Alfred's musings

I really can't wait to add all my friends and family (and business partners) to Google plus... We're using it internally and it's just a more logical and smarter way to communicate with people selectively! (Hence the radio silence out here... blogging is now more work than +1, and getting less attention! Sorry!) Really loving my CR-48. I've now switched to a routine where my CR-48 stays at work, and my Mac stays at home, and when I commute, I don't carry a heavy machine along... I use my phone (and hoping to get a tablet soon too, for those hours travelling). The only thinks I can't do from my CR-48, are iPhoto-style editing of the 2555 photos I took a couple of weekends ago (of ballerinas, no less!) some development stuff that require dev tools to be installed (I'm still tinkering with AppInventor and more) VPN for the hand full of resources that Google don't expose without VPN, like our new hire referral program intranet site. "for everyt...

Last week I've been to the beautiful Marstrand at Sigma's Camp Digital event , that was running alongside the Stena Match Race Tour . And what a privilege it was! I've been asked to present, and my presentation was sandwiched between Spotify and Apple :) Sigma are really switched on and very innovative & creative. I enjoy working with them. And as expected, they helped arrange some of the logistics, and offered to "send me a car" to collect me at the airport. And so they did. But not just any old taxi. It was a brand new fully loaded Audi A6, and I was handed the key by the driver, to test drive it back to Marstrand myself! (Audi was a sponsor of the Regatta, and hence the car.) And the journey back was equally exciting in an A7! On both journeys, there were a lot of traffic, so I did not quite get a chance to push the car to it's limits, but stationary traffic offered me a chance to play with the nice gadget sin the car. The most refined new feature for...

There are many articles on how to switch the original CR-48 Chromebook to work on other mobile platforms... with Developer mode and more... but I've just tested on the latest Chromebook software (and originally CR-48), and it's working nicely in the UK (I've got a Vodafone SIM) without fiddling with developer mode. Just plug it in and go! Next: I've got to try this in South Africa.

Just a bit of light humour... and not an accurate reflection on all of these companies (especially the ones I've worked with), but still funny! And I know Manu has been asked to extend this to include IBM, Oracle and a few others :)

I'm over the worst after the disappointment this morning trying to buy Olympic tickets . I eventually concluded that even over loaded servers could be a way of extending the lottery. But the emotions around Olympic tickets have sparked interesting debates at work amongst the really smart Googlers, with many algorithms on how it could be optimised without discrimination, and my preference is the model suggested by " paulmarkj " in a comment below this post . Or - we could simply run a race, and the first to get to the tickets, get 'em ;)

Note to self: Don't be daft! Remember the Olympic ticket sale fiasco when designing the next high-concurrency system. What a disappointment. I've been dreaming about one day attending the Olympics, and when it was announced that the Olympics was coming to London, I was excited, at least because I expected that I would be able to attend some of it. The first round of ticket sales have come and gone, and it's now old news that about 1.6m people applied and only 1/2 of them got any tickets. What was good about the first round, was that they did not create a huge peak load on ticket servers in their process. However, the second chance ticket buying, was done on a first come first served bases. Except with the remaining 800 000 people all up at 6am armed with a VISA card and a list of the available events, the organisers (Locog) and VISA and Ticketmaster should have expected some spike in demand... but no. It was not more a first come, first NOT served affair. I know this ...

I've talked about presentations before , and decided it's worth posting an update on tips specific for presentations with Google Presently (our presentation product as part of Google docs), when used on a Mac or on a Chromos machine like my CR-48. 1) The right screen size: After you connected your projector or external screen, resize (or hit the green + button in your browser). Why? The external display and Mac OS will negotiate the right screen resolution, but the layout of your presentation in the browser will not know that the screen size changed. By forcing the browser to re=think it's size, you ensure that the slides and preview are displayed properly. 2) Full screen shortcut: cmd+shift+F (for Full screen) removes borders and other stuff - this is *the* way to do your slide show. 3) Cache the content: As presently draw down content from the interweb, you slide show can never be forgotten home. You never need to find a USB key. You never quire some additional und...