I have simplified my photoalbum a bit with new categories. It will be focused on trips and events. A Misc category is for other types of photos.

Hope you enjoy it.

"Brick walls are there for a reason. They let us prove how badly we want things" - Randy Pausch

Around 2 years ago I browsed the google video site for interesting video clips that i could download to my upcoming long flight. A lecture by Randy Pausch was on the top 10 next to some MTV videos and a conspiracy video about how the 9/11-twin towers could collapse the way they did.

The title “Randy Pausch, a dying 47-year-old professor gives last lecture” scared me a bit but in the same time I was very curious about why you want to make that kind of lecture. Actually Mr. Pausch was not talking so much about his problems. He wrapped up the good things from the past with great humor and enthusiasm. As he said in an interview: “If I were a musician , I would have composed music. But I am a lecturer. So I lectured”.

Please tell them about having fun, that’s the way I remember you for.
That’s like letting a fish talk about the importance of water.

I don’t know how to not having fun. . .right. . .I’m dying and I’m having fun.. And I will keep having fun every day I have left…

A wonderful inspiration and tribute to life and to being optimistic. I suggest that you give Mr. Pausch one hour of your time and listen to his very inspirational and touching lecture with the subject: How to achieve your childhood dreams… And help others to achieve theirs.

If you don’t have an hour, i recommend you the ten minutes version he made at Oprah

During this lecture Randy talked about his childhood dreams and how he achieved them. He talked about inspiring people and things that mend a lot to him. He also summarized his lessons learned.

Lessons learned

• Bricked walls let us show our dedication. They let us prove how badly we really want things.
• Don’t bail; The best gold is at the bottom of barrels of crap
• Decide if you’re a Tigger or Eeyore
• Never loose the child-like wonder. That’s the thing that drives us
• Help others
• Never Give Up
• Loyalty is a two-way street
• How to get people to help you
  • Tell the truth
  • Be earnest
  • Apologize when you screw up
  • Focus on others, not yourself
• Get a feedback loop and listen to it
• Show Gratitude
• Don’t complain, just work harder
• Be good at something: it makes you valuable
• Work hard…
• Find the best in everybody; no matter how you have to wait for them to show it
• Be prepared: “luck” is where preparation meets opportunity

After the last lecture, Randy made the book “The Last Lecture“. In the book Randy goes through his life and how it changed when he got diagnosed with cancer. It is very clear that this book isn’t about death, a wrap-up or a “hey, look at me” biography. It is a tribute to the hard challenges in life, how to make impossible things or not be limited by low expectations or bricked walls. I strongly recommends this book. It is an inspiring tribute to life. Sad but uplifting in the same time.

Almost all of us have childhood dreams; for example, being an astronaut, or making movies or video games for a living,” said Pausch. “Sadly, most people don’t achieve theirs, and I think that’s a shame.

Have fun, it should never go away!
http://download.srv.cs.cmu.edu/~pausch/

The Wired CD was shipped together with the newspaper in november 2004 with the sloagan: “Rip. Sample. Mash. Share”.

These musicians are saying that true creativity needs to be open, fluid, and alive. When it comes to copyright, they are pro-choice. Here are 16 songs that encourage people to play with their tunes, not just play them. — WIRED magazine, November 2004 issue (CD was included with magazine.)

Wired highlighted a license form that is very common when it comes to photos and videos thanks to sites like Flickr.com. However, it haven’t succeeded in the music world. Maybe piracy can be one reason?

Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that increases sharing and improves collaboration. You can Share, Remix, Reuse — Legally.

During one cold night in August i decided to try to find all the creative commons music i could.

I found a site Jamendo.com that was pretty good. A lot of music gathered. I downloaded about 10 albums that I liked but that was pretty much it.

The amount of music available with creative commons license is still very small. I don’t think it will be a hit. We will get free music anyway with services payed by commercial or monthly fixed fees (Spotify/Pandora/last.fm). Creative commons will still be a niche.

But the 10 albums i found was great!

File formats come and go. Harddrives does not last as long as we want to. New software means new formats. Formats that can be unreadable if they don’t get big enough. Are you sure that you still can open your old Ms Works 3.0-documents or your Kodak Photo CD’s…

15 years ago i had an Atari 1040. I used it to write essays and other schoolwork. This data will only be readable with that old Atari-software that I used to create it with. Since the disks are formatted with some old file-system I will need an Atari (or some compatible OS) to be able to get the files. Kind of tricky!

Some formats will live longer than others. If you have Word Documents, Mp3 files, Wav and PDF-files, they will probably be readable in the future (but we don’t know how long). If you have documents made by software that is not so common, I recommend you to keep the program or convert the data to a more common format.

Wired have written an article about this subject. It is available here.

Ok, so now we have gone through the file formats… But the format does not matter if you loose the file, right? Do you backup your data? I would recommend the following:

1. Use Dropbox or some other file sharing for the files you use daily. (And that is not too private to share on internet servers in “the cloud”). If your harddrives will fail they will be easily restore
2. Keep your important files such as photos and music on at least 2 physical disks. The propability that both will break at the same time is not that high. That will keep you safe.
3. Backup your burned DVD’s and CD’s at least every fifth year. Actually one DVD of mine broke in just 3 years without using it.
4. Place a harddrive at another place (a relative or a friend) to prevent data loss caused by theft or fire.

I have spent a big portion of my vacation backing up my CD archive to FLAC (lossless audio files). The music archive will be stored on 2 harddrives.

So… If you, like me, don’t know what to do during your vacation: Back it up!

I get the question once in a while.

David, why do you blog…?

Yes, why do I? It’s actually a good question.

The first reason, reason 1: I like blogs, so I want to contribute!

I spend hours reading other people’s blogs… It’s a new great way of getting information from other people. Some blogs are personal and other are about things and interests. They are inspiring and informative. Even if they are about “things” they feel personal. .. . I would gladly meet all these people for a cup of coffee (or two) and discuss, share opinions and information. . . . But, since that’s not possible, I can share my thoughts, (hopefully) inspire some and contribute with my blog.

The second reason, reason 2: I want to write things “off me”.

It is easy to inspire me.. I can find a lot of things interesting. Right now I find technology trends extra interesting. Mobile industry and the rapid Software development give me some busy hours after work. There are not so many people around me that find the subject that interesting to talk about… So I use my blog to write these things “off me”.

The third reason, reason 3: The second thought

If you want to blog about a subject, you also need to give it a second (or third) thought. The world looks different when you walk around with a camera around your neck…

The third reason, reason 4: Control

With my own blog, published on the domain of my family I feel safe. My word is mine. Even if my site is mirrored and stored on Google, Yahoo and so on I still have the control of the database and all the files. I also upload images to my site and they are copyrighted by me and only me

However, i don’t blog because i want attention… I don’t care if I have one million visitors per day or just a few… The joy is all about contribution to the great world of blogs…

The music industry must move away from the retail CD as its primary revenue generator before Christmas 2009

Many bloggers and newspapers are proclaiming the death of the CDs. This has been done for many years now, but the CD, as a medium, is still around.

2006 Alain Levy, chairman and CEO of EMI Music said that the CD is dead “as it is now”. EMI did not stop to focus on the CD as a medium, but started to add additional content to the CDs to maximize the extra value.

No doubt, the CD has been struggling against the downloading (legal and illegal) for some time now and I think it’s a good idea if the music industry are focusing a bit more on downloads during 2009.

There are some good reasons for why the CD are still here, i will list my top 3:

1. Better sound quality than MP3 and AAC. Most of the tracks on iTunes 128kbit compressed AAC that is far from the sound-quality that a CD will provide.
2. iTunes are still to dominating on the downloading market. The music industry want to have a larger number of alternative stores.
3. The CD is physical media. If you download, you have to handle the content. Many people still think that’s inconvenient. Maybe you’re on the road and wants to buy some good new music. Then the CD is your only option (for now).

I like the CD and I think that it will survive over it’s 30th birthday 2012.

Take a look at it here.

It’s time to wrap up the year 2008. It has been a year of change with Obama, Olympic games and fincancial crisis.

• It is also the year when Yahoo said no to Microsoft.
• iPhone really rocked it’s way into the market and changed the focus from Hardware design into Software. The application store now contains more than 10000 applications which is very unique and the os and ui is beautiful. The first iPhone competitors has been released from other vendors and they seems really cool.
• The commercial breakthrough for mobile internet. 3 Sweden has announced that they will gear up to 21mbit during Q2 2009.
• Small cheap $400-notebooks (so called netbooks) got really popular since Intel finally released it’s power effective atom CPU’s.
• The small and cheep netbooks (above) originally came with linux (or a linux-option). Linux had to step back in favor of old Windows XP (Microsoft’s joker-card).

Maybe 2008 was the year when Technology finally became trendy? It’s not about the phone, it’s about the possibilities and user experience. It’s not about having the internet in your computer, it’s about how!

So, finally, what about 2009?

• Cloud computing – Basically, the cloud is the internet-architecture itself. There is a lot of cpu-power left in all the servers out there and new technology makes it possible to share servers based on the needs. An entertaining guide is available here (youtube video) and here (article) The technological hype has started already but the commercial breakthrough will come in 2009. Cloud computing is being driven by providers including Amazon, Google, HP, IBM, Intel and Microsoft. The potential of the hype maybe will be clearer with the fact that Amazon price for one GB in the cloud is only $0.150 at this moment. The next amazing web services are in the Cloud. Already now, we have services like Dropbox (file synchronization) and Mozy (providing unlimited backup for only 5$ a month). More of your data will move out on the internet. Many people already have all their mails in their gmail inbox instead of in their harddrive. The same will probably happen with documents, images and music. It’s convenient, but watch out.. .who owns your data?
• PC OS fight again! – Apple will relase Snow-Leopard 10.6 in january, Microsoft will release Windows 7 in october. Both releases are polished versions of the previous releases. Linux won’t step back again . The latest versions of Ubuntu really give me a Wow-impression. This will be interesting.
• Mobile TV and Mobile Payment in Europe? I don’t really believe in this, but i want it Maybe.. . maybe…
• Video conference tech will make it already tough times tougher for the airlines that will lose business-travellers.
• Mobile internet will grow further and this year it will lead to Web 3.0 that will make internet look better on mobile phone screens. Mobile version of firefox will be released and the mobile phone vendors will start to compete with the small netbooks with more advanced and great looking smartphones.

Want to read more?

Time magazine has listed the best inventions of 2008

Happy new year!

/David

Every owner of a Windows computer has some problems with their Operating system.
Some windows computers are slow, some won’t sleep. . Some will give you bluescreen from time to time. .. Some will freeze frequently . . some will take like forever to start.. .Some needs a restart every hour .. . Some crashes from time to time.. .

Microsoft has had a monopoly situation .. . but that situation is actually no more…. 5 years ago you needed windows to be able to do your school work, maintain your business or play that favourite game of yours. When it comes to gaming, the monopoly is still there (if you don’t count wii/ps3/xbox).

When it comes to work or daily computing like internet surfing and other things windows is one of the worst operating systems you can use. The number one reason: you cannot count on it.

Linux and MacOSX is as user friendly (if not better). Still, around 85% are using Windows (according to w3, sept 2008).

So, if you are a windows user, do you recognize your daily usage in this movie?

The Matrix runs on Windows

Här är min topp10-lista:

1.  Nils Landgren
2.  Michael Jackson
3.  Jamiroquai
4.  The Ark
5.  Angélique Kidjo
6.  Guru
7.  Incognito
8.  Christian Walz
9.  Toto
10. The RH Factor

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