October 8th, 2007 |
Published in
Blog, Business, Politics, Travel
The Western border between Europe and Poland is opening. This means when you drive from say, Berlin into Poland (about an hour and a half), you won’t have to go through a passport control. One minute you’ll be driving through the rolling hillside and wind turbines of Eastern Germany. The next you’ll be driving along the pole straight pine trees of Zachodniopomorskie (West Pomerania).
When I first visited Poland, I had to wait in ridiculously long queues at the Polish consulate in Toronto to apply for a VISA. Then with Poland entering the EU, they dropped the VISA requirement for Canadians (we STILL have a VISA requirement for Poles visiting Canada). Poland has boomed since entering the EU, with something like 6% economic growth over the last several years; all I see is construction cranes in Kolobrzeg, the city I stay in when I’m there.
But now that Poland has toughened up it’s Eastern borders, they’re entering into Schengen Zone this December. All land and sea border controls will be closed!
September 19th, 2007 |
Published in
Blog, Software, Travel, Web, screencasts
I’ve been playing around with Mango Languages tonight for a few minutes and I thought I’d share the experience, which is EXCELLENT. I retained some language very quickly it seems, but I’m going to see if I can stick with the French for a bit.
Mango Languages
Magda and I tried the Mandarin, which, when you first see the screen full of characters, seems a little daunting. But within minutes I was understanding the tones of the characters and pronouncing “Hello my name is” correctly for the first time ever. I now know what the little accents on the roman versions of Chinese mean!
July 27th, 2007 |
Published in
Apple, Blog, Business, Design, Gadgets, Travel, Web
Something big is coming, in the form of something very small. But it’s not small tech, it’s small price. This fall, the first ULTRA cheap laptops will start to appear on retail shelves, and they could seriously shake things up. Take a look at a few of the best cellphone/computer handsets today, and we’ll compare them to one of the upcoming hypercheap laptops.
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