The iPod
If you are interested in buying an iPod, Amazon.co.uk just slashed its iPod prices across its online store, by quite an amount. This is a great opportunity to get one of those lovely Nanos. Or, you can participate on pestaola.gr's iPod nano give-away contest.
Tuesday, 27 June 2006 7:27 pm
There and back again
This has been (surprise?) yet another crazy day, which is reasonable because Mondays are crazy by definition. What's more, I have been ( still am ) so sleepy today that concentrating was hard, to the Nth degree.
I went to Rethymno on Saturday, to spend some time with my loved one and, hopefully, loose some steam. Before leaving I thought about using my long-forgotten iPod shuffle to ease the boredom of the long ride, as well as to try to make up something out of it, perhaps. So, I loaded it with three recorded conferences of the recently held BloggerCon. One of the was the one Chris Pirillo ran, 'Users in Charge'. That was a really, really eye opener, or, ear opener, depending on the way you see, or hear (uhm) things. I will get back to it in a later paragraph, though. iPod rules by the way. It's a great way to actually get some benefit while you are commuting or otherwise loosing precious time. Or, when you simply want to have fun. You can get all your favorite podcast episodes on iTunes, load them on your iPod and be on your way. Easy as ABC.
So, my girlfriend's girlfriend ( that is, female friend ) was to become the godmother of this little cute girl, so, naturally, she invited her friends, and I tagged along. The mother of the kid to be baptized is the sister of one of the Cretan singers/lyra players, Stelios Bikakis. This fact led to the gathering of the 3 most popular and well known Cretan artists at the party/celebration place (Bikakis, Tsouganakis and Kontaros). So it was really, really fun and quite a unique privilege to be able to listen to them singing and playing lyras and all. Good times. It was that fun we ended up being the last ones leaving the party, which significantly affected the available time to sleep, but it was worth it, nonetheless.
Every time I go to Rethymno I visit my favorite bookstore, which curries my favorite magazines, which also happen to be the only ones I ever read. Those are the Edge Magazine (best gaming magazine, ever, though I haven't had the chance to check on Famitsu, yet, nor can I read Japanese, yet .. ), Wired (90% ads, 10% content, but this 10% is too good to miss ). I also like those Mac Magazine, iCreate and MacWorld. Perhaps it's because I have been drinking the kool aid for sometime now, which makes them great to my eyes, to paraphrase something I heard lately. Unfortunately, neither Edge's nor Wired's recent issues were available even through they have been out for sometime now. Talking about latency here.
Back to this BloggerCon conference. For the longest time in my life ( it seems that way, at least ), our CEO has been preaching the user - is - who - matters - the - most concept, and was urging us stop thinking the way a developer would think and try to think as a regular user. This would usually fail and sometimes it would even results in fights and arguments. Of course, he is right. Listening to all those users ( users, not developers ) speaking their minds in this BloggerCon convention for almost an hour ( while driving to Rethymno ) made me see the light. Those users were raising so many valid points and were asking so many questions -- those are the same kind of users that constitute the 90% of the known user base, give or take -- that really had me thinking about it for hours, after I was done listening to it. Of course, all those issues raised are supposedly well known and understood by us developers, but in reality they are not. I would highly recommend you go ahead and download the recording, now. I would especially encourage all Phaistos Networks colleagues to download it and listen to it. Especially my beloved dev.team guys.
Tuesday, 27 June 2006 1:28 am
Deal of the day : Kanguru Micro MP3 player for 27$
C/Net's cool Deal of the Day blog reports on Amazon's offer for Kanguru Micro MP3 player, for 27$. Its not an iPod, but its definitely cheap.
Friday, 16 June 2006 10:36 pm