If you have ideas, inspiration sites or suggestions feel free to comment. In the meantime, I will start to look for a great new design compliant with my actual mood

In these challenges, Apple is usually quite good at making WOW effect products. And somewhat yesterday the whole mac planet was waiting for such a big bang as when the iPhone came out. And yeah, Apple did a fine job, but not a great one as expected… This iPad is finally a nice giant iPhone without GPS and camera but including iWork (and iBooks).

This morning I have a bittersweet feeling that I can pinpoint to some missing or disappointing elements:

1. A thick border !  Why after the slim and tiny MacBook Air (and the whole MacBook family), did Apple release such a large ugly border screen ?
2. Let’s go back to the … past 4×3 aspect ratio ? I mean everybody is now HD or  Full HD in a cinema compliant 16×9 aspect ratio.
3. No webcams… no comments…
4. iPhone OS based huh! I get the technical/battery life/optimization idea, but why push so much work in porting iWork on iPhone OS. Or on the other hand why not offer the full Mac OS X SDK on a tablet computer ?
5. No GPS = No Location Based Service… sad again.

All these factors, let me really think that the iPad is finally an iDraft. A firts version not fully polished as we were used to by Apple and Steve.
EDIT: I just find out the mashable iPad missings article. I should add SD cards and HDMI in my list…

The Apple iPad

The Wavyx MacPad

Here is my ideal iPad:  a nice thin 16×9 device. You’ll notice the front webcam is upside, but I’m not it wouldn’t be better on the left side to ease video conferences with multiple contacts. On the back, I put 2 webcams. I know it’s too much but I was thinking about some Augmented Reality application  that could better capture the 3D environment with 2 webcams. So let’s say it’s an optional feature

By the way, it has a GPS and it’s of course Mac OS based, so more a MacPad  or MacTouch.

PS: I still searching through the specs, to find how much RAM is bundled but I hope it’s enough to have bigger application with less memory problems as on iPhone.

Planes are like ants trying to find food and auto-organizing themselves (not necessarily with the shortest path). This recall me of the Ant colony optimization for solving TSP problem.

Here are some resources for the ACO optimization for TSP problems: http://www.scribd.com/doc/3689188/Ant-Colony-TSP-Optimization, http://www.ugosweb.com/Documents/jacs.aspx or http://www.idsia.ch/~luca/acs-bio97.pdf.

Last months I wasn’t really active (at all), despite my good 2009 resolutions
But isn’t that a rule ? To NOT follow your new year’s resolutions…

Anyway, I have a pretty good reason: I was getting married !
So now things are slowing a bit, I would like to share a few “wedding resources” as a first come back post.

These are mainly DIY shops for decoration, invitation cards, … (I know this does not sounds so geek, but in some case it’s kinda like soldering :

• http://www.ava.be/FR/default.aspx
• http://www.creacorner.be/
• http://www.schleiper.com/
• http://www.lamaisondupapier.be/
• http://www.creatine.be/ with 2 shops: http://www.creatinestockel.be/creatine/ and http://www.creatinewavre.be/
• http://www.maison-lefebvre.be/

IMHO, you should definitely  check AVA and creacorner as a starting point.

Here are a couple of extra links: http://www.parcleopold.com/, http://www.artegra.be/, http://www.cordslafourmi.com/, http://www.nias.be/, http://pagesdor.truvo.be/Papeteries_-_D%C3%A9t./Papeterie_d%27Ixelles/Ixelles/fr_BE_YP_FREE_2659166_0000_1665077_6470_00000, http://www.creascrap.be/

But here comes the BUG: on a google apps domain (not gmail), if you try to send an email with  to: me@mydomain.com and bcc: allmyfriends@domains.com, the bcc adresses do not receive the mail !

I tried many times.  From and to my usual gmail account, all is working perfectly. But using google apps  gmail version (tried with 2 differente domains), I still cannot send email using the to/bcc mails to protect privacy (see gmail help).

I just filled the gmail support form, we’ll see how quickly google fixes that. (let’s hope I didn’t miss a small config step;)

UPDATE: still no answer from google, but it is not a bug, it’s a feature The mail only arrived 18 hours later ! (of course I was not so patient and I sent it through my own mail server)

My third 2009 resolution can be summarized as a “simple” word: FOCUS ! Well not so simple after all… I must admit I have a tendency to follow to many ideas at the same time. This was true in 2008, even if I manage to keep my number of active ongoing projects below 3 (of course these are extra-work projects). Anyway, looking back the last year, I (or we) did not ship or fully release a public version of these projects. Finally, one may wonder what’s the point of having projects?

Don’t get me wrong! I’m still passionate about what I undertake. But in the end, I think it would be better if I choose one path instead of following multiple tracks going in different directions. On the other hand, I’m quite convinced that sometimes you may find synergies around different ideas. But let’s face it, it requires more energy and efforts, and it definitely does not take away the risk of dispersion.

Eventually, to be entirely truthful, this third resolution will probably be the first I will not follow… Anyway, that’s worth a try, moreover since I made it public! Speaking of which, I’m really interested in your insights about this “focus dilemma”!

Sébastien recently sent me this article from Loïc Le Meur which summarize quite enough the spirit of “Let’s do something, we’ll see later if we can make money out of it”. Like me, you may have some ideas stored in a “to do some day box” and guess what… most of the time these ideas are still there and never get a chance to live. The worst is when you’ve got such a brilliant idea (or at least a good one) and you do nothing of it, then you discover some nerd kiddy has just launch your idea and of course it’s working great!  Need an example..hum let’s take that “search engine thingy called google” … no I’m kidding. But my point is: you can get the best idea of the world ever and still sit on standby waiting for ???

So back to the 16 year-old kid who stole your brilliant idea: what is the main difference between you and him/her? He/She just did something out of the original idea. And yeah sometimes it means you can fail, but it can also give you so much positive feedback for your next brilliant idea!

Let’s just stick to this simple motto: Talk Less, Do More !   and we’ll see what can be achieved this way.

When he told me this:

now you’ve got AIR and Flex. AIR is the new desktop !
AIR AIR AIR AIR AIR AIR AIR AIR AIR AIR AIR AIR AIR AIR AIR AIR AIR AIR AIR AIR AIR AIR AIR AIR AIR AIR AIR AIR AIR AIR AIR AIR AIR AIR AIR AIR AIR AIR AIR AIR AIR AIR AIR AIR AIR AIR AIR AIR AIR AIR AIR AIR AIR AIR AIR

That’s the moment, it hits me… Adobe AIR could be some subtle palindrome… for RIA ! And in a certain, I find this name quite appropriate. And even if Air is not exactly a Rich Internet Application framework, it could definitely be a Rich Integrated Application one.

Fini le soleil, la plage, les coktails,… et retour à la Belgitude: pluie, froid, pas de gouvernement

Et pour ceux qui se demanderaient si j’ai bien tout lu… hé bien non! Il me reste encore le tome 6 des Princes d’Ambre que je n’ai pas réussi à entamer et je dois également terminer The Pragmatic Programmer (seulement 15% lu mais très intéressant jusqu’ici) .

Mais aucune inquiétude, je reviens le 3 Octobre.

En attendant, je compte bien profiter de ce temps pour lire qques livres. Voici le contenu livresque de ma valise:

• Organisez vos idées avec le Mind Mapping
• The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master
• Smart and Gets Things Done: Joel Spolsky’s Concise Guide to Finding the Best Technical Talent
• Les six chapeaux de la réflexion : La méthode de référence mondiale
• Les princes d’Ambre: Tome 4, 5 & 6
• A la croisée des mondes, Tome 1 : Les royaumes du Nord

C’est déjà pas mal et plus qu’assez pour 12 jours… Par contre, je suis trop fainéant pour mettre les liens Amazon. Après tout, c’est les vacances!

Pocket GPS World

Some GPS softwares:

http://www.navman.com

http://www.magellangps.com

http://www.alturion.com

http://www.tomtom.com

http://www.navigon.de