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I am in a village called Dagali the coming days for a management meeting tomorrow and a company event the days after. It’s always good to see most of the colleagues at once (almost 100 will come!). Well, well, we were supposed to go rafting or outdoor karting on Friday, but (looking back) luckily the program got changed; it is 2 degrees and friggin’ SNOWING at the moment!! I ask you…the end of May!?! It’s welcome to Norway, eh? 😉

Apple has ended the ‘Get a Mac’ ad campaign last week, the apple.com/getamac site now points to the new campaign ‘Why You’ll Love a Mac’.

The campaign ran for four years and consists of 66 gems, I put some of them on the blog before…the returning Mac vs. PC cage-fight never bores and is absolutely brilliant!

Adfreak.com has put an overview of all ads in the campaign on their site, check them out (as said, they’re worth it!) or alternatively watch the tribute made by OneMoreThing (THE Apple-community of The Netherlands and Belgium, website in dutch) below:

It has almost become a daily routine; booting up the PS3, calling Robbert on Skype, starting FIFA10 and…GAME ON!

The online gameplay on the PlayStation is fantastic, it’s not any different as sitting next to each other, wow! And even though we don’t play that long, normally a best of three, the temperature rises as if NL was playing the Worldcup final! 😉

My friend and ex-colleague Laurens sent me a DUO LNB for our satellite TV antenna (he has easy access to those as he works for the satellite operator SES Astra 😉 ). The antenna is now pointed to two satellites at the same time (19.2 East and 23.5dgr East) so that both HD and non-HD content is received.

Watching the Champions League final in High Definition was great (the match result not really though 😉 )

Ha, the Queens invite is in!

The formal invitation to meet Queen Beatrix on June 2nd came with the mail today. As you can see, it looks pretty formal…oh well, it *is* the Queen after all. 😉

I’ve never seen her in real life before, it’ll be interesting!

Having a girlfriend who is a flight attendant and being generally interested in everything aviation myself, the YouTube clip below is really amazing! It’s crazy to see and realize how many airplanes are up in the sky worldwide over a 24h period:

Hehe, looking at the airtraffic movement in Europe, this simulation was obviously not made with the ash cloud in mind… 😉

Onion News Network: “New Google Phone Service Whispers Targeted Ads Directly Into Users’ Ears… …The new feature reduces Google phone users’ cell phone costs while providing them with unobtrusive, personalized ads delivered in a friendly whisper.”

Hahaha, another great clip by the news satire organization The Onion…and they ain’t all that far off:

Google is investing heavily in both the Google Phone and acquired the AdMob mobile ad platform in November 2009, combining the two with Google Ads, their online advertisement eco-system, and bringing it to market to lower the device’s cost is exactly what is going on! (btw. Google already said in 2006 that mobile phones should be free)

Also, Apple bought Quattro Wireless earlier this year, a competing mobile ad platform, and already announced the iAd platform in its upcoming iPhone OS 4.

Indeed, the mobile ad war has just started and a voice whispered the ads while being in a call seems a not so distant future…not sure if I like that though.

It’s May 17, ‘syttende mai’, today which means that Norway is celebrating its Constitution! I should and planned to wear my best suit, have a traditional champagne breakfast and was then supposed to get drunk while watching the ‘russ’ parade (Norwegians have some nice habits! 😉 )…unfortunately I am sick, so nothing of this all. 🙁

The non-existence of Adobe’s Flash on the iPhone has been food for discussion from the moment Apple introduced the iPhone. Users are said to complain, yet the iPhone is selling like crazy…it ain’t all that bad apparently (and to be honest, I don’t really miss Flash on my iPhone).

Especially the last month Adobe started to openly argue ‘with’ Apple (via media), heating up the discussion between the two companies. Steven Jobs responded with an open letter (an interesting read really).

Adobe now thought to play it smart by openly countering with an ‘We LOVE Apple’ advertisement, see below. It’s ok and funny in a way, but they are just shooting themselves in the foot; TechCrunch has an interesting article why.

And obviously a creative Apple fanboy mind (via http://yfrog.com/83n4fp) has created a counter-ad, which is hilarious! (if you don’t understand; the LEGO-block normally resembles the fact that a plugin is not installed in your browser, such as a Flash plugin in Mobile Safari on the iPhone)

Pfeww, I checked the garden today, and the very last pieces of snow have disappeared (!!)…FINALLY!!

I guess that we can say winter is really over now, so let’s get the summer started…and where is the sun? I’m wanna grill some ribs on the BBQ! 😉

Birmingham Mail: “The “job with a difference” is being advertised at Jobcentre Plus offices in Birmingham, Warwickshire and Shropshire.  Applicants are told they must be prepared to perform naked at home in front of a web camera and engage in smutty talk with callers. They are also warned they should be ready to go along with “any other activities you feel comfortable with”. The ad says men and couples are also wanted”

Jeez, it seems that everything is used these days in order to fight high unemployment rates, eh?

This one is AMAAAAZZINGGG…

PS. I really thought I put this sand art performance on the site over a year ago, but couldn’t find it?!?

Stieg Larsson is keeping me awake these days; the second novel in the Millenium Trilogy, The Girl Who Played with Fire, is again addictive. And luckily it’s only 568 pages hehe…and as I got the third novel (only 651 pages 😉 ) for my Birthday, I’m pretty sure to miss quite some hours of sleep the coming weeks…zzzzzz

I waited for an extra week as winter never seemed to end (thinking back to the cm’s of fresh snow last Tuesday!), but after a few days of 15-20 degrees with the sun high in the blue sky, today was a safe day to change my winter tires for summer rubber! An easy job…I’m gonna test-drive tomorrow morning to feel the result.

Quite unexpected I was called this morning to participate in the Holmekollstafetten today, a relay race over 18km divided in 15 stages which claims to be worlds biggest relay race! I haven’t trained at all, but I guess I can manage my stage…it’s a whopping uhhh, 390m! 😉 Check out the stagemap, I’m having the 12th stage.

Haha, wish me luck, I’m starting my warm-up!

I bought an HD-satellite receiver, so we can enjoy TV in full HD now…yes, it DOES make a difference, watching TV in HD is a whole new experience! (and yes, watching TV ain’t THAT important really! 😉 )

It’s Liberation Day in NL today and that means that my dad is having his Birthday…uhh, or was it the other way around? 😉

It’s a quite special one for him this year: his 65th which means that he is ‘officially’ retired now! (even though he stopped worked some years ago) 😉

I can recommend George Carlin’s performances to anyone, they are truly superb! This one puts Global Climate change and the ‘save the planet’ movement in perspective…;)

Yay! Finally there is a jailbreak available for my iPhone (3GS with new bootrom)! The tool is called Spirit, developed by iPhone hacker Comex who released it today!

Although I did ‘discover’ in the last months that I did not need a jailbreak as much as I expected (I *lived* on the alternative Cydia Apps on my previous first-gen iPhone), most of the Apps I ‘needed’ are in some form actually available in the Appstore. There are some Apps that do make a difference though; SBSettings and Categories for instance…hehe, those make my iPhone experience even better!! 😉