A Dane in Luxembourg

After hearing that last.fm updated their website, I just had a look. Amazing! So much richer in content and much easier to navigate. I mean, I don’t see a difference in my client (iScrobbler), but holy-moly, the website is very sharp now. Design is nicer and everything is easier to find. In addtion to this, there are new features (at least to me as I haven’t been able to find them before :-)). Your own radio station with your music (that you add yourself). You can add music from other people on last.fm as well.

I’m looking forward to exploring the site more in the future. Well done!

Tags:   last.fm · Music · radioNo Comments.

The web site of The Open is a disgrace. The scoring board in both Firefox and in Safari on the Mac doesn’t render correctly. You would expect better from the people behind the Open - greatest golf tournament in the world.

The europeantour.com knows how to do it. As does the US PGA tour.

Tags:   bad web design · golf · the OpenNo Comments.

Apple seems to have put to many things out at the same time on Friday: new iPhones, MobileMe is replace .Mac and new software for the 1G iPhone.
As Luxembourg doesn’t or at least not officially has the iPhone, I can’t say anything about activation woes or 1G phones in limbo after trying to update to the 2.0 software.
MobileMe is up and running now. The push of mails and calendar events seems to work fine between my iMac and my MBP. The price for the service has dropped to 69 € instead of 99€ (it is $99 in the States…) for European countries with the euro. I like that I can also modify my calendar from a Windows machine running Firefox 2 or 3. The MobileMe service is not fully compatible with IE7 (not that I’m interested in using it anyway).
So things are starting to normalise around Apple’s services… Thankfully!
Now if we could just have the iPhone here in Luxembourg…

Tags:   Apple · iphone · mobilemeNo Comments.

Browsing through the App Store, finding many interesting applications. Downloads a few… But why? The iPhone still isn’t here, so why bother? Talk about getting ahead of yourself! And who wants an iPod Touch anyway?

Tags:   Apple · iphone · ipod Touch · Software2 Comments

All day has been a mess regarding my .mac e-mail account. As most of the population will know, we are approaching the launch of the iPhone 3G rapidly. The App Store via iTunes is online (and is looking very nice, very nice indeed) and iTunes has been updated and the update was available here as well.
However, the address www.mac.com has been unreachable since this morning, thus making it impossible to check any e-mail via a web browser. It was supposed to last six hours, but here there is nothing in working order… The new address doesnt work either (http://www.me.com). It is just showing the feature page at Apple regarding the MobileMe package.
So currently Mail seems to be retrieving all mails on the server, Growl is misbehaving after the install of MobileMe (which by the way still is not available in Software Update).
The MobileMe preference pane is not working:

Not very Apple-like to put their customers in this position…

UPDATE: me.com seems to be responding albeit slowly… Hopefully Apple will have it sorted quickly. The massive impact of the millions of iPhones coming online tomorrow has not kicked in yet…

Tags:   Apple · e-mail · mac · mobileme · synchronisationNo Comments.

Via Macworld UK:

Apple’s new iPhone sold out online in Britain ahead of its Friday launch, defying general consumer gloom as the country’s economy threatened to tip over into its first recession in more than a decade.

Carrier O2 said on Tuesday its website had been unable to cope with demand, which peaked at 13,000 per second. It later said it had sold out. Carphone Warehouse said the level of interest was 10 times that for the original iPhone last year.
[From iPhone U.K. Web Sites Swamped Before Friday Launch]

Holy smoke! I think the Brits have gone crazy! 13,000 per second?!? I wonder how it is going to play out in the other countries. Yes, yes, I know: Luxemborug is still not on the map…

Tags:   Apple · frenzy · iphone · UKNo Comments.

The Plazes beta is looking good. The interface has been cleaned up and it interacts (among other applications) with Twitter.

Tags:   Plazes · Social networking · TwitterNo Comments.

Steve Jobs and his team presented the latest in the iPhone saga today. As expected, the device is improving and becoming increasingly available across the planet.

Quite a few will see the phone on 11 July, among them are most of the remaining big markets like Italy, Spain and Japan. Coming soon are countries like Malta, Liechtenstein and … the Ivory Coast!! You would have thought that Luxembourg would be at least among the “coming soon” countries. Especially now, where all the neighbouring countries (Germany, France and Belgium) have or will have it.

The market might be insignificant, but compared to Malta, Liechtenstein or the Ivory Coast, it should be more interesting to strike a deal with the providers in Luxembourg!

Full list of countries here

So P&T, Vox and Tele2Tango: Get in gear please! We want the iPhone as well! And with a good and reasonably priced data plan as well!!!

Tags:   Apple · iphone · luxembourg3 Comments

The keynote of WWDC on 9 June is approaching rapidly and Steve will be doing it himself. This indicates that more than just standard news will be announced.

As for the iPhone, we are seeing announcements from several providers that they are going to offer the iPhone is this and that and these countries “some time this year”. Whether or not this will be a 3G version, with or without GPS etc. is still unclear. This will undoubtedly be much clearer after Steve’s keynote on the 9th.

As no news have been announced regarding Luxembourg, I fear that Luxembourg won’t have an “official” provider in the near future… All the neighbouring countries (Germany (O2), France (Orange) and Belgium (Mobistar as part of Orange) have or will have it this year. It doesn’t make sense that Luxembourg is not included this time around. Are LuxGSM, Vox and Tango to cheese-paring to pay the price asked by Apple?

Tags:   3G · Apple · iphone · luxembourg · macNo Comments.

Gilles and his team opened the new Computerhome store opposite the cash in Belle Étoile, Bertrange today. The store is small but well organised. Full line of Apple products are available and the all the Macintosh computers are on display for a hands-on experience. Go have a look and tell Gilles that I sent you

Congratulations to Gilles and his team for making this happen!

Tags:   Apple · computerhome · luxembourg · mac · storeNo Comments.