At The IFA Con­sumer Elec­tronic trade show, TOMTOM and Garmin showed of their new nav­i­ga­tion sys­tems. The TOMTOM Go X40 Live series (940, 740 and 540). Al devices con­tain the HD-​Traffic (High Def­i­n­i­tion Traf­fic), which is being used for up-​to-​date traf­fic infor­ma­tion. More ser­vices like Google Maps inte­gra­tion (Finally!), fuel prices and a brand new user inter­face.
This years inno­va­tion came from Blaupunkt which will release the Trav­elPi­lot 700 and 500 with over­lay nav­i­ga­tion infor­ma­tion on real­time video (dope).

The new inter­face resem­bles (RIPP-​OFF) the Mac OS X icon style, coin­ci­dence? Nope because Ken McAlpine (a bril­liant prod­uct engi­neer) has joined TOMTOM as senior vice pres­i­dent prod­uct design. But again it’s just form over func­tion, it’s not how it looks STUPID it’s how it works! TOMTOM is just the best of the worst for me. So call­ing out Apple, make my iPhone a car nav­i­ga­tion system and put my TOMTOM out of his misery

As I promised ear­lier, I would write a review about TOMTOM. I have had the device now a couple of months, although I find the device the eas­i­est to use cur­rently avail­able in the indus­try, I have some real com­plaints, actu­ally I only have two. On the hard­ware side the bat­tery life, which is really shame­ful! I know I can charge the device with my cig­a­rette lighter but thats not really the point of a portable device. With modern Lithium-​Ion bat­ter­ies nowa­days you can expect bat­tery life of 5 hours or more. While it charges quickly, after less than two hours on the road the little bat­tery indi­ca­tor at the lower right would start to flash yellow… bugger. My second com­plaint is about the soft­ware, I would rather see TOMTOM write a native Cocoa appli­ca­tion, JAVA tech­nol­ogy is okay, but one way or an other, JAVA pro­gram­mers seem only to be able to pro­gram buggy and crappy pro­grams, that’s at least my expe­ri­ence. I have tried mul­ti­ple times using the TOMTOM Home soft­ware, it can brick your TOMTOM (the famous blink­ing red cross)! Luck­ily I had backed-​up my device so it wasn’t a prob­lem. I can repro­duce it every time. The soft­ware really sucks balls big time! SO should you buy a TOMTOM? I would say yes, it’s always right in find­ing my loca­tions, traf­fic infor­ma­tion, is really easy to use and when I buy a new car I don’t have to migrate or redo all my data or settings.

The World­wide Devel­oper Con­fer­ence 2008 had an unusual high atten­dance (52.000 atten­dees). CEO Steve Jobs announced a couple of inter­est­ing items during the event: Mac OS 10.6 (Snow Leop­ard), Mobile Me and of course the iPhone 3G. The ses­sion of Mac OS X 10.6 this after­noon will be cov­ered under non-​disclosure, so don’t expect any offi­cial fea­tures or announce­ments to be coming from Apple but as usual some infor­ma­tion is cer­tain to leak. The iPhone is finally coming to the Nether­lands, sorry you guys who’ve bought it recently on eBay. Again and again I’ll tell people the same mes­sage, it’s a devel­oper con­fer­ence not a con­sumer event. So for those who are dis­ap­pointed wait for the next event and you’ll be amazed!

MobileMe will hope­fully bring the long over­due upgrade to .Mac. Now I only have to wait until July 11 to buy myself an iPhone 3G.

When I bought my Mac­Book Pro I also bought myself a new back­pack or in this case a hard­pack.
Axio’s stan­dard dual zone com­part­ments with 4-panel orga­niz­ers can fit up to a 17″ Mac­Book Pro which remains secure in a fleece-​lined cocoon. With it’s urban styl­ish badges, unique con­trast zipper stitch­ing, head­phone pocket with exter­nal exit makes it extremely com­fort­able and appeal­ing eye-​candy. Here are some prod­uct highlights:

• Molded poly­car­bon­ate hardshell
• Over­sized padded shoul­der straps with phone pocket
• Ergonomic back panel with “sponge” foam for comfort
• Dual zone com­part­ments open­ing to 4 sep­a­rate panels
• Ded­i­cated padded laptop com­part­ment - fleeced lined
• Large exter­nal back zipper pocket for easy access
• Holds a 17” Mac­Book Pro and 15” note­books or smaller
• Styl­ish black chrome zipper pulls and badges
• Sporty con­trast zipper stitching

Apple’s iPhone SDK press con­fer­ence will be held at 10:00AM PT / 1:00PM ET

08:00AM - Hawaii
10:00AM - Pacific
11:00AM - Moun­tain
12:00PM - Cen­tral
01:00PM - East­ern
06:00PM - London
07:00PM - Ams­ter­dam
09:00PM - Moscow
03:00AM - Tokyo (March 7th)

As I men­tioned in an ear­lier post, I would be offer­ing a mobile ver­sion of this weblog. It’s been run­ning in beta form for a while now and I think it’s ready to be unleashed into dig­i­tal cyber­space. You can approach this opti­mized ver­sion with you iPod Touch or iPhone by enter­ing this URL in your browser: http://​mobile.​dig​i​tal​ren​dezvous.net and if you have the latest firmware 1.1.3 (4A93) and the Jan­u­ary upgrade for the iPod Touch, you’ll see the magic of Web Clip. So dig­i­tal­ren­dezvous | mobile is ready-​to-​go.

Apple has made an iPhone acces­sory, a Blue­tooth head­set. This was men­tioned ear­lier during the Keynote of Steve Jobs at Mac­world Expo. It’s cur­rently unknown when this is going to be released and how much its going to cost.