We have been working on this for a little while and today it finally saw the light of day. Check it out at Google Mobile or download it directly to your Blackberry from http://m.google.com/sync.
Also see my post to on the Google Mobile blog.
It has been great working with the Jaiku team over the past few months and I am really excited that they are now finally part of the family.
It was ten years ago today, that my friend Sebastian and I packed up my dad’s Lada estate with all the personal possessions we could fit into it, mounted our bikes on the roof and set off for Hamburg to catch the ferry to Harwich. Sebastian went back to Berlin a year later, but I have lived in the UK ever since.
Of course, at the time I would never have thought I was going to stay this long, get married, have children and be on course to spend the rest of my life in this country. So it wasn’t quite as significant a journey then. We were only going for a year, to study, maybe for two to get some work experience. But looking back now, our slow cruise up the Elbe in the sunset certainly marks one of the most defining moments in my life.
We arrived in the East End after a 24 hour journey, tired, excited but perhaps also a little scared. Sebastian had arranged for us to stay with a friend of his who lived in a huge loft apartment in Lana House on Commercial Street, just opposite Spitalfields Market. The area was already up and coming back then, but it was still extremely rough, dirty and poor. I remember that we went out to play basketball on a small court around the corner on that very first afternoon and that this felt incredibly comforting. It wasn’t the kind of thing that tourists did. We had only just arrived, but it already felt like we belonged. It was a great start.
If you have not signed the iPlayer Petition on the No 10 website, please do. I find it infuriating that the BBC could even consider in this day and age to launch such an important service for Windows and IE only. What are they thinking?
I read this in an article about the “Webmaster of Al-Qaida” in The Economist today:
In light of this month’s failed attempts to set off car bombs in London and at Glasgow airport, allegedly by a group of foreign doctors and other medical staff, one exchange of messages found on Irhabi007’s computer, in a folder marked “jihad”, makes intriguing reading. “We are 45 doctors and we are determined to undertake jihad for Allah’s sake and to take the battle inside damaged America, Allah willing,” ran part of it.
He put this stuff in a folder called Jihad? Are you kidding me? Next to the folder called Uni, or Holidays, or My Music? Crazy really…
Mike Rowehl of Admob has a great story about how the Gmail for Mobile Java client saves him on his current trip to India. It is nice to know that we can make a difference to some people’s lives.
Since I have taken some time off work to get to know Charlie properly, I am hoping to get some major DIY jobs done around the house. I plan to lay the oak flooring planks in some rooms, build a few shelves and maybe my wardrobe. Yeah right. But hey, what a fantastic excuse to update my arsenal of power tools!
So, I set out last week to acquire a whole number of gadgets. Of course, when you live on a building site and have builders in your house all day, your requirements change. Because they have some cool stuff. And once you have borrowed their Makita, DeWalt or Bosch Professional tools, you suddenly realise that Black & Decker or any of the junk you get sold at B&Q or Homebase just doesn’t do.
I wrestled hard with myself for several days, looking desperately for reasons to acquire a Makita LXT cordless drill, ideally the LXT202 combination of a combi drill and impact driver. Some of the guys on site used these and they are just unbelievably awesome. In the end though, I saw reason and settled for a Bosch GSR and GDR 12V combo on offer at Axminster. I am looking forward to working with an Impact Driver, as I have never used one before. People tell mythical stories about them.
To lay our 10″ oak planks, I really needed a mitre saw for cutting. I had always wanted one, but this was finally a good reason to get one. Again, I went for a Bosch model, that is amazingly compact, the GCM8S. It cuts 270mm wide, just what I need to for our big boards. It also came with a free stand which I have been using as a generic workbench.
Finishing the boards in our, mostly, small rooms doesn’t justify the use of a big drum sander and I don’t like the edge sanders you can typically hire. They create too many ridges. Clearly I needed a hugely powerful Belt Sander. The Makita 9403 is the real deal, a big mama of a sander which I picked up at Axminster and used to finish off the bedroom floor beautifully last weekend. A real winner.
Finally, working with the floor boards requires a planer, and I went for the economical but decent quality Ryobi EPN-7582N. Works like a charm.
Of course, I probably wont get any of the work done that I have planned, but at least I now have all the tools to do it, theoretically :)
Surprisingly, Charlie Foster decided to come out much earlier than expected. He was born yesterday, weighing 3.4kg. He has a full head of hair, just like his brother did and generally seems quite excited to be ‘out and about’. Beth is doing fine, enjoying some time off from Felix, who misses her madly. I will be a busy house husband for the next few weeks looking after him.
I cannot believe that I have not posted anything for two months. My life has been absolutely insane. Work has been crazily busy. We have finally moved back into our house (yes, after almost 5 months!), which is still a building site, and the new baby is coming in a few weeks. I owe big updates, especially on the house stuff. Lots has happened.
Today we launched the Gmail for Mobile J2ME application in Spanish, French, German, Italian and UK English. So if you are a Gmail user in any of those languages you can now get the app by going to gmail.com/app or googlemail.com/app in your phone browser. Let me know if you have any problems.
Also, you can now sign up for Gmail or Google Mail without an invitation.
