In the Jukebox: The Clash
Know your rights!
Know your rights!
With over seven years of blogging experience and after three years working in the international department of a POS software company, it is only logical to create a POS weblog. The point of sale world has a lot in common with normal PCs, but there are some differences. Old hardware (black and white terminals) goes hand-in-hand with the latest technologies (RFID), which make it a very interesting niche market.
Ten minutes clicking around in cPanel and Movable Type, and POS blog was born! On this site I will publish news about Point Of Sale (POS) hardware and software and everything related to it. Please have a look at it, and let me know what you think about it.
Most computers have two input devices: a mouse and a keyboard. The mouse is mainly used to navigate in the GUI, while the keyboard is used to enter data. Both input devices need some training to get used to, though I still picture my father picking up the mouse from the table and moving it through the air.
Experienced mouse users are ably to move the pointer from one side of the screen to the other side to click on a tiny button within a fraction of a second, which is becoming increasingly difficult as the screen resolutions get bigger. Besides moving and aiming the pointer, they know how to use the three buttons and the scroll wheel at the right moment. Advanced mouse users sometimes use mouse-gesture enabled applications to perform even more functions with the mouse.
Experienced keyboard users are able to reach high key rates using all ten fingers. Besides high speed data entry, they also use the CTRL and ALT keys to navigate through applications.
I rarely meet persons who have reached the highest levels in using both devices. Mouse–wizards usually type with two (or three or four) fingers, while keyboard enthusiast loose time navigating. The problem is that we do not have enough hands. Efficient use of both devices requires three hands: two for the keyboard and on for the mouse. Depending on the type of work done mostly frequently, people become either mouse–addicted or keyboard–bound.
In my work, I receive many interrupts and rarely work more than five minutes in the same application. As a result, my primary input device is the mouse. In the past I have tried to learn to type with ten fingers on the old mechanical typewriter of my mother, but due to my mouse use I have fallen back to a two finger system.
But things are changing. As my work slowly shifts from technical support to marketing and sales, I find myself writing more texts. And the more I write, the more I feel limited by my two–finger technique. I write slow and make many nmistakes. So I decided to use the mouse less and improve my typing skills, preferably using all ten fingers. I am aware that this is going to be very difficult, since old habits are hard to shake off and starting to write with ten fingers will initially decrease my typing speed even more, but I am convinced that I will be more efficient in the long term.
I do not have time to do a special training, but would rather learn it be gradually changing my habits. And of course a gadget freak like me needs some tools to help me. So the first step I took was to install ActiveWords on my computer. ActiveWords is a wonderful application in which you configure words to trigger events. To open the Firefox browser, I simply type firefox and my favourite browser starts. The trick for me is that ActiveWords lets me start applications faster by keyboard than by mouse, even if I use ten fingers to type. Another benefit of ActiveWords is that the Misspellings plug-in corrects my mistypings within any application! It works exactly like the auto correct feature of Microsoft Word, but is works system wide. I have been using ActiveWords for some days now, and even though I sometimes enter the keywords with only two fingers, I am very happy about it.
Another tool which I am planning to use more is Emacs, the amazing extensible, customizable, self-documenting real-time display editor. Emacs interests me for its huge range of features, which all can be controlled by keyboard. In the past I have met some Emacs-wizards who were able to write and edit very efficiently and I have used it a little bit in my UNIX days. I am aware that Emacs has a steep learning curve but it looks like a long-term winner for me.
Microsoft finally found out that it is not wise to use years as version numbers. Their latest server software called Windows 2003 Server sounds very old in 2005.
This week microsoft announced two new products which follow up on a year–version: Microsoft Mobile 5.0, and Microsoft Office 12.
This is the feedmap for Lleida. I feel very lonely :-(
They managed to locate my feed surprisingly precise!
Yes! I managed to get my phone configured, so now I am finally a member of the ‘moblog crew’. You can expect more pictures from now on.
The trick was to define another GPRS connection, using another APN name. Does anybody know what this APN is?
[Update 2005.05.03]: APN stands for Access Point Name, which is the name of the destination network.
Quack quack: Duck Ska.
In the last 12 months I haven’t found a single false positive in the spam folder of my mailbox. I still receive some false negatives, but that doesn’t bother me. No false positives means that I am able to change my processing workflow. Until now, all spam ended up in the spam folder, which I checked for false positives once a week. Today I changed my mail configuration to discard all messages flagged as spam. This saves me about 15 minutes of work every week!
One week ago I received my new mobile camera-phone. I was happy, since I wanted to use it for publishing photo’s on Flickr. How disappointed I was when I found out that Amena had delivered me a half configured phone. No international roaming, GPRS, MMS or e-mail configured. :-( In short, my wonderful multimedia phone was delivered with all the multimedia functions disabled.
Now one week later, I have managed to get GPRS activated (I have to pay activation costs!) which also made MMS active. After talking 5 minutes with customer support they also told me that they have activated roaming, so the next time I go abroad I can call home. In theory, everything should be alright now, but… somehow I still can’t send nor receive e-mail. And that is exactly the feature I want most!!!
To be continued…
The idea has been lying on the shelves for over two months now, and today I finally did it. Besides a big all-in-one feed, I have created some more specific feeds:
All current subscribers will from now on get the weblog feed instead of the all-in-one feed. And of course, all these feeds have been outsourced to FeedBurner.
Why is it so difficult to do? When I buy a phone, I want all functions to work. Since yesterday I am using my new phone that came with the new contract. Since this phone has a camera, I would like to take pictures and send them to my friends or publish them on Flickr.
Well, that is not possible, since I do not have GPRS. Last year I had exactly the same problem with Movistar, but that solved itself after a while. But now I want to send my photos, so I checked the Amena site for instructions. Without success. So tonight I will try out the support department. And when I speak to them I can also activate roaming, since they have decided to deactivate it by default since most people never leave the country anyway ;-).
It’s not that difficult to do it right!
People are individualists; we prefer to do things alone and don’t care about the others. Fortunately, we are also ‘intelligent’ and realise that we need other people in certain situations. But if this is not strictly necessary, we are selfish. This is a big pity, since we can do so much more when we co-operate!
I was realising this when I was waiting at the luggage belt of the airport. As usual, everybody was bending over the belt to see whether his or her luggage was coming and thereby blocking the view of the people behind him or her, who in their turn had to bend even more over the belt to see something. In this struggle, only the first person is able to see the luggage coming, and is able to get the luggage without problems. All others have two problems: they cannot see their luggage coming, and when they finally see their property, they are not able to get it because of all the people blocking the way. The solution is very simple: if everybody keeps 2 meters distance from the belt, everybody is able to see their luggage coming, and everybody is able to get to the belt to pick up their suitcase. If it is that simple, why won’t people do this? Well, mainly because there is no incentive for the first person that has the view and the space no matter the distance to the belt. And when the first person chooses to stay close to the belt, all the others have only one solution: get even closer to the belt!
In my work I encounter the same problem. Whenever I have contact with a possible dealer in a new country, the word exclusivity falls within the first two conversations. They have seen our product and think it is good and have the idea that they can conquer the whole market because they have a better product. They are so wrong. Dominating a market is extremely difficult and usually does not depend much on the quality of the product (Microsoft?). If you want to sell a lot of our product, all you need is demand, which is difficult to create. The best way to do it is to have many, many dealers. If many dealers are offering this product, it will become visible. And when it is visible, clients start asking for it. This is how we work in the Spanish market. There are 400+ dealers of our product, and in some branches our product has become the ‘de facto’ standard. Local dealers sell a lot more because there are many other dealers offering the same products; they would never have reached those sales using an exclusive product. If only our foreign contacts could have this insight and allow for more competition in their markets. I am 100% sure that they would sell a lot more!
If people would be less individualistic, we could do bigger things!
The main reason we went to the Netherlands last weekend was to visit our family. Finn is about a month old, so it was about time to meet him!
And babies are such a great subject for photos, so I uploaded some to Brain Pics.
It’s a TV, it plays DVDs, and it’s a beer fridge, all-in-one! What else could you possibly want?
[Via Gizmodo]
Tomorrow morning I will travel to Harmelen again. It will be a short visit to see Finn, the newborn son of Esther and Terry, and of course to visit the party of the ‘Vrienden van JN Harmelen’.
Until next week!
Some weeks ago, we decided to change mobile provider. We have a contract with Telefonica Movistar, but most people we phone with are at Amena. We did some calculation and came to the conclusion that we could save on our bill by changing to Amena as well.
This weekend we finally found the time to head to the Amena office, and we explained out plans. The nice lady in the shop asked us some questions on our phone behaviour, who, when and how much, and she explained us about all the possibilities of the different packages. We made some quick estimations and selected the ‘right’ package.
Then the more important question came. Carriers earn so much money with all their inflated rates, that they can give away expensive toys. We could choose a new phone! MJ had prepared herself, and knew what her demands were: she wanted the cheapest phone that could flip open. Until now she always had candy-bar phones, but now she wanted clamshell. All other functions did not matter, since she only use the device for phoning and sending SMS messages. Her choice was the NEC e242.
Of course, as a reader of mobile expert Russell Beattie, I know that there is more. Russ has the most incredible applications and uses for his mobiles, and it seems that he uses his mobile for everything I still use a PC for. But his phones are, even after the carrier discount, so incredibly expensive that it would take me years to earn that back with the cheaper rate of Amena. I guess Russ lives in another realm, but most people here choose between the five cheapest models. So I set my mind together, and thought logically. I don't phone a lot, I use SMS even less, and once in a while I use WAP to spend some dead time. Basically, any phone would be enough. But hey, I am a gadget freak, so I should have something additional to wish for, right? Maybe I need a camera on my phone, to update my photo page more often. That's it! I looked around, and saw a nice and cheap Samsung phone that according to the specs had a camera. I asked if I could see it, and fell in love with the device. Cool design, very light weight (they show the phones without batteries), but… without camera. I asked the friendly lady if she could show me the camera, but no, they'd made an error in the specs. So I took the cheapest camera phone they had: the NEC e242.
Now we have to find a way to keep our new phones separated!
Will all these WordPress users now switch back to Movable Type?
Zie De Volkskrant:
STAP merkt op dat de drinkschuren zich ontwikkelen tot geduchte concurrenten van de plaatselijke horeca. Hoewel alcoholverkoop zonder vergunning illegaal is, wordt er veelal niet tegen opgetreden door de controleurs van de Drank- en Horecawet. De Koninklijke Horeca Nederland (KHN) dringt dan ook aan op sluiting van de drinkschuren. Volgens een woordvoerder van de KHN werken de schuren alcoholmisbruik in de hand.
Jongeren gaan op zoek naar alternatieven vanwege de slechte kwaliteit (en prijs!) die de reguliere horeca biedt. Zolang er geen betere alternatieven zijn, lost verbieden niets op.
Overigens, hoe staat het met de Sjet?
Before:
Now:
After: ??????
The redesign of Brain Tags has officially started!
One of the songs I always play when I need to get rid of some excess energy: Million Dollar Love by Dub War.
Have a look at the following screen:
This is the screen Firefox shows me when a site requires me to log in. Note that there is no information about the URL of the site or the realm requesting me to log in. You can imagine the problem this gives when I open many tabs at the same time: I have no idea of which site is going to receive my details.
This problem only occurs in the Spanish version of Firefox; I also installed the English version, which showed me the necessary information.
It is Easter holiday for me, which means that I have a weekend of four days! I am very happy about it, though most of my friends here have two weeks of holidays.
Anyway, we take the opportunity to leave town for some days. Tonight we will drive to la Seu d’Urgell, which is about 150km from here, and which will be our home for these days. Tomorrow we will visit Andorra to do some tax-free shopping and to enjoy the mountains. We will also take a bath in Caldea to relieve our tired feet after all those shopping kilometres. On Saturday we will drive to Barcelona, since we have tickets for the theatre.
Surely I won’t be connected to internet, so no updates are to be expected. But you are already used to that, right? :-)
Today is a very quiet day, so I have some time to upload some photo’s and write a short post. You can see the photo’s in my CeBIT set.
Just like last year, the last two days of the CeBIT are very boring. The days are long since I spend most of it waiting or visitors. Even though, I have a positive feeling about this year’s show. We have made some very interesting contacts, which might turn out successful. As usual, we only know the real results after a few months.
This view is very uncommon because of the geographic position of Lleida, shielded by mountains and a lot of land.
Two songs! Omaha from the Counting Crows and Believe from K’s Choice.