On the other hand…

Ah, coffee! Some people love it, some hate it, and others are quite indifferent towards it. Myself, I find the craving at various times, the cravings to indulge in either a finely brewed black cup or a more soothing latte, cappuccino, mocha, cafe au lait, etc. Until previously, one would have to purchase a rather expensive piece of machinery, in order to brew such special cups yourself. Prices were in the range of 4-5000 DKK. But recently, the introduction of various machines using capsules, prices have lowered a great deal.

The Nescafé Dolce Gusto Circulo will set you back about 1000 DKK, a somewhat easier price to swallow. It’s also very easy to use and maintain, but more about that below.

There is a varied set of capsules available. From normal coffee to the variants mentioned above plus espresso, different kinds of cocoa, chai tea latte, to various cold drinks too (ice coffee, ice tea etc.)

Of course there is a price for convenience, and using the Circulo is very easy:

1. Turn on the machine. It requires a 30 second pre-heating period if started from cold.
2. Fill the water tank with water. It comes off easily and can be filled from tap.
3. Take out capsule tray and insert capsule.
4. Insert glass/cup.
5. Move slider on top to the warm or cold setting, depending on capsule variant, and fill in the amount you wish.
6. Some drinks require two capsules. In that case, remove the first capsule and insert the next. Repeat step 5.
7. Remove capsule and your drink of choice it ready. It usually takes but a minute.

The whole process is very easy and you can’t really mess it up. You can of course personalise some drinks a bit. If you like your cappuccino strong, put it a bit more coffee or a bit less milk etc. Very easy to do.

Like I mentioned above, convenience comes at a price. The capsules aren’t exactly cheap. It usually costs about 40 DKK for 8 cups of drinks using 2 capsules and 16 of drinks using one. I’m sure you could probably make some of them cheaper yourself – at least the black coffees – but as for the rest, I’m not so sure. And besides, there is something about craving a vanilla latte and having it 3 minutes later. The price is worth it in my opinion. Your mileage may vary.

It all comes down to taste and of course the taste is rather important here. Again, it’s a subject to taste, but most of the stuff the Circulo brews taste fine to me. I have had better cups, but you can’t really beat the price and convenience factor. I’ve tasted both Nespressos and Tassimos cappuccino and they do really taste very much alike. Perhaps the Nespresso cup was a bit less sweet, but generally I find the standard pretty high. The chai tea and vanilla latte is a big hit here. The chocolate is also quite good, though I drink very little of such, so I’m not the most qualified to speak of that matter.

Maintenance of the machine is low. It needs cleaning after about every 500th cup so I can’t really say much about that yet. But I can’t imagine it being much work, considering how convenient everything else is.

I might not be the most qualified reviewer of a product like the Circulo, but I will give it my recommendations and say that I’m happy with the machine overall.

Rating: 8 out of 10

-Jacob

Just a heads up to support the nimble Nimblebit and their great effort on Tiny Tower.

Zynga blantantly copied the idea, concept and almost also the execution, as you can see here.

-Jacob

It’s really elementary, my dear Watson. If you are in any way a fan of Sherlock Holmes and the masterful tales about him by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, you need to get this. 

You see, while many people are of the impression that the extraordinaire books cannot be visualised, these DVDs of the 1984-1994 tv-show will prove them wrong. The late Jeremy Brett simply is Sherlock Holmes visualised in person. 

This box has 36 episodes and 5 longer episodes (tv movies) and the total run-time is about 41 hours. That’s almost two days worth of the most atmospheric crime mystery and drama ever filmed for the screen.

With perfect settings, props, clothing and language, you quickly become immersed in this wonderful world of the extremely clever Holmes and his trusty companion, Dr. Watson. Throughout the episodes Jeremy Brett plays Holmes, while Dr. Watson is changed about halfway through. Whether the first or the last is the better, is probably subject to taste. In my opinion both are fine.

The box set comes on 12 DVDs. Picture quality is by no means stellar. Actually is kinda rough, but I’m very much used to watching blu-rays, so it’s a bit unfair for me to expect the same quality. But the quality is perfectly adequate. The stories are great and the audio is clear and fine. Just don’t expect anything special from the visual presentation.

Sound is standard 2-channel stereo and the episodes are subtitled in Danish, Swedish, Norwegian and Finnish. Price is about 250-300 dkk depending on where you shop.

The box-set comes fully recommended for splendid entertainment.

Rating: 9 out of 10

-Jacob

I’ve been using a jailbroken iPhone 4 on iOS 5.0 for some weeks now. Was the upgrade from my finely tweaked 4.3.1 worth it?

I think so. Even though my jailbreak is tethered, I’m enjoy the very good Notification Center plugin IntelliScreenX and BiteSMS 6.0 is also shaping up very nicely. Both are still in beta, but are relatively stable. For the last week I haven’t really had any crashes and I’m a fairly heavy user of my phone.

Battery life seems okay on my phone so no complaints there either. The only real downside is the tethering reboots, but 95% of the time a respring is enough.

So far, jailbreaking iOS 5 is very recommendable!

-Jacob

NeoGAF – a well know site to gamers – has a really nice comprehensive list of the best/most popular iDevice games out.

The first 30 games are detailed with screenshots. As for the rest, they are just listed with their name.

Check it out!

Linky

-Jacob

You know when you take a picture with your camera and it turns out blurry? Usually it’s because you’re moving your hand while take the picture.

Now, what if a piece of software could someone attempt to analyze in which way you moved your and, i.e. the path of movement and then unblur the image? Sounds like something out of la-la land or an episode of NCSI or similar? Well, this is getting close to reality, thanks to Adobe’s latest sneak peak of their “deblurring” technology. Watch and be amazed.

-Jacob

If you were one of the many to enjoy Amanita Designs Machinarium, you just might like to watch out for their latest upcoming game, Botanicula. Not much is know, but the teaser below certainly seems loaded with charm, much like Machinarium.

Amanita Design is considering an iOS release as well. Here’s hoping!

-Jacob

With Capsized, you return to the good, old-fashioned 2D platformer gameplay. This game wouldn’t have been out of place on a C64 or an Amiga – save for the lush graphics and physics of the game, that’s obviously very much up to date.

You take on the role of an astronaut

in a crashed spacecraft. You set on out and about, to explore, do missions, save comrades and battle the creatures of the planet you crashed upon. It sounds pretty run of the mill, but there are a few factors that makes it a bit more interesting, namely the hook and the physics of the game. You can jump and find fuel for your jetpack, but you also have a hook you can throw out and attach to surfaces or objects. This makes for a quite open posibillities, as well as some amusing options for creating havoc.

Capsized’s graphics are simply yet almost breathtakingly beautiful. Hand drawn and well animated, combined with amazingly atmospheric music by Solar Fields, you are certainly in for a treat, both visually and aurally.

Luckily, the trend continues in the gameplay area. The game can be played with a combination of keyboard and mouse, as well as gamepad (best with Dual Analog gamepads, like the Xbox 360s). However, even though I am an avid 360 player, I prefered the PC versions keyboard and mouse combination. It handles well, and the game plays smooth. There are three difficulty levels and the easiest should make it possible for most players to complete the game. It’s by no means easy, but not too hard.

Clocking in at just 10 USD on Steam, this is really a steal. Also comes highly recommended on Xbox Live Arcade.

Rating: 8 out of 10

Trailer:

So it seems the long awaited native Facebook application for iPad is included in the latest iPhone version of the application. Only one byte needed changing. It was even possible for non-jailbroken devices to do this.

However, Facebook was quick to block for the application, although if you were lucky enough to have already logged in before the blockade, you should be good still.

The application seems pretty neat, although it does have a few osbcure bugs – see picture to the right and below (sorry, text in Danish).

Anyway, iron out the few bugs and you have one hell of a solid social network application.

Now Google, where’s the iPad version of Google+?

-Jacob

At first it sounded like a crazy idea. Shelling out 5000 kroner on something that is just an overgrown ipod touch. I quickly discarded the idea. But then… A friend got it and he loved it. I love gadgets and I took his appraisal of it into consideration. I weighed the pros and the cons, and in the end I got found a good offer on the internet. A few days later, I was the owner of an iPad 32GB version.

Now, manual people look at it and go “What on earth do I need one of those for? I already have a computer or a laptop!” and that is quite right. Most people don’t need an iPad. But then again, most people don’t NEED a big screen tv, they do not NEED a big luxurious car. But it’s still darn nice, right? The iPad, my friend, is somewhat similar. It’s a thing you don’t need, but once you have it, it’s damn nice.

Please notice, that at heart I am a thoroughbred Windows user. I am in no way an Apple-fanboy or anything similar. But there is something to be said about the quality of Apple’s products. From the case in which the iPad comes – heavy, stylish and a prime example of minimalism – to the actual iPad itself, which is pleasing and (in my opinion) a beautiful people of gadgetry.

I opened the case and there was the iPad. The case had an USB-cable for syncing and transfering, a small leaflet and a USB-to-mains pow er converter for charging. I had heard that the iPad would be quite power hungry for charging and it was all true. None of any of my computers USB ports would supply enough power to charge it. I suppose that’s why they include the converter. Anyway, while it was somewhat surprising that none of my computers – including a very new and powerful Intel i920 based computer with an 850 watt power supply – were apply to charge it, I was still happy for getting the charger, since it will work with any iDevice, such as my iPod Touch and my soon to arrive iPhone 4 (edit: now arrived).

As all other iDevices, the iPad needs to be activated through iTunes. Yes, iTunes is still somewhat horrible, at least on Windows, big it could be worse. The activation went fine and the first thing I did was to jailbreak the device. Silly? Well it made sense. iOS 3.2 which the iPad is running has no multitasking at all and jailbreaking and installing Backgrounder enables total multitasking.

At first I discovered that it is certainly not all apps in Cydia – that is, all the homebrew apps – that are ready for iPad. It seems there are some differences between iPhones and iPads and those differences are the main culprit. But, so far the only thing I miss is support for a decent clipboard manager.

I also got some of the popular iPad apps to test it out and let me just tell you straight away, that some of them are really good. Here is a rundown of a few:

Angry Birds HD - the popular game from the iPhone, in full HD quality. It should make it any better to play, and no, looks aren’t everything, but the larger screen also allows for more precise aiming. And that is basically all you do in the game.

Flipboard - The strange newcomer that really shook up a few people. What Flipboard does is to take your Facebook account, Twitter and various RSS feeds and puts them into some sort of magazine look. You flip pages like you were reading a magazine, only it is simply your Facebook account, tweets or various rss feeds. On paper it sounds kinda silly and I didn’t really think it would work, but I must admit to have become somewhat addicted now, to this new format. The only drawback with Flipboard is the fact that it doesn’t take so many sources.

Pages - The iPad’s take on Word. In other words, a word processor. With full WYSIWYG. Does it work? Well actually, yes it does work. Quite well. Why? Mainly because of the much larger keyboad on the iPad. Especially in landscape mode. Sure, it is still a touchscreen and as such there is no tactile feedback when you type. But at least it can be made to make little clicking sounds. And with a bit of practise, it’s not really bad to type this way. This entire review was written on the iPad, so it can’t be half bad.

Pulse News - This is another news reader. It’s not as fancy as Flipboard, yet it still has a somewhat nice layout and supports more sources. And it can supply you with a larger overview of several news sources at once.

Any hidden object game - I like the occasional hidden object game and while they vary somewhat in quality, the ones optimized for iPad are generally quite good. The bigger screen makes for a more enjoyable game.

Uno - Yep, the classic card game for iPad. The larger screen makes it possible for up to four players to play on the same screen. It may sound silly, but it works really well.

Browsing the web. In particular with something like Atomic Web browser with it’s very convenient adblocker which, when you’ve gotten used to it from your desktop computer. Sure, there is no Flash support, but it really doesn’t take a lot of the experience away. I rarely miss it, if ever.

Streaming movies. It is certainly possible and with a program like Airvideo it works quite well. The bigger screen makes it more enjoyable and bearable than using an iPhone.

The actual hardware is also rather enjoyable. The iPad feels durable but I still recommend getting a screen protector and a case for it. The screen isn’t that prone to scratches, but it’s still nice to be on the safe side. The iPad looks and feel exclusive with its beautiful screen and aluminum casing. Too marks there. Simple, but stunning. The screen sensitivity is spot on. You can say a lot about Apple, but they do crank out the best touch screens around.

If you have already checked reviews of the iPad on the net, you might have read that it has really excellent battery life. For once, those claims aren’t just marketing ploys. The damn thing DOES have awesome battery life. 10-12 hours isn’t unheard of on mine. It just goes on and on (wish my iPhone 4 did that). When the battery IS drained, you will of course have to recharge it, and this is a situation that will differ from charging an iPod or iPhone. Those most of you would probably recharge via a computers USB port. That is also possible with the iPad – if your computer can deliver th 10 watt the iPad needs. None of mine did, but luckily, there is an adapter for USB to a mains charge. Charging it fully from scratch will take a few hours, but that isn’t so bad.

The standard 30-pin Apple port is placed in the bottom of the device, along with its fairly big speaker. You will not run a disco from this, but it’s okay.

I must say that the great user interface, the awesome batterylife, stylish design and the amazing screen really makes the iPad a winner. Sure, it’s not the best way to type out a novel on a touch screen, but for casual surfing, chatting, gaming, editing of documents etc., it’s really good.

It could be somewhat lighter (it weighs approx. 700 gram) and can be a bit tiring on the hand holding it, but other than that, I hardly have any complaints. Perhaps the price. It’s about 4.500 DKK and that’s if you buy it in Germany or the UK. You can’t even buy it in Denmark yet. The official Danish price will probably be 5.500-6.000 DKK.

This article started with me being afraid that this purchase was a mistake. Now I’m pretty sure – it wasn’t and isn’t. I really enjoy the iPad and most people who have tried it admits it’s really nice. Whether or not you should get one, is up to you. I AM somewhat of a gadget geek, but it is a quality product.

PROS:

Stylish and sleek design

Amazing and large-ish screen (9,7”)

Very responsive touch screen

Fast CPU

Hundreds of thousands of applications, many very good ones amongst them

Can be jailbroken

Awesome batterylife

Fast recharging

Easy and intuitive userinterface

No Flash support (=many ads gone!)

CONS:

Price

A bit heavy

Attracts fingerprints like crazy

iTunes-dependent

Recharging only from mains – or a computer with crazy USB power output!

No case included (at this price, at least a cheap one should have been)

No Flash support (=many videos/web games gone)

Rating: 9 out of 10

-Jacob