Two days ago I picked up a brand new MacBook Pro 15-inch with a Intel core i7 CPU from my local hardware pusher. I have to admit it’s a DAMN fast machine, especially after fitting it with a Corsair SSD disk. However, it has one major grievance in my opinion – the button-less multitouch trackpad. My old 2007 model MBP has a physical button located below the trackpad, and I have gotten accustomed to resting my right hand thumb there when using the trackpad.
The new multitouch trackpad does not come with a physical button, but it can detect “idle” fingers on the trackpad so when resting my thumb I can still use the trackpad as if the thumb was not in contact with the pad. Most of the time. If I am to move my thumb only the slightest – which I typically do when I try to tap-to-click with my index finger – it will start interpreting my movements as multitouch gestures and very diffrent things than I intended will start to happen. Most annoying.
After searching for a software solution to disable the lover one third of the trackpad I got pissed of and typed “I hate the macbook multitouch trackpad” and guess what, I am not the only one. First hit in the result list is Kustaa Nyholms site over at sparetimelabs.com, which on his Multitouch page explains why he hates the trackpad and what he did to fool it into behaving properly. I have to admit, It’s a sexy solution 
Now my thumb rests nicely on a piece of former DVD case, and my erranous click rate has gone down to zero. It even looks good, although I will try to get some thinner double sided tape and do a better job with my scissors to get it perfect. Thanks Kusti!
After doing geocaching for a little over a year, I still love it. But geocaching has some features that makes the activity pattern change a bit over time. In the beginning there’s a lot of caches not very far away, and you can go grab caches in between other things that you need to do, like shopping and dropping the kid off in kindergarten. However, after some time you need to drive for quite some time or do time consuming walks in the woods just to get to the cache site – as there is a proximity limit of 161 metres between caches and the bureaucracy of placing geocaches is quite overwhelming for the less eager among cachers . This makes having time for geocaching more difficult since you have to dedicate whole days to geocaching since the distance to the nearest cache is steadily growing – and not everyone has full days to spend on something that does not help in building the house or fixing the garden… Of course, those rare business trips to other cities are treasured as that often gives one the possibility of finding a cache or two.
Enter: Gowalla. This is more of a social networking thing compared to geocaching, it helps you see where your friends are, and their status updates. Gowalla is actually quite similar to geocaching, in that it has geographical spots that you can find, and you can log that you have found them on the system’s website or on a mobile client. However, there’s a lot of small differences. While Geocaching uses various physcal containers that you actually have to get a hold of in order to write something in the enclosed log book, Gowalla only reqires you to be in the proximity of a spot in order to log – or Check In to – the spot. This means you can find and log the spots without even getting out of your car, and you don’t need to worry about getting a cache muggled which may result in unwanted attention from law enforcement and so on – a great advantage in urban areas. Also placing spots is a lot less hazzle with Gowalla – there’s no formal requirements for placing a spot and no approval process. So anyone can play Gowalla very easily. Geocaching also has this more or less unwritten rule that one should only find a cache once, while Gowalla encourage you to find the same spot multiple times by introducing a leaderboard for each spot. Gowalla even has virtual “cache content” (swag) that’s trackable like Geocaching’s travel bugs. But I can’t say I’m really into that part of Gowalla -yet.
Of course, Gowalla is a more virtual game, and is as such not really much suited for the family sunday trip with kids – the instant reward of having your toddler/child finding tupperware treasure chests in the woods is something Gowalla just can’t provide
For the Norwegian readers out there this piece on NRKBeta has more about Gowalla. Translated version here.
Endeleg er domene-piraten Karl-Oskar Fosshaug ute av business. Norid har sperra domena hans og kasta han ut som registrar. Ein siger for alle oss som har prøvd å registrere eit domenenamn berre for å oppdage at Central Equities allereie har snike seg til det heilt urettmessig.
Fosshaug burde blitt bura inne i tillegg, men ein kan ikkje få alt ein ønsker seg her i verda.
Aftenposten ITPro Domenebloggen Dagens IT
Eniro, selskapet bak telefonkatalogen.no/gulesider.no har nettopp vore så greie å berre publisere fødselsdatoen min på nett utan mitt samtykke. Så dersom du har lyst til å stjele identiteten min er dette no så lett som å gå til telefonkatalogen.no og finne adresse og fødselsdato, og så finner ein årstalet i skattelistene. Deretter kan ein bruke ein personnummer-generator for å finne det faktiske personnummeret. Eller sjekke mot websider som validerer identiteten din basert på personnummer.
Tidlegare har eg i alle fall prøvd å vere påpasseleg med å ikkje legge ut fødselsdatoen min på heimesida mi, Facebook, MSN og liknande. Då eg no vurderte å registrere meg som brukar hjå Eniro for å få skrudd av fødselsdatoen min blir eg møtt med dette bruksvilkåret:
Ja, jeg samtykker til at de personopplysninger jeg har lagt inn kan gjøres tilgjengelige i denne og andre søketjenester fra Eniro Norge AS.
Trur ikkje det, nei.
Denne saka har fått stor merksemd på Twitter under taggana #eniro og #enirofail, i tillegg til at nettavisene no ser ut til å hive seg på.
digi.no digi.no VG Dagbladet
Eit medlem av det svenske Piratpartiet, Jonas Bergling, fekk sparken for å offentleg ytre seg om politikken til partiet han er medlem av. Dette er noget spesielt i alle fall her til lands. Bergling er i kontakt med advokat for å finne ut om han fekk fyken på lovlig vis.
Den orginale saka finn ein på NA.se.
Digi.no og ITavisen.no har også plukka opp saka – legg merke til korleis artikkelen på ITavisen berre er eit popularisert samandrag av den meir utfyllande artikkelen til Digi
Den omtalte chaten gløymde dei begge å linke til, den finner du også hos NA.se, med eit kort utdrag i tillegg.
Two days ago I picked up a brand new MacBook Pro 15-inch with a Intel core i7 CPU from my local hardware pusher. I have to admit it’s a DAMN fast machine, especially after fitting it with a Corsair SSD disk. However, it has one major grievance in my opinion – the button-less multitouch trackpad. My old 2007 model MBP has a physical button located below the trackpad, and I have gotten accustomed to resting my right hand thumb there when using the trackpad.