If you haven’t been checking out the “Random Bits” part hanging out over there on the right side of my blog lately, you might have missed the pointer to Wednesday’s column written by Mark Morford of the San Francisco Chronicle, entitled “What’s On Jesus’ iPod?”. If you missed it, go read his column and come back. No worries, I’ll wait.
As of writing this post, there’s still quite a few hours to go before you’re able to go out and get Tiger, so here are a couple of great reviews to whet your appetite: Macintouch review and Ars Technica review
Brent has pointed to an interesting new little technology that’s being proposed called Neutrino, mentioning that he plans on supporting it in an upcoming release of NetNewsWire. Neutrino is one feed (a la RSS) that points back to everything an individual sends out into the ether: their blog, a Flickr account, whatever. The idea is that you subscribe to the person, as opposed to having hunt down disparate parts that they happen to put out there. Having been a fan of email forwarding services since my Bates days (Got enough of your ISP? No problem - just change the settings with your email forwarder to forward your email to your new ISP email!), I’m really intrigued to see this happen.
Of course, I just have just this blog, so it’s not like I have a huge need for something to package the different things together. Speaking of which, I’m still having a hard time wrapping my mind around why Flickr is such a boon. I used to use the original online photo services Ofoto (erm, before Kodak bought them and renamed them Kodak EasyShare Gallery - the latter of which I just discovered) and Shutterfly, but have long since abandoned them. I know it has its fans - Sean, Jess & Basil, for instance. I mean, I get that it’s a place to display your photos, but unless you’re using a restrictive blogging service, you can do that on your own site anyways. Heck, if you have iPhoto, it gets even easier. From what I can tell, the unique feature would be the Notes & Tags feature which looks admittedly very cool. I dunno - am I missing something here?
Of course, I suppose I should just sign up and try it out since it’s free…
Interesting article over at the Washington Post, For Some, Thumb Pain is BlackBerry’s Stain. While this certainly doesn’t surprise me, I am somewhat aghast at the volume of email some of these people have banged out on these things. Chill people!
Seemingly out of nowhere, You Software finally released You Control: Desktops v1.0, completely bypassing a second beta round as originally planned. While I can’t say that it was the smoothest beta experience I ever had (You’s representatives had gone completely incommunicado for a good portion of the beta period), I have to give these guys kudos again (1, 2): They issued everyone who played with the beta a free serial number for 1.0.
It was totally unexpected and such a pleasant surprise. I had full intention to buy it, so now I need to decide on another product of theirs to spend my money on…
John Gruber over at Daring Fireball has posted an excellent, hilarious and yet insightful translation of Adobe’s FAQ about the Macromedia buyout.
Even with my being a recovering Roman Catholic (or maybe because of that), I’ve been quietly curious about who the next pope would be. I don’t think my religious history was the stronger instigator of my interest, rather the recognition of what weight the leader of a major religion carries in the world today (note Jeremy’s latest post about the interference Ratzinger tried to run during the election). Since the announcement of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger’s election, I’ve been poking around on the web for honest reactions as I don’t know a thing about him (as opposed to the celebratory-for-the-sake-of-being-celebratory response that I’m sure has been dominating this last extension of the media’s pope-a-thon). I, like many others, was hoping for a return to the open-mindedness that was nowhere to be found under the reign of John Paul II.
Salon has a great interview with Brian Schweitzer, the Democratic governor of Montana. Uncomplicated, straight-forward guy speaking the obvious truths that those of us are waiting to hear from the party. Go read it.
One thing that has always struck me as rather strange is that larger outdoor industry companies sometimes are hypocritical when it comes to choosing more environmentally-conscious ways of doing things. You really have to look at the smaller upstarts to find products made with recycled and/or reused materials, fairer business models and intriguing new ways of doing things (Patagonia, still under the commendable guidance of its founder, Yvon Chouinard, would be the big exception to this rule).
Chalk up another exception: Black Diamond Equipment (or, BD). If you’re not a climber or a tele skier, you might not recognize the name, but Yvon’s original company (yup, same Yvon - before it rose again from being sued into the ground back in the day before legal disclaimers, the company was originally Chouinard Equipment) is a very well-respected leader within the industry. I just caught wind of a press release today that announced that BD will be installing solar panels on the roof of their single retail store by their headquarters in Salt Lake City.
BD has always been cool. Unlike the overwhelming trend of outdoor companies choosing to ignore their founders (or even rewriting their history), BD doesn’t shy away from where they come from (in fact, the “c” in their logo is a hat-tip to their roots). Peter Metcalf, the CEO of BD, led the charge against then-governor of Utah (now, scarily, the Secretary of Health & Human Services after a terrifying run as head of the EPA), Mike Leavitt when Leavitt agreed to open up protected land in Utah. The outdoor industry eventually rallied around Metcalf, leveraging their expiring contract with Salt Lake City for the biannual tradeshow. They were successful in the end, but I think that had more to do with Governor Olene Walker, who replaced Leavitt when he was picked by Dubya to head up the EPA.
Just a little tip for those Saft users out there who haven’t upgraded to 10.3.9 yet: Download the latest version of Saft before launching the new 10.3 version of Safari that comes with the latest update. The older version of Saft is incompatible.
So if you have an interest in computers, I’m sure you’ve already heard by now that Adobe has a $3.4B all stock offer on the table for Macromedia. Conversations have already started as to whether this is a good thing or a bad thing.
To be quite honest, I’m not quite sure how to feel about this. After all, Macromedia has long since focussed on the web space and away from traditional publishing software for quite a while now, Freehand possibly being the only exception to that rule) - heck, when was the last time they updated Fontographer (I’m actually surprised they acknowledge its existence on their website)? Given that, there’s pretty minimal overlap in the markets both companies serve - Dreamweaver and Freehand are the only ones I can think of.
So, while I had a similar reaction to the news as Brent (”Uh-oh… Monopoly anyone?”), the reality of it is that Adobe’s been a monopoly for a while anyways. Yeah, there’s Corel’s Painter and Quark supposedly giving them a run for their money, but I’m thinking it’s more of a brisk walk.
I don’t think there will be any regulatory issues, although this means there’s zero competition in heavy-hitter web development tools. I certainly hope this doesn’t mean the end of Dreamweaver, but who’s to say? It should be interesting to see if this spurs any sort of life out of Corel or Quark (or some as-unyet-recognized new player).
Update (4/19): More insight into the proposed buyout…
Pardon the smarminess, but while I’m exceptionally entertained by the headline given Apple’s recent announcement on the launch of Tiger, I’m a little disappointed in the complete lack in mentioning this most likely being the very reason behind Microsoft’s actions: Microsoft in PR Push for Longhorn
Really? Is the reason really because they’re trying to build interest before WinHEC? Yeah, there’s always an element of that. Or is it more likely that Apple just days ago setting the date for the launch of Tiger - an operating system about which you cannot read one article without a comparison to Longhorn and its never-ending delays - is what really prompted the push?
Of course, they can always use the 1983 “Teen Beat” photo-spread of Bill Gates that had resurfaced a few months ago to add something new to the non-news that constitutes this new PR push. Or, given the Mac sitting in the background of his office, maybe not.
Curious since 1974. Chronicling it here since 2004.
