Cast42 as gadget via Google Mashup Editor

A few months ago, I asked Google to join the group of people that have access to Google Mashup Editor. As soon as Google granted my access to the private beta, I played around a bit with the tool. Altough its possibilities are endless, I had no good idea for a mashup that I would want. Since I'm happy owner of an Ipod Touch, I started to think about a customized version of this blog especially for the Ipod Touch/Iphone. After some playing around, I was quickly able to make a simple gadget, that takes the atom feed of his blog and strips everything but the essential. To access the gadget, surf to http://castfortwo.googlemashups.com. To add the Google gadget to your personalized homepage, go to your homepage, click on "Add items", select "Add a feed or gadget" and enter the address of the gadget : http://castfortwo.googlemashups.com/gadget.xml. The gadget should now appear on your homepage:



This how it looks on the Ipod Touch mobile version of iGoogle:

What I hope to hear in Steve Jobs keynote

Rumours are running wild in anticipation of the keynote presentation of Steve Jobs tomorow. I hope that:

• Will Wright takes stage to announce that Spore will be released for mac first. His showing up supports the claim from Steve that OSX takes gaming serious. I can brag for to months to my PC collegues about how good Spore is (isn't that priceless ;-))
  
• A basic version for .Mac becomes free and is powered and fully interoperable with Google services. More iDisk space can be bought from Google or Amazon S3.
• Iphone comes to Belgium.
• Apple clarifies their bidding strategy together with Google on the 700 MHz spectrum. This is why 'something is in the air'.
  
• OSX Leopard is updated with a functional ZFS filesystem from SUN. ZFS has already been open sourced for osx but is in beta.
  
• Timemachine can be used over Wifi. Currently, backup synchronisation goes only over the USB or Ethernet wire. I hope to be able to connect a USB disk to the Apple Basestation Extreme and connect my macbook pro via Wifi.
  
• Itunes Europe launches with rental movies from major studios.
• OSX on AppleTV becomes open. We can prototype or own channel on it.
• Google Maps becomes integrated in Ipod Touch.
  

Above list of predictions/wishes is unlikely to happen. More probable is that we will get Itunes rental movies restricted to the States only. (One of the few drawback living in Europe). We will get a small notebook with Flash drives and touch interface (I don't bother because I can't afford it anyway) and more details about the Iphone/Ipod Touch SDK will be announced (as announced already).

iGoogle on Ipod Touch

Recently, Google homepage iGoogle got an Iphone/Ipod Touch specific overhaul. It can be reached on http://www.google.com/ig/i. This is how it looks on my Ipod Touch: