Wie België vroeger in Google maps of Google Earth bekeek, wist al dat enkel op de as Antwerpen - Brussel de kaarten gedetailleerd waren. In de rest van Vlaanderen was de resolutie niet echt om je huis gemakkelijk op terug te vinden.
Sinds kort echter zijn in Google Maps nieuwe satelliet foto's van België geïmporteerd, met details die goed genoeg zijn om het zwembad van de buren wel te kunnen bekijken. Deze foto's dateren van april 2009.


Toeval : in de buurt van onze woonplaats vind ik deze toevalstreffer terug. Op deze manier zie je ook dat Google met satellietfoto's werkt, en niet met foto's genomen vanuit vliegtuigen.

De Bunker is een jeugdhuis in Glabbeek dat ieder jaar een festival organiseert. Vijf jaar geleden waren we erbij toen de Levellers de affiche sierden. Dit jaar heeft men blijkbaar totaal de danskaart getrokken met Stijn, Front 242, Etienne de Crécy en Dr Lektroluv.


Front 242 is al jaren één van mijn favoriete groepen. Halverwege de jaren negentig waren de groepsleden echter de samenwerking beu, en gingen elks hun eigen weg. Wat nog volgde, was een jarenlange release van remixes. Onlangs echter besloot Front zijn nummers te herarrangeren door gebruik te maken van de allerlaatste synthesizers, wat de live CD 'Moments' opleverde. Ook een manier natuurlijk om creatief te zijn. Ik krijg nog steeds kippenvel als ik Funkhadafi of Im Rythmus bleiben hoor brengen, maar opgewarmde kost van 20 jaar geleden, blijft opgewarmde kost natuurlijk. Wie ze gemist heeft, kan zich herpakken op 1 november : dan treden ze samen met Anne Clark (!) op in Hasselt.


Arsenal is een echte live groep : opzwepende funky wereldmuziek, die het vuur in de tent zette. Knappe groep met goeie nummers en duidelijk veel podiumervaring.
Etienne de Crécy bracht een DJ set, maar was te repititief om te kunnen blijven boeien. Sommige delen van zijn set zakten daardoor als een soufflé in elkaar. Nee, dan liever Dr Lektroluv. Deze belgische DJ die steevast in zilveren vestje en groen masker optreedt, stond terecht bovenaan de affiche.

It's three weeks now that I have the Nokia N97, and I must say I'm quite pleased with it. The list of installed applications grows every week, and the hardware is, as said before, a real bliss. The S60v5 update introduces widgets, miniviews that display information on the home screen. Examples of miniviews are a weather widget, Facebook, stocks and RSS feeds. I like the idea of presenting variable & customizable information on the home screen, something that was really missing in S60v3. However, I really would like to see the following implemented :

• more widgets. The list is quite short IMO


• a separate widgets section in the OVI store


• currently, the miniviews on the home screen are rather limited in screen estate space, a variable size would be great


• more customizable home screens, of course


• vertical scrolling RSS widgets. Currently, only the first two RSS entries are shown


• a TV widget that shows the current and next program in a miniview

I hope the N97 will be able to upgrade to Symbian^2, which should be available mid 2010. Whether S60v5 apps will be supported, is of course a question. In the mean time, one can install the M1 Android shell, which provides your N97 with the Android home screen. It's nothing more than a placeholder for some application launchers, and once an application is launched, you're in the S60v5 interface again. Somehow cool, especially on a white N97, which gets transformed to a HTC Magic.

The longest solar eclipse of the 21st century, in (magnificent) pictures.

I've been playing with the Nokia N97 for a week now. Choosing the color of the device has never been so difficult : I like my mobile phones black, but the black N97 version has a dark brown back, and the front is more anthracite. So I opted in the last moment for a white device. It arrived a week later than expected, and judging by the size of the box, I feared that the webshop only sent me the car holder. Choosing a device only by internet preview pics & unboxing videos is deceptive - the box itself was 3 times smaller than expected. If you have small hands, you're apparently an ideal candidate for mobile device manufacturers to send device previews to. And indeed, after unboxing the device, it was about 1 cm less wide and high as expected. Same experience with my previous Nokia, the N80. Seems that most people really like small mobile phones, something I can't understand why.


The box content is rather dissapointing :
- a stylus ? Come on Nokia, the era of the stylus has ended 3 years ago. Get over it. It would have been great if you provided us with a USB memory stick disguised as a stylus, with a Nokia logo on it, but this stylus thing is waste of plastic.
- No car charger ? This is Nokia's flagship device, and no car charger provided ?
- No pouch ? No TV out cable ?


Luckily, lots of this is made good by the N97 device itself: Very sleek & sexy with a chrome bezel. Nokia hardware rules. The slide-out mechanism is great, and makes a nice sound when clapping open & close. There is unfortunately little or no tactile feedback from the keyboard, but apart from that it works fast. Battery life is very good, I get 2 days with moderate to heavy use; battery needs about 2 to 2.5 hours for a complete fill.


The performance of the N97 is rather surprisingly good, given its 434 MHz processor. The touchscreen is quite responsive for a resistive screen, though a capacitive one would have been far better. First thing to do is to fill the gorgeous 32GB space with new S60v5 applications. The OVI store is a good starting point, the list with applications grows every week.


I like the stability of Symbian; combined with the wealth of applications, this makes it a bliss using the device. Combined with the sexy look & feel, you'll get lots of attention when you pull out the N97. A question I get a lot, is if the functionalities are comparable with the iPhone. Well, hands up of those iPhone users whose devices can do the following :
- SSH to your Linux workstation/VNC control your windows desktop, read your email, while listening to your favorite MP3 files.
- follow your voice-guided satnav, while listening to your MP3 files, FM transmitted to your car radio.
Get it ?


Are there any drawbacks on the device ? Apart from the hefty price tag, hardly; initially there were numerous problems reported, but the new firmware took care of most of them. However, I'm still bugged with the following :
- The GPS has lots of trouble getting a fix on satellites; only while enabling A-GPS, I get a fix within the minute. Drawback if you don't have an unlimited data plan.
- The Accuweather widget doesn't refresh itself correctly (sometimes needs manual kicking)
I hope that next firmware upgrades will take care of this.




Apart from that, the N97 is by far the most pleasant toy I ever used. Definitively an allways-on device.

Het is tegenwoordig feest in de nachtelijke lucht :
- Vlak na zonsondergang kan je prachtige structuren ontdekken in de schemering in het westen : door de uitbarsting van de Sarychev vulkaan is er enorm veel vulkaanstof in de lucht. Deze kleine stofdeeltjes geven oorzaak tot horizontale stofbanden boven de westelijke horizon.
- Het Internationale RuimteStation (ISS) kan samen met de Space Shuttle (STS-127) gezien worden als een snelbewegende zeer heldere ster. Vooral het ISS is door zijn grootte een zeer helder en groot object aan de avondlucht. Al met een gewone verrekijker kan men al zien dat dit geen ster of vliegtuig is. Verschillende amateur astronomen hebben met hun telescopen gepoogd om het ISS op de gevoelige plaat te krijgen, met succes. Wil je ook het ISS zien overvliegen, en eens zwaaien naar Frank DeWinne ? Rep je naar heavens-above.com, vul je coördinaten in, en selecteer ISS om een idee te krijgen van de tijdstippen waarop het ruimtestation te zien is.
- En tenslotte kan men 's nachts lichtweerkaatsende wolken zien (NLC's), laag in het noordwesten. Deze ontstaan doordat de zon zo laag onder de horizon zit, dat wolken op grote hoogte nog steeds verstrooid zonlicht naar de aarde weerkaatsen.

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, has returned its first imagery of the Apollo moon landing sites. The pictures show the Apollo missions' lunar module descent stages sitting on the moon's surface, as long shadows from a low sun angle make the modules' locations evident.


The LRO Camera was able to image five of the six Apollo sites, with the remaining Apollo 12 site expected to be photographed in the coming weeks. The returned high resolution pictures show the remainings of the lunar modules, and on some you even can see scientific instruments and the 40 year old footpaths of the astronauts. Impressive !

Just as with the New Horizons mission to Pluto, NASA is giving you again the opportunity to add the submission of your name & country which will be put onto a microchip & put on the Mars Science Laboratory rover. This mission is scheduled for 2011, so you still have some time to fill in your name. Might there be intelligent life on Mars after all, and if they find the rover, you'll be among the first ones to welcome our Martian overlords (and their probing chambers).
Please note that Robert'); DROP TABLE 'names'; (aka little Bobby Tables) has been added already...

2009 is indeed without a doubt the year of the smartphone. From that viewpoint, I'm really an early adopter since I have a smartphone since 2007. In retrospect, my current Nokia N80 has been the most fun mobile device ever. It has consolidated my MP3 player, my GPS, my internet communications device, my PDA and of course my mobile. But technology moves forward. Initially, smartphones were designed with the business user in mind. But then came the iPhone; and changed all that. Big touchscreens for everyone (thank you Apple). My initial idea was to acquire a second-hand N96 device, and wait a year for Android to mature. But an idiot changed my plans, and I decided to wait for the next Nokia device, the N97.

The N97 is important : Nokia produces mobile phones for everyone, and controls 40% of the market. The N97 is their top line model, and therefore a direct competitor for the iPhone. Nokia has released the 5800 Expressmusic as their first touchscreen mobile, and it has been a smashing success. The N97 is Nokia's aim at a new N95 success story and their new flagship device. Nokia decided to continue with Symbian as the operating system for their smartphone line, with some additions for touchscreen support. They probably did this to provide a solid base and a broad range of applications for the N97. However, the result is S60v5, and has some strange and sometimes confusing behavior, like single/double tap in lists. I applaud the stability of the operating system, but I'm quite sure that the N97 will be my last Symbian powered mobile.
If you take a look at the competition, the Nokia N97 has some serious opponents. The iPhone off course, with its glorious eye candy, and many available applications. Whether you like it or not, the iPhone has become the mass standard for smartphones. Unfortunately, as with many Apple products, the hardware is pretty impressive, but the resulting functionalities are pretty limited. My new mobile must support a GPS (and I'm talking about voice guided satnav, Apple, not about a map software which pulls data from the internet), and that pretty much ruled out the iPhone.
Android is the new kid on the block, and a very interesting one. Crafted in the dungeons of Google, this open and attractive operating system is the new standard for HTC mobiles. Unfortunately, Android software still is limited (but growing with a fast pace), and it fell out the list of candidates for the same reason as Apple, because of the absence of GPS software.
The Palm Pre came late to my attention : it looks like Palm really took the good things from the iPhone and even went a step beyond that. This resulted in a gorgeous looking interface, which got quickly copied by HTC in their Sense UI interface for the Android.

In a next blog post, I'll explain my experiences of one week of playtime with the N97.

Deze grote buizerd hing al een tijdje boven ons huis te cirkelen. Prachtige foto van de buizerd in de vlucht, herkenbaar aan zijn bruine vogelkleed, en zijn korte ronde staart. De buizerd is één van de meest voorkomende roofvogels in de Benelux. Het liefst zitten ze in een gevarieerde omgeving, meestal aan bosranden. Ze broeden en overnachten in bosrijke gebieden en jagen in open gebieden, zoals weilanden en akkers. Als je over de snelweg rijdt, zie je vaak buizerds zitten op een paaltje of een hek. Dit zijn goede uitkijkposten voor ze om voorbijwandelende muizen, kikkers of konijntjes te kunnen zien. Maar het is ook mogelijk dat ze wachten op een door een auto aangereden hapje. De buizerd is beschermd in België, waar er nog zo'n 700 broedparen bestaan.