Posted by cascadehush on January 21, 2007
Google Trends: iphone
As of this writing, most people searching for the word iPhone on Google are from Greece. Or at least that’s what the graph looks like. I’m not sure what statistical methodology is used, it it’s some kind of pro-rata, per population thing… But that’s not the point.
Does Greece have terrible mobile phones?
Does no-one in Greece know how to get to the Apple site?
Has the Greek press given Apple particularly high-profile coverage but lacking in detail?
Are the Greek simply tech-savvy riders of the bleeding edge?
Or are there a lot of retired mobsters sitting on their yachts in the Adriatic with nothing better to do than search google for new ways to spend their ill-gotten gains?
Who knows.
I just thought it was a bit weird.
(Should there be any Greeks reading this, i’d appreciate any local insight you might have.)
Posted in Hardware, Opinion, Rant, iPod | Leave a Comment »
Posted by cascadehush on January 19, 2007
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Would be nice if they’d use proper title text for their web pages.
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“If you are still struggling with choosing your first lens, or just trying to make the right decision, while faced with many choices, this article should help.”
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Posted by cascadehush on January 19, 2007
Why The iPhone Won’t Make Apple A Player In Business IT – News by InformationWeek:
Whether IT departments embrace the iPhone or not, some employees will walk in the door with them.
And that’s the key point, and it alone negates the title premise of the article.
One of the key reasons Windows slammed OS/2 was that people were using it at home, on their own computers, and were going to work and complaining about the clunky DOS or Unix based systems they were forced to use at work. Windows was gaining market share in the home whilst IBM was trying to introduce OS/2 to businesses. In the end Windows won because people knew about it, recognised it and could use it. All this acted to move businesses to Windows despite the fact that OS/2 was technically superior.
Now I’m not saying businesses will be knocking down Apple’s door any time soon to kit out their staff with iPhones. But if Apple play their cards right, eventually pressure will build and employees could start demanding something a lot better than the dreadful phones they are currently being forced to live with. And unlike the OS/2 vs Windows competition, the iPhone will be both technically superior and have the features real people want, and that will be hard to beat.
The only thing standing in the iPhone’s way is the cost. I suspect that we’ll see the iPhone become part of many employees salary package.
Posted in Opinion, iPod | Leave a Comment »
Posted by cascadehush on January 18, 2007
Posted in Opinion | Leave a Comment »
Posted by cascadehush on January 18, 2007
Screenshots of Office 2008 for Mac – The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW):
Check out the gallery for a look at some cool new features in Office 2008.
Well, I must say this looks horrible.
I’ve seen screenshots of the PC version, and whilst I doubt I’ll like the new version, I can at least see why they are doing what they are doing.
But based on these Mac screenshots, it looks like Office 2008 will be a total mess.
What I find most appalling is that they have retained the formatting palette – an awful abomination of user interface design which one can never find a comfortable home for, which just sucks screen real-estate whilst forcing you to continually re-locate it in order to see what you are trying to work on.
One can only hope for the death of the modern word-processor which thinks it’s a desktop publisher and diminishes productivity by focusing on flair and form over content and structure.
Meanwhile Microsoft are trying to kill more trees by herding spreadsheet users into a paradigm of creating spreadsheets specifically designed for printing. Yes I know this began in Office 2004, but it does look like they have pushed things even more in this frightening direction. If ever there was a document that should live in electronic form, surely it is the spreadsheet.
Office 2004 never looked so good.
Posted in OSX, Opinion, Software | Leave a Comment »
Posted by cascadehush on January 17, 2007
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A free OpenGl billard game for linux. (OSX and Windows ports available as well)
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Developed as part of the Cairo icon font by Susan Kare, the dogcow eventually became the mascot of the Page Setup dialog box. Unclear as whether the picture was bovine or canine, the two taxonomies merged into the “dogcow”, the creature who says “moof”.
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The SpaceNavigator from 3Dconnexion is a tres cool USB peripheral for navigating in 3 dimensions in certain 3D software. Until now the SpaceNavigtor was Windows only, but 3Dconnexion has announced beta OS X support at Macworld.
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Fly through valleys, soar to mountaintops, dash down streets or orbit the earth in one seamless motion using the exciting new SpaceNavigator. Starting at $59, 3Dconnexion has made powerful 3D navigation accessible and affordable for architects, artists, s
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An ongoing discussion over at the Apple.com support forums led me to this tip from Macintouch about reverting your iPod back to firmware version 1.2. Many of the posters there have reported complaints about firmware 1.2.1 causing lockups.
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AutoPatcher is a freeware Windows Update alternative that gives you more control over how you update your PC. (This page is interesting because it also contains alternatives)
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Posted by cascadehush on January 17, 2007
Create photo mosaics with Mosaickr – Lifehacker:
Turn Flickr photos into a cool-looking mosaic (a big photo composed of lots of tiny photos) with mosaickr.
[...]
There’s no charge for the low-resolution version of your mosaic, but the high-res version will cost you 1.49 Euros (payable via PayPal).
Apart from seeming to be an interesting service, what is more interesting is that they are trying to monetise it with micro-payments per service. No doubt this is what web 2.5 will be about. Advertising can only go so far. Sooner or later people are going to have to pay something for their web services or lose them in a Web 1.0 style bang, as I’ve mentioned before.
Posted in Amusing, Internet, Opinion, Photography | Leave a Comment »
Posted by cascadehush on January 16, 2007
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ccPublisher is a tool that does two things: it will help you tag your audio and video files with information about your license and it allows you to upload Creative Commons-licensed audio and video works to the Internet Archive for free hosting.
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FreeMind is a premier free mind-mapping (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_map) software written in Java.
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a great trick to do on your background image
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THE books which defined the way The West thinks now… In their own words… but condensed and abridged into something like readable
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xPad is the ultimate notepad, TextEdit and Stickies replacement for Apple’s OS X.
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Various Photoshop Tutorials, many for older versions. (Which is no bad thing. It’s likely some of these would work in Elements as well)
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Turn a jpeg into old-school ascii art
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updated collection of 43 Folders’ most popular, most visited, most-commented-on, and my personal favorite posts about David Allen’s GTD.
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Tilt the floor to roll a ball through an obstacle course before time runs out. Neverball is part puzzle game, part action game, and entirely a test of skill.
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Quick, informative quiz about senses.
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I recently posted a link back to my blog on both Digg and Netscape to see what would happen. The results were not as shocking as you might think… until you factor in StumbleUpon!
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Ready to install binary packages for MacOS X.
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Registers documents and blogs for Numly copyright. Numly Numbers are unique identifiers of electronic media and recognized worldwide by electronic publishing companies and electronic content providers.
Posted in Opinion | Leave a Comment »
Posted by cascadehush on January 16, 2007
TubeSock – Rip videos from YouTube:
TubeSock costs $15
Witness the spectacle. On the one side a dodgy website full of copyright violations and naff home-movies. On the other side, a video player with limited codec support, even more limited screen space and yet more limited battery life.
Now, standing between, a celebrant ready to marry these two misfits. That celebrant is TubeSock and it only costs $15. Will it be happily-ever-after for YouTube and the iPod?
I must say it seems like an ideal match. If I’m going to watch crummy, low quality video I may as well do it on a low-quality-video player. If it was free, I’d probably give it a try. $15 is not unreasonable, but I just don’t care enough to pay for the privilege.
If you do care enough to pay, I suggest you take advantage of the opportunity before Google sues stinkbot out of existence, or else just changes their website API to make the software unworkable.
(And before Apple sues me out of existence, make note that I am not calling the iPod low quality, just the video codecs that it plays.)
Posted in Media, OSX, Opinion, Software, iPod | Leave a Comment »
Posted by cascadehush on January 8, 2007
I was watching a copy of a TV show which had been recorded of someone’s TV. Part way through, a banner add appeared at the bottom of the screen (yet another reason why traditional TV stations suck) telling me that the series was available in iTunes.
Here is what went through my mind in the next 60 seconds:
- That’s nice to know, if I want to seen any episodes I have missed, I can at least get them that way.
- Is the quality going to be any better than what I’m watching now? I doubt it. If it isn’t, then why would I pay for it. If I’m going to pay for a TV show I want it to be DVD quality.
- Isn’t it ironic that I never would have thought to go to iTunes for this TV show. I am watching a non-legal copy, yet by watching it I am now a potential customer for a legal copy of further episodes.
- I bet that when I go to iTunes the TV show won’t be available on the Australian iTunes. Nothing I have looked for on iTunes is available in Australia. There is stuff I want which is available to Americans but I can’t buy it here. So I probably won’t bother looking.
Posted in Media, Opinion | Leave a Comment »
