This morning, bright and early, I headed down to La Med in Clifton for the first Audi Run gathering for a Sunday morning Breakfast drive to Franschoek.

I started this little idea with the intention of starting up a social club with a group of folk in and around Cape Town who love driving, who love Audi and just want to hook up for a chat every now and again while taking a Sho’t Left to check out some of South Africas sights.

I was joined by

Chris M of iMod and his fiance’ in a 2010 Audi A3 1.8T with the personalised plate “SEO GURU-WP”. (His plate doesn’t lie… he is the guru when it comes to SEO in SA).

The Perel brothers, otherwise known as obox and MarcPerel, the brainchildren behind “From the Couch” the vlog rocked up in a Audi A3 B7 2.0 model. They are more famous for having beaten me in last years Blog Awards in the “Best New Blog” category.

We hit the road around 9am and headed north on an absolutely awesome drive. It was the perfect distance to enjoy the scenery, enjoy the drive and have fun driving without getting bored. It’s also a really great road with some cool swooping turns, a few bumps and crests to keep the drivers entertained and highly recommend that you check it out sometime.

Breakfast was cool. We settled in a quiet but complicated little restaurant and chilled for a few hours. The company was great and it was exactly the kind of vibe that I was hoping for. Just a group of us chilling without worry about work, talking about projects or any of those pretentious things that get brought up at the usual social gatherings in Cape Town.

I had fun and I’m definitely going to be organising a follow up.

Chris – your car is sweet dude. Enjoy it buddy, I know how hard you worked for it and be proud at the fact that its yours and not a gift or something that came easy!

The Perel boys – It was gangsta gents. You guys are real and I love the humility. Your business rocks already, but stay true to yourselves and you guys will be champs one day. #TrueStory

if you are keen to join us on our next trip, be sure to join the Audi Run Facebook group, its open to anyone. We think that once every two months or so would be a nice way to set up the regular gatherings and keep it casual.

Nokia has recently announced that it will give away Ovi Maps with turn by turn voice navigation free to all of its devices enabled with GPS units. Sadly, it could launch the Ovi Maps 3.0.3 for the Nokia N97 when it launched it for the rest of the mobile giant’s lineup due to memory space issues on the C:/.

A Nokia representative then announced on the forum that the Ovi Maps Free versions will be available to Nokia N97 and N97 Mini users after the release of the latest firmware for v21. After much anticipation for the latest firmware which was expected today, Nokia has made available Ovi Maps for the N97 and subsequently delayed the release if the new firmware. #uncool, but honestly, it doesn’t matter because now all 79 countries maps are available to me free of charge on my Nokia N97.

Follow these instructions to install Ovi Maps 3.0.3 for the Nokia N97:

Select Applications from the Main Menu

Select SW Update

Ovi Maps – with free navigation will be in the menu list

Select Options > Download

Upon completion of installation, I recommend that you restart the phone.

I have just started playing golf and have spent the last 2 months at the driving range learning.

I was just sent this pic by @igsaan to highlight what a set of golf clubs mean to an angry wife, much like the Tiger Woods issues!

On the back of the Apple iPad launch yesterday, this is a parody TV ad that has surfaced on the web.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsjU0K8QPhs[/youtube]

We all know that Twitter generates an insanely massive amount of data and just in case you had the urge to print it all, you might wanna read some of the interesting bits below first. Thats just in case you actually DO want to print all of Twitter, of course!

Still want to print Twitter? Let me know if you plan to, just so that I can stand around laughing at you while you do!

I would like to express my opinion on a topic that has bothered me for a little while now, but has become more of an annoyance to me as my love for tea has grown.

My problem is a simple one but a relevant one and I am sure that many share my frustration.

Invented in 1922 by a dude named Arthur Leslie Large (yup, that’s his real name), the electric kettle has become a critical household appliance in millions of homes the world over.

If you would like a lesson on the history of the kettle check out some of the facts of the electric kettle, but I want to highlight the blatant stupidity of the electric kettle in this article.

Why does the electric kettle not have multiple temperature settings?

It’s a simple feature and is already popular on toasters, so why is it not available on the kettle? How many times have you attempted to make tea, only to find that you have to wait 15 minutes for the water to cool before you can drink it without burning your tongue, throat and everything else between your lips are your hips?

The electric kettle is 88yrs old already and is it genuinely possible that no-one at any of the electric kettle manufacturing companies have not thought of adding this simple feature to the most unintelligent appliance that we all own?

Imagine the convenience of being able to drink a nice cup of tea, when you actually want the cup of tea and not wait 15 minutes after you actually want the tea!

So there ladies and gentlemen, the dumbest home appliance: the electric kettle!

The controversial Audi A5 suicide advert has been doing the rounds online. I think that it’s a brilliant advert that highlights the new Clean Diesel engines that are good for the environment. Audi has a reputation of really good adverts and I have featured some here before.

Sadly though, Audi has come out disowning the advert and denying the validity of he advert as an Audi initiative. In their defense, the advert does stand out like pink hair when you consider that legacy Audi adverts are always very clinical and portray clean and tidy concepts. #JustSaying!

Check out the Audi A5 Suicide advert:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlVoX-04SLQ&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

Do you think that this really is an Audi advert?

I became a Mac fan boy very recently and the theory of “Once you go Mac, you won’t go back!” is very clear to me now. I am totally in love with my MacBook Pro Unibody. When I got my Magic Mouse, I was blown away with its sheer design elegance and loved the idea of a touch interface on a mouse.

Sadly though, Apple screwed up with the settings of the Magic Mouse, its very slow and not very intuitive in terms of customisable settings. I have since been using an application called BetterTouchTool as recommended to me on Twitter and I was slightly more impressed with swipe customisation on the Magic Mouse.

I have just come across an app called MagicPrefs, which unleashes the Magic Mouse to its full potential and allows for seamingly endless customisation of two, three and four finger swipes, taps and scrolls. The mouse is now completely amazing and I am going to have a real hard time using any other mouse now.

My favourite is settings are the ability to increase the track speed and the ability to add applications to specific click types.

The UI for the preferences is really cool with LIVE CUSTOMISATION tweaking allowed, which basically allows you to view your swipes or taps on screen as you assign it a function.

The application will show up in the System Preferences window as shown below

The Top menu icon and menu is very handy as well and has quite a few intuitive settings that are easy to get to.

The application is ery lightweight and the install file is only 1.2MB including the installer and you can  download MagicPrefs from the webpage on Apple’s site.

I highly recommend this application for all Magic Mouse users!

My love for Nokia’s is very evident on my blog and I often find myself in the middle of iPhone vs BlackBerry vs Nokia arguments, and many times I win those arguments. I’m also fairly concerned for the environment and ever since IslandChic got involved in Carbon Emissions Trading and the Kyoto policy, I have taken an interest as well and did quite a bit of reading up on the matter.

I’m no saint though, I drive to work in a 2.0litre engined car, I could do a million things to reduce my carbon footprint, but I do

• unplug devices that are not in use
• once fully charged, remove teh cellphone charger,
• shower instead of bath
• have the car cleaned using a bucket and not a hosepipe
• switch unnecessary lights off, etc

My point is, that even though I am concious about the impact of global warming and I do constantly remind myself of my contribution to the problem, I do not do nearly enough to help.

The guys at Nokia have been helping though. For many years now, Nokia has been actively pursueing green technologies and methods of reducing the problem. Nokia handsets are now free of PVC, lead, mercury, cadmium, hexavalent chromium, Polybrominated Biphenyls (PBB) and Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers (PBDE).

2/3rds of the energy used by a mobile phone is that which is consumed while the mobile phone is fully charged, but remains plugged into a charger. Nokia has realised this and have introduces “No Load” chargers, which ultimately switches the charger off once the phone is fully charged. I have also noticed that on my N97, when the phone is fully charged, or when I remove the charger or USB cable from the device, a reminder message is displayed encouraging users to unplug the charger.

All very subtle changes to the user, but the massive impact it could have when considering that there are almost 2 billion Nokia’s in circulation is quite impressive.

Check out the phone below that uses sugary liquid to power the device. In the images, the device is powered with Coke and a single topup of Coke is said to last 3 to 4 times longer than a single charge of a normal battery. I have included the original article text below the pics as well.

How cool is this?

A green phone for Nokia

This is the client project for designing an eco friendly phone for Nokia. Through my research, I found that phone battery as a power source, it is expensive, consuming valuable resources on manufacturing, presenting a disposal problem and harmful to the environment.  The concept is using bio battery to replace the traditional battery to create a pollution free environment. Bio battery is an ecologically friendly energy generates electricity from carbohydrates (currently sugar) and utilizes enzymes as the catalyst. By using bio battery as the power source of the phone, it only needs a pack of sugary drink and it generates water and oxygen while the battery dies out. Bio battery has the potential to operate three to four times longer on a single charge than conventional lithium batteries and it could be fully biodegradable. Meanwhile, it brings a whole new perception to batteries and afternoon tea.

Check out Nokia’s Enviroment portal for more info on Nokia’s projects.

It looks like Microsoft is going to be bringing Xbox Live to the Windows Mobile platform in the near future. One of the better and more reliable sources for what is coming for Microsoft’s mobile platform is Microsoft’s own job postings. They are looking for a program manager and software test engineer for the project.

MobileTechWorld has the details of the two job postings. The first is for a “Principal Program Manager.” The key sentence in that posting is:

“We need a Principle Program Manager who can help drive the platform and bring Xbox LIVE enabled games to Windows Mobile. This person will focus specifically on what makes gaming experiences “LIVE Enabled” through aspects such as avatar integration, social interactions, and multi-screen experiences.”

For the software test engineer, they describe it as “The focus area of this team is our full end-to-end gaming experience, and it’s our teams challenge to ensure the highest level of quality and fun in all aspects of that experience.”

Microsoft has already integrated gamertags from Xbox Live with Zune IDs and now it looks like they are bringing Windows Mobile into the fold. That may also be a stepping stone to getting Zune bits on Windows Mobile, something that has been long rumored.

My guess is this is something for WinMo 8 or perhaps a “Second Edition” of WinMo 7. WinMo 7 is due to ship this year and the OS should be fully baked by the end of Q1, or perhaps a month or two after that, but not any later. It should be in consumer’s hands by Q4 2010. That means any projects being hired for now will be in the next version at the earliest.

I’ll be interested to see how they plan to integrate the two. Having avatar integration and social interactions is nice, but isn’t really a killer feature. The multi-screen integration could be interesting. Could you be playing Halo and using your phone as a tracking system or some other instrument panel? We’ll have to wait and see. If you are really curious, apply for the jobs. Who knows? You could get paid to sit all day long and play with an Xbox 360 and a super-secret build of Windows Mobile with Xbox Live integration.