apple will be able to solve this by using a RFID chip in every Wifi terminal (see their recent patent).
Second observation while browsing is that it's going slow. Something to be expected when you know that the DS Lite runs on a 67MHz ARM9 processor but I hoped more horsepower was made available in the extra front cartridge.
Third reading gmail on the DS Lite is possible although not very elegantly as Google does not support Opera's browser very well. Typing short emails is working fine and definitely an option.
Fourth, on the public hotspot of the local provider Telenet, authentication via username and password must be reentered after each session. Thus closing the DS lite and opening it again ment that the full username and password had to be entered again. I guess this has to do with Telenet infrastructure because I got a popup about a root certificate that could not be stored. I did not test Wifi in a open hotspot without authentication.
Fifth, during browsing it is not possible to play games. The top cartridge must be removed and browsing is then disabled. So no easy switching between reading mail and brain training...
To conclude, even in bright sunshine the screen stays readable. Kudos to Nintendo for this.

To conclude, the Opera browser for NDS Lite does not transform the game console into a functional handheld computer. To me, it looks more like a gimmick.

Public broadcaster : Starbucks for media?

From the moment I read on his blog that Dries Buytaert (the Drupal guy) was reading a book about tribal wisdom from Starbucks, I intended to examine the book and eventually buy it to read. The book subject triggered me because two people pointed in the direction of tribal mechanisms. The first one is Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries, professor at Insead and author of very good books on leadership. Recently he studied organisations by traveling to countries where pure tribal societies are living (read “High Performance Teams: Lessons from the Pygmies”, Organizational Dynamics, 27 (3), 66-77. Kets de Vries, Manfred F.R. (1999)). I think his experiences with those tribes leads up to the arguments for the authentizotic organistation (dutch link). The second pointer in the direction of tribes comes from the social scientist Ilka Tuomi (the author of the book Networks of Innovation). In his presentation titled "Social Forces and the Broadcasting Revolution" he forecasts the rise of groups, clans, tribes , typically based on gift economies, in the next generations of internet-based societies. So I was wandering if the success of Starbucks had something to do with gift economies like in open source or commons-based peer production.

In the beginning of March '07, during a transit in the Heathrow airport on my way to the Game Developers Conference in San Franciso, I walked into a bookstore and found a book about Starbucks. Because we were in a hurry, I bought it without much further ado and started to explain to my colleagues what I tought Starbucks is about and why I tought it could learn us something about the future of broadcasting. During the flight I discussed what I read in the Starbucks book with them. Visiting a Starbucks rose high on the list "things to do when arriving in San Francisco". So this was the first Starbucks we visited in our life:

Of course, our high expectation where not met at all. We had to cue up in a long line. Since we where new we acted to slowly and felt as obstructions. No personal treatment by the baristas who could hardly understand why we had such a difficulty in formulating our order. And in contradiction with mental picture build by the book, the place was not clean. To sum it up, far from amarvelous experience at all. Luckily, the lathe was indeed very good! (So it is a good strategy to be really good at one thing, see Principle 2 of BBC's 15 web2.0 principles)

Later I found out that the book I bought was the wrong one. In a nutshell, the book goes as follows: it states that Starbucks is a successful company, it presents a list of principles of the company that boils down to "if you know your costumers you can give them a great experience". (That the service industrie would develop to experience industry is also long predicted). If you apply this principle to your business, your business will also become successful. A bit to simple for my mind.

To me, the Starbucks principle resembles a lot to the style of Flemish pubs we (used to) have. Just substitute coffee with beer and there you go. So nothing very insightful or revolutionary. Hence, I still intend to buy "Tribal Knowledge: Business Wisdom Brewed from the Grounds of Starbucks Corporate Culture". Luckily I understand now that I can study it by having a good beer in a Belgian pub (even beter would be Café Tabor in Heverlee) Cheers!

Am I rich ? According to DnScoop I am ! not ;-)

I just learned from Seth's blog about DnScoop. It estimates what an URL is possible worth. I must have struck gold because they estimate this blog is worth a whopping $1,320,066 . Yahoo !!! This is of course an error. The reason is probably that is takes the trafficrank of http://www.blogspot.com that hosts all the blogs of Google.

Google course on photography

Recently, I discovered via Google Video Recommendations that Google Video hosts a course on photography :

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For those who always wanted to know what focal length, aperture, F stop numbers, ... exactly are and many things more, I recommend the tutorial already. It start relatively basic but I guess that is to build up a strong basic layer to build upon further. Let me know what you think.

The starfish and the spider

I just finishing reading the book "The starfish and the spider" that I got from Werner. I like the concept of spider and starfish. It helps to discuss strategies. But on the other hand it think starfish is a new word for things we know already a long time: grassroot and bottom-up. The new thing is that we are now able to work grassroot and bottom-up using the information and communication technologies. Maybe the power that comes from the combination is what makes starfishes so important. And ignites a true social landslide in the way we work and live.

Customize your 3g phone into a blackberry

These three apps i find indispensible for a 3g phone:

1. http://gmail.com
2. http://mini.opera.com/
3. http://www.google.nl/gmm

unless it's an Apple iphone of course.

It still miss a mobile version of my Google calender. Hopefully that's coming this year. Google, please ?

If mobile operators would charge resonable rates for the datatraffic then I think 2007 will become the year that we all starting to read mail on a phone now and then. Because the above three apps almost transform every phone with a colour screen that can execute Java Midlets (an that are a lot of phones) almost into a Blackberry. And let's face it, don't we all want one like our CEO just like we wanted a GSM back in '98 because all important people already had one ?

Test driving a new phone

Today I get a new phone to test: A Sony Ericsson K800i. According to the reviews its one of the best cameraphones. Check the pictures I'm sending in....

Trying Amazon Unbox

I just tried to order a South Park serie from Amazon Unbox. This is the result:

Add MP3 to your blog

As explained here
just add a bit of code:
<iframe style="border: 1px solid #aaaaaa; width: 100%; height: 25px" id="musicPlayer" src="http://mail.google.com/mail/html/audio.swf?audioUrl=MP3_URL"> </iframe>

And the result will look like this:


It is an Stabat Mater I found here. The link to the MP3 file is:

http://www.musikethos.org/mp3/Patrizia%20Bovi/01%20Stabat%20Mater.mp3

This is the HTML with link filled in:
<iframe style="border: 1px solid #aaaaaa; width: 100%; height: 25px" id="musicPlayer" src="http://mail.google.com/mail/html/audio.swf?audioUrl=http://www.musikethos.org/mp3/Patrizia%20Bovi/01%20Stabat%20Mater.mp3"> </iframe>

New feature on Google Video: post a video on your blog

Google Video added a new feature. If you see a video you want to share on the blog, it's now just a few clicks away. They support Blogger (as you can see), Live Journal, My Space and TypePad. The movie is Jonas Geirnaert graduation project "FLATLIFE" (2004), selected for Short Films in Competition at the Cannes Film Festival 2004.

Nintendo DS remote for your media center

Opera for DS is as announced released in Japan. The good news: it supports functionality as for Opera 8.5. This means that reading gmail wil not be a problem. The bad news: no support for plugins. So no Flash video. Hopefully, this will not be te case in Opera for Wii. I also learned that the DS can become a remote for your media center using software called PlayerPal.

The European release of the Opera browser is foreseen for end of september (source)

Google personal homepage troubles

I'm an avid user of the personalised homepage of Google a.k.a http://www.google.com/ig . After a year or so of trusted functioning, I got a lot of "information temporarily not available". First, I thought it was due to my Opera 9 browser I'm currently trying out but after some digging on monday 6/26 it turned out a lot of users had the same problem. Last wednesday 6/28 everything looked fine again. Today, the same hichup appears. I know that it's a free service but I feel it's beyond Google standards. Hopefully, they fix it soon. Maybe it has something to do with their upcoming Gbuy aka GWallet aka GCheckout ?

The Wiivolution

At E3 Nintendo announced and showcased its upcoming game console Nintento Wii. The Wii name was already revealed earlier and generated a lot of debate. A lot of complained that it sounded to much as "pee". But i find the contraction of "we" + "i" + "i" = "wii" a nice naming for a winning concept.

Let me try to explain why. First of all, the Wii gameconsole will be lowpower such that it can be always on without a big energy bill afterwards. This means that all Wii consoles will become nodes into a massive p2p network. Since the console is connected to the TV, it can become a TV and radio. Secondly, Nintendo unrolls a true crossmedia strategy. Think about the Nintendo DS or DS Lite with an opera browser. It means that on the handheld device of about 150 euro you can perform all personal actions: browsing, instant messaging, email, talking, ... next to casual gaming via the wifi network. It is also announced that DS Lite will get a digital televion receiver (see "Nintendo expects limited losses from Wii launch").

The nintendo Wii will have flash SD card slot. Imagine the following. While on the go, you encounter a friend who recommends you a media title. When in a wifi network, you go online with the DS (lite) and start up the download of the media title on your home Wii system. Later at home, you enjoy your title.

The Wii could also become a mediaserver that decodes the media title and beam the decoded video to the DS (lite) handheld. Or downloads the webpages you visit and repurposes them for viewing on the handheld. I also expect that with a push on a button you can display the webpage currently on the DS (lite) back on the TV.

So if you then have to book a hotel for your vacation, there's no need to quarrel with your wife in the couch about who operates the wifi labtop. You just browse both at your own pace and when there's something to share, just push the button....

Very clever indeed, Nintendo

When I asked people in my own social circle if they would be interested they responded that games are way to expensive. Enter Nintendo's Virtual Console that virtually plays every title from the start of their offerings. Some of them will be for free, others can be bought from the week budget children get. Rumors go that prices will be under 10 dollar. (Wii's classic games to be priced less than US$10)

Moreover, a whole load of good low priced games and application may be expected because Nintendo is really bringing in the indie scene. The price of the development kid is supposed to be less then $2000. Hundred times less then a PS3 dev kid, under the assumption you get one! Think now about democratic innovation as discussed by Eric Von Hippel and the revolution can begin.

Zie wie mijn blog bezoekt

See where vistiors of this blog are located:
Click to my gvisit tracker
A cool example of gmaps hacking !

Experiment: P2P Live Audio streaming van de Prix Europa

Iemand van EBU vroeg me om dit op het web te plaatsen:

Ter gelegenheid van het Prix Europa openingsconcert op Zaterdag 15 oktober 2005 om 20h in Berlijn, organiseert de EBU een streaming experiment in samenwerking met Octoshape. De stroom zal ter beschikking zijn op de volgende webstek:
http://www.octoshape.com/events/prixeuropa2005.asp

OctoShape is een nieuwe technologie die gebruik maakt van een P2P (peer to peer) aanpak en die een kostefficiente en hoge kwaliteits distributie van mediastromen over het internet naar verscheidene simultane luisteraars.
De volgende stromen zijn beschikbaar:

• Windows Media 9 aan 96 kbit/s stereo, afspeelbaar door Windows Media player


• AAC Plus op 64 kbit/s stereo, afspeelbaar door WinAmp player of itunes

De efficientie van het OctoShape systeem hangt af van het aantal luisteraars. Hoe meer gebruikers, hoe beter het systeem performeert.

Vraag dus aan je collegas en vrienden om ook te luisteren.

(Original message in English:
Live Audio Streaming of Prix Europa.doc>>

Dear colleagues and friends,

On the occasion of the Prix Europa opening concert to be held on Saturday,
15 October 2005 at 20.00 CET in Berlin, the EBU organizes a streaming
experiment in collaboration with OctoShape. The streams will be available on
the following website:

http://www.octoshape.com/events/prixeuropa2005.asp OctoShape is a novel technology which uses a P2P (peer-to-peer) approach and allows for cost-efficient and high-quality distribution of media streams over the internet to several thousands of simultaneous listeners.
The following audio-only streams will be available:

• Windows Media 9 at 96 kbit/s stereo, played by Windows Media player


• AAC Plus at 64 kbit/s stereo, played by WinAmp player

The efficiency of the OctoShape system depends on the number of users involved. The more users, the better the performance of the system.
Pleease invite your collegues and friends to click on the above
address on Saturday, 15 October at 20.00 CET. Publish this information on your website in order to attract as many people as possible.
I hope that you will be one of the users who want to try the Octopus streaming system.)

Why Google does Talk ?

Why does Google provides a instant messanger with a peer to peer voice messaging? In this post I argue that in fact they are doing a kind of automating social tagging in order to improve their search results.

In a reaction There goes Philosophy point #2 on a slashdot posting, it was mentioned that Google better updates their "10 things":
Google does search. Google does not do horoscopes, financial advice or chat.
since the release of Google Talk that is a chat program.
And they did (see the full disclosure at the bottom of the page)
I started wondering why Google does talk. In my opinion they provide the VOIP/chat program just because this is sensible service to their users. Hence users will use it. As a consequence Google can get a good grip on your dailly social network. This is what they are after in my opinion. Because if they know what you and your friends at Google Talk/Mail are searching, they can improve their Page Rank search results by making use of your social network structure. Just like their Page Rank algorithm, a spin-off of the founders mathematical journey in the graph structures of internet content, makes use of the link structure of the items that GoogleBots indexes. In fact they can automate a kind of social tagging. That Google can record what you search was already remarked earlier at Google stealthily monitoring clickthroughs from search-results

I think it's a good value proposition. Google Talk for free, simple, no bypass of the corporate firewall with file upload (this is why Skype was considered insecure by Gartner), small screen estate and in the end better search results. Just like your Gmail inbox is read by machine programs, the social network is build by programs. Privacy is relative maintained as long as Google wants it. Unfortunately, history learns that if it can be revealed it will be revealed.....

Seba op de moto van de zwaantjes in het kader van een verkeersopleiding