I never thought about this, but there is a very simple symptom to make you realize that the economy is in crisis. You can be certain that it is a fact, when the banks begin to advertise mainly deposits.
Accordingly, if the banks are advertising credits, this means that the economy is progressing. Plain and simple :).
I bought a wireless router, Linksys WRT54GL. I looked around, asked several salesmen and they all recommended this particular one. Once I saw a section called “Open Source” on the box, I was hooked :). It’s more expensive than other routers in the same category, but since people are recommending it …
There is a CD with a setup wizard in the box, and it looks very easy – connect the router to the network card of the computer, run the CD on the computer, follow the steps, provide the necessary information and there you are! I had a problem, however. After I inputted all fields and being at one of the last steps of the wizard, where the settings were to be saved on the device, an error occurred. Four-five times in a row. It was not possible to save the settings on the router! I guess the problem was with the firmware of my new gadget, because after I downloaded the latest version from here and upgraded the device (it is very easy, when you login through the web interface on 192.168.1.1, with no username and password “admin”), everything went Ok.
At this stage, a second problem occurred. I called my ISP to change the MAC address for my connection. They told me, that the MAC address of the router should be written on a sticker on the bottom of the device. Yes, it was there, but as they suggested, it was wrong :). You should know, that in some cases the MAC address on the sticker on the bottom of the router is for the local network, not for the internet connection. When I got the device to work it turned out to be different and the ISP support had to change it.
Overall I am happy with the router, because after I got it to work I had no other problems. And I don’t have to switch on my home computer to be able to connect to the internet on my laptop and on my smartphone anymore :).
Finally, if you happen to buy such router and you have problems with its setup, download and install the latest firmware, and keep in mind you might have to double check the MAC address :).
It was an interesting day today. First I learned, that Dimitar Berbatov finally signed with Manchester United, then I read that Google are releasing their own browser, which is big news. The rumors that Google are developing a web browser from 2-3 years ago, because they bought the gbrowser.com domain turned out to be true. Although there is nothing on http://www.gbrowser.com as of today, a browser is already available, just a few hours after I heard about it: http://www.google.com/chrome.
Overall the browser seems to be fast and the interface is quite clean (note that the page tabs are located in the title bar, probably to save some space). There is a Bulgarian localization of the user interface and the Firefox shortcuts are working, for example Ctrl-T to open a new tab, Ctrl-“+” / Ctrl-“–” / Ctrl-0 for zooming, Alt-Home to navigate to the home page.
There seems to be a problem with Flash, however – if you go to the Buynomobile page you can see the Chrome freezing, especially if you try to switch between the different pictures in the gallery. Additionally, the zoom is far from perfect – it looks similar to the one in Firefox 2, and the zoom in Firefox 3 is much better. But this is still a preview release and I am sure that there will be improvements soon.
Anyway, competition is a good thing, it is good to have different options to choose from :).
He may be the only one, but at least pretty colorful :).
I had an occassion recently to watch Steve Jobs presenting again:
Uncle Steve demonstrates not only his ability to present by himself, but manages to govern a dozen of lecturers perfectly. If you have around 3 hours of spare time and you are wondering what to do, you can watch them – to see the perfect synchronization between the lecturers and the subjects, at least. And if you think that it is easy to present and preparations in advance are not much needed, see this ;).
As far as the iPhone itself – I had the chance to play with it and my first impressions are controversial. I was really impressed by the design and how easy it is to navigate with the user interface, but on the other hand, after just ten minutes of usage I felt heat from battery on the flat of my hand. I guess that the rumors about the power consumption problems with the iPhone are true. We’ll be able to see if they addressed this issue in iPhone 3G, which is peeking out of the horizon – see the Guided Tour to be hooked up completely ;).