emconsteroids

This is how long my iPod is predicted to live for according to the iPod Death Clock.

Playing the devil’s advocate – why do these pictures look to me more like a publicity stunt than anything else let alone help for the third world.

For sure: The digital devide is a threat to our current society and the 100 dollar laptop is a nice and beautiful attempt to do something against it. But isn’t this idea a bit too idealistic, quixotic maybe even naive?

I mean at least looking at the school building which holds around 150 pupils should make you suspicious:

There is no sign of electricity let not to mention an internet connection. Looking at the inside of the classroom

still no sign of any electricity. Instead you have this smartly dressed dude from the western world with his shiny 100$ Prada belt explaining with the upraised digit how this shiny green fisher price device will solve all their problems.

I mean look at this image…

… this would even cause problems in modern western auditoriums. How can you possibly supply that many computers with electricity if there is not even enough electrical power to run a refrigerator in a hospital!

This somehow smells like a publicity stunt. A short one as well. 3 hours maybe – until the batteries run out of power.

This is how busy our air space is …

There is a pretty neat application called Plazes for your mac that registers your location. Needless to say, you can use this together with Adium so it sets your status message to where you’re currently at. Setting it up is simple:

1.) Go to and register at Plazes
2.) Download Adium
3.) Download the script from Adium Extras, that allows you to hook up Adium with Plazes.

You can install the extra easily via web:

Then you just setup your parameters:

You can use these parameters:

%_plazename
%_plazecity
%_plazestate
%_plazecountry
%_plazelat
%_plazelon
%_plazeurl

The script assumes you use the Plazer app to connect to Plazes and that your username and password are therefore stored in the Keychain under the name “Plazes”. If you do not use Plazer and want to use this Plugin (I have no idea why you would want that, but hey) you can create the entry in your keychain yourself.

Adium will ask permission to access the keychain every time the script is used. You can select “Always allow”, but for some reason this only works for the duration of one session (I have no idea why). To allow Adium to access the username and password every time without asking, add Adium to the list of programs in the keychains item under access control.

You will end up with something like this:

Thanks to Lukas Vermeer and Peter Rukavina!