The Rocky Mountain News, a E.W. Scripps newspaper, is closing this week, just shy of its 150th anniversary. Here’s a bit from the paper’s own coverage:
Rich Boehne, chief executive officer of Scripps, broke the news to the Rocky staff at noon today, ending nearly three months of speculation over the paper’s future. He called the paper a victim of a terrible economy and an upheaval in the newspaper industry.
The New York Times paints a bleak picture as well:
From Engadget’s lengthy review of Amazon’s revamped Kindle e-book reader:
All in all, the hardware has been seriously streamlined, and the result is nothing short of gorgeous. Besides being evened out and pulled in, the Kindle 2 is also astonishingly thin – just 0.36-inches – which makes it a pleasure to carry, though we miss some of the bulk of the original for reading duties. It’s not a huge deal, but besides the frequent mis-tapping of buttons, we still feel the original more closely replicates the “book holding” experience. But ultimately, the question that will be nagging most people here is, “why didn’t they do this stuff the first time around?” and it’s a valid one. It’s amazing to consider how many (original) bad hardware choices have been overcome with this new design, but also somewhat vexing if you were an early adopter.
NASA and climate researchers are weighing their options after yesterday’s crash of a new satellite designed to monitor atmospheric carbon dioxide with unprecedented accuracy. A malfunction during the rocket ride toward space sent the Orbiting Carbon Observatory plummeting into the Indian Ocean near Antarctica.
“To say that it’s extremely disappointing would be an understatement. This was a really important science mission,” said a dismayed Edward J. Weiler, NASA’s associate administrator for science.
Macworld, on Apple’s annual shareholder meeting today:
With Jobs currently on medical leave until the end of June, the health of Apple’s CEO was very much on the minds of attendees at the shareholders’ meeting. In fact, it was the subject of the first thing asked when company executives opened the floor to shareholder questions. A shareholder asked whether Apple’s board of directors had kept investors in the dark about the status of Jobs’ health and inquired about a succession plan. Board member Arthur Levinson, who is also chairman and CEO of biotech firm Genentech, replied that the board disclaims information that it deems important and proper, and that it talks regularly about a succession plan.
I stumbled across this Time article from 1983, about Steve Jobs and his young company, Apple Computer. Here’s a bit about the origins of the Apple // computer:
“Steve didn’t do one circuit, design or piece of code,” says Wozniak, who was widely regarded as the true technological wizard in Jobs’ corporate Oz. “He’s not really been into computers, and to this day he has never gone through a computer manual. But it never crossed my mind to sell computers. It was Steve who said, ‘Let’s hold them up in the air and sell a few.’ ”
I’ve been a notebook user ever since my first Mac - a 1GHz Titanium PowerBook G4, until about 18 months ago, when I bought a 20-inch aluminum iMac as my main machine. It’s a beast of a computer, but I still need to be portable from time to time.
I’ve also always been a fan of smaller notebooks, but never used anything under 15-inches across, until I bought a 12-inch PowerBook a while back. I loved that machine, but I really wanted something small enough to toss in my bag and ride my bike somewhere without the weight of a PowerBook.
Apple has announced the beta of Safari 4 with lots of new features. Including one that seems to be borrowed from Google’s Chrome browser:
Thanks to Top Sites, you can enjoy a stunning, at-a-glance preview of your favorite websites without lifting a finger. Safari 4 Beta tracks the sites you browse and ranks your favorites, presenting up to 24 thumbnails on a single page. You can even customize the display by pinning a favorite site to a specific location in the grid. That locks it into position, so you know just where to find it every time you open Top Sites.
After leaving MobileMe, I learned about Foxmarks, which touted itself as a great way to sync Safari bookmarks across Macs, but I found it less than stable, especially on my work machine. So after some head scratching, I am now using my Dropbox account to sync Safari’s history and bookmarks across my Macs.
The process is actually very simple - just make sure Safari is closed before you start. Here’s how to do it:
In the world of podcasts, there are many choices, especially when it comes to shows centered around technology (and even more so centered on Apple technology), but very few of these podcasts would ever talk about the Macintosh Quadra 660AV, the Apple Lisa, or the Performa 5200.
That’s just one reason the RetroMacCast ( iTunes Link) stands out. Each week, James and John sit down and discuss Apple news, unique eBay auctions (like a pallet of Color Classics and PowerBook Duos), and the “Retro Mac of the Week.”
Macworld’s Jason Snell recently test-drove a MSI Wind running OS X. In his two pages of ponderings on the little notebook, Snell does something that I found surprising: comparing the Wind to Apple’s MacBook Air:
While the Wind is not a terrible laptop, it most definitely feels cheap. Apple’s Aluminum-clad laptops all feel solid, and even the white plastic MacBook feels sturdy. The Wind’s plastic skin feels thinner and more flexible, especially on the bottom—it feels more like what you’d find in a clock radio or other cheap consumer appliance.
U.S. Senator John Cornyn and Representative Lamar Smith, both Republicans from Texas, held a press conference Thursday to announce separate bills in the Senate and House of Representatives, both called the Internet Safety Act. Along with sections stipulating stiffer penalties for activities related to accessing child pornography on the Internet, the law would require Internet and e-mail service providers to retain “all records or other information” about anyone using a network address temporarily assigned by the service. The provision about retention would apply to any provider of “an electronic communication service or remote computing service,” as well as someone who receives the content and recipient list of e-mail messages that it “transmits, receives, or stores,” according to the text of the Senate bill.
I love retro computing, and I like well-done mods. RetroMacCast forum member option8 loves both, it seems. The hardware hacker has put a Mac mini inside a Apple Disk II case. Check out that link for photos.