Today, I've received an email from Apple telling me that my MacBook Pro has been shipped.

I've ordered the 2.8 GHz Core 2 Duo model October, 21st so it took Apple some 10 days from order intake to shipping. When I gave their carrier (UPS) a call to ask for a precise delivery date they told me that the package originates in China and it would take some four days to Germany. So I'm looking forward to next Monday.

More generally a total time frame of two weeks from order to shipping is pretty long in my personal perception for a consumer electronics device. In light of rumored MacBook Pro shortages I'm still happy that it takes them only two weeks to get it out to me. Interestingly enough they've started shipping directly from their factories to their customers.

I'll keep you posted. You won't hear from me on Monday, though. :-)

A good friend over at d2 pointed me to the following extraordinary super talented young guitar player. I simply had to share it:

"Hi, I’m Sungha Jung from South Korea.

My dream is to become a professional acoustic fingerstyle guitarist. I had been watching my dad play the guitar for awhile before I finally jumped on it myself two years ago. I just turned eleven in September, 2007. Currently, I am taking weekly classical guitar lessons and teaching myself fingerstyle guitar. I used to not have tabs for the music that I played in my videos. I just listen and pick them up directly from the sound source in videos available on the internet.

However, recently, I have started playing with original tabs whenever they are available to me by courtesy of the authors. My guitar is custom made to fit my body size, and on it, Thomas Leeb wrote “Keep on grooving to my friend.” I’m very grateful to those prominent guitarists who have had a great influence on my guitar playing.

I’ll continue to study them and learn more about interpretation of music and various playing techniques. My daily practice routine lasts for one to two hours when school is open, but I play up to three hours a day during the school breaks. It usually takes me two to three days to practice and videotape a new piece but sometimes up to a week for more difficult ones.

Last, but certainly not least, I can’t thank Ulli Bögershausen enough for being my musical inspiration.”

The folks at Apple have just finished their review of the fully reworked TAXIRUF version 2.0. The application is about to hit the App Store within a few hours now.

As usual you'll find all the (German) details here. If you want to grab a copy for your iPhone please follow this link.

I've heard scattered rumors :-) that TAXIRUF 2.0 is about to hit the App Store and it'll feature a fully reworked user interface along with full text search and streamlined automated updates.

Stay tuned!

I'm back.

Two weeks in Africa left me with overwhelmingly diverse impressions and emotions. An ideal climate, a long and gentle seacoast, Tunisia, the northernmost country of Africa has for over 3000 years witnessed the passage of Phoenicians, Romans, Vandals, Byzantines, Turks, Spanish and French. They came as fugitive s or adventurers, to conquer or to claim, warriors and missionaries, traders and farmers each leaving a part of their story in stone or mosaics, on hills of Carthage and the threshold of the Sahara.

Experiencing the Arabic culture has been a disruptive and very valuable experience for me. With a Human Development Index of 71 (my home country ranks 14) Tunisia is an extremely poor country, however, the people I've met were unbelievably friendly and all passionate to service. In fact I've rarely experienced such a consistent, honest and unpretentious hospitality at all and I've been to many places considered "leading hotels of the world".

During our stay in Tunisia my wife and I successfully earned our Golf License (in Germany so called "Platzreifeprüfung"). We went through an intensive course with PGA Tour Member and Golf Pro Fethi Mhadhbi with whom we had the pleasure to spend lots of time in one-on-ones and finally played the great Hammamet Golf course.

Usually Fethi trains groups of 6-8 people but we were lucky enough to be the only ones who had booked his course at that specific time so we had 100% of our Pro's attention for the entire time of the course. Fethi not only taught us the concept, theory, history, passion and practice of Golf but also provided us with a rich and very personal insight into the Arabic culture seen through the eyes of a world class player who had travelled the globe before.

Usually when my vacation nears its ending I'm looking very much forward to getting home. This time it has been different. I'd not say I could have stayed forever. But I definitely want to return to Africa and getting to know so much more about the Arabic culture and a country which has suffered so much during our decade. Tunisia and specifically the people of Tunisia made a huge difference to my wife and me.

We'll definitely return to Africa early next year.

Yesterday we've released the updated version 1.1 of Taxiruf for the iPhone. Today it entered the Top 10 sold applications in App Store and less than two weeks after the initial release now ranges on rank 10.

Mac Life recommends Taxiruf as one of the must have applications for your iPhone. Besides the joy of having the leading German Apple mag recommending our solution we are also extremely pleased by the fact that Mac Life considers our technical support services as outstanding.

We are continuing to invest into completing the database which ships with the application in order to also cover smaller cities and villages. We've also received a tremendous amount of great feedback and are currently in the process of deciding which feature requests we are gong to address in version 2.0.

Version 2.0 will be a free update for all existing customers and a simple download via App Store.

One of the most demanded features - and one which we are definitely going to release with version 2.0 - is the capability to select from multiple numbers for a given location. Currently TAXIRUF connects you directly with the cab company nearest to you. In version 2.0 we are introducing an option to preview all possible entries and select the one you want to dial.

We're also going to streamline the process of notifying us about missing or false entries. Currently we kindly ask you to drop us an email. Version 2.0 will automatically let us know in case a search yielded no results (you've got to actively opt-in for this feature). We believe this will help us to dramatically improve the quality of our database in less time.

Last but not least we are shortly going to release the next great iPhone application which will be a world wide release. Stay tuned for news and thanks for being our customers.