Douglas Bowman, on the new buttons inside Gmail and Google Reader:
The buttons are designed to look very similar to basic HTML input buttons. But they can handle multiple interactions with one basic design. The buttons we’re using are imageless, and they’re created entirely using HTML and CSS, plus some JavaScript to manage the behavior.
It’s a lengthy read, but it provides a fascinating look into the care these guys put into simple buttons.
I’ve been a .Mac/MobileMe customer for 6 years… all the way back when Homepage was the most bad-ass thing I’d ever used. In fact, Homepage is what brought me into the .Mac fold. Since then, a lot has changed with the service - what I need out of it. For years, I used Homepage and Backup - that was it. The online portion - email and contacts - was nice to have, but I didn’t rely on it. In addition, I was a one-Mac man: my trusty old Titanium PowerBook was my only machine.
The New York Times describes Fusion-io, a start-up Steve Wozniak has joined:
The company relies on high-speed flash memory, commonly used to store data on an iPod or digital camera. Fusion-io takes many flash chips and packs them together on a module that is a bit bigger than a deck of cards. The module slides into certain slots inside servers. That gives the main computing chip quick access to data stored on the flash chips. In traditional systems, servers must hunt for data on separate storage systems linked to the processor by a slower connection.
In an interview at a New York City event Tuesday to mark the extension of Microsoft’s collaboration with EMC to help IT pros improve virtualization, security and content management, Ballmer touched on the progress of Windows 7, stressing that its faster performance, longer battery life and simplified security settings will be “a pretty good step forward in terms of what users care about.”
For these reasons and others, Ballmer warns, enterprises that stick with Windows XP too long they will hear about it from impatient users who have been using newer computers running Vista and Windows 7 at home.
Broadcasters now have until June 12 to turn off their analog signals, although they can do so anytime after Feb. 17 if they choose to. Many broadcasters already air a digital signal as well as an analog signal. Once analog signals cut off, consumers with older analog TV sets that receive over-the-air broadcasts with an antenna will need to buy a digital TV set or install a converter box to keep getting signals.
CNET has a piece pointing out several applications designed to help guys… uhh… track the cycles in the lives of the women around them. Really. Here’s a sample:
PMS Buddy, due to launch for the iPhone this week, has been available as a free service for nine months. The site’s tagline is “Saving relationships, one month at a time.”
[…]
Take the competing app PMSTracker. “Tired of your wife/girlfriend/sister/mom/secretary biting your head off unexpectedly once a month?” the app summary on iTunes asks prospective buyers. Another one, called uPMS, markets itself as “an application for all guys out there suffering the monthly Psychotic Mood Shifts from their better halves.”
Still, taking all tests into account, you could conclude that the MSI Wind is on a pretty level playing field with a 4-year-old Apple laptop packing a PowerPC processor. Is that some great feat? I’m not sure. Is it interesting? Yeah, it’s kind of interesting, especially if you were considering a used iBook to save some cash.
This answers one of the biggest questions that comes to mind when I think about putting OS X on my new HP Mini 1000. It’s currently running Ubuntu, and runs like a dream.
Damien Stolarz details how he stuffed two 500GB drives inside his MacBook Pro with one of these. I love his honesty about the rig:
A smart thing to do would have been either:
Make a RAID mirror of the two drives. I would only have 500GB of storage total, but my chance of data loss would be far less with a backup drive.
Leave the drives separate. I’d have 500GB + 500GB, and I could even back up critical data using Time Machine.
CNN:
When to quit – said Kamen, also the inventor of health care technologies and the Slingshot water purifier – is “the toughest question there is” for any entrepreneur who survives on creativity and instinct.
“It’s not nearly as glamorous as people think to keep working on something and to keep hitting roadblocks and to keep going,” he said.
Jon Armstrong of Blurbomat (he’s married to Heather of Dooce), has posted this jaw-dropping screenshot of his Mac Pro working way too hard. The culprit? Adobe Flash.
Out of a Rolling Stone interview in 2003:
The most corrosive piece of technology that I’ve ever seen is called television – but then, again, television, at its best, is magnificent. Because the average American watches five hours a day of television, and television is a passive medium. Television doesn’t turn your brain on. Or, television can be used to turn your brain off, and that’s what it’s mostly used for. And that’s a wonderful thing sometimes – but not for five hours a day.
Starring the Computer is a site dedicated to pointing out computers in TV shows and movies. Pretty fun to click through.