I thought about buying a SSD to replace my hard drive in my Macbook for a long time now. You don’t know what a SSD is? Well, traditional hard drives (HDD) use spinning discs to write data on them and break easily if they suffer from a heavy bump for instance. Solid state drives (SSD) are microchip based drives that are already heavily in use in cell phones or digital cameras. The biggest advantages of SSDs are their blasting speed, high robustness (you can literally hit them with a baseball bat and they won’t lose your data) and low power consumption. A huge disadvantage is the high price and little data storage. Currently you pay approx. 300€ for a 128GB SSD.
However, videos like this one and reading how amazed people are by the performance boost that comes with the switch made me really curious. I studied a bit on which SSD to buy and decided to go with the Corsair Nova 128GB version, even though Intel is still dominating the SSD market. Enthusiasts will tell you that in terms of sustainability and performance nothing comes close to an Intel Postville for instance, but tests have shown, that Corsair’s new model most definitely is a good alternative to the pricy Intel drives. Corsair promises a reading speed of 190 MB/s and writing at 270 MB/s. Well, here come the results.
Installation was easy, done a quick reinstall of Snow Leopard and then I was ready for the journey on the fast lane. I am still impressed. Comparing read and write speeds you can imagine what is happening on my computer now. Bootup is really quick, but more important application and file handling is supreme: the whole system just snaps! For launching Adobe Illustrator my Mac normally took about 15 seconds, now it opens in less than 3!
Concluding I can say that replacing the HDD for a SSD really is the performance upgrade #1 you can achieve at the moment and is just worth the money!
Dear readers, I am currently not updating my blog due to several reasons:
It’s summer!
The world cup was on. I rather spent my free time in bars, with friends, next to barbecues watching the games. Germany did really good, Spain did better. Congrats to Spain! Campeones del mundo, olé!
I did a short trip to Berlin visiting a friend and watching Germany lose against Spain. Weather was perfect, also Fashion Week Berlin was on and Berlin made a really good impression on me. The city to be in Germany at the moment.
I am building a new website: I will be moving my blog to my name-domain www.jansenderek.com. Therefore I had to develop a new website concept which rocks. Stay tuned for a new release!
Wir Deutschen beschweren uns bekanntlich gerne. Wir beklagen uns über Steuern, unsere Politiker, über alles und nichts. Des Öfteren stöhnen wir, wenn es darum geht, dass Deutschland nahezu nichts zu bieten hat, wenn es um Innovation im Internet geht. Diese Diskussion ist vor allem wieder aufgekommen, als bekannt wurde, dass mit Citydeal wieder mal eine Idee innerhalb kürzester Zeit erfolgreich kopiert und an sein amerikanisches Vorbild Groupon verkauft wurde.
Die Ursache für diese Situation hierzulande liegt offenbar in unserem ausgeprägten Sicherheitsbedürfnis (=Abneigung Risiken einzugehen), analog dazu der verkrampften Suche nach einem kurzfristigen Geschäftsmodell bzw. Cashflow und dem Breitdiskutieren neuer Ideen. Martin hat das vor einiger Zeit sehr treffend zusammengefasst und bezeichnet das in seinem Artikel auf netzwertig.com als fehlende Naivität. Sowohl bei den Gründern als auch bei Investoren. Ich stimme zu.
Auf Investorenseite möchte Xing-Gründer Lars Hinrichs den ersten Schritt machen. Mit HackFwd soll neuen Ideen finanziell auf die Sprünge geholfen werden. Das Konzept ist gut: 30% für HackFwd, davon gehen 3% an Berater, der Rest bleibt bei den Gründern und dafür gibt es ein Jahr Finanzspritze. Den bleibenden Eindruck hat aber vielmehr der gesamte Auftritt von HackFwd bei mir hinterlassen. Allein die moderne, hübsche und für deutsche Verhältnisse äußerst extravagante Aufbereitung der Webseite und Animationen hebt HackFwd aus seinen Reihen ab. Denn es gehört Mut dazu, einem “ernsten” Thema wie der Kapitalbeschaffung und Finanzierung durch ein plakatives Design so viel Leben einzuhauchen. Sogar die Verträge sind von der Agentur IDEO grafisch aufbereitet worden. So was kenne ich nicht in Deutschland.
Dieser Art und Weise auf potenzielle Gründer und Ideen zuzugehen verspreche ich viel Erfolg. Ich glaube HackFwd das Statement neu und anders zu sein. Ich bin mir ziemlich sicher, dass so, früher oder später einige innovative Ansätze aus dem Hause HackFwd entstehen werden, die woanders vor verschlossenen Türen gestanden hätten. Auch hat mir natürlich besonders dieser Leitsatz gefallen: “No Copycats: You don’t like it. We don’t like it. Nobody likes it. So build something really new.” Sehenswert sind die Animationen auf der Webseite von HackFwd und zudem noch das Video mit Lars himself (man beachte den halben Stuhl im Hintergrund! ):
Some of you know already, that I spent some serious time in Japan, particularly in Tokyo. I have seen a lot of clips about Tokyo, but this one has a very unique touch. Makes me wanna book a flight ticket right away. Great shots and editing by Stefan Werc.
…but it just seems as if we are not supposed to be friends yet. You may have read my first issues that I experienced with Chrome on Mac. Thus you may understand that I was really happy to read yesterday’s announcement by Google to release a new “stable” version of Chrome for Mac. Well, it was just about time!
According to Google the main features that have been improved are the support of html5, some new APIs and browser sync functions. After having installed the new version on my Mac I quickly realised that this version is still a lot of pain for someone who tries to import settings from Firefox and to set up a decent synchronization along several machines. In fact…I am facing even more problems than before. No matter what, this post is not supposed to be a huge complaint about Chrome. I still have a lot of respect for the people behind Chrome for developing a clean and minimilastic interaction design and supernice performance. Instead I will give you a short review on some pros and cons of the current Chrome version and the issues I am facing right now.
Importing settings
Importing settings and bookmarks from other browsers should be commodity today. Sadly with Chrome this is not the case. On Windows for instance, I was able to import my passwords from Firefox, but not my bookmarks. My bookmarks simply did not appear, even though I remember that it worked two weeks ago. On Mac it was the other way round. There is just no way to import passwords somehow. Why? I don’t know! It makes me go crazy!
Bookmark sync
Chrome provides a native bookmark sync via one’s own Google account. It sounds so easy. You have a couple of bookmarks and use your Google account data to synchronize them along several machines. To make it quick: it is a mess! What happens behind the curtains while syncing is concealed, which is why this function easily creates chaos. There is no transparency provided in whether your bookmarks in your browser are being merged with the server or replaced by them (or the other way). This needs to be improved.
I recommend backing up your bookmarks via Xmarks or simple html export before setting up that built-in sync. A couple of times it happened to me that I had my bookmarks somehow doubled, some folders were empty or half empty and so on. Also in most cases my bookmarks just won’t always synchronize to other machines. At least not anything near real-time.
Password sync
This is a major issue to me. I have accumulated a lot of different usernames and passwords on various websites and don’t want to lose them. As mentioned above I was able to import my passwords from Firefox, unfortunately only on Windows. In order to transport them from either Firefox on Mac or from Chrome on Windows I tried using Chrome extensions. Even though Xmarks (a very functional and well working bookmark/password sync extension for Firefox) is available for Chrome, too, Xmarks does not supply the password sync for Chrome. Another extension I tried was LastPass, also a password and form filler which did not work for me. LastPass is not able to synchronize the whole password archive and will only access passwords on Chrome, that have been used recently. And at last I tried to figure out a solution to manually extract my passwords from Chrome so I could import them on my Mac, but could not find a way to do this. And this is how far I got…
Extensions I love extensions, plugins or whatever you call them, no matter if on Firefox or on Chrome. Even though I did not fully switch from Firefox to Chrome yet, I already have a couple of favorite extensions I want to recommend to you:
Symtica: gives you easy and fast access to all Google web products
Pendule: fast access to source codes (or try the built-in feature Ctrl+Shift+I)
Firebug: even though Pendule does a good job for me in most cases, I still use Firebug
Resolution Test: for testing websites in different screen resolutions
Chrome Sniffer: quick detection of web technologies a website uses
Chrome SEO: instant access to SEO relevant information on a website
Color Pick: lets you easily pick color codes on a website
Postponer: a Read it Later plugin (Postponer manager and Postponer adder)
To sum it up: I believe in Chrome’s power and it is just a pleasure to surf the web on it. I desperately want to enjoy Chrome’s speed and minimalist functions without being forced to switch back and forth between browser. Therefore I will be waiting in hope for a seamless native password synchronization!
Hereby I want to introduce you to my new companion: a Zeiss Contaflex IV straight out of the 60s. The first model of the Contaflex series was developed in 1936 and was one of the first cameras to have a built-in exposure meter. This is the fourth and last version in its series and was built in 1959! If you want to get the real feeling of what era this toy comes from, have a look at the original manual.
It belonged to my stepfather for at least 40 years, who used it on his trips to the US, Asia and all over Europe….also back in the 60s and 70s. Sadly, for the last couple of years it just silently got dusty in a cupboard… until it finally got into my hands. I did not have a chance to develop some pictures yet, but everything still seems to work. I love its nostalgic feeling and hope the camera will be able to deliver some decent pictures. I will give you an update on that soon.
I just found this really lovely animation on the Greek crisis at Ignant. Don’t expect too much details from these clips though. For some real insights on the Greek crisis (except for reading the newspaper) either watch this video or have a look at this basic explanation.
I love Chrome for its speed and clean features. I especially appreciate the built-in bookmark sync function via your own personal google account. Still there are a couple of really simple functional reasons that keep me from fully switching to Chrome. Most of them only count for the Mac version.
There are no separators in bookmarks,
I am missing a password sync (for this, currently I am using the xmarks plugin in firefox),
and the major issue for me: you cannot simply drag and drop the favicon (or Chrome’s star) for bookmarking into the bookmark bar. This really disturbs me in my common use flow.
Conclusion: I will be waiting for new Mac releases.
Hi, I am Jan and this is my personal blog. Here I randomly post my thoughts on mostly random topics like cheesecake or the next big thing on the web. I will be writing in either English or German...no reason.
Installation was easy, done a quick reinstall of Snow Leopard and then I was ready for the journey on the fast lane. I am still impressed. Comparing read and write speeds you can imagine what is happening on my computer now. Bootup is really quick, but more important application and file handling is supreme: the whole system just snaps! For launching Adobe Illustrator my Mac normally took about 15 seconds, now it opens in less than 3!
):
I love extensions, plugins or whatever you call them, no matter if on Firefox or on Chrome. Even though I did not fully switch from Firefox to Chrome yet, I already have a couple of favorite extensions I want to recommend to you:
