A long long way from home

I normally listen to music in iTunes while I am working. When doing desktop work using iTunes with Butler for fast switching of songs is the best solution for me. But I also use the phone a lot. So, when the phone rings I need to take off my headphones and switch to my iPhones handsfree. And when the call is over I have to switch back to the laptop headphones. Very impractical, annoying and disturbing, as this happens quite often. I tried using BluePhoneElite with my former Phone – an Nokia 6300 that is mostly crap – but that did not exactly work very well.

And now I finally got a round to buying an iPhone 3G. And I try using BluePhoneElite with that as well – and it turns out it wasn’t the Nokia that was teh crap, it’s BluePhoneElite. And I bought a license for that piece of shit. Well, that pretty much concludes the whole use-laptop-as-phone-handsfree idea. Does not work. Am I doomed to be switching headphones for the rest of my life?

Enter AirPhones. Instead of using the laptop as a headset, I can now use my iPhone as speakers! It works pretty much like AirTunes, only you can not use an iPhone as an AirTunes speaker. AirPhones are even better, as they will also stream audio when playing video with iTunes¹ . As long as your Mac and your iPhone is on the same network – typically WiFi² – you are able to use your iPhone as a speaker with either the built in speaker or headset. And when the phone rings AirPhones takes a break while you talk, then comes back. Pure bliss.

One little trick is to turn down the volume completely on your Mac before you start AirPhones. That way, when the phone rings you will not suddenly get music out of your internal speakers.

All in all, the best money I ever spent on the iPhone appstore. Thanks AirPhones! And remember – do the fancy dance.

1. Altough, it is rumoured it does not play the audio from VLC [↩]
2. If you do not have wireless where you are you can always set up an Ad-Hoc wifi network. That works as well [↩]

Finfin nederlandsk painnkak!

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.

Sidan eg er i språknazi-modus i kveld sendte eg dette til NORID.

Hei.

Vi satt og snakka litt på IRC her i kveld, og ein kar lurte på kva i all verden ein "AAAA limpost" var. Eit kjapt google-søk avslører at den einaste plassen dette ordet er brukt er på http://www.norid.no/registrar/sos.html . Heller ikkje der var det forklart kva ein limpost er.

Etter litt kreativ gjetting trur vi at det er snakk om ein glue record. Stemmer dette?

De snakkar og om "SOA-post", "NS-poster" og "A-poster". Etter å ha googla litt (igjen) ser det ut for at det er berre de og Google si norske brukarrettleiing som kallar det noko anna enn SOA-record, NS-records og A-records.

Eg skulle ønske de kunne bidra til litt mindre forvirring ved å bruke etablert teknisk terminologi på nettsidene dykkar. Dersom de meiner at de bidreg til å gjere det enklare for meinigmann å lese dette ved å finne opp ny terminologi er det mi meining at de bommer på skiva sidan folk som ikkje veit kva ein "glue record" er heller ikkje vil klare å finne ut kva ein "limpost" er sidan det berre er de som brukar det - i tillegg uten å forklare kva det er. Hadde de brukt "glue record" ville folk kunne finne hundrevis eller tusenvis av nettsider som kunne forklart dei kva det var. "Limpost" er det umogleg å finne ut av kva er.

Forøvrig er ikkje meinigmann publikummet dykkar heller, så å begynne å finne opp pussige norske uttrykk på denne måten har vel ikkje noko for seg i det heile teke.

Dette er eit ope brev, som også ligg ute på http://ormset.no/wordpress/2009/03/06/kva-i-all-verda-er-ein-limpost/ . Eventuelle svar vert også publisert her.

Ha ein god ... måndag, antar eg.

Med beste helsing, Ola.


Apple recently released Safari 4 beta for the Mac, and I think it’s actually pretty good. What especially trigged my interest was it’s new tab system, and most of all the sheer speed of this thing. Loading and rendering pages is suspiciously fast. The Norwegian online IT magazine seems to agree with me on this. (originally from Maximum PC)

However, there is always some wrinkles.

Wrinkle number one was the “Top sites” functionality. It is really slow, and bogs down the browser experience. Luckily, it’s mendable. I found a great list of tips for disabling/re-enabling functionality over at Macosxtips.co.uk. To say goodbye to Top Sites just enter the following in the terminal:

defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4IncludeTopSites -bool FALSE

The other thing was a decent flash block. I usually don’t mind sensible ads on web pages, I even find good deals that way some times. But flash ads are way to annoying, so I want to block them. Firefox has a nice plugin called Flashblock, which I have been using for quite a few years now. It blocks all flash, and gives a clickable flash symbol that will display the flash animation/video. Very useful.

I have been looking for something similar to Flashblock for Safari, but only found SafariStand which is based on blocking/allowing for specific sites… Not very useful, really – or I didn’t figure out how to set it up properly. But after some more googling I finally found ClickToFlash which does the same thing as flashblock and to top it all off is free as in freedom. Me like!