HHG: 2010 World Series

World Series are times when the Yankees are playing... that's not this year. Now it's the San Francisco Giants and the Texas Rangers who are playing. (what? the Rangers?)

The Head says: Rangers have better offensive production, they win on the road, and with superstars like Josh Hamilton and Vladimir Guerrero they can truly back it up. San Fran can bring only unproven youngsters (Cody Ross anyone?).

The Heart says: Hamilton's story is really amazing, especially in America where they love this kind of come-from-behind situation. Going from drug addiction to baseball's richest price is a very good story. Also the Rangers could win their first title ever.

The Gut says: Giants should claw something out of nothing. Tim Lincecum has been pitching lights out, Ross has been hitting balls out of the park, and they've managed to kick a much more favoured team like the Phillies out of the playoffs.

Where is my iTranslate App?

Now we have the Dragon dictation app and music recognition for the iPod it's only a matter of time until somebody comes up with a proper universal translator: just let your iPod pick up something in a foreign language, it will interpret it and dig up from some obscure cloud database the translation into any language you want.

Obviously the cloud needs to be populated by translation logic that makes sense (i.e. not translate every single word literally). The recognition logic would have to be quite elaborate to do cross-reference between different languages (you might not know the speaker's language). And perhaps it needs to account for context too, the longer the soundbite, the better the translation can pick up nuances, or transliterate common phrases. The app might use the GPS locator to account for local differences in speech (e.g. dialects).

So where is this app? Is it here already? Can I take it on vacation to Japan?

I See Dead People

When Michael Jackson died, his music suddenly went up the charts like nuts. His classic songs were top of the charts for weeks, mainly thanks to massive, massive numbers of downloads, and record sales of his old albums.

Last week Antonie Kamerling - actor, singer, local celebrity - died, and his music, his television shows and movies flew off the shelves en masse. Again it earned him - posthumously of course - another number one-hit billing.

What's the fascination with buying music from recently tragically deceased artists? Especially in the time of the iPod and music downloads it's not like the shop's gonna run out of stock. Of course, there will never be proper new material, but the old material will remain in some shape or form. And it's not like the material magically got better. Songs that in life were barely breaking even, become post-mortem cash cows, just by having the artist shed his mortal coil.

For me indeed either Jackson's or Kamerling's or anyone's demise is tragic. It doesn't automatically make me want to spend money on their work more than when they still trucked along on this earth. I remember them, perhaps a prayer for their loved ones. But their music is not suddenly 100 percent better. If they made sucky movies in life, the movies still suck when they are dead.

Chic beats pragmatism beats boring

The iPhone 4 is a controversial product. It looks good, the retina display is really sharp, and it just feels and operates like a charm. People with iPhones have more sex than people with any other phone. Nevermind that nobody actually owns a phone other than the iPhone...

But the "You're holding it wrong" meme really propelled it into new levels of notoriety. The reception quality for such a high-end phone is disappointing. And with everyone having one, wanting one or getting one, you're not standing among the crowd with an iPhone 4.

Okay, you might get a Windows Mobile 7 phone. Or maybe an Android phone. But you'd be judged a little bit boring. Maybe you should get the next generation iPhone instead. Only this time the lines in front of the Apple stores will stretch across the city.

New Leadership

We're about to have a new government, new leadership. It will be leadership in minority, it will be one in controversy. For me, it's a question how long this thing will last. Some people think this government will disband pretty much as soon as the first difficult topic comes up. Others think the situation is such that they will have to work together - no matter how bad it gets. Because the alternative, having no leadership, is worse.