A few weeks ago I saw this amazing pen design by Lamy, the Pico. I'm a heavy computer user so I don't do much handwriting, but I do like nice tools so I thought I'd get this. Particularly the small form factor when retracted and the sleek design attracted me. There are some things about the Pico that nobody is telling …

The past year, you may have seen me tweeting some "#secretproject" tweets. Last week, the project was finally revealed, and here is the video, in case you've missed it: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nkebVQL5zc] This is what is known on the internet as a "Useless Machine" or …

Here's a one minute how-to on growing catnip without having to water your plants every day. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jyqNzNeQeE]

Last week, the upgrade to Ubuntu 11 severely broke all carefully selected menu colors, graphics settings and icon sets. I gave up the fight after a few hours of effortless restoration work and switched to Linux Mint 11. While setting up my machine and restoring the links to the company Windows file servers I could not …

This year's Dutch Java Nerd event called J-Fall was held in Nijkerk, in a beautiful location called "Hart van Holland" . With plenty of sessions by speakers from all over the world it promised to be a great day for Java enthusiasts, at a great location for meeting friends and colleagues. I took a day off from …

Want to save a single email from gmail to disk, in a readable format for Outlook, Thunderbird or Apple Mail? Here's how: 1. Open your browser and log into your gmail account. 2. Open the email you want to save. 3. On the top-right, there is a little triangle next to the "Reply" button. Click that, and select …

True to their tradition on the Mac, the Calendar and Addressbook applications on the iPhone are, let's say "lacking finesse". As good as Apple can design products and user interfaces, their focus is clearly not on calendars and address books. I've read somewhere that "iCal is proof that Steve does not …

Dear Apple, I am truly sorry for the huge loss and wish every Apple employee, family, and friends of Steve strength in these tough times. Through Apple, Steve improved the lives of many people in the world, including mine. By hiring great people and (re)building the Apple brand, he will continue to do so even long …

We all know the stories about how vacationing smartphone users became the victim of high roaming charges, resulting in monthly bills sometimes exceeding €1000. To put an end to this, the EU has come up with a rule stating that carriers can no longer charge more than €50 per month for roaming, and are obliged to warn …

Dear Tim, I am certainly not the first, nor the last to congratulate you with your new position at Apple. I'm sure there will be many great things to come for Apple and it's customers. Apple has become the doctor that doesn't fix the pain, but cures the illness and improves our daily digital lives. Please make sure …