Gadgets that I actually use. Part I: Anker 40W 5 port USB charger

It looks like Apple made it: White and light grey, clean design.
Nicely packaged also.
It charges my iPad, iPhone and Nexus 5 at the same time.

And quickly so.

With room for two more devices.

Now I only have to find a more organized solution for all those wires and devices.

Something like this:

Facebook and Spotify

OK, I'm up to date again. Just added the 'follow me on Spotify' badge on my home page: www.terwisscha.com

Testing ScribeFire add-on for FireFox

Hello dear reader, this post is written in an add-on for Firefox https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1730. It seems to be very useful, especially when you post to multiple blogs. Plus you can save drafts of posts. And it works in my beta release version of Firefox (release 3 beta 5), which at this time is quite special.

checking LiveCastr....

Are you too one of those people who tried video-call on your mobile and hardly ever since?
LiveCastr gives video-calling a new spin by offering you a way to broadcast and store your video-call online.
There's a cool embedded streaming object, but it messed up my page layout...
I'll try to put it on the right-side column...
...and that messed up the page even more...
How cool services can be ruined by poor usability details...
...so I created a separate page here

Skyhook (the one that feeds location into the iPhone and iPod Touch)

Steve Jobs told that the Maps application on the iPhone (and iPod Touch) works with Google Maps. The third element in the solution is SkyHook Wireless. They have a databse of WiFi Access points and their location. So when the iPhone's WiFi is turned on and it receives signals from an access point, it will be able to find out where you are.

Skyhook has a piece of laptop software of it's own that works as a browser plug-in.
It'll show me where I am, based on the same access point database.

The mash-up below is a logical next step:

first mobile Google Maps Mashup?

My Google Alert notified me about Myrimis today.
( Myrimis )
It really looks very promising if you 'take the tour' on their website.
Social networking-like capabilities, Geotagging photos, Geofences, a mobile client.
So I registered and downloaded the client (Symbian only, Windows Mobile 'coming soon'. It's the other way around most of the time)
To my great surprise I noticed that Google maps and satellite images are being used.
I thought Google did not allow mobile usage of those yet.
The downside is that the client is so cluttered with functionality and the maps work so different from Google Maps, that the Wow-effect soon diminished.
But it's yet another example of the direction in which we're heading.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: location based services are on the verge of a major breakthrough.

recording four tv channels at once, while watching two others

I finally got it working properly:
my two home theatre PC's (HTPC). One upstairs, one downstairs.
Until yesterday, the 'real' TV's image got blurred as soon as I turned one of the HTPC's on. And the one upstairs had never shown a clear image.
My guess that I needed to really split the cable signal and boost it with a Hirschmann amplifier turned out to be correct.
So 150 Euro and some tinkering with high quality Coax cable later it all works.
Downstairs I built two digital TV decoders (from FireDTV) into a Windows machine, so I can watch and record digital TV. Windows Media Center still doesn't understand high definition TV (streaming h.264 to be precise) so I'm using software called DVB-Viewer together with CoreAVC to watch and record the three High Definition channels on my cable.
Upstairs is a more traditional setup with a dual analog tuner built into a Windows Media Center PC.
Ironically I hardly ever watch TV, but hey, I'm an innovator so I did it just for fun.
Next up: streaming live TV wirelessly from my HTPC to my MacBook.

Mobile Google Maps in the train

I filmed Mobile Google Maps in action during my train ride to work.
The Nokia N95 is on KPN's network and the TyTnII (MDA Vario III) on T-Mobile's.
Apparently it only works well when the phones are set to use the GSM instead of the UMTS network.
What surprises me is how well it works.
Most mobile operators considering location based services are thinking in terms of checking every several minutes.
Whereas this product seems to check every one or two seconds. And in effect notice every hop from cell-tower to cell-tower.