this morning google and t-mobile launched the first android-powered handset manufactured by htc. this largely anticipated device comes with a big touchscreen and a slide-open full keyboard. it’s a 3g phone, wifi enabled, built-in gps, drm-free amazon mp3 music store, android market app store, 1gb storage, copy and paste and a chrome-lite browser. it will be available october 22, 2008 at $179.

i had the chance to play around with it for a while and i have to say it is better than i expected. the touchscreen functionality competes with the apple iphone, design and look and feel are pretty good (despite what i expected from google), the htc device itself is bulkier, thicker and heavier than the iphone but still competes in a market where blackberry’s and sidekicks are popular devices. there are already tons of fun and helpful applications available and based on it’s open google android platform i’m sure there is way more to come. congrats to t-mobile and google, great move.

for more information check out walt mossberg’s first impressions or simply techmeme.

[tags: google, android, t-mobile, htc, g1, apple, iphone, sidekick, platform, amazon mp3]

for the weekend, cern’s 27 km large hadron collider explained in a rap.

experiments at cern help us understand the world we live in by the telegraph

(via tom foremski / silicon valley watcher)

[tags: cern, rap, physics, alpinekat, hadron collider, geneva, proton, accelerator]

a little while back i received an invite for ping.fm from ryan merket, who i worked with before. in short ping.fm is a status update tool that sends your updates to a bunch of your favorite microblogging services like bebo, blogger, facebook, hi5, jaiku, linkedin, livejournal, myspace, pownce, tumblr and twitter and there are more to follow. you publish your update at ping.fm and within seconds all services are updated with your message.

“ping.fm is a simple service that makes updating your social networks a snap.”

“ping.fm was created for the sole purpose of making it as easy as possible to share your posts with the world. now you don’t have to fumble around the web in order to post anymore, you can just post once, and be done with it. the idea came about when making some posts to twitter and tumblr. the idea of posting the exact same information in two places seemed a bit tedious, so ping.fm was born.

you can update your status through the ping.fm website or a number of other tools like instant messengers or mobile email/sms, i usually use the iphone interface at ping.fm/iphone/.

this is an extremely handy tool and i love it. if you wanna check it out, just use the invite code “dreamofping” while signing up.

update : ping.fm just redesigned their ui (courtesy of jyoseph and it looks great) and added more services like plaxo pulse, plurk, brightkite, mashable and xanga.

[tags: ping.fm, ping, ryan merket, status, updates, lifestream, facebook, twitter]

this morning steve jobs held his keynote address at the worldwide developers conference in san francisco’s moscone west unveiling the new apple iphone 3g to be available on july 11th 2008 at $199 (with a two-year at&t contract of course).

“apple iphone 3g – twice as fast. half the price.”

some of the new features are: 3g broadband wireless connectivity, built-in gps and a couple of great location-based services like loopt, contact search, full iwork document support, microsoft powerpoint support, bulk delete and move, saving email image attachments, scientific calculator, parental controls (mainly for youtube/itunes), many more languages supported (on the fly switching), plastic back and thinner edges, the new apple appstore and many more. the new iphone 3g is now also more enterprise-ready by supporting microsoft exchange activesync – push email, calendar and contacts – “the power of a laptop into the size of a smartphone” – more … but i’m actually most excited about mobileme, which is “exchange for the rest of us”.

i’m already a sync fanatic, all my phones (including my iphone), my two laptops (mac and pc) and my desktop at home are synced with each other and with multiple online address books through plaxo, but so far it only syncs my contacts, calendar and notes. mobileme takes this two steps further.

“access and manage your email, contacts, calendar, photos, and files at me.com. All with amazing applications that are so feature-rich and easy to use, you may end up preferring them to your regular desktop applications.”

this is not only an even nicer, more structured and more instant contacts, calendar and notes sync, i can even access my picture gallery and idisk from wherever i am, either through my iphone, my macbook pro (pc’s are supported too) and any web-browser through a feature-rich desktop-application-like web interface at me.com. changes on your iphone for instance will will take immediate effect on your computer, you can access the same files, folders, pictures wherever you are.

i love it, i’ll get the new iphone 3g on july 11th and you can watch the whole keynote here.

[tags: apple, iphone, keynote, steve jobs, wwdc 2008, microsoft exchange, mobileme]

i’m following the live wwdc 2008 steve jobs keynote updates via macworld right now and reading

“iphone 2.0 software has three parts to it: enterprise support, the sdk, and some new end-user features. ‘let me start with the enterprise. customers have demanded microsoft exchange, so they’ve built it in out of the box for 2.0 software: push email, push contacts, push calendar, auto-discovery of exchange severes, global address lookup, and remote wipe security feature. all built in to iphone 2.0 software. they’ve added secure vpn services from cisco and other network service demanded by the enterprise market. everything that apple was told enterprise users want, they’ve built in.”

reminded me of a conversation which i had with my brother in law regarding the enterprise capabilities of the iphone and that at that point it wasn’t quite ready for enterprises’ security and exchange requirements. in a later interview with business week’s olga kharif i have been quoted

“if things like this are available, companies will give employees a choice of an iphone vs. the blackberry,” says frederik hermann, director of global marketing at jajah.

so i guess now enterprises will seriously consider to replace the old rubbish blackberries against apple iphones

read on the live notes at macworld.com

[tags: apple, iphone, keynote, steve jobs, wwdc 2008, wwdc, san francisco, developer]

this is just a quick post but maybe you’ll decide to join us tomorrow at there’s a new conversation in palo alto, may 29, 2008 at the sap labs.

“ten years ago, four authors came together to start a new conversation about marketing. the result was a book called the cluetrain manifesto and with it, chris locke, rick levine, doc searls (with whom i coincidentally shared a cab with on our way to the hotel during leweb3 in paris including a great conversation), and david weinberger nailed 95 theses on the door of the internet and challenged us all to wake up to a transformation underway in how companies and people engage in markets. looking back over the past ten years we have learned a lot about what happens when mass markets adopt collaborative online communities and it is time to revisit this vital document that played an important role in starting a new conversation about what it means to be a marketer. what have we learned? what was right and wrong? what was left out that we should have been thinking about? what should we be thinking about for the next ten years?”

here is the schedule for tomorrow 8 am to 8 pm:

8.00 am — registration set-up (dc / vc)
8:30 – 9:30 — continental breakfast
9:30 – 9:45 — intro, ted shelton
9:45 – 10:30 — intro, doc searls
10:30 – 11:00 — find your teams + morning break (same room)
11:00 – 12.00 — deb schultz + breakout
12:00 – 1.00 — lunch & networking (upstairs balcony)
1:00 – 1:45 — thor muller – customer service from the outside-in
1:45 – 2:30– giovanni rodriguez – positioning today
2:30 – 3:00 — breakout + mini-break (same room)
3:00 – 3:45 — andreas weigand – conversational data
3:45 – 4:30 — jeremiah owyang – getting your company conversation-ready
4:30 – 4:50 — breakout
4:50 – 5.30 — peter hirshberg – wrap up / future
5.30 – 5.45 — ted shelton – closing remarks / conversations / open discussion
5:45 – 8.00 pm — reception (upstairs balcony)

here you can find more information about the event, sign up, and the conversation group.

i’m really looking forward to this, meeting friends and joining the conversation.

[tags: there's a new conversation, conversation, the conversation group, cluetrain manifesto]

the french electronic music duo ‘justice‘ just released their music video for their new track ’stress’. the violent clip is directed by romain gavras and obviously wants to provoke and causes controversy. it reminded me of a movie i saw in montpellier in 1995 called ‘la haine‘ taking place in the banlieue (suburbs) of paris.

(via libération)

[tags: justice, stress, electronic, music, clip, video, french, haine]

brilliant! more info at www.goodbyetothenormals.com

[tags: goodbye to the normals, goodbyetothenormals, short film, robbie williams, rudebox]

sony does it again, they are shooting another spectacular advert by drenching downtown miami in millions of litres of foam – sony foam city. sony is well known for it’s massive productions starting with a true masterpiece and my all time favorite the sony bravia bouncy balls ad filmed in san francisco by director nicolai fuglsig and the song ‘heartbeats’ by josé gonzález.

this spot was followed by the sony bravia paint spot in glasgow and the stop-motion play-doh bunnies in new york.

now director simon ratigan of hla has worked with a crew of 150 to demonstrate the capacity of sony hd handycam and cybershot cameras to capture the beauty of bubbles.

200 locals were provided with the cameras and asked to record their foamy frolicking. their footage, along with professional shots, is being combined for a campaign that will be introduced to the public in stages, finally reaching televisions in the uk and europe on 1st may, 2008.

find some more pictures and info at behind the buzz and adland.

(via yasir from immediate future and duncan’s tv ad land)

[tags: sony, foam, commercial, ad, miami, handycam, cybershot, bubbles]

i actually bought the apple iphone the day it came out and signed up regularly for the two year contract during the activation through itunes. but now i had a couple of friends from europe visiting who bought an iphone over here (in the us) and of course wanted to use it with their sim cards from germany, austria or uk. i still thought it’s quite a hassle to unlock, jailbreak and activate your apple iphone, but no! that’s the reason why i quickly wanted to share ziphone with you. a super slick and simple tool you download and install on your mac or windows computer, you press one button and three minutes later you can enjoy your fully functional, activated and free apple iphone – no contract, you can use any sim card anywhere in the world and everything including updates and syncing via itunes works perfectly.

“ziphone – iphone unlock tool by zibri. no computer knowledge required. enables you to activate your iphone on any network. you don’t need to provide any information to att. there is no need to soldering/opening your iphone. you can use it on as many iphones you want, it works with any iphone, any provider and any sim card in the whole world! actually you only need an iphone and a computer (windows/mac).”

you’ll find the tool and more information at download.ziphone.org / www.ziphone.org

[tags: apple, iphone, att, activate, unlock, unblock, jailbreak, ziphone, zibri]