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.
Fraser Speirs is the developer for the wonderful FlickrExport tools for iPhoto and Aperture (I use the Aperture plugin every day) and Darkslide, an iPhone app that allows an excellent Flickr experience on the handheld.
When Apple announce iPhoto 09 was going to have a built-in Flickr exporter, I was worried. Often times, when Apple “adopts” a technology that was available as a 3rd party add-on, usually that 3rd party add-on goes away, but Fraser Speirs’ own look at iPhoto ‘09 may prove that sometime the 3rd party guys get it right:
A hilarious interview on The Daily Show with Neil DeGrasse Tyson who wrote a book called The Pluto Files:
Dear CNET, you are why my iMac is now all slimy:
The museum building, designed by Roman Delugan from Delugan Meissl Associated Architects in Vienna, Austria, touches the ground at only three points and so appears to be floating.
With the advent of iPhone 2.0, Apple’s App Store has made it easy for users to find, purchase, and install software on their iPhone anywhere - adding programs is no longer dependent on a “host computer.” Macworld’s Ryan Faas ponders what could be next for the App Store:
Since netbooks essentially fit in between a smart phone and a full-featured computer, they’re a logical step for App Store-style software distribution. In fact, many of the constraints on netbooks and smart phones are the same: small screen size, limited memory and processing capabilities, and restricted storage for the applications themselves. Since many netbooks are designed to be easy to use and carry and often serve as a second computer, making app installation simple is an excellent idea.
Back in June, Apple showed off its solution to the problem of iPhone apps not being able to run in the background - push notifications. Basically, Apple would relay updates from the Cloud and push them to the phone. The most obvious winners would be apps like AIM. Now, if I close the app, I have no way of knowing if someone tried to contact me via AIM unless I go open the app. The notification system would be able to update my iPhone - even with the app closed - and tell me that someone needed my attention.
At this year’s Macworld event, iDVD got no mention when marketing chief Phil Schiller took the wraps off iLife ’09. Even the iLife banners at the event excluded any mention of the product. Since then, Apple has issued two press releases on iLife ’09, and in both cases iDVD was relegated to one-off mentions as software capable of “creating DVDs.” Similarly, references to the software on the company’s iLife product page are anything but standout.
I’ve always been a heavy-duty user of both iCal and Address Book. If something doesn’t get entered, it doesn’t happen. I put my wedding in iCal, for crying out loud - complete with an Event Reminder that morning (in case the hangover I would earn at my bachelor party was enough to erase my mind).
In college, I was a Newton user. It synced with iCal and Address Book very well, most of the time. I also used .Mac (sounds retro now) for email and backing up my contacts and calendars to my iDisk. After the Newton, I used a Treo in the 8 months leading up the iPhone launch. The Treo ran the now-defunct Palm OS on a Palm Treo 680. It synced with my Mac using mark/space’s Missing Sync software - again with .Mac in use for email and backups.
I took a photo this morning from my bathroom and played with it in Photoshop to make it all look tiny:
![Snowy Village [028/365; 01/28/2009]](http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3351/3234172390_08ebf014d3_b.jpg)
Macworld dug this up:
Instead of typing instructions, the user rolls the mouse on a desktop. As it moves, the cursor - an arrow that points to specific points on the screen - moves accordingly. The user can give instructions by pointing the mouse to pictures on the screen, such as a file cabinet or wastepaper basket. Or, by using a graphics package called MacPaint, he can draw his own creations.
A friend of mine reminded me of the Lynx text web browser tonight. Here’s a blurb from the download page:
Lynx has become quite popular as a “Universal Access” web browser for the Visually handicapped. Though Lynx is limited as it does not support JavaScript. Lynx was originally developed at the University of Kansas. In 1995 Lynx 2.4.2 was released under the GNU Public License by UKansas, since then it has been maintained and extended by a group of volunteers. This is the latest version, and has been compiled into an OS X package.