Happy New Year. Resolutions? Not making them this time; though I stuck to all of them last year.

 

Next week, my 9 month industrial project at Vodafone starts. Minor downside for now: it's in Germany and I don't have accommodation yet. The research I will encounter promises to be interesting. Unfortunately it will also be confidential – including my own project. So in 2009 you won't read much about it here.

Maybe I should devote a blog category to my adventures in Dusseldorf. The city looked really nice while I was there (Christmas market!) and the quality of living appears to be amongst the worlds finest.

 

Picture by Jörg Dickmann (www.joergdickmann.de)

I will be working in one of the buildings on the right. Although I don't know anybody nor speak any German, I'm very much looking forward to live there.

Auf wiedersehen!

The Belgian Band Clouseau launched an online version of their new video clip. The music video was shot in High Definition. The neat part of this is that the interaction on the HD footage allows you to discover more then you would normally see.

Explore the different rooms:

 

Overview

 

 

*Update 18 November*

 

This site uses a similar concept.

Since a while I’m looking for a new phone. Right now the market gets swarmed by touch-based devices, following the iPhone hype. But what else is out there?

Since I work and live in two countries, I figured it might be an idea to look into models that support 2 SIM cards. Take it from first hand experience: no matter how bad the European Commission threatened operators; roaming is still too expensive.

Anyway, that frustration put aside, you can start the hunt for a phone with this technology. But for some reason when you have these niche market requirements, you end up on Asian knock-off sites. Dual sim, Windows based, probably not looking anything-like-the-picture-at-all iPhone rip off anyone?

While browsing around, one of their product categories woke up my inner-geek: Watch phones. I know they are around for a while, but I wouldn’t want to be caught dead with one on me since they look so goofy.

 

When I was a kid, I remember dreaming of devices like this. I saw them on TV. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles used them to communicate and needed it _badly_ to contact my friend that lived just down the street.

To call him to come over and play, I always had to ask my mom permission to use the landline. As if that wasn’t enough, I was exposed to the risk of *his* mom answering the phone when I called. Yak, I hated that. This would allow me to secretly contact him and setup a meeting to continue working on our tree-house from which we would rule the earth soon after.

A few years later the mobile phone became mainstream.

Nevertheless, my love for these futuristic looking devices is still there. It looks like I’m not the only one, because when I clicked the one that was best looking (read the one that looked least ugly) the model was sold out. Hmm, a future mass product after all?

 

Maybe.. if they get the design, usability and privacy issues down. Just like with any other product.