You can always change this.

Some days ago, flickr.com added geotagging. Big thing!

Now a poor user not only gives the traditional tags to photos, but also browses through a map to add the photo to its place of creation. In addition, the yahoo maps suffer from a lot lower resolution comparing to the main competitor (try to find Koli).

Why a camera cannot have a GPS sensor attached to store the information about the place the photos have been taken, similarly as it does with shutter speed, times, etc.? Then any software could read this information as easily as it’s done EXIF. Save the users’ time! Shall I apply for a patent again?

During the November 2006, it will be 17 years since the fall of communism in Czech (and Slovak that time) republic and in the whole block of countries under the Soviet-thumb. In all the countries, the communists reformed, changed their name, and have publicly apologized for the committed atrocities. In many countries they dissolved into some type of socialist-, left-wing parties.

In Czech republic of these days, there is a political party called Czech and Moravian (!) Communist Party. According to the law passed in 1993, the Communist party of Czechoslovakia, the original organization of the current Czech communists, was a criminal organization (but has not been banned). The current communists got 12.8% of votes in last elections, falling from 18.5% in 2002. That is, whole communist electorate gave a vote to a criminal party. Yes, the Czech have not faced up to their history. As an example, the leader of the communists has been elected as one of the vice-heads of the parliament.

Talking about the recent elections, both leftist and right+center parties got same (100 and 100) number of mandates in the parliament, while the civic party won, socialists finished second. Since 1989, it has been a matter of pride of the government not to rely on the votes of the communists MPs. All other parties promised to their voters not to cooperate with communists and, oh my Stalin, not in any case take them into government. Typical schizophrenia of the post-communist country, since same communists permitted the current president to get elected, and socialist government used their votes to pass several laws.

It has turned out that in the stalemate 100:100 situation, there cannot be a government not supported by the votes of commies. First attempt of the winner failed (a coalition of the non-leftist parties). Politics is a conflict resolution process, so to resolve this conflict the leader of Christian democrats (center) joins with the leader of socialists to compile a government. Since together they cannot get the required 101 votes, on whom do they plan to rely? On the very same people who promised not to.

To finish this introduction into the current political Czech, we observe that the leader of the Christians has been forced to resign. Thus, while the stalemate continues, and while the leaders of the democratic parties make fools out of themselves, there is one party that has not been taken into negotiations, and whose voters are laughing. Guess which is it.

With all new communication services like skype, accounts on email servers, gadgets like mobile phones, social networking services, I think it becomes quite difficult to keep contacts synchronized. Most of the services used their own proprietary solution, so e.g. one can log into skype anywhere and the skype contact list is automatically downloaded, and after changes also uploaded back to the skype server.

However, synchronizing between different providers and services is not possible at the moment. I therefore propose that there shall be a (yet-another) service that would allow users to maintain the contact list, provide different software and hardware a possibility to download the contacts, make changes, and upload the contact list back. While some security measures need to be adopted, I see no reason why such thing could not exist and be taken into action. For instance, most of the current mobile devices can connect to Internet servers. A simple application that would replace the current address books would just keep the address book fresh.

Let’s not confuse this proposal with a centralized user account and identity. Several companies have tried (e.g. passport from M$) without a greater success.

The communication protocol would be open (though secure), so anybody could write their own clients and plug-ins to any-kind of current software. The format of the contact list would be extensible, to allow an application to add new fields into the database.

Am I being naïve or shall I apply for a patent?

I expect not to be the first one to observe that electronic chips are getting smaller. So small, that a memory chip of a reasonable capacity (512kB) is not bigger than a grain of rice. As a bonus, the chip can be accessed wireless.

There are, however, much smaller memory chips available at the moment. A permanent memory cell 5000 times thinner than a human hair. That means such a cell, or a bunch of them, can without a problem penetrate you skin, travel in your blood, causing no problems to your organism. Add a future nano-sized device for a wireless read or transmission of data…

We can expect that in a couple of years such devices will become increasingly available and thus ubiquitous. What all will be possible to do with them? How will they change our lives?

Several ideas to ponder upon for my dear readers: your cloth will tell your wash-machine what is the proper program to wash. Your food can be equipped with the best-before info and contents and your fridge can then tell what needs to be wasted. What more, your kitchen keeps a list of all your groceries. Do you want to cook something perhaps? Select a recipe (your favorite recipes are intelligently recommended at first) and you will instantly know whether all required is at home. While shopping, you just pass the cashier. Your wallet knows how much money you have in (if you ever are going to need some physical change). You can trace what have you eaten (and what has passed through, of course), including medicines. You will never loose anything anymore, your staff is tagged. In fact, if you allow, all your movements can be recorded, so your family and friends can know where you are or where have you been all day.

I expect most of these will become our everyday reality in a couple of years. You can immortalize your ideas and implications of what can be done under this post.

During past week I started to receive more spam, even-though the graphical code tries to tell human commenters from robots. Now I’ve installed a new plugin, so if you experience any problems with comments, please send me an email… or try to comment under this post :)

Did you know that avocado is, besides its great taste, also rich in E-vitamine? Andrés brought some nicely ripe avocado, so I tried to create something new from it.

Boil two eggs to hard.
Cut a larger ripe avocado in half, remove the seed, and using a spoon take the pulp out. Do not mash.
Chop a half of lettuce (iceberg lettuce is ok) and gently mix half of it with avocado, 4 tblsp of mayonnaise, a cup of kermaviili (curd-cream), 10 chopped large olives (green were good, black can be more decorative, remove seeds :-) . Pour in two tsp of lime or lemon juice.
Create a bed from the rest of the lettuce on a large plate and spread the created mix on it. Sprinkle with cooled chopped eggs and a pinch of salt. Serve with fresh bread.

Serves 2-3, enjoy.

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