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With the iPhone 3G and the iPhone 2.0 software for the first iPhone generation and the iPod touch Apple also introduced Microsoft Exchange support.

For a client like Outlook, but also e.g. for my Nokia E61, Zimbra Server will look like and behave lika an Exchange. That means you can simply point Mobile.me (me.com) or your iPhone/iPod at your Zimbra mail server and done. You get mail, calendar and contacts push over the air. Note: Make sure you diable your IMAP account for the same server should you have one, otherwise you might confuse yourself…

Mail Badger is a plug-in for Apple’s Mail.app that enhances the application’s dock icon by allowing users to set up multiple “badges” that display message counts from different mailboxes or counts of messages that satisfy a wide range of conditions. (more…)

Animoto.com is a 2.0 style web application that creates videos out of still images with the click of a button.

You simply choose a song and images. Animoto then automatically generates a unique video for you. According to animoto, no two videos are ever the same.

Many of the post-production techniques that the founders used while working as producers for MTV, Comedy Central & ABC are used in Animoto’s patent-pending Cinematic Artificial Intelligence developed to think like an actual editor and director. The resulting video is produced in a widescreen format, containing the visual energy of a music video and the emotional impact of a movie trailer.

See the about video here or check out this video about great people at Optaros…

There was a stunning presentation at TED on Microsoft’s Seadragon technology. See it on YouTube.

Software recognizes patterns in images and joins meta data together. You gain a multi-angle view of basically every spot on earth you can find publicly available images on. This view is used to create a 3D model. Seadragon helps to navigate among the vast amount of data. Seadragon is a RIA visual data (more than just images?) explorer with a neat zoom feature solely “limited by the number of pixels on your screen”.

The technology preview of Photosynth is online at http://labs.live.com/photosynth/

Why do I promote a Microsoft technology here? Well, I do not really care if Microsoft or anybody else is evil or not. I’m looking for solutions that work, and the acquisition and R&D work that Microsoft has done here is really amazing. A couple of things I’d like to point out:

• You gain value by just offering your pictures, because they get tagged according to the other comparable image’s taggs
• The “data is the next intel inside” and UGC talk applies 100%. A great algorithm generates value only on user generated content.
• The technology definitely leverages high bandwidth and resolution but by definition will work on any device with any connection to the net.

I’m looking forward to being able to upload my own pictures to a collection or even get my hands on the technology myself.

The are a few collections here.

The last couple of laptops I have tried to find the perfect tool setup with–if required–the right accessories to make it even better. There are a couple of sleek notebooks out there than come with a power plant rather than a power supply, if you know what I mean. These are not for me. We spend too many hours per day on the job and we charge our clients too many bucks to spend time, money or even our backs’ future to carry around stuff that does not work or not do it’s job in just the perfect way.

My problem was always with the mouse. On my desk I have a proper mouse that I take the time to connect whenever I’m at the office. But for on the road it is useless, because it is huge, has a long cable and therefore never makes it in my bag. I did not manage to find the perfect on-the-road mouse till now, so I’d use my touch pad most of the time and for the occasional presentation my little HP laptop mouse that is ok, but not more. And when it comes to Human Interface Devices, good is definitely not good enough. It has to be very closed to perfect.

I also like to use Bruno’s Kensington Wireless Presenter for pretty obvious reasons.

Now, what I do no like are dongles or how ever you call those little things that you plug into your USB port to connect through proprietary means to some external device via a technology that is already inside the laptop (Bluetooth in this case).

So I was looking for a combination of the Apple remote and the Apple Bluetooth Mightymouse for a Windows PC in a mobile form factor that does not come with a dongle or in other words supports the Bluetooth standard.

Well, here it is: The Microsoft Wireless Notebook Presenter Mouse 8000

It’s a small form factor wireless multi button laser wheel mouse and a wireless presenter (Powerpoint remote control) including laser pointer as well as a general remote to operate media players and any other application that can be operated by keystrokes. It did come with a dongle, but in fact it supports Bluetooth and does work w/o the dongle when connected to any other internal Bluetooth adapter.

It really does what it is supposed to do. No cable, no dongle and connects well also after standby etc. The only little flaw is with the driver included which relies on the proprietary dongle that can not be redirected to my internal dongle. So the additional nice features and driver support for magnifier and instant viewer etc do not work when not using the dongle.

So my impression with this product is in line with my general opinion on Microsoft: they will never really and fully support an (open) standard. They will always take the time and effort to extend it to their own interpretation to force you to use one or more of their products. In this case the limited functionality is still unique and very valuable for me. If they’d come up with a driver package that will not rely on the proprietary dongle, I would actually recommend the product to others. :)