What’s next? A 160GB iPod.

I watched Steve Jobs give his keynote speech at the Worldwide Developers Conference the other day. I always enjoy watching his presentations. Anyway, he had a couple of interesting things to say. He talked a lot about the switch to Intel processors. What was interesting is that Apple already have Mac OS X running on Intel processors. According to Jobs Mac OS X has been leading a double life over the last 5 years. Since the inception of Mac OS X, Apple have always had it running on Intel “just in case”, as he put it. Apple plan on shipping Macs with Intel inside by June 2006.

The next version of Mac OS X will be called Leopard and will be released around the same time as Microsoft’s Longhorn operating system in late 2006 or early 2007.

What was interesting was that Jobs demoed a new version of iTunes that allows you to search, and subscribe to, podcasts directly from the iTunes store. According to Jobs they already have a directory with 8000 podcasts available for download. There will be no charge for subscribing to podcasts. I find this impressive. When you consider that podcasting first appeared around August of last year (I started listening around October 2004) it’s pretty impressive that a large corporation like Apple has taken notice so soon and have already incorporated podcasts into their products, namely iTunes. Perhaps this is why Apple is doing so well at the moment: it listens to what people want. Microsoft would do well to take note of this.

Now Oracle is at it too: “You can now subscribe, via RSS, to audio interviews with technical managers and evangelists at Oracle about recent technology announcements.”

Surfs up! The next wave is here.

Microsoft has started to podcast.

The other day I was sitting in an Internet cafe using a standard PC to check my email etc. At the top of the screen was a meter that showed me how long I had been using the PC and how much I owed at that point. In other words, if you use half an hour, you pay for half an hour etc. However, when you want to use a wireless connection, for example, here in Starbucks, you have to pay for a fixed block of time up front and you get charged at a fixed rate whether you use all the time or not. I tried a different location and found the same thing. If I think about it, it’s the same in Starbucks in London too. Why don’t they offer metered wireless Internet just like in a standard Internet cafe? Maybe more people would start accessing the Internet in places such as Starbucks if they only get charged for what they actually use. In Starbucks, here in Madrid, the minimum amount of time you can purchase is two hours. It doesn’t normally take me two hours to read my email! In other locations you have to purchase a minimum of one hour, but still. If I only want to check my email I am going to think twice before forking out money for something I am not going to use.

BBC News: Apple ‘to switch to Intel chips’

Today’s movie: ‘Driving through the Basque country’

Got back from the Basque country yesterday evening. Arrived in Madrid around 6.30pm with the temperature hovering around 34 C! The scenery there is amazing. Green is the best word I can think of for describing it. You can check out some of the photos I took of the Basque country here. We did a bit of walking in one the many forests and I also attempted to play Pelota Vasca. I don`t recommend it for the hands. I even learnt a few words in Basque, which bears no resemblance at all to Spanish, but unfortunately I seem to have forgotten what they were.

A bit of advice. If you ever plan on visiting the Basque country, I recommend that you take some form of identification with you. A Spanish friend of mine told me that because the Basque country is home to ETA, the terrorist group, the police in the area are quite fond of randomly checking people for identification. I didn`t take any form of identification with me but thankfully we weren`t stopped. In my defence, my friend didn`t tell me that I needed to take any until we were already halfway there 🙂

I´m off to El Pais Vasco (Basque country) for the weekend. We leave early tomorrow as it´s about a 4 hour drive apparently. I have never been to the north of Spain before so it should be fun.

Why doesn´t my iPod have a simple on/off switch? Answers on a postcard please.

Congrats to Gaurav, a friend of mine, who has just landed himself a job at Google. I am planning to visit California around October or November time so hopefully he will be able to organise a trip around the Google complex for me. Maybe I’ll take my resume with me too 😉

As promised, no more titles.

There was a software update available for iTunes on the Mac the other day. I’ve just noticed there appears to be a new button in the bottom left hand corner. When you move the mouse over it it says, “Show video full screen”. It’s not enabled and I am pretty sure it wasn’t there before. There doesn’t appear to be anything in the iTunes help that explains what it is for either. I wonder if Apple is planning on selling music videos through iTunes? It would be cool to be able to watch the video that acompanies a song. Currently the only way of doing this is to sit in front of the TV all day hoping that the video you want to watch appears on MTV.

[Update: apparently there are other ways of watching music videos other than sitting in front of your TV all day. Both Yahoo and Microsoft offer services that allow you to download and watch music videos. ]

I installed the Air Traffic Control Dashboard widget the other day. It provides an easy way of discovering wireless access points. It’s pretty neat. Check it out.

Good afternoon from Starbucks, Madrid.

No more titles from now on for my blog entries. Why? Because I often find that each post consists of a number of unrelated items that can’t be grouped under one heading.

Benjamin Franklin: When you’re finished changing, you’re finished.

Yesterday the public swimming pools in Madrid opened. They are the closest thing you’ll get to a beach in Madrid. I went to one with some friends. Lots of people, but then that could have been due to the fact that on the opening day there is no entry fee. There were a few television crews covering the opening day too. We got asked if we wanted to do an interview but we bottled out by claiming that we couldn’t speak Spanish 🙂

I just Googled myself and this blog is currently 7th in the results list. Woohoo!

… me. Let me explain. The language school I am at here in Madrid had a party Friday evening. Anyway, it’s traditional at these parties for the school to hold a raffle at the end. Prizes include things like 2 weeks of lessons free in their school in Germany if you are studying German etc. Anyway, I won a weeks worth of intensive lessons here in Madrid. I have never won anything like this before, although that probably has something to do with the fact that I never enter into competitions. Hmmm! Maybe I should try the lottery.

I have a question for all you photographers out there. Over the last couple of weeks I have been taking some pictures of Madrid with my digital camera and on several occassions I keep coming across the same problem: how do I reduce glare when taking a picture? I have taken a couple of pictures that haven’t come out properly because of glare from the sun. It’s annoying. If you have any suggestions, please post a comment. Thanks!

If you have Tiger, the latest version of Mac OS X, you can use F12 to toggle your Dashboard widgets on and off. Much quicker than clicking on the toolbar.

Well, here I am in Starbucks with my wireless Internet connection. I have uploaded some photos I have taken here in Madrid. You can view the photos here.

I used the Flickr Uploader tool to upload my photos to my Flickr account. It’s the first time I have used it and I have to say it’s pretty slick, although a bit slow. All I have to do is drag and drop my photos from iPhoto into the uploader and then hit the “Upload” button. That’s it. Nothing to it.

It’s official, Spanish TV sucks! Last night, while channel hopping, I came across a program that looked like the Eurovision song contest. Surely it can’t be that time of year again. Anyway, I checked the TV guide and to my horror it was the Eurovision song contest, only it wasn’t the final, it was the semi-final. I didn’t even know they had semi-finals. Needless to say the talent on display wasn’t very talented.