SJ... beware!

Wow, on the train still. 12 hours and counting. Countless bad decisions, bad information. Passengers missing plane connections, passengers with 6 week old babies told they need to take the taxi for hours in the middle of the night, because SJ will not pay for a hotel room.

The train had no food and no water and whatever provisions they took in disappeared in minutes. And to sum it all, we left Sundsvall at 16.00 and estimated arrival is at 23.00. You can take a moped and make better time. We have had to stop for every cargo train and passenger train on earth.

Until SJ shows a commitment to their customers, I will not take the train again.

SJ and air travel

If ever you need to fly from Stockholm and think about taking the train to Stockholm and fly out from Arlanda, you need to remember two things:

1. SJ / Banverket is incompetent and they are late a significant amount of the time. (I am writing this from a train that is 5 hours late for a five hour train.) When something happens, you always get the feeling that no one is working behind the scenes to figure out the best possible way of solving things for the passengers and confusion reigns.
   
2. SJ has no guarantees about connection to a flight. You are screwed if they screw up.

In this day and age where everyone is pushing train travel, it seems SJ / Banverket have a lot to learn from the airlines in punctuality and how to treat customers. The green party wants to eliminate domestic air travel in sweden... they should fix the state own rail system first and make them take their customers seriously.

Next time we ride to Östersund... it will be in the Subaru.

Great picture set of Endaveour

Look at the pics from this post. Absolutely stunning.

Spotify

I have been fighting iTunes DRM on my machine for the past few days, because of an old email address that some music was tied to and now will not play. That made me look into alternatives. I need my Ozzy!!!

While Apple tech support tries to help me (they are very responsive BTW), I have started to look at alternatives. I got an invite from Spotify. Amazing selection of music, streams incredibly fastly and the quality is pretty good. The spotify team is smart... they started by focusing on the basics... music and will probably add a lot more features as we go forward.

What I would like to see more of in Spotify, which I think could make it become a worthy contender to iTunes. (except for iPhone support)

1. Much better social. Hook it up to Google's open social or to facebook and let me share my music!
2. Support for AirTunes
3. Link the song titles to Billboard history
4. Don't let it take 10 % of a core2 duo while idling (on mac os x). If you are caching... then say so!
   

I have no clue how to make spotify portable... or how to have my playlists move from iTunes to Spotify (product idea!!!) . I think that as they get adoption, they will figure this out.

Great service... go Spotify!
Anyhow, here is my first Spotify music list!

Seducing...

Great article in the NYT today, somewhat related to our launch.

OMG

Some people are so funny and so witty when they write that it is amazing. Anyhow, not every day I get called an Internet Stud... This made me laugh and really made my day. We had a funny thread about this internally :-)

Gmail voice and video launches

I work with an amazing team based here in Sweden and in Kirkland. Our team launched Gmail voice and video chat this week for windows and mac and for 50+ languages. I was in Kirkland when the button was pressed and I am really happy I was there.

The official google blog post is here. The main architect of the software, Justin, has a post here and here.

With the software being public, we can now focus on bug fixes and improvements. So if you are having issues, please post in the user forum.

Gmail voice and video chat is fun, simple to use and great platform that we can use to innovate... remember, this is verison 1.0 :)

And yes, it is me in this video:

Listen to the Fonz America!

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/cc65ed650d

The economic crisis, as explained by my colleague Art Leyzerovich

Here is my simpler explanation of what happened as I tell it to my 87 year old today (happy birthday, babushka!) WWII veteran grandma:

1. Mortgage brokers lied to home buyers, telling them they would have no problem paying off their mortgage.
2. Mortgage brokers then lied to investment banks, telling them they did due diligence evaluating mortgage applications.
3. Investment banks lied to their customers about the riskiness of the pooled mortgage assets they sold.
4. Ratings agencies lied to the public about the riskiness of the banks' investment vehicles they were evaluating.
5. Investment banks then also lied about their ability to underwrite the credit default swaps (CDS) that they sold to other banks to hedge their risk [this is actually the bigger problem].
6. Bank executives lied to their investors and other banks about the value of their assets.
7. Government officials lied to the public, telling us everything was fine and they had their eye on things.
8. And of course, more than a few home buyers lied about their earning power/job stability (see step 1).
   

Double solid line (i.e. net outcome):
============Everyone who lied, got free stuff:=========

• Mortgage brokers got big commissions for years
  
• Investment bank executives (and employees along for the ride) got big bonuses (and severance packages!)
  
• Ratings agencies got lots of consulting fees
• Government officials got to "loaf at the office" (or in Crawford, Texas) instead of doing their job of oversight
• Many homeowners got to live in houses much bigger than they could actually afford for a few years
  

Now, nobody believes anybody else, and now you and l get to pay for it all, cause of course, ain't no one above giving any of it back (excepting some spectacularly symbolic show trials). QED!!!

Rysnc for mac os x

Good write up.

http://www.bombich.com/mactips/rsync.html

iPhone Upgrade from 1.1.x to 2.x pmn on a mac instructions

Upgrading an unlocked 1.1.4 phone to 2.1 was easy... but getting started was long.

FInally, I settled on pwntool, as quickpwn did not detect my phone.

I followed these instructions... thank you for posting them technophile. I put the bootloader files and the apple fw update in the same folder as pwntool.

Big big big thanks to the iPhone Dev team... you guys are as relevant as ever!!!

And another one

Realtid

http://www.realtid.se/ArticlePages/200809/03/20080903094006_Realtid186/20080903094006_Realtid186.dbp.asp

Of course, google translate is your friend. http://translate.google.com

Serge hits the newspapers

I was lucky enough to get to present Google Chrome to the press. Made first page news. A couple of links:

DN: http://www.dn.se/DNet/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=3130&a=823541

DI: here

Thanks to Maria and Niklas for organizing!

How many homes do you own?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxT0s_I5WtA

Vote!

Var med och rösta fram den snyggaste omdesignade Google-loggan!

5 200 personer deltog i tävlingen "Doodle 4 Google" och vår expertjury har valt ut 30 finalister!

Mellan den 20 augusti och 3 september kan Du rösta på din favorit-doodle.

Vinnar-loggan kommer att ersätta den traditionella Google-logotypen på vår svenska hemsida under 24 timmar.

För att rösta, besök vår kampanjsida: www.google.se/doodle4google

He should run for president

http://seantevis.com/

Good luck Sean!

Trunki from Barnkorgen

Called Barnkorgen today and bought 2 of these funky Trunki suitcases for kids. Great for families travelling. It was not the upgraded model though, but the fact that barnkorgen had it in stock in Sweden and let me pick it up straight from their house in Märsta was a big plus! Good service indeed.

Bose QC-3 headphones lost

I lost my Bose QC-3 headphones on a BA flight from Heathrow. I emailed and called http://www.missingx.com many times, but to no avail.

The serial number on them was: 040075Z70042420AC ... may they rest in peace... or find me if anyone ever Googles the serial number.

To be honest, after a few months, I never thought they sounded that great nor do a good job at noise cancellation. I ordered a pair of Audio Technica from amazon instead. It will be interesting to see how they perform, but the reviews I have read say they blow the Bose out of the water.

TomTom vs Garmin Nuvi 760

After being a Tom Tom Navigation for PDS user for many years, I recently switched to a Garmin Nuvi 760.

I dumped TomTom because of 24 hours wasted on a new model I bought, which was marked Europe, but was in fact a Nordic version in the box, an error they made on 1000s of boxes, according to support personnel. This was also during the painful tom tom home transition from version 1 to 2... it made me give up Tom Tom.

I went with Garmin because of all the good things I had been reading about Navteq maps and the positive reviews one could read in Råd och Rön and in M3.

So, what are the differences I could spot after a few months of usage?

1. TomTom lets you view POIs on the map. Not Garmin.

2. TomTom has interesting community map updates. Not Garmin.

3. TomTom lets you buy maps online and install them directly. Not Garmin.

4. TomTom charges about 99 dollars for US and Canada maps... garmin charges double that. (Scandal me think!!!)

5. The Garmin build quality feels sturdy and strong.

6. The Garmin throws us off course more often than the TomTom did.

7. The TomTom map renderings were nicer than the Garmin, which has a CGA graphics feel to it.

8. The Garmin switches to night mode colors by itself.

9. Hard to find clear reception on the Garmin FM transmitter, and the microphone for the mobile bluetooth connection is so-so.

All in all, I am a bit disappointed with the Garmin. I will let it get old and switch back to the tomtom. I avoided the Navigon because it runs windows ;-)

Put space shuttle here.

On the plane again

Waiting for flight BA 773 to London. And then on to San Francisco. Woohoo, I was just upgraded to business class... well, to London anyways.

The past few weeks have been intense, but fun. We got a whole new patio, I have worked long hours and it has been our first real months with taking both care of the kids.

In May, I went to Zurich and last week, I was in London and Dublin. I am lucky to be able to travel like this, a combination of amazing parents in law and a wife with a very high energy level. Lina has made this dream job possible.

Freja is an amazing daughter and Émil is so curious and so like me... Like having a little backup following you around.

After this trip to SFO, I will be off for 6 weeks. 4 weeks alone with the kids and then take the family to Canada. It'll be good for everyone to sync up and soak up the nice warm montreal summers.

Lina is in the house!!

So, I have registered and can now contribute to our blog :)

Work is great and even though summer is not really here I'm so happy wither is over!

Must not forget..... Happy Birthday Émil :)
4 years ago our not-so-little-anymore prince was born. It is amazing how much joy and a real sense of being a family he has brought us. I am so proud of him and he is everything I ever wished for and more.

Today I am going on caffeine and willpower! I think our kids had a sugar overdose at Émil party yesterday and they both slept bad....or nothing at all (read: Freja)!

Goodbye Punkt-se

Sorry to sound mean, but all these free newspapers that clutter our streets and transit system must stop. Punkt-se was a rehash of yesterday's aftonbladet (not high quality to begin with) but with 3 times the ads.

All the energy required to print these newspapers that just end up in the trash makes me sick. (At least Metro has recycling bins around the subway system)

Punkt-se, don't let the door hit you on the way out!

May Day

Long weekend over here in Sweden!

My coughing has taken a toll and apparently I have a small fracture in a rib. I did not know coughing could cause this.

Well, I am resting up a lot, the kids are playing and Lina is taking care of them. Hopefully I will see an improvement soon!

schooling in

I have been at pre-school with Freja the past 3 days. It is going really well, except that Freja today is coughing a lot... probably got it from her dad.

So today... alone with the kids. Tomorrow... Luleå with Lina, Freja and Émil! Rented a car so we get to visit people up there.

/Serge

Innsbruck

Serge is in innsbruck for a big conference this week... and misses his family.

Freja is starting day care next week.

Lina is going full time next week.

In other news, we've remodeled the living room a bit (work in progress) and Émils room will surely be next.

Take care!

Lots of travel

I have been going to Luleå a lot these days, and Lina is working at her new, great job. Freja is walking and growing fast while Émil is becoming a beautiful smart boy.

I have been working too much as usual... but hey, I am still having lots of fun at Google.