Universal Rule

Book Reviews

Monday, May 26, 2003

Your Mission, Should You Choose to Accept It -- Comment()
Aaron Swartz writes: "Lessig reports that Starbucks is asking people not to take pictures of its environment. Your mission? Take a photo, then post a link to it. This exhortation to commit contributory trade dress infringement will self-destruct in..."

Writing about Apple Music Store -- Comment()
I wrote two weeks ago a column on Apple Music Store. The column appeared today in Finnish, and contrasts the Apple concept with the peer-to-peer music distribution networks. I would formulated my thought a bit different today than two weeks ago, but the basic message has not changed: offering music on reasonable terms on the net is good business, and the key to success is the ease of use. Here Apple is doing better than all other companies.

Spell-checking Finnish for LaTeX -- Comment()
I just discovered Tmispell, which seems to be a promising tool for spell-checking LaTeX documents written in Finnish. The command to use is tmispell -d suomi -t tiedosto.tex.

Further use of Nokia 6800 -- Comment()
I have been using the new Nokia 6800 phone for writing several e-mail messages. It takes some practise but it is not too bad to write with only your thumbs. There are some hidden feature in the phone which are not documented properly in the short user's guide. But most of the time the phone works as advertised.

The phone has currently over 3 MB of free memory for documents and applications. This is not bad for such a small device. I'm almost wondering where all the electronics is hidden inside the phone, because the color display, the battery, and the internal keyboard take space.

I tried out one of the included games, and it wasn't so bad. The FM radio can be listened through the handsfree stereo headphones or the loudspeaker, with enough volume to be heard in the room. I haven't tried out how the phone works when used with the loudspeaker function for several listeners and speakers simultaneously.

-- Comment()
Kasia in a nutshell points to Google pagerank: "A long and interesting discussion in Jeremy's weblog about Google's pagerank and weblogs."

-- Comment()
Mr. Gates' spam proposal: 'Mr. Gates has proposed his solution to spam. Unfortunately, it is yet another idea that will not work. [...] The problem the MSFT solution aims to solve is the problem of distinguishing good spam from bad. The proposal has a clever (though I think dangerous) safe harbor provision to "create incentives for email marketers to adopt best practices, and to certify themselves as trusted senders who can be more easily identified by consumers and filters alike." Presumably, if we know which marketers are "trusted senders" we can accept their mail, and block all the rest -- spam and non-spam alike. Thus, email would become a more effective channel for trusted marketing -- but little else.' [Lessig Blog]

-- Comment()
Wow, those spammers are quick: "So [...] I posted my offer to spammers that I'd be happy to read their spam sent to a special spam email address if they promise to pay $500 for the privilege. At 9:58 this morning -- less than 2 days later -- I received my first acceptance. How exciting!" [Lessig Blog]

Experiences of the Nokia 6800 mobile phone -- Comment()
I have been using the Nokia 6800 mobile phone for three days now. Starting to use the phone was relatively easy, but for someone who has never set up a modem or an e-mail connection it would have been a bit difficult. Luckily I could check the setup from my iBook.

Nokia 6800 contains an internal keyboard which is ordinarily hidden inside. The keys are well placed and easy to use. The layout is similar to the qwerty lauout on standard computer keyboards. You type with the thumbs, which is quite easy to get used to. The speed is of course not as good as when touch-typing, but not too bad either.

This phone makes it possible to read and write e-mails when you don't have access to a computer. I'm using GSM data instead of a GPRS connection, which is slower but not so expensive. Reading e-mails works ok, but you have to wait some time for the messages to download. I really miss the spam filter of Mail on Mac OS X. I get about 20-30 spam messages daily, and all get through to this phone.

Nokia 6800 has a lot of fine features: calendar, alarms, FM radio, vibrating alarms, multimedia messages, lighted keyboard etc. There are also some drawbacks: programs take a few seconds to start up (e.g., e-mail), and sometime you wonder if the phone is responding to a command. But after some practice the phone works well.

This note was written and edited on Nokia 6800 as exercise for getting used to the keyboard. The Finnish umlaut charaters are available: äöåÄÖÅ. And Nokia 6800 also works well as a phone.