1. Beck – Modern Guilt
2. Coldplay – Viva la Vida
3. MGMT – Oracular Spectacular
4. TV on the Radio – Dear Science
5. Snow Patrol – A Hundred Million Suns
6. British Sea Power – Do You Like Rock Music?
7. The Verve – Forth
8. Bon Iver – For Emma,Forever Ago
9. Razorlight – Slipway Fires (UK-Version)
10. Keane -Perfect Symmetry

This list wasn’t easy to compile. Still it reflects my musical journey through 2008 quite well. And it is an honest list – some might rub their nose at Keane, but, please forgive, I really liked their album, which turned out to be a good listen when the office was buzzing with work. Beck’s new outing was as terrific as it was bleak and turned out to be one of my favourite listens closely followed by Coldplay’s great new Eno-produced album, which came out just before our wedding. Listening to Viva La Vida time warps me back to this wonderful time in Syl’s and my life.

As I limited myself to a Top 10 list, I had to leave some good albums out. Here are the other contenters:

• The Cure – 4:13 Dream
• R.E.M. Accelerate
• Jack Johnson – Sleep Through the Static
• Hot Chip – Made in the Dark (Std)
• Travis – Ode to J.Smith
• Lykke Li – Youth Novels
• Hercules and Love Affair – Hercules and Love Affair
• Sigur Ros – Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum End
• Godlfrapp – Seventh Tree
• Emiliana Torrini – Me and Armini

I surely have missed some great albums. Feel free to post your lists and albums which should definitely be on my list and in my iTunes. Thanks and Merry Christmas.

1. Quicksilver: QS, for me, is the ultimative application launcher. It builds upon the keyboard centered Mac approach and renders the mouse almost useless. With only two keystrokes I can launch any application I want without removing my hands from the keyboard. You can also search for docs, send them to applications or email them to an address stored in address book all in one go without clicking around and searching in folders. It boosts your workflow like a rocket and makes searching so much easier – especially when you are still on Tiger where spotlight is a stubborn beast. So check it out, it’s free.

2. Journler: Journler is my digital note book, my digital moleskine. I store almost any information in there: my daily memos, text snippets, domain lists, software licences and serials and all the different access codes to my costumer’s webservers. It has a powerful search feature that makes searching and finding really fast and easy. I also like the smart folders which organise your information autmatically according to the tags you applied to a piece of information. In addition you can add e-mails directly from Apple Mail, Adobe PDFs, Page or Word docs, jpg or png images and screenshots, urls and much more to your entries. Thus you can create information clouds that bring together all the information that is relevant to your entry. No more searching in different folders or opening multiple documents in order to get all you need. This is such a great way to organise your information that it makes office work a pastime. Check it out – it’s donation ware. However, I have purchased a licence for US$ 25,00 to support the project.

3. 1Password: I was a bit uncertain about this but after testing it for a while I have become a power user. 1Password stores all your sensitive information in a secure database protected by a master password. You do not have to remember your passwords, codes or other sensitive data any more. 1Password does that for you and protects it from inquisitive eyes. In addition, it creates really secure passwords and fills in forms automatically so that you do not have to go searching for or trying different passwords. This can be quite a nuisance, especially if you do not stick to one password – which, for security reasons, is recommended. 1Password has made my password universe much wider and I feel much more comfortable, now my mind can relax and does not have to think so hard any more to remember what kind of combination I chose for a particular account. There’s also a web based feature included which enables you to access your secure password database on different machines and OS. Well, worth its price of US$ 29,95.

4. OmniFocus: Based on David Allen’s Getting Things Done, omnigroup’s latest offspring is the ultimative task management application, built for different approaches to task management – not just David Allen’s. It is a flexible app teeming with a multitude of features, making task management really easy.
You can add tasks from everywhere using the Quick Entry feature but sometimes I still rely on making paper notes for urgent things that I have to jot down fast. Still it keeps your tasks together so that you can relax your mind, knowing that nothing will be forgotten. It’s nice to have a buddy like this. I purchased it during the sunrise period for about US$ 40,00. It is now US$ 79,95 – an unattractive price for an attractive application.

5. Scrivener: This is my favorite software to prepare my seminars, speeches and presentations. I am a structurist and Scrivener allows for structuring your material just like I have always dreamt of doing from a global to a very detailed perspective. It boasts a host of features like tagging, split document views, importing media, an integrated browser, tagging, keywords and so much more for US$ 39,90.

ITunes has made a backup of the data of your previous installation by way of the recovery mode. Back up the data and re-sync. You might have to re-install BSD Subsystem and then OpenSSH from Installer.app. If your dialer is crashing because you are in an unsupported country and you have problems with SMS, you must patch AppSupport.
As I said, the whole process is no big deal at all. My phone works like a charm – thanks, last not least, to the guys at ziphone.org and iClarified.com. And the phone really IS cool…

If you have bootloader 4.6., notice that this process downgrades your bootloader to 3.9. It works for firmware versions: 1.1.2, 1.1.3 and 1.1.4

Try it, John, it’s all there for you. You might even get your bricked phone working again…

After I had unpacked the phone and marvelled at its impeccable design, I realised that the American seller had not included the iTurbosim which was supposed to be used together with my Mobilkom-simcard in order to unlock it. So I had to find another solutions since I did not want to go argue with the Yanks, wait another fortnight or spend another 50 euros for a new next sim to unlock the phone.
So with the help of my friend, Alex, I found another solution: A method to unlock the phone with a patch, run with the installer.
When I was running the patch, Sylvia came to have a look at what I was doing and, having not seen her for the whole day, I listened to her account of a full and interesting seminar day which was properly finished with a yoga session. Unfortunately, I did not pay enough attention to the instructions so I crashed the phone. At first, it would not restart and I was devastated. I felt like crying. Reconnecting the phone with my PowerBook resurrected it. I managed to run the patch again and, hey, it recognised my Austrian sim card. Wow. I made my first call to Sylvia, who was already fast asleep, leaving a message on her voice mail. But still, I was not there, the dialler still crashed returning to the springboard when I tried to dial a number. I also couldn’t reach my iPhone with another telephone. So the search went on.
I came across IClarified.com, a website with a multitude of top iPhone tutorials, where I was able to take the next step. Still I had to overcome obstacles like sshing to my phone with Fugu – which I completely failed at – resorting to cyberduck, trying dozens of password combinations, and – after I had given up all hope – managing to connect to the phone and installing the necessary files. And still it wouldn’t work. I had to go another round. I had to run still another patch and after rebooting the phone, I couldn’t believe my ears. I really was able to make and receive phone calls from my beauty. Yes!!! I have been working for five hours now and, believe me, my eyes are heavy. Still, it’s good to have fixed my phone and a good feeling to have overcome all these obstacles. After all, this phone is pure indulgence. You wouldn’t go through so many glitches if you weren’t a little queer. But here it is, welcome one of the few iPhones in Austria!

It features 10 songs:

• 15 STEP
• BODYSNATCHERS
• NUDE
• WEIRD FISHES/ARPEGGI
• ALL I NEED
• FAUST ARP
• RECKONER
• HOUSE OF CARDS
• JIGSAW FALLING INTO PLACE
• VIDEOTAPE

The new album follows the avant-garde route the previous records have taken but, at first listen, appears more accessible than, for example, Kid A. Still it paints a bleak, desolate soundscape, interspersed by faster guitar tracks, which still cannot escape the melancholy.

Download the new album from: inrainbows.com

Congratulations to Ernst and Lisa. What a proposal! A big shout goes out, of course, to Barbara, without whom this would have never been possible. THANK YOU!